Roll On: Notes From Minneapolis

This week we dive into the why behind my decision to visit Minneapolis and what I learned from the experience. Plus stories from the swimming vault and some epic show & tell before fielding a few running-centric listener questions. Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein myself and Adam Skolnick dissect matters of the day in a manner that is instructive and sometimes even entertaining. Aside from serving as my sidekick and hypeman, Adam Skolnick is an activist and journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. He writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently using the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Topics explored in today’s conversation include: The Envol Swimrun Battle & Running For Justice Virtual Run Challenge; an update on the Iron Cowboy’s ‘Conquer 100’ challenge; the intention behind Rich’s trip to Minneapolis & his experiences in the city; what it means to reimagine public safety to create a safer society; Rich’s partnership with Ten Thousand and the new ‘Distance Kit’; and the future of lab-grown, ‘cultured’ meat. In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you stay motivated in your endurance challenges? What advice can you offer first-time marathoners? How can you hone your nutrition for large endurance races? Thank you to Steven from Charleston, Casey from Illinois, and Asha & Savannah from British Colombia for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. Ten Thousand ‘Distance Kit’ Giveaway: We’re giving away 5 Distance Kits from Ten Thousand! To enter: (1) subscribe to the Rich Roll Podcast YouTube channel; and (2) Leave a comment under today’s episode video. We will pick 5 winners who will receive the full kit (short, tank, and socks) and reach out to them. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll598 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon598 Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Before we dive in, real quick.

• 1:27Rich Roll?

  All right. Let's do the show.

• 1:33Rich Roll?

  What's up, podcastaholics? Roll On is back. Adam Skolnick and I are inside your ear hole, infecting you with ideas, big and small. Good to be here. Good to see you, my friend. Before we get into it, in addition, as you may or may not know, we also... In the course of doing this show, conduct a little bit of show and tell. We've got some good ones for you on that front today. And we round it all out by answering some of the questions dropped on our voicemail, which you can ring up at 424-235-4626. If you happen to be watching at http://www.youtube.com/richroll.

• 2:18Adam Skolnick?

  That's very thorough.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  Yes. Just so there's no confusion, please take a second to hit that subscribe button, maybe even click that notification bell or the like button if you're feeling frisky. Leave a comment below with your thoughts on audio. You must also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify because that is the rule.

• 2:38Adam Skolnick?

  The rule of life.

• 2:40Rich Roll?

  How you doing?

• 2:41Adam Skolnick?

  I'm doing good. I've got my, my right glute is a little twingey since you're asking.

• 2:46Rich Roll?

  Theragon.

• 2:48Adam Skolnick?

  There's a, there's a ritual application.

• 2:50Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 2:51Adam Skolnick?

  For every problem in your life.

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  I've got a product for you, my friend.

• 2:54Adam Skolnick?

  I have the Theragon.

• 2:55Rich Roll?

  What happened?

• 2:56Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I don't know. It's just like, it's, I've had a piriformis that is cranky for a long time. And sometimes it's more cranky than others. And I think it's really what it is. I think, you know what it is, is that if I'm not doing my yoga, like five days a week, at least in the morning, my body tells me.

• 3:13Rich Roll?

  You gotta get on that Goggins stretching routine.

• 3:16Adam Skolnick?

  I do.

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  Three hours a day.

• 3:18Adam Skolnick?

  I could, I could, I could be more Goggins. There's no question about it.

• 3:21Rich Roll?

  We, we all could.

• 3:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 3:23Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of room there.

• 3:25Adam Skolnick?

  Lot of room between where I am and Goggins. I'm comfortably at the 38 to 40%.

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good. That's.

• 3:32Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not even sure I'm there.

• 3:33Rich Roll?

  You might be over indexing there a little bit.

• 3:35Adam Skolnick?

  I might be.

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:39Adam Skolnick?

  Definitely. Happy belated Earth Day, Rich.

• 3:42Rich Roll?

  Happy Earth Day yourself. Every day is Earth Day. That is the refrain as. Trite, as that may sound.

• 3:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, every day.

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  I was remiss. I didn't post on Instagram my happy Earth Day.

• 3:53Adam Skolnick?

  You didn't virtue signal on Earth Day?

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't do that.

• 3:57Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 3:57Rich Roll?

  I'm feeling like a bad.

• 3:59Adam Skolnick?

  Missed opportunity.

• 3:59Rich Roll?

  A bad progressive, I guess.

• 4:01Adam Skolnick?

  You know what I feel like?

• 4:02Rich Roll?

  Part of me is like, it's sort of like Valentine's Day. It's like, oh, okay, we've made this social contract that on this day, we all have to do X, Y, and Z. And I, I don't know, man. I resist that.

• 4:12Adam Skolnick?

  You should. You know, I had forgotten that my wife and I, long ago, before we were husband and wife, or wife and husband, is more apt.

• 4:19Rich Roll?

  There's a virtue signal.

• 4:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 4:23Adam Skolnick?

  Before we were wife and husband, we had decided that we would ignore Valentine's Day.

• 4:28Adam Skolnick?

  And then I'd forgotten that. And so I bought her a bunch of stuff for Valentine's Day this year. And then she didn't have anything for me. And she's like, we don't do Valentine's Day. I'm like, I knew that.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  You broke the rule.

• 4:37Adam Skolnick?

  I knew that.

• 4:39Rich Roll?

  Your chivalry.

• 4:40Adam Skolnick?

  I got in trouble for not knowing our rules on Valentine's Day.

• 4:43Rich Roll?

  There you go. It's confusing, this culture that we live in.

• 4:46Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  As a man, trying to make the right decisions and the right moves.

• 4:52Rich Roll?

  What else is going on?

• 4:54Adam Skolnick?

  I've been swimming more, which is good. I got like in three times the week before last and again this week. I've been swimming more, or I guess last week.

• 5:04Adam Skolnick?

  And it's been great. You know, the water's warming up a little bit. Got the big swim run challenge coming up in June. Team Envol, Nicholas Ramirez, you know, the guy who advises me on all things swim run. He got inspired by the four by four forty-eight.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Adam Skolnick?

  And saw this like, he saw that as this accessible challenge for people who are interested in ultra, to push themselves. This is an accessible challenge for people who are interested in swim run. It's much less demanding than four by four forty-eight. It's over the course of June, he's got teams in different locations. And you can, anyone can sign up and he can assign you a team. You don't have to know anybody on your team and you don't have to even be.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Your team can be virtual.

• 5:45Adam Skolnick?

  The team is virtual. And basically, there's kids teams if you're 10 and over. And of course, mostly it's going to be adults. And all you have to do is a minimum of 15 minute swim run activity with at least two swims and two runs. So there's two transitions. Right? 15-minute activity could be enough. His wife is, who, you know, they have two young kids. His wife's just gonna do a 3-kilometer swim run every day with a group of people in Stockholm. So it doesn't have to be this huge thing. And you get 10 points per activity plus 1 point per kilometer, or 1.25 point per kilometer if it's over 10K, if one session's over 10K. And at the end of the month, they're gonna tally it all up, and they're gonna decide who wins.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  That's cool. Where do you find out more about that if people wanna sign up?

• 6:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's Team Envol, which is on Instagram, and they've got a website.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  E-N-V-O-L.

• 6:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 6:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Adam Skolnick?

  And 2 euro of your, signing up costs a little money, and 2 euro of that's going to Sea Shepherd, inspired by our discussion.

• 6:46Rich Roll?

  That's dope. I like that.

• 6:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a positive thing. And, you know, part of the reason they're doing that is that a lot of swim run races are still being called. Yeah, they're up in the air or not happening because of COVID. And so it's to kickstart people's training. But also, during the month, there's gonna be special days where he spotlights swim run organizers, where they have a specific challenge. So like Swim Run Belgium might have a specific challenge for people that you could take up or not. It's up to you. And there might be prizes associated with that.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  What if you live somewhere where all the pools are closed and you're landlocked?

• 7:21Adam Skolnick?

  So that's a good question. So where all the pools are closed and you're landlocked?

• 7:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Adam Skolnick?

  That's a very interesting.

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  I'm positing that as a theoretical.

• 7:31Adam Skolnick?

  The best thing I could think of. So the world champion, Desiree, I have to look her up now, cuz I'm silly like that. But she's one of the world champions on the women's side, and she also does sometimes races with men, and so she does the mixed-team stuff. She's gonna be leading a group of mercenaries. They're the kind of the loner swim run people. So there's a guy that is being coached by Nicholas in Iran. And he's the only swim runner in Iran that Nicholas knows of.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool.

• 8:01Adam Skolnick?

  And so that guy's gonna be on Desiree's team. There's gonna be, so people who are far out, that aren't connected to any swim run community. Cuz even though in LA, there's not that many people involved, but there are people around. But in, yeah, so he's got, that group is gonna be, Desiree's team is gonna be the mercenary group.

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  I feel like there's a New York Times assignment. Where you could go to Iran and do a story on the lone swim run guy.

• 8:32Adam Skolnick?

  If only I could just, if I could just pitch you for my New York Times stories, I'd have more of them.

• 8:38Rich Roll?

  Nobody's interested in that.

• 8:40Adam Skolnick?

  No, I think the Iran story would be good. You know, for someone for like that to be like a news story, he'd have to do well in a race, I think, or like, but, but there is, you know, that's what Nico really wants is me to do.

• 8:50Rich Roll?

  Does he train in the pool at the palace that Bonnie talks about in her book?

• 8:54Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that, that's amazing. Like, that's Iraq.

• 8:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 8:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but, but.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  I just, I just played my, you know, dumb American card.

• 9:01Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. But I just think it's interesting, like Iran is a lot harder to get to than Iraq for Americans. So it would be, but I bet I could do it. It's just a matter of getting permission, especially if you're doing something on culture like that, swim run or sports.

• 9:17Adam Skolnick?

  You know, that, that's, so that's cool. I would love to do a story on, on, you know, there was a, there was an open water swimmer who was trying to stave off like a civil war or like a civil conflict in Tunisia. And he wanted to swim from one part of the country to the other and to do like to kind of swim diplomacy.

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:41Adam Skolnick?

  And so he did that this year.

• 9:43Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool.

• 9:43Adam Skolnick?

  That's a cool story too. Yeah.

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  What else?

• 9:46Adam Skolnick?

  What else? Oh, May 5th, there's a virtual run, Running for Justice. It's National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. I don't know how many people are aware, but there has been this epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women in cities around the country, but also on, in Native American nations on the reservations. It's something well known. It's been publicized. There's been kind of even a movie about it. This is a problem that's been ongoing for years and years. And it's women who are most, who have kind of risen up to try to. Get justice for these women, or at least investigate the crimes. And Jordan Daniel, who is an indigenous woman, local, lives here in LA,

• 10:30Adam Skolnick?

  was a collegiate level runner. We talked about her once before. And she was doing like, I think, 10,000, 5,000, 10,000 K races on track.

• 10:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Adam Skolnick?

  And she ended up becoming a marathoner after college, kind of dealing with a eating disorder during her college career and afterwards, kind of going through that recovery and embracing longer distances as a way to pay tribute to the women and girls who've been, who've gone missing. And for a long, and she ran the Boston Marathon in, in war paint, symbolizing this cause.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:04Adam Skolnick?

  And now she is leading this virtual run on May 5th. So we'll, we'll link up the show notes. You can, everyone can sign up. There's a little bit of a fee, not too much. And it's about kind of raising awareness. So you put it on your social media and get more people aware of this epidemic.

• 11:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. I like that, man.

• 11:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And she's, she's phenomenal as a person and as an athlete, so.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  Maybe we should get her on the podcast.

• 11:27Adam Skolnick?

  We should get her on the podcast.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well.

• 11:30Adam Skolnick?

  How are you, Rich? What's going on?

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  I'm doing pretty good. I feel, I feel pretty refreshed after a very hectic five days in Minneapolis, which we're gonna talk about in a couple of minutes. Got a good ride in yesterday, like a 60 mile ride. So I'm feeling progressively a little bit more fit than I was maybe a month ago. So that feels good, but a little bit off my routine due to some travel. But I did have one kind of quick story that's sort of a win of the week that I wanted to share up top here. My boys, Tyler and Trapper, my stepsons, and my nephew, Hari.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  Just rap production on their first album or EP, it's five songs. Fantastic.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  In a proper studio. And just for context, like, the boys have been playing music together, these three guys, who created the theme song for this podcast on the first day of the first episode. It still remains, since they were like, six years old. I mean, Julie put a guitar in Tyler's hands when, you know, he could barely talk. Right. It was all she wrote. Like, that was, it was clear, like, this was gonna be his thing. Same thing, Trapper, with Trapper, with drums. And we've been sort of waiting and waiting for them to finally lay down some tracks in proper fashion. Tyler, along the way, his voice has developed. It's so beautiful. And he's become quite an extraordinary

• 13:03Rich Roll?

  songwriter. And they've been rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing for months, actually throughout the whole last year of the pandemic. And Hari is a childhood friend? Yeah, Julie's brother's child. Okay. Cousin. They've been, they've been rehearsing for, for like, a year. And the original intent was that they were gonna have their friend Chris from this band Grizzly Bear produce. But Chris is in Spain. I mean, Grizzly Bear is like, their favorite band. This is like, a huge opportunity for them. Chris is in Spain, however, and it was just becoming obvious that it was gonna be too tricky to do that in any meaningful way. But they linked up with this other young producer here in Hollywood. And they just spent all of last week at this

• 13:48Rich Roll?

  studio called 64 Sound. Julie and I went and visited on the final evening of recording. And it's this totally dope, like, old-school recording studio in Highland Park that's got this incredible vibe. It's owned by Pierre de Reader, who's the dude from Rilo Kylie. And over the course of the history of this studio, so many awesome bands have, have recorded there, from X, Sleater-Kinney, Amanda Palmer, Ben Harper, Death Cab for Cutie, Sia, Maroon 5. So there's this- Beautiful history. There's a cool studio tour video of 64 Sound. I'll link that up in the description and the show notes. So you can kind of see what it looks like. Amazing.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  And they just had this extraordinary experience. They got to use an instrument that was used by Elliott Smith, who they like revere. And they had some of their friends come in and accompany them for some of the sessions, including this guy Harrison Whitford, who's an extraordinary guitar player and is Phoebe Bridger's guitarist. Oh, my God. So Tyler and Trapper kind of came up in the Phoebe Bridger's extended universe. Like, you know, they don't know her personally, but they know a lot of the musicians that are part of her kind of ecosystem. So that was really cool, getting to hang out with Harrison. So they laid down five songs.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  And it was just, you know, as a parent, such a proud moment to see the, not really the culmination, really the beginning of so many years of time that these kids, passion and time that these kids have put into their music now, you know, turning into something that they can share with the rest of the world. And I had this moment the night before they were going into their first studio session. They were doing final rehearsals at the house. The whole kitchen area, you know, kitchen, living area in our house was just musical instruments everywhere. And they were playing some of the songs. And I was sitting with Julie listening and she just started tearing up. She was like, you know, because we see them as the, you know, six and seven year old,

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  eight year old, 10 year olds that every time we would have a dinner party, they would play, you know, they'd play a couple of songs by Nirvana or Rage Against the Machine. Right, right. So now they're men, you know, they're young men at the, you know, kind of coming into their creative prime. And it was just really cool to see. So, anyway, as a parent, that's a win, you know, to see that happening, especially as somebody who spends a lot of time talking about the importance of pursuing, you know, what's meaningful to you. And these guys have, you know, had extreme fidelity to this idea of becoming professional musicians. And now it's sort of. They're coming out of the starting gate with that, which is great.

• 16:41Adam Skolnick?

  Props to the boys. Do they have a name for the album yet?

• 16:44Rich Roll?

  No, and they don't even have a band name yet.

• 16:47Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, good. I love that.

• 16:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so they're still working on that. Tyler, Tyler wrote all the songs. And he's lead vocals and lead guitar, and they played all the instruments with the exception of some of the the people that came in to, you know, lay down accompanying tracks. But Tyler doesn't want it to be Tyler Poet. He wants to have a band, a proper band name, but they just haven't landed on it yet. He said he has five contending ideas, but he wasn't willing to share any of them.

• 17:15Adam Skolnick?

  Poet's a good band name.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  You can tell him that.

• 17:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not telling him anything. I'd say the working title is Trace Primos.

• 17:22Rich Roll?

  Is that what it is?

• 17:23Adam Skolnick?

  Three cousins.

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  I'll let him know. I'm sure he'll be happy to receive that. We got a lot to talk about today, but before we get into the big story, which is going to be all about my experience in Minneapolis. Why don't we drop in and do a segment we're calling the Iron Cowboy Ticker?

• 17:42Adam Skolnick?

  Iron Cowboy Ticker.

• 17:44Rich Roll?

  That's right, which is also kind of a win of the week.

• 17:46Adam Skolnick?

  Today, it's the win of the week section, too.

• 17:48Rich Roll?

  We have lots of wins of the week.

• 17:50Adam Skolnick?

  We do?

• 17:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's more.

• 17:52Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  Keep going.

• 17:55Adam Skolnick?

  The Iron Cowboy Ticker, he passed 50 Ironmans or quote unquote, Ironman distance triathlons.

• 18:02Rich Roll?

  You can't call it an Ironman.

• 18:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 18:03Rich Roll?

  Iron distance triathlons.

• 18:05Adam Skolnick?

  He passed the 50 mark, which was his own world record, Guinness World Record, correct?

• 18:11Rich Roll?

  I don't know exactly how Guinness defines all of this stuff. I do know that he announced that it was a world record once he completed his 51st.

• 18:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 18:21Rich Roll?

  When he did, the original 50, obviously, that was in, those were all in different states and he was traveling. So now it's all like very home based, but. From what I understand or gather, yeah, nobody has done more than 50 in a row.

• 18:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right, so his is 51.

• 18:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:36Adam Skolnick?

  So he had a big, I think it was, it was his most Forrest Gump setting yet, where a lot of people turned out to be part of the record and they ran some of the marathon with him and then, and then he gave a nice speech. I saw that.

• 18:46Rich Roll?

  He gives a little speech every evening when he concludes, and he's amazingly kind of together and eloquent, dropping a few words of wisdom on whoever's remaining at, you know, the late hour when they complete the marathon.

• 19:01Adam Skolnick?

  Did he just get more weather? Did I see on today's Instagram or was that an old, is that an old photo?

• 19:07Rich Roll?

  If he had just started this like six weeks later, it would be a much more pleasant experience. Like, they just cannot escape. We're now, you know, in, essentially in May, and they're still dealing with snow and sleet and all this terrible stuff.

• 19:19Adam Skolnick?

  They could through early June.

• 19:21Rich Roll?

  More power to him. I guess, you know, that's why it's called an adventure or a challenge, right?

• 19:25Adam Skolnick?

  So he's day 57?

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  Today, he's on day 57. He does appear to be having some significant hip issues. There was a bit of a limp that I noticed in him the other day. I saw him like on the bike using like a kind of ball roller thing on his hip while he was riding.

• 19:42Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 19:43Rich Roll?

  So I know that's been bugging him, but to date, every time he's had some kind of setback from his swollen ankles to whatever he's dealing with.

• 19:51Adam Skolnick?

  He had that shin problem, right?

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he just kind of powers through it and seems to get somewhat past it, which again, I think is testament to the power of the body to adapt to extreme circumstances. And again, you know, I said it before, I'll say it again. This guy is so mentally strong, perhaps one of the most mentally strong people you're ever gonna encounter. My fear is that his mental strength exceeds his physical strength, but to date, he's still cranking and.

• 20:24Rich Roll?

  It does feel like there's been a little bit of a breakthrough, like his mood seems to be really good and he's smiling a lot and you know, seems to be really engaged with the people that show up and track miles with him and

• 20:35Adam Skolnick?

  And he shaved his beard.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  He shaved his beard after 50.

• 20:38Adam Skolnick?

  I think that was the playoff beard.

• 20:39Rich Roll?

  One of the wingmen did too.

• 20:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  So yeah, it's like, whoa, what happened to the Iron Cowboy? He looks like a totally different person.

• 20:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he looks polished now.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Adam Skolnick?

  He's a polished cowboy.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  But sending him love and wind in his sails.

• 20:52Adam Skolnick?

  It's like he was the bounty hunter on the plains and then he got recruited to the Texas Rangers and they said, you can keep the hat, but you gotta shave.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  He's switching it up, man.

• 21:03Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I think he had like a real problem with his ankle or shin or something and he had to, he found a brace and he was walking and using poles and then gradually he was able to like, if you looked at his marathon times from like, maybe marathon 30 to 45, 50, every day it was getting a little bit quicker, a little bit quicker, a little more running, a little bit less walking. And then the last couple of days, I think he had

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  The hip.

• 21:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Now it's the hip.

• 21:29Adam Skolnick?

  It's a little bit lower.

• 21:30Rich Roll?

  So it slowed him down again.

• 21:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but not much.

• 21:31Rich Roll?

  But he's gotten over and through these other things.

• 21:34Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 21:35Rich Roll?

  And he's on the backside of this. So much work remains to be done, but

• 21:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing.

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be an amazing feeling to know that he's more than halfway there.

• 21:43Adam Skolnick?

  I'm in awe of the guy.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  It's pretty crazy, right?

• 21:45Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 21:46Rich Roll?

  So everybody, send him your love at IronCowboyJames on Instagram where he and his family and all his people that are supporting him have done an amazing job at storytelling in real time.

• 21:58Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt.

• 21:59Rich Roll?

  This event as it unfolds.

• 22:01Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sure.

• 22:01Rich Roll?

  It's always like the first Instagram story that I watch every day to get caught up. I mean, it's like a million little clips, you know, it's a lot, but you can just, you know, check in. And there is something, we said this before, it's something, there's something comforting. I'm comforted by every day waking up I look at it and he's like climbing out of the pool.

• 22:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Rich Roll?

  And I'm like, there he is. He's still doing it, man.

• 22:25Adam Skolnick?

  It's like clockwork. Well, you know, you were talking about long-term distance or long-term effects of these kinds of ultra outputs. I was reading a story written by an editor of mine at New York Times, Randy Archibald,

• 22:41Adam Skolnick?

  about the Anvil. You're familiar with the Anvil race?

• 22:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Adam Skolnick?

  In Virginia. He wrote this years ago. It was like 2016, I think. It's a great, it's a great piece. I mean, it's hilarious and fun. And it's about five, it's a quintuple Iron Man, but they also got cease and desist letters. They couldn't use Iron Man, but it's the same distance. And you could either do it all, the whole swim all at once, the whole, then do the whole running, the whole bike and then do the whole run with sleep deprivation. Or you could do each one, one after like day by day, and then there's a cutoff time. And so those you had, you got to choose.

• 23:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:16Adam Skolnick?

  And so he was there in Virginia and it was all in this, it's similar to the way James is doing it because it's, it's all in a

• 23:24Rich Roll?

  Contained space.

• 23:25Adam Skolnick?

  Contained space.

• 23:26Rich Roll?

  There's a, there's a thing called the DECA that's similar to that where there's a loop. It's in England and they just go around in circles.

• 23:32Adam Skolnick?

  That's 10 of them, right?

• 23:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. So anyway, in that story though, he referenced some study that like some doctors are out or scientists are out there thinking that there is a long-term health, like heart health implications with ultra, like there's scar tissue or something around the heart. Have you heard that before?

• 23:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's, there's truth to that. It probably breaks down on an individual basis. Like who becomes susceptible to that kind of thing, but certainly that's a risk. It's a risk that, that James has willingly, you know, invited into his life and we need pioneers like this to show us, show us what's possible. You know, when I did the epic five, it was like, oh my God, you did five. And now it's like, this guy's going to do 100. You know, it's, it's like, once it's, you know, it's.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  It's the same thing as Bannister breaking the four-minute mark in the mile. Like, once a barrier is broken, then the floodgates open and everybody's perception of possibility gets elevated. And that's kind of the story of the human race.

• 24:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yep. I'm with you. I love seeing him out there doing it. I just had never heard that about the heart stuff before.

• 24:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's lots of studies on that kind of thing.

• 24:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Rich Roll?

  All right, well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Minneapolis and other sundry topics.

• 24:52Adam Skolnick?

  Dateline Minneapolis.

• 25:02Rich Roll?

  All right, we're back. Let's talk about Minneapolis.

• 25:05Adam Skolnick?

  Let's talk about it.

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  So, the week of April 13, I spent, along with Blake and Jason, in Minneapolis. The idea being to garner a tactile, kind of firsthand, boots-on-the-ground experience of what is actually transpiring there. I said this in the introduction to the Jeremiah Ellison episode that went up earlier this week, that it's easy to think you have a sense of what's going on based upon the news that you consume, or the newspapers that you're reading, or the cable news channel that you're watching.

• 25:47Rich Roll?

  And it's something very different to actually be there and sort of touch it, feel it, to be present and immersed in the events that are transpiring. And I suspect you, as an investigative journalist, have had this experience time and time again. I'm not an investigative journalist. It was something interesting and new to take the podcast on the road. I mean, certainly when I travel and go out of town, I've traditionally brought a case and do podcasts on the road, but this was different. It was more event-inspired, as opposed to just, oh, I'm going to be in this city giving a talk, I might as well bag some podcasts along the way.

• 26:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right. This was part and parcel to an event that has captivated the whole world, in a way, because of the social justice implications and because we were all captive audience to George Floyd's death and murder. So, it's a... It's crazy and I mean, my experience has been mostly with underreported stories. But it's the same in the sense that you drop into a place where you haven't been.

• 26:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Adam Skolnick?

  And don't necessarily know the lay of the land. And you have an objective and a limited amount of time with which to get everything done. And you, so there's a, there's an element of adrenaline that's kind of always thrumming through you.

• 27:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 27:07Adam Skolnick?

  You feel like you can never relax until you, until you get stuff in the can.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  And this was that times a thousand because you flip on the TV.

• 27:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  And it's just Minneapolis 24 hours a day on cable news and you're there.

• 27:21Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 27:21Rich Roll?

  And it's all happening around you.

• 27:23Adam Skolnick?

  And you wonder what everyone else is recording, like, how am I? But the beautiful thing about, about you doing it is that a photographer named Tom Stoddard, who I worked with earlier in my career, he's a legend, English photographer. He's been around for years and years and he was in, you know, in Bosnian war and other places. He's been a war photographer. He's been the guy that is in, you know, Tony Blair's limo. I mean, he's, he's done it all in photography from the news perspective. And when I was working in displaced people's camps in, in Myanmar with him for a feature for men's health, he said, you know, a lot of, some other people have done this story, but you haven't done the story.

• 28:05Adam Skolnick?

  And so it's still important, you do it for the first time, it's still important. And in this sense, it's even more so because first of all, you weren't just doing the quippy kind of public radio, you know, story or even a 30 minute narrative. You are doing deep in-depth interviews with people who normally are just on the TV for about five minutes. And so you bringing your perspective and your skill as an interviewer, which I think, and I've, I've just wrote about this, is, I think. I don't think there's a parallel for you as an interviewer out there in broadcasting.

• 28:38Rich Roll?

  That's a heavy statement.

• 28:40Adam Skolnick?

  I've always believed that. I've told you that before. And, and so you come into this area with all this energy, but for you, bringing your perspective, it's always going to stay relevant. So it's a really interesting challenge for you. I mean, what, what, what drew you to do, you know, to like mobilize the podcast in this direction? Cause it's new, new ground for you.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it definitely was an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and play with the format and try something new. But I felt called to do it. It felt important. It felt like the right thing to do. And I feel really good about the, not just the content that we were able to gather over the course of the week, but the decision to do it in the first place, you know? And I think it's a, a direction that felt right for me. How the audience processes it is none of my business. That's up to them. But the rule is for the show has always been for me to follow my curiosity and to try to have meaningful conversations that, that

• 29:43Rich Roll?

  matter. And this squarely falls into that category. But it all came together in a very interesting way. So I should probably recount that. What happened was

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  my friend Brogan Graham, who longtime listeners will remember was on the podcast many years ago. I think it was four years ago, back at 277, something like that, episode 277. Brogan is one of the co-founders of the November Project, which is a global free fitness movement that's now in countries all over the world. He had been living in San Diego. He relocated to Minneapolis a couple of years ago. And we've stayed in touch and been friends, kind of internet friends. And he reached out several weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, and was like, listen, you know, obviously you know, there's a lot going on in this city right now. I think it would be really interesting for you to come here

• 30:36Rich Roll?

  and get some interviews and I could help corral some interesting folks. I know a lot of people in the city. I'm pretty plugged in. What do you think about that? And I immediately thought that that was a great idea. And time, you know, is ticking pretty quickly on how this story with the Chauvin trial was. Evolving, so it was kind of a moment of clearing the calendar and just jumping on it and getting out there and doing also in terms of getting out of my comfort zone. When I've done podcasts on the road in the past, it's just me, right? But this time it's like, let's bring Blake, let's bring Jason, let's do, you know, full production, you know, quality, video and audio.

• 31:18Rich Roll?

  We'll get a hotel room with a big room in it and we can set up a set and we'll conduct as many interviews as we can. But as we approached the day to depart to Minneapolis, I was struggling to get, you know, we did some research, like who would be the people that we would want to talk to, right? Let's reach out to them and we were getting no responses. And part of that is because, I'm sure, because everything in that city was obviously very tense, but also kind of evolving moment to moment. And there was a sense that nobody could really commit to anything because who knows what's going to happen the next day. And the people that I was reaching out to are also in high demand with the media and

• 32:02Rich Roll?

  the whole media universe is now camped out in Minneapolis trying to get people, you know, to interview. So on some level, I was competing with the networks for time and attention. And if you're somebody, if you're a civic leader in Minneapolis, you have to gauge how you want to invest your time. Should I go on Good Morning America or should I do the original podcast, right? So we get on the plane and it was very unclear whether we were going to be able to interview anybody. But I know, and I know you know, because we talked about this, that when your heart is pure, when your heart is true, the universe will conspire to support you. I don't think that's at all right. I know, I joke, it's more like you have to show up. Yeah.

• 32:43Rich Roll?

  You show up and you're in 100% for the adventure and whatever is going to, you know, unfold. Then magical things can happen. But if you're like, well, I don't have it all scheduled, so I'm not going to go. You're depriving yourself of that miracle.

• 32:58Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  And I've done this many times in the past, so I knew to kind of trust that it would be okay. And it ended up being more than okay. We got incredible interviews with a variety of super interesting people. And, you know, once again, like affirmed that, that, that idea that like, sometimes you just have to show up.

• 33:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 33:21Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 33:22Adam Skolnick?

  Can I set the context a little bit here? Cause one of the people you, you interviewed, the first episode just came out today. We're recording it on, on this on a Monday and last night, uh, the, the Jeremiah Ellison episode just dropped. But just to quickly set the stage, you get out there, um, a week before the jury delivers their verdict. And you're there like right up until like a couple of days before the verdict comes in, right?

• 33:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Adam Skolnick?

  Or before the, before the closing arguments.

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. So just to backtrack a moment, um, Brogan deserves a ton of credit for really, um, being an incredible host and helping to open up a bunch of doors. Um, I'm wearing this T-shirt, it says, it says Zoom call summer camp. Brogan sent this to me like almost a year ago. I love it. So I wanted to wear it today in honor of Brogan.

• 34:13Adam Skolnick?

  Well, Brogan, Brogan was kind of like your fixer, right? Like we.

• 34:16Rich Roll?

  Kind of, yeah, he's kind of a fixer. He also, uh, gifted me with that moose that you see in the center of the table there.

• 34:22Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 34:22Rich Roll?

  And he also created this, this podcast, this Rich Roll Podcast bingo card, which I'm going to get framed here for the studio that has like, you know, basically, uh, all the words that tend to recur on the podcast.

• 34:36Adam Skolnick?

  Give us a few.

• 34:37Rich Roll?

  Refuel, gut health, John Joseph, Goggins, precipice. He missed a few, like unpack, um, new book.

• 34:48Adam Skolnick?

  Baked in.

• 34:49Rich Roll?

  Paradigm busting, vegan, swim run is on there. And then it's got like, you can cut out your little, you know, bingo.

• 34:55Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 34:56Rich Roll?

  Bingo chip and the whole thing.

• 34:58Adam Skolnick?

  We gotta play bingo.

• 34:59Rich Roll?

  Anyway, Brogan is one in a million. He's one in a billion. Like he's the kind of guy who like goes out of his way to do cool, creative things like that. So shout out to Brogan. He very much wants your job, so careful.

• 35:11Adam Skolnick?

  My job?

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Rich Roll?

  I think I am gonna have him come in and he's gonna be in the area at some point in the not too distant future. I'm gonna have him sit in and read some ads with me.

• 35:22Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect.

• 35:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:23Adam Skolnick?

  So you have him sit, have him sit in with us and?

• 35:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it'll be good.

• 35:26Adam Skolnick?

  I'll just, I'll just get pushed out of the way.

• 35:28Rich Roll?

  No, you're not getting pushed out. Your job is secure, Adam.

• 35:32Adam Skolnick?

  Is that Brogan the moose or the caribou? The moose.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  That's not him personally.

• 35:36Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 35:37Rich Roll?

  But to answer your question, yeah, so, so the Jeremiah Ellison episode just went up. We were present through the culmination of the defense presenting their case in the Chauvin trial. So we left Saturday morning. So Friday, the last day, the defense had rested and it was then headed to, then Monday was, was closing arguments and then to the jury. And we don't know what happened with that.

• 36:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  Convicted on all three counts.

• 36:09Adam Skolnick?

  That we should, yeah, I mean, that's major.

• 36:11Rich Roll?

  Third degree murder and manslaughter. But there was this very palpable sense that the city was on edge and had the verdict gone a different way. I'm pretty confident that the city would have exploded.

• 36:23Adam Skolnick?

  Well, plus, like, the, the day before you leave or the night, like Dante Wright is killed.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  Right. So that's on top of the whole thing.

• 36:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 36:31Rich Roll?

  So just to set the stage a little bit, we arrive Tuesday night, I think. We get there at like, I don't know, 8, 8:30 or something like that. And we're staying in a hotel right in downtown. We're driving through downtown to get to the hotel. It's completely boarded up. There's nothing open. There's no people anywhere. It was very eerie in that regard. None of us had eaten dinner yet. And there was a restaurant in the hotel. The only vegan option was spaghetti. And for $22, you could get an order of spaghetti that was like the size of your fist. I ordered two of those for $44 and felt like I'd only eaten an appetizer and I was starting to lose my mind. I'm like, we gotta order more food.

• 37:14Rich Roll?

  But there were no delivery drivers and very few restaurants opened. There was also the curfew, right?

• 37:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:22Rich Roll?

  So the curfew is at 10:00 PM. Restaurants weren't taking orders after 9:00, but there was no drivers to deliver the food. So we would go on DoorDash, which is the main food delivery service in that area. And it would allow you to like place your order and it would look all good and it would charge your credit card. And then you'd get a pop-up saying like, "We just canceled your order. There's no drivers." But they made sure to charge your credit card first. So I did that three times and racked up like, you know, $300 in food delivery.

• 37:54Adam Skolnick?

  That never showed up.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  That never showed up. Finally, Jason, through his keen telephone and interpersonal skills, cajoled a Chinese restaurant into delivering us a bunch of food. So it ended up being fine. But for a moment there, I was like, "We're not going to be able to eat." So that was the first night. Then, after that, you know, we started to get to work and trying to pin down some people to interview. And a bunch of the people finally did get back to us and we were able to lock down a bunch of interviews. We ended up touring George Floyd Square, which was an extraordinary experience. And I said this in the podcast

• 38:35Rich Roll?

  with Jeremiah, but in many ways defied my expectations of what it would be in so many ways.

• 38:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  And in that is a powerful lesson or reminder that when you think you understand something, perhaps you don't understand it as well as you think you do. Because I'd seen George Floyd Square, as all of us have, on television a thousand times. I'd formed in my mind what it would be like, what it looked like, what the environment surrounding it would be like. And it was really none of those things. We shot a bunch of video. We're able to work with a couple of local guys, Jordan and Benny, who did some portraits and shot some video for us. So we're going to try to put together a video out of that

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  experience. And it was really powerful and meaningful and also very meta, given that the eyes of the world were kind of upon

• 39:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  this city while we were there, including the fact that on All Day Friday,

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  Dante Wright's entire family was in the lobby of the hotel. So you'd see them on CNN, you'd ride the elevator down and like there they, there they all are with, um, with their lawyer. And so, you know, it just, it just felt meaningful to be there. And I felt a responsibility and a certain level of pressure to, um, I don't want to say get it right. Brogan is always like, you're not going to get it right. Release yourself from the pressure of trying to get it right. But at least be able to, um, do service to these people who were donating their time to share their story. So it was very intense. Like I was prepping most of the time with the exception of kind of going out,

• 40:20Rich Roll?

  um, to George Floyd Square. And it was just bang, bang, bang, interview, interview, interview. So.

• 40:25Adam Skolnick?

  What, what, what hit you at George Floyd Square? I mean, I know you've talked about it a little bit, uh, in, on, on social media already and then, um, in the podcasts really eloquently, but it was kind of in brief, because you're talking to Jeremiah about his work. Um, what was it for you? Because to me, when I look at the photos and look at the video, it almost is like it was a retrograde moment in America. Like it was a throwback moment, a lynching on television. And it almost looks that way. It almost looks like what America used to look like back when people couldn't eat at the lunch counters. You know, it's kind of got that throwback, like retro look to it.

• 41:02Rich Roll?

  Well, it's in a neighborhood that, that, you know, hasn't necessarily modernized to look like 2021. So you can easily see it, uh, you know, as 1965 in many ways.

• 41:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Rich Roll?

  The neighborhood itself is fairly residential. Like I said with Jeremiah, I expected it to be a much more urban neighborhood than it was. Um, the space itself is much larger than I expected. Um, on the day that we were there, I mean, obviously your emotional experience of visiting George Floyd Square is going to be heavily dependent upon what's happening in the square on that day. And certainly there are moments where there's a lot of people there. Sometimes it's celebratory and joyous. On the day that we were there, it was gray and kind of cold and rain, you know, drizzling. There weren't that many people there. It was the middle of the afternoon and it just felt somber. It was unbelievably quiet in the space. And, and it was, you know, I was struck by the idea

• 42:00Rich Roll?

  that it's kind of like this living, breathing museum, which is what I said the other day as well.

• 42:06Rich Roll?

  I didn't expect to be as moved by it as I was because I'd seen it so many times. Like, all right, we're gonna go, you know, do this thing. And then I was like very moved by what I saw. And it's really only in part about George Floyd. It's really about all of the, like, the legacy that led up to George Floyd with all of the people who have died painted on, on the street. There's a cemetery, sort of a mock cemetery that they set up with gravestones for all the people that have died. And every little piece- In Minneapolis or overall? I think it's for Minneapolis. For Minneapolis. Every piece of graffiti art, every mural, every little, you know, artifact that's

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  placed is not policed, but, but kind of managed by a community of people that have a say in what's, you can't just go in there and paint a mural or paint on the street. It's not a, you know, it's not a, what do you call that, like a- Public art space. Yeah, it is a public art space, but there's a lot of intention that goes into what's gonna happen there and what's not. We had spent, and I, again, you know, forgive me for repeating what I talked about with Jeremiah, but we had spent a good 45 minutes to an hour visiting. Then as we're leaving, we encounter this group of people who are all members of something

• 43:32Rich Roll?

  called the Agape Collective, I think it's called. And this is the story that I want to tell. So maybe 10 of them, they're all wearing the same t-shirt. And one of the guys says, hey, man, like, what are you, what are you, what are you guys doing here? Not in a overly aggressive or threatening way, but more like curiosity with a little bit of an edge, like, hey, state your purpose. Right. You know, like, tell us what you're all about. Yes. Brogan's like, oh, I live here. These are my friends. They're from Los Angeles. This is- Rich, he has a podcast and we're just here visiting, trying to understand what's going, you know, get a, get a better sense of, of what this is all about. And the guy goes, "Oh, you have a podcast? What's your podcast?"

• 44:18Rich Roll?

  "It's kind of a health and wellness bent, um, but I talked to all kinds of interesting people." And he's like, "Do you do social justice?" And I said, "Yeah, a little bit. It's not all the time, but that's why I'm here. I'm, I'm here to have some conversations with people about what's happening here." And he goes, "Okay." And then, and then he looks at me and he goes, "What's your podcast do?"

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  And I was like, "What does my podcast do?"

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  I was like, "What is my podcast?" And I, literally it was a deer in headlights. I was like, "What does your podcast do?" And I did not have like an immediate answer for him. I was like, he put me on the spot with that one.

• 44:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right. What does it do?

• 44:59Rich Roll?

  And I kind of muttered through like, "Well, you know, blah, blah, blah. I just, you know, I try to empower people, whatever."

• 45:05Adam Skolnick?

  You said something, but inside you're like, "That's not it."

• 45:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was like, "I really should have an answer to that question."

• 45:12Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  And whether he knew it or not, I mean, that was like the ultimate question. Like, that's a profound question. Like, what is your podcast? And then the rest of the week, Brogan was joking with me. He's like, "Hey, Rich, what does your podcast do?"

• 45:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 45:24Rich Roll?

  "What does your podcast do?"

• 45:26Adam Skolnick?

  That's like Jules from Pulp Fiction. You almost just started walking the earth.

• 45:30Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 45:31Adam Skolnick?

  That was it.

• 45:31Rich Roll?

  Exactly. I was like, "I give up," right?

• 45:35Adam Skolnick?

  Rich walks the earth.

• 45:35Rich Roll?

  What an amazing ques- and I, and so anyway, we said enough to at least, I don't know if we, we didn't win them over, but, but sort of made them feel comfortable enough that our intentions were pure. And one of the women then gave us this incredible tour of the space. She took, there's a greenhouse there where they're growing plants. And walked us through all the different kind of mini installations throughout the space and it was, you know, it was kind of an amazing experience.

• 46:07Adam Skolnick?

  It's kind of a reclaimed area that now belongs to the community, but in a very controlled, not controlled, but a very intentional, kind of controlled way, right?

• 46:16Rich Roll?

  Very much so.

• 46:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  You know, when you, when you breach the border of it, there's a big sign saying, now you're entering the free state of George Floyd and there's also these placards up that kind of state the, I don't know if I want to call them rules, but like things to, things to bear in mind when you walk in here, like this is a place of grieving, this is, you know, this is, this is not for your Instagram moment, you know, this is a place of, you know, of, of, that is, that is somber and, you know.

• 46:47Adam Skolnick?

  They need that though.

• 46:48Rich Roll?

  Please, like act accordingly, essentially, right? And you realize like how much thought and intention has gone into this and yet there is a, you know, a debate over when to open the businesses that are within the square. Again, something I talked about with Jeremiah, there's business owners that would like to reopen their businesses, but, you know, is that a good idea right now? There's differing conflicting opinions on that. And then the, the gas station where they've removed the pumps and now there's a fire pit and this is where the community kind of leaders sit and talk about the space and the issues that had, you know, happened that day and whatever else is, is top of mind. And it was, you know, it was, it was cool.

• 47:33Adam Skolnick?

  It's almost like it will become a museum, you know, like.

• 47:37Rich Roll?

  It'll be interesting to see what it looks like in a year and five years from now.

• 47:41Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, the context of Minneapolis of all of this and, you know, like George Floyd's death was. To put it in, we've all, we've all seen the video and we've, you know, we know about Chauvin and his background and it was murder, but you know, he was one of many people who have been abused or killed by the Minneapolis Police Department. They've had long, long time accusations of racism. Black residents are more likely to be pulled over, arrested, roughed up than white citizens. They account for 20% of the city's population, but made up more than 60% of the victims of city police shootings from 2009 to 2019, according to police data. And Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, has just announced a complete investigation

• 48:26Adam Skolnick?

  into the Minneapolis Police Force with the blessing of the chief, who is black, we should say. And so all that is the context for you being there, you know, like that, that's the context for George Floyd Square kind of blooming and becoming this place.

• 48:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the context is much broader than George Floyd.

• 48:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:43Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and that's something that, look, I realize like emotions run high around this and, you know, in my opinion, Derek Chauvin snuffing the life out of this guy, it's like, you know, on video, it's like, this is not a, this is not a, a hard case.

• 48:58Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 48:59Rich Roll?

  You know, and it is interesting that there was such a, such an exhale and a sigh of relief when the verdict was announced, because it seems like, you know, this should be a no brainer, and yet, time and time again, we've seen it go the other way.

• 49:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  It was interesting when I posted a little clip, little video clip of me and the guys walking through George Floyd Square on Instagram last week. It was, for the most part, well received, but also met with not a small amount of, of derision and what I would characterize as moral confusion, a few ad hominem attacks, a lot of what about-ism, and this idea that, you know, to honor that space and to, you know, appreciate the movement is somehow to hoist George Floyd up as some kind of hero, which really misses the point and the main issue of the whole thing.

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  It was dispiriting on some regard to see that, and I understand everybody's got, you know, their own take and opinion on that. And ultimately...

• 50:06Rich Roll?

  You know, I do it again. I feel pretty good about being on the right side of history. And like I said, I'm proud of the work that we've done. And I think it is important, and I talked to Brogan about this the other day. There's this idea that, yes, we all saw the verdict. We watched it live here in the studio the other day. There is this sense that we can exhale a sense of relief. And I think it's okay to be happy about it for a minute. Like, there's this sense like, well, we can't be happy about this. There's so much work that has to be done, and that's certainly true.

• 50:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Rich Roll?

  But I think we can be grateful that it turned out in that way, without it being some kind of referendum on the extent of the remaining work to be done.

• 50:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I think so. You know, I think that what you were referencing with your Instagram posts is like you had said at the beginning of us talking about this, that like, we all think we know something before we... And then you get there and there's a whole nother depth to it that we hadn't really anticipated. I think that when it comes to how polarized we are with media choices, or media silos, or politics, or whatever, people are so sure of their opinion, more so than ever, especially the less they know about it. You know, the less you know, the more sure you are of your opinion. And I think that that's where a lot of that comes from. And we're like somehow calcified with so little information into these little boxes. And we do it to ourselves, and we're the product.

• 51:40Adam Skolnick?

  We've talked about it with technology, and I think you're dealing with a little bit of that. I think it's, that's why it's so cool that you are wanting to flex and kind of get that crust out of there. Because what we need is a certain level of unity to accomplish big things, to make the world better. I mean, that's what you're, to me, that's what you're after.

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, flex might be the wrong word. Like, I went there with a lot of humility and appreciation that even though I think I have a grip on these issues, understanding that, you know, I was only touching the surface of what was really going on. And the spirit of the trip was to try to learn more so that I could understand more comprehensively the issues that are at play. That I think, look, you know, Minneapolis is a test case. Yes, it's about the current and future state of Minneapolis, but... You know, to again use the word referendum, it's about the civil rights movement at large, it's about where we stand on race as a country and it bodes, it is a statement on where we're headed as a country.

• 52:48Adam Skolnick?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:49Rich Roll?

  And that's why the world was watching this 24 hours a day.

• 52:54Adam Skolnick?

  I think, you know, you talk about with Jeremiah in that episode about kind of the wins that the Minneapolis movement for Black Lives Matter has had in terms of policing. And I don't want to step on that now. People should check out that episode because it's very interesting. But for me, from a, looking at it, when I look at the effects of the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, now, now we see two things. And one is the Biden election victory. I think that's directly tied to that. I don't think you have the turnout you have for Biden without Black Lives Matter. I think that's a big win that is connected completely. I think it's, that was the first. And I think the George Floyd,

• 53:36Adam Skolnick?

  first of all, having a murder case at all, and then the verdict. I do think that they, you, you, you got to give credit to the BLM movement. So, you know, when you went for a movement that wasn't after any one specific, you know, there was no civil rights law they were after, there was no permission to go to school type of thing that's, that the civil rights period had, which are very, you know, simple, like really easy to understand things they're trying to accomplish. That makes it easier for spectators, I guess, or other people in the, in the public who are, are sympathetic and want to know. This, the BLM movement didn't have that. So it was kind of like harder to understand for some people. But now we have these two really concrete things, in my opinion.

• 54:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:20Adam Skolnick?

  What do you think about that?

• 54:21Rich Roll?

  Well, it's harder to calculate progress without some kind of touchdown moment.

• 54:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 54:25Rich Roll?

  So on some level, that's what this represented.

• 54:31Rich Roll?

  And progress is iterative, you know, despite how much kind of revolutionary energy you have around massive change, history dictates that these changes happen pretty slow.

• 54:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  And as much as some people would like it to move much more quickly, we have to at least acknowledge that it is moving in the right direction.

• 54:55Adam Skolnick?

  It is. Couple of questions for you, because you talk with Jeremiah about kind of the defund the police language, and I think that, you know, we should, you should lay out, kind of like, I know Jeremiah does very well, but, you know, people are confused. I think that anytime you question the police, it's been a third rail in this country for so long. It's like the military and the police. You can't criticize the police, you can't criticize the military. It's like immediately a political third rail. And that's what this movement was doing, which is why people were like, some people who were not sympathetic were pushing back.

• 55:39Adam Skolnick?

  But I think what is, you know, what the Columbus case showed, I think the soldier that was pulled over, the lieutenant that was pulled over in Virginia, I think it was, what that showed, maybe it was Maryland, is that too often, first of all, police, armed police don't have to show up for everything.

• 55:59Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right? So when we talk about, when they talk about, the activists talk about defund the police, they are talking about moving money around and having, like you said, not a monopoly for public safety.

• 56:12Rich Roll?

  Well, it depends on who you talk to.

• 56:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 56:14Rich Roll?

  Like I said, defund the police means different things to different people.

• 56:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  You can make the argument, as Jeremiah does, that The provocative nature of that phrase was what was necessary to produce

• 56:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  the conversations that lead to change. The counter to that is, is that it's so inflammatory to say that, that it's unproductive.

• 56:36Adam Skolnick?

  Right. So I, and my, my take on that would be like, I think abolish the police is an unproductive phrase. Like, I think defund, I think you should, we're all grownups, we should be able to listen to that and, and figure out what that means. That means, you know, for, cause for years, police forces were, were funneled cash to militarize more and more. And you'd see these, like, they have military Humvees with their police department. It's like, some of that stuff is unnecessary and certainly what's unnecessary is, is to have, like, the lieutenant who wanted to drive a mile to get into a well-lit gas station is immediately, has guns pointed at him and people shouting at him. Or, you know, George Floyd passing allegedly a fake bill.

• 57:19Adam Skolnick?

  There is no reason to get violent with someone like that.

• 57:22Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 57:22Adam Skolnick?

  The, the, or Dante Wright.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  In the middle of, in the middle of the Chauvin trial, are you, you're gonna shoot at Dante Wright driving away?

• 57:29Adam Skolnick?

  There's no, there's no reason to.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  It's insanity, right?

• 57:32Adam Skolnick?

  You can follow him home and block the driveway.

• 57:34Rich Roll?

  Show up at his house tomorrow.

• 57:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 57:36Rich Roll?

  If there's a warrant out for him. But like, your job is to de-escalate conflict. But the problem is, so much of the training that's bred into the police force is that things can go haywire at any minute. You've got to be ready at all times for something terrible to happen. And so you create a, like, trigger-happy mindset because you're always thinking that lethal force is gonna be directed at you.

• 58:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 58:04Rich Roll?

  And so that creates like an anxiety or a fear, I suppose. And I, I don't wanna get too deep into this because I, I'm certainly no expert on police training or, you know, the, the entire issue as a whole. But I think the relevant point that I would like to make is that when you hear defund the police and Jeremiah being somebody who's at the vanguard of that movement and is kind of, for better or worse, Ben, you know, a prominent voice in, in, with respect to that issue. When you actually sit down and talk to him, what he says makes a lot of sense, which is that Which is first to pose the question, should police have a monopoly on public safety? Which is a question I said to him, like, I'd never really asked myself that question or thought about it.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  But when you think about it, you know, a sort of armed response to every 911 call is certainly highly inappropriate. There are probably the majority of those calls that could be attended to without people with guns. We see this in other countries. And we do need better training around de-escalation.

• 59:08Adam Skolnick?

  We see it here in this country. We see it in LA, like...

• 59:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but part of the, you know, the kind of response is, we don't need to defund the police, we need to give them more money into training, right? Maybe, and, you know, we could talk about that. I think the larger point is, we need to reallocate resources so they're going in the direction of the kind of reform that we would like to see. And that overall, the police force should be a tool in a larger toolkit that includes other public safety measures that are more appropriate depending upon the circumstances.

• 59:43Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. Because I think what's also, I don't hear people talking about is the status quo. It's not working for the police either, in the sense that...

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  It'd be terrible to be a cop right now.

• 59:54Adam Skolnick?

  Why would you, like, and, right now or anytime there's lethal force involved, like, everyone suffers from these things. The repercussions, you know, one thing I was thinking about when I was listening to Jeremiah is like, look at this amazing family. Keith Ellison, his father is the Attorney General from Minnesota, was a congressman for many terms, is so empowered, and this guy's an artist who, you know, must have felt called to more service and decides, and is really, has a great idea of what it means to be an activist and what it means to actually then synthesize those demands into governing, and he cares about both.

• 1:00:33Rich Roll?

  And he understands community building.

• 1:00:35Adam Skolnick?

  And he understands community building, and he's, like, as good a spokesman as you could ever find for, from an activist point of view. And now he's governing and understands that's a different level, and he's really on that, it's, you know, not to put him in some politician box, because he might be an artist in five years again, but Barack Obama was a community organizer. So when you see that kind of progression, it's very exciting. But...

• 1:01:02Adam Skolnick?

  So like, at the same times, there's this beautiful, there's a beauty in like, these powerful families, or some, some sort of energy. And it has nothing to do with people's economic background necessarily, or their, or their ethnic background. It's just like, some families have this like incredible energy running through it. And that is an energy that I think there's, there's, it has to be treated with respect. And at the same time, if you're a police officer and you get into an altercation, one moment could, could create a negative energy that runs through, like the George Floyd family now has to deal with this vacancy. But the cops family has to deal with the fact that they, he murdered George Floyd. And like, that kind of, the repercussions

• 1:01:46Adam Skolnick?

  of all that, that's what's so sad to me. The tragedy, the tragic repercussions, when you see what, what an incredible, like, purpose-driven family looks like. That's what we all want to be, right?

• 1:01:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, certainly, a call to service is like woven into the DNA of that family. Their mom was on the board of the Department of Education, I believe, like, yeah, amazing.

• 1:02:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Rich Roll?

  Amazing.

• 1:02:14Adam Skolnick?

  So, anyway.

• 1:02:16Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:02:16Adam Skolnick?

  You guys saw the, the verdict here together, and that was kind of like a, a cap on the trip for you, wasn't it?

• 1:02:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we were back here and working on the episode, and it came on. And, well, first of all, Brogan FaceTimed me, and he's like, they're gonna announce the verdict pretty soon. So that was how I clued into it. And we just, yeah, we flipped on YouTube where it was, you know, streaming live, and just watched until they announced it.

• 1:02:44Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing. You think you'll, you'll do one of those trips again?

• 1:02:49Rich Roll?

  I'd like to. I mean, not for the sake of doing it, but if it feels like the right thing to do. You know, it is interesting because the legacy of this show is essentially evergreen conversations, and this is something that is...

• 1:03:06Rich Roll?

  More news than that. And we're, you know, we're releasing these now over a couple of weeks.

• 1:03:12Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  So there's a dated nature to it, I suppose, but the conversations are really about the ongoing conversation. It's not about like what's happening in the Derek Chauvin trial or what's happening with Dante Wright. It's about the larger issues at play that are not going away. You know, that conversation continues.

• 1:03:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  You know, as everybody is fond of saying, the work is just beginning and there's much to do.

• 1:03:37Adam Skolnick?

  Very cool. It's almost like anytime there's a conflict, you just wish that the people that are called to deal with it, show up with this idea that I want the best interest for everybody involved to be the outcome, including myself. And so what is that? And that would be a nice intention. Now, I'm not a cop, but that would be a nice intention. When I show up to, to do a job, that's kind of where I try to come from.

• 1:04:01Rich Roll?

  And listen, you know, I'm sure there's a huge number of police officers that have that state of mind.

• 1:04:08Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt, and soldiers.

• 1:04:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. It's just, it's just not everybody and there's, and clearly so, and it could, there's good reasons why people don't show up that way. Cause maybe you have to be on guard. Maybe there's something wrong with, but it seems like, it seems like if we, if we follow like what you're saying, what Jeremiah was saying on, in his podcast with you, if you kind of divide up the, the tactics, this you need an armed response for, this you don't. Maybe you have a better chance of, of getting there.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, we'll see what, we'll see what unfolds.

• 1:04:43Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 1:04:52Rich Roll?

  All right, let's move on to a little show and tell, shall we? The show and tell segment.

• 1:04:58Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:04:58Rich Roll?

  I got lost at show and tell today.

• 1:05:00Adam Skolnick?

  You, your first show and tell is 10,000, correct?

• 1:05:03Rich Roll?

  First up on show and tell is the 10,000 Distance Short and Kit. 10,000, long time sponsor of the podcast. Shout out to 10,000. I love those guys. What's interesting about 10,000 is that this is a, it's a relatively new brand that.

• 1:05:22Rich Roll?

  That really kind of found its mark in the gym, functional fitness, kind of CrossFit world. And they've been a great sponsor for, I think, over a year at this point, for quite some time. And I love their gear. I love training in it. Their stuff is really of the highest quality. And they reached out to me many months ago to share this plan that they had to get into the running space in a meaningful way, because their gear wasn't really necessarily tailored for run-specific workouts. And they just asked, would you be interested in getting involved and helping? And because I love the brand and I really like the people, the guys behind it, I appreciate their incredible attention to detail and

• 1:06:06Rich Roll?

  their fidelity to the highest quality training gear that I was like, yes, I will jump on this. What a cool opportunity. So, over the last several months, in kind of stealth mode, myself along with some other ambassadors that you might have heard of, like Ryan Hall, American record holder in the marathon, turned like beast mode, like powerlifting bodybuilder guy. It's unbelievable, this guy's transformation, but he's such a cool guy. And obviously, nobody knows more about running than Ryan Hall, along with Robbie Ballinger, friend of the pod, who ran across America and just set the FTK that we talked about in Central Park. Hukam Tofare, who's been on the pod, friend of the pod. We were all testing prototypes

• 1:06:51Rich Roll?

  and giving 10,000 feedback. We would do these Zoom calls. I would do Zoom calls with 10,000. There'd be like six or eight people from their team on the call. They were so receptive to all the kind of ideas that I would have, and they just continued to iterate. They'd prototype after prototype after prototype, super receptive, very humble about what they knew and didn't know about running. And they finally nailed it. And they've created this short called The Distin' Short. I apologize, these are actually dirty, because I ran in them the other day and I haven't done laundry, so. They don't smell bad.

• 1:07:30Rich Roll?

  They really crushed it. Like, it's a fantastic short. It feels like it disappears when you're running. The liner does not chafe. That's my biggest beef with most running shorts, even really great running shorts. Like, if I'm going out on a super long run, at some point, I start to have to deal with, like, some chafing. I've never had any chafing with this.

• 1:07:48Adam Skolnick?

  You don't Vaso?

• 1:07:50Rich Roll?

  Sometimes, like, if I, you know, sometimes I will, but I was testing this without that because I wanted to see if there would be, like, a hotspot with it, but no hotspot. And I really love it. I'm excited to have played a small part in the creation of this product.

• 1:08:06Adam Skolnick?

  How long would your test runs be?

• 1:08:09Rich Roll?

  I mean, I, you know, I'm not training super hard, so, you know, 10, 13 miles, something like that. I wasn't going out doing, like, you know, ultra runs or anything like that. But Robbie was.

• 1:08:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:08:18Rich Roll?

  And he wore their gear for his Central Park FTK and didn't have any issues whatsoever.

• 1:08:26Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, I'm really proud to have played a part in this. This is the tank top that they also created as part of the, as part of the run kit.

• 1:08:34Adam Skolnick?

  Look at that.

• 1:08:35Rich Roll?

  Nice blue, super nice material. Like, everything that they do, like, the stitching, everything is, like, you know, so well thought out.

• 1:08:42Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 1:08:43Rich Roll?

  And refreshing. And I told the guys that I wanted to share that today, and they said, "Well, let's do a giveaway." So, they were kind enough to offer five full-distance kits, which is the short, the tank top, and a pair of socks. To enter, to win one of these distance kits, all you have to do is subscribe to the YouTube channel, leave a comment below indicating why you think you should be the recipient, and we'll just pick five. We'll reach out to you, get your address. Once we select you, we'll message you directly and get you the gear. But if you would just like to bypass that and grab them, you're

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  certainly welcome to do that. There's a link in the description below or in the show notes, and if you use the code RICHROLL, you get a 15% discount.

• 1:09:37Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect.

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  One thing I did want to say, when I posted this on Instagram the other day... There were some women who were like, "What? No women's line?" It is a men's apparel line, so there's not much I can do about that. It just is what it is. But I am actively working with 10,000 on some new stuff that I'm super excited about, that I can't really talk about right now. So that's going to be coming out later this year. So, cool stuff in the pipeline. Very exciting. Second thing I want to share in show and tell is this smart goggle from this company called Finis, which is swimwear apparel company. Yes. And before I even do that, let me do a little backstory here, because it's a good story.

• 1:10:18Rich Roll?

  So, my friend John Mix, who's the founder of Finis, that's become like a very prominent competitive swimwear and training device company. He started this company, I don't know exactly when he started it. It was probably in the early to mid 90s. I met him through Pablo Morales, the great Olympic champion Pablo Morales. Yes. Who I swam with at Stanford, then we did our final year at Cornell Law School together. We lived together in Palo Alto when we were studying for the bar exam.

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  And Pablo was like the initial investor, or one of the initial investors in Finis. They were kind of partners back in the early days. And when I met John, he was the first person to show me the monofin. This is in 94, 95, something like that. He had been, I guess the story goes that he had been traveling in Europe, and he happened upon a fin swimming competition, which he'd never heard of or seen anything like before. He had been a swimmer himself, and he's like, "I need to learn more about what this monofin thing is." And he got one, and he brought one back, or he brought a couple back,

• 1:11:40Rich Roll?

  and started playing around with them. And he was sharing them with Pablo and myself and a couple other swimmers. And we would go down to the pool at Stanford and play around with them. And they were super fun and an incredible... Training aid because when you're doing it properly, swimming, you know, undulating the dolphin kick underwater with a monofin, it works your abdominals and your lower back like nothing else.

• 1:12:04Adam Skolnick?

  Were they heavy or they're smaller than the freediving monofins?

• 1:12:09Rich Roll?

  So they come in all different sizes and in competitive fin swimming, there are different fins for different events and I'll get into that in a minute. But there's a like the sort of original models are hand-built tapered fiberglass with, you know, a double foot, you know, what do you call that?

• 1:12:27Adam Skolnick?

  Foot pocket?

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  Foot pockets that are extremely tight, like it's very difficult to get your feet in there and once they're in there, you're like locked in and you become like one with the fin in a very, you know, kind of mermaid way.

• 1:12:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  And we were just having a blast playing around with this thing at the pool and getting a great workout along the way. And as a swimmer, you know, as I've said many times, like I was a bench warmer at Stanford, like I was not putting points on the board, but I had the opportunity to train with all these Olympians. And I will say, if I was going to toot my horn at all, the one thing that I was, and I think I still am pretty good at is underwater dolphin kick. Like certainly Pablo, Anthony Moss, Sean Murphy, Jay Mortensen, maybe a couple other guys on the team were better than me at that, but I was right up there with, not right up there, but I was like kind of on the heels of those guys when it came to that.

• 1:13:24Adam Skolnick?

  Was butterfly your main stroke?

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was a butterfly swimmer. And this was a period of time in the late 1980s where swimming was just starting to figure out, competitive swimmers were starting to figure out how powerful the underwater dolphin kick was off the walls and how you could swim faster underwater with a proper dolphin than you could on the surface. So. There were backstrokes, starting with Dave Berkoff at Harvard, who would essentially swim almost the entire 100-meter backstroke underwater. Because they could go so much faster and American and world records were being broken using this technique. Until FINA and USA Swimming said, hold on a second.

• 1:14:11Rich Roll?

  Like, this is rewriting the entire thing. Like, we're not so sure this is the best way to do this. So they ended up instituting a rule that said you could not swim underwater dolphin kick for more than 15 meters off each wall. And that kind of changed the game.

• 1:14:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Rich Roll?

  But during this period of time where everybody was pushing the limits with the dolphin kick, we were experimenting with it on the team. And I was always very strong in this regard. So the monofin was like, where has this been my whole life? Like, I love this. Like, maybe I should get into this fin swimming thing.

• 1:14:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Rich Roll?

  Pablo, myself, and a couple others along, you know, with John Mix's leadership, started to learn more about this world of competitive fin swimming, which for people that don't know, there is an entire sport and subculture that's quite robust in certain parts of Europe and particularly in Russia and in parts of China, where when you're coming up as a kid and you show prowess in the pool, they figure out right away, very early, whether you're going to be a fin swimmer or a traditional competitive swimmer. And certain kids get channeled into this fin swimming world. And there's a whole universe of international fin swimming competition,

• 1:15:30Rich Roll?

  where they have these meets and you're in this monofin and you basically

• 1:15:37Rich Roll?

  dive in off a starting block, just like you would in traditional swimming. And you swim underwater as fast as you can with this fin. Everywhere from, everything from 50 meters.

• 1:15:48Adam Skolnick?

  Asthenic, right?

• 1:15:49Rich Roll?

  So with some of the events, like every event is different. Like, it's divided up into all these fascinating subcategories. So.

• 1:15:57Rich Roll?

  If you're just swimming the 50 meters, you don't need anything because literally they cover the distance and like, I don't know, I should have looked up what the current world record is for 50 meters, but it's like, it's like, I don't know, 12 seconds or 13 seconds or something like that. And when these swimmers dive in with the fin, this wave, it's like a tsunami, like a low, like, like a two-foot tsunami just moves down the 50-meter pool and then just drenches all the officials at the other end of the pool. And it happens so quickly, it's fascinating to watch. There are other events where you use a snorkel. So you have a center-mounted snorkel, you dive in and then you swim just below the

• 1:16:39Rich Roll?

  surface of the water, but the snorkel is above, so you can breathe the entire time. And you're in a streamlined position like this with your hands out in front of you, undulating. And then there are other events, longer events, where, I forget which one is apnea. Is that where you have the snorkel or is that where you have the tank?

• 1:16:57Adam Skolnick?

  No, apnea is breath hold.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  So that's the 50, like when you just do the breath hold. There are other ones where you use a tank. You literally have an oxygen tank that is wired to your mouth.

• 1:17:07Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  A thin, long oxygen tank and you hold it out in front of you like this in the streamlined position.

• 1:17:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Rich Roll?

  I have my hands above my head for people that are listening.

• 1:17:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  And you'll swim 1,500 meters underwater without ever breaking the surface, breathing by dint of this oxygen tank.

• 1:17:25Adam Skolnick?

  You ready for the world record 50 meters?

• 1:17:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, did you just look it up? What is it?

• 1:17:28Adam Skolnick?

  15 seconds.

• 1:17:29Rich Roll?

  15 seconds, alright.

• 1:17:30Adam Skolnick?

  And 100 meters, 33.87.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  So it's, it's crazy, right? Like when I discovered this, I was like, how did I never know about this?

• 1:17:38Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  Because it's never really made its way to America.

• 1:17:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:17:43Rich Roll?

  So John brings a monofin back. He introduces this device to...

• 1:17:49Rich Roll?

  A group of elite swimmers. In short shrift, it becomes a go to training device for a lot of very elite competitive swimmers. Most prominently, there's a swimmer called Misty Hyman. Who, and she ended up winning the 200 meter butterfly gold medal in Sydney. And she was a devoted practitioner of using the monofin in training and had an, she had an unbelievable underwater dolphin kick, the best in the world. She's just one, she's probably the most prominent example. But that got John thinking about how he could put together a team in the United States to go to the world championships of fin swimming.

• 1:18:31Rich Roll?

  I don't think I've ever told this story on the podcast, but in 19, I think it was 1996, the world championships in fin swimming was going to be held in Hungary in this town outside of Budapest called Dunya Jvaros. I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.

• 1:18:48Adam Skolnick?

  No, that's a great pronunciation.

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  Dunya Jvaros.

• 1:18:50Adam Skolnick?

  Dunya Jvaros.

• 1:18:51Rich Roll?

  I'm sure I'm saying it incorrectly.

• 1:18:53Adam Skolnick?

  It sounds good.

• 1:18:55Rich Roll?

  And he, he, he puts together this team, there were probably like 10 or 12 of us. The team included Jenny Thompson, who between 1992 and 2004, won more Olympic medals than any other female swimmer in history. Pablo Morales, most winning swimmer in NCAA history, won the gold in the hunter fly in Athens.

• 1:19:17Adam Skolnick?

  Your friend.

• 1:19:17Rich Roll?

  Misty Hyman, who I just mentioned. Chris Morgan, my friend Chris Morgan, who went on to become a very prominent swim coach. He was the 2008 Olympic coach for Switzerland in Beijing. He then went on to be assistant coach at Harvard. He's doing other things in the swimming world now. And then me, right? Like I was sort of like piggybacked onto this crowd.

• 1:19:39Adam Skolnick?

  The would be lawyer with his good dolphin kick.

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  John's like, yeah, you can come, you know? So in 96, we all go, I'm like with these incredible Olympians.

• 1:19:51Rich Roll?

  We go to Hungary to compete in this meet, but we don't know what we're doing at all. Like, we have no, like, these swimmers are unbelievable, but they have no experience in fin swimming, which we soon learn is a very different discipline. Like, we were training together and trying to figure it out, but it was like, you know, a hilarious Bad News Bears-type situation, but with Olympians.

• 1:20:12Adam Skolnick?

  That's funny.

• 1:20:13Rich Roll?

  With gold medal, world record-setting Olympians.

• 1:20:15Adam Skolnick?

  Did they like the fact that they were in beginner mode? Like, was it...

• 1:20:18Rich Roll?

  No, because it was fun. There was no pressure.

• 1:20:20Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:20:20Rich Roll?

  Like, and the United States had never attended one of these meets.

• 1:20:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:20:24Rich Roll?

  So, we show up in Hungary. We go to this town, which is kind of a communist relic. Like, a lot of these tall, sort of, housing, you know, facilities that you could tell are like from a bygone era.

• 1:20:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:20:42Rich Roll?

  And a very industrial town. I think the steel mill was really the engine for the economy in this part of the world. But they have this beautiful natatorium. We swim in this meet, and we did, I was, I was like on the four-by-two-hundred relay. They do relays, like they do in swimming. And just watching it was fascinating, and like, meeting all of these athletes from all over the world. I remember there was one guy, the guy who, I think he won the 50-meter apnea, was a dude from China, who kind of was, he was a big dude, kind of bulky, he had a, he had like a belly, and he was smoking cigarettes outside the natatorium, like, in between sessions.

• 1:21:25Adam Skolnick?

  Badass.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  But he would dive in and like, break the world record in the 50 meters, like, swimming in a way that none of us could. And it was just really, it was just a wild, wild experience.

• 1:21:38Adam Skolnick?

  Like, "Sir, your meet's about to start, and I'll be fine. I'm doing, I'll be fine."

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  But what's interesting, and the reason I bring it up, is that the legacy of that experience is finis kind of popularizing, through John, popularizing the monofin as a training device, and most competitive swimmers use it as one of the tools in their toolkit. But at the same time, fin swimming has never caught on in the United States. And you have some experience with this, right? Because there's a crossover between the fin swimming world and the freediving world.

• 1:22:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, so, I mean, the monofin that was adopted by freedivers to go on constant weight to get the records. Originally, they were just using bi-fins and then someone found the monofin and incorporated that. And Alexey Molchinnov was groomed as a high-end, national-team-level swimmer from the time he was a little kid because his mother, Natalia, the greatest freediver ever, she was a competitive swimmer for the first 24 years of her life. Anyway, Alexey was kind of put through the sports schools in Russia. And just like you said, he was divided, put into the fin swimming camp because probably

• 1:22:52Adam Skolnick?

  because he was built with amazing, powerful legs and he had a great dolphin kick and they put him right in the fin swimming. And he did fin swimming until he was 17 and immediately went to freediving from that. So, and it gave him this advantage. Now, he's the deepest ever with a monofin.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:05Adam Skolnick?

  Well, there's a reason.

• 1:23:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's super interesting. I could tell you that when you're fit and you're using a monofin, the feeling of moving through the water that fast underwater is exhilarating. It's crazy, like how fast you can go underwater with it. And there are, like I said, there's different monofins for different events and purposes. So, for the longer distances, you're going to have a very large, broad, pliable monofin that has a lot of give in it. And for like the 50-meter apnea, it's going to be a very stiff board. And so, I don't know what it's like now, but back then, you could get a sort of commercially manufactured fin that would just be a piece of fiberglass, but the real...

• 1:23:50Rich Roll?

  There's real artistry in these people, much like surfboards, like creating the perfect fin for that individual and for a specific distance or event that tapers and there's like, you know, all these like little certain peccadilloes that the different athletes would have with respect to their fins. And so we were trading fins and trading t-shirts with the Russians and the Chinese and it was wild. I mean, and as, you know, as a swimmer who never made it to the level where I was competing internationally, it was like this cool way of like tasting that in a very low stakes environment for us. Cause we didn't win any medals or any like-

• 1:24:26Adam Skolnick?

  Were you still in law school?

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  This was, yeah, I was still, yeah, I was still, or maybe, no, I think it was, it was,

• 1:24:34Rich Roll?

  I think it was right after I graduated. Maybe it was 94, 96. I can't remember. No, it was, it was after law school, but shortly thereafter.

• 1:24:42Adam Skolnick?

  Fun.

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  As you get old, I can't remember the timeline exactly.

• 1:24:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right. Do you miss, uh, do you, have you, how come you have, you gotta try freediving with a monofin, man. You gotta get, get your monofin back.

• 1:24:52Rich Roll?

  My, well, I, listen, when I was in Malta, I did a whole day of freediving breath training with like that guy, I can't remember his name, the guy who lives there who's like a former world champion. And then we went out to, to actually freedive and I could not get down below like 12 or 15 feet without my head feeling like it was gonna explode. I couldn't, I could not equalize. So I, I'm sure with discipline and training, I could get past that, but on that day, which is the last time I tried it, I couldn't. So I, I don't feel like I, I could really get the full freediving experience because of my inability to equalize.

• 1:25:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. You just have to, you just have to work on it a little bit. You can easily get past it.

• 1:25:32Rich Roll?

  But I love the monofin. All of which brings us to the, the show and tell, which is-

• 1:25:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, not a fin.

• 1:25:38Rich Roll?

  John, who then, you know, I, I've just recounted the early days of, of Phineas, which was a company that literally, literally started with a monofin as its product, has now become this robust competitive swimming apparel line, has come out with a smart goggle and John sent me one of the early, uh, one of the, you know, before it's commercially, it's not quite commercially available for you. You can preorder it, they're shipping in May. But what's cool about it is it has a computer that you can see that, that fits in here. You kind of, um, push it in here and it clicks in and it's got a little optical,

• 1:26:18Rich Roll?

  I don't know what you would call that lens there. And in the corner, for your left eye, it provides output and data on your swim workout. Essentially, real time data to better understand the patterns in your swim training. It calculates split and time and distance. You can see it very easily and read it pretty easily. I was concerned because I, I wear glasses. I'm pretty blind without them, but I had no trouble reading it. And it's amazing how it kind of knows if you're doing a set of hundreds. It knows that if you sit on the wall in between each hundred repeat for more than like five seconds, it's like, oh, okay, this is a, he's taking a break. Like this is your split for the hundred. And you don't really need a pace clock because it'll then count down.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  Okay, how much rest you want in between each one of those.

• 1:27:05Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:27:06Rich Roll?

  And then it all syncs up with this app called the CIYE app. So your workouts upload there. It integrates with Strava if you'd like that. And what's cool and different about this smart goggle, because there are other smart goggles out there, is that the, the actual technology, you can pull it out. Cause the goggle at some point is going to wear out.

• 1:27:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:27:28Rich Roll?

  The lens are going to get scratched or you're going to, you know, break the mooring or whatever. You just get another pair of goggles and pop in the tech into that.

• 1:27:37Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:27:37Rich Roll?

  Which is cool.

• 1:27:38Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  So I dig it. I dig Phineas. I feel allegiance to them because of my history with John and the whole Finn swimming thing.

• 1:27:45Adam Skolnick?

  Cause your hungry days?

• 1:27:46Rich Roll?

  My hungry days. It all comes in this beautiful box and it's pretty easy to set up. I set it up the other day and I dig it. So another tool for the swimmers out there.

• 1:27:57Adam Skolnick?

  You know what I dig? Your Rolodex. You have a very impressive Rolodex, sir.

• 1:28:02Rich Roll?

  I'm 54, so I've lived a little bit of life and I've met, you know, some people along the way.

• 1:28:06Adam Skolnick?

  Company founders, Minneapolis.

• 1:28:09Rich Roll?

  I love talking about Finn swimming though. I wish I could remember. I'm going to have to go back. I have a photo album that I created from that experience with pictures of a bunch of the athletes. And I should have broken that out and reviewed it.

• 1:28:21Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? That's perfect for show notes, baby. Throw up with some, some, some pics of Rich Roll 96.

• 1:28:28Rich Roll?

  From 96.

• 1:28:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:28:30Rich Roll?

  Anyway. You know what I forgot to point out on the smart goggle and we'll put this in the show notes. John was kind enough, this is not a sponsored thing, I just, I love John and I want to support him, but he was kind enough to offer a 15% discount on the smart goggles, which is a $35 value if you use the code SMARTGoggleRR at checkout. And I'll put the link up, you can just go to Phineas, but I'll put specific links up to these goggles in the description below on YouTube and in the show notes on audio. There you go. Moving on, what do we got? Should we talk about this meatless meat Ezra Klein, New York Times op ed? You, you know.

• 1:29:14Rich Roll?

  I feel like we've done a lot today, but this is an article that Ezra penned up, that I believe ran in the Sunday Times, that I think deserves just a quick. Did you know he was a plant based? I did, yeah, I did. He's been vegan for a little while at this point, and he talks about it regularly on his podcast. For those that don't know, Ezra Klein founded Vox Media. He did. Now he's back with the New York Times, his podcast is killing it. And he's had, I think he's had Bruce Friedrich on, he had, who else did he have on? He's had a bunch of people on his show that have been on this show that are from the kind of plant-based

• 1:29:54Rich Roll?

  animal rights, you know, sector. So he's definitely sensitive to this issue. And I think this article did a good job of explaining the complications of our over-dependence on meat and animal agriculture. And I think it's interesting that he has shouldered this mantle at the Times because prior to Ezra being on staff there, the only other person at the Times who would occasionally talk about this subject matter is Nicholas Kristof. Right. He would talk about the chicken industry and things like that. Yeah, in fact, in this article, they referenced the Costco chicken industry.

• 1:30:37Rich Roll?

  And that was all because of the work of Leah Garses from Mercy for Animals, who's been on the show and has been on Ezra's show. But the New York Times doesn't have a George Monbiot. Right. You know, so Ezra is sort of fulfilling that. I mean, he's not as staunch or Ezra's much more of a realist, as you will see if you read this article, about how to solve this problem. But he does a great job of talking about the implications of meat being on the rise, the implications for for future zoonotic diseases, the problems related to antibiotic resistance, the climate costs. And in terms of the solution, he's basically calling for,

• 1:31:22Rich Roll?

  I think where he got criticized on this is this call for kind of government, not government intervention, but government budgeting to invest in the plant-based sector.

• 1:31:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, it was it was it was connected to, he's basically saying, I looked at the Biden plan for climate, like the climate stuff, and there's nothing in there involving agriculture or meat production.

• 1:31:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Which is, let me just put a pin in that for a second and interrupt you, because I don't know if you saw this, but unfolding on Twitter over the last 48 hours is this idea that Joe Biden is going to restrict people's meat eating, and that caused this reaction in the in the in the Republican community, including like Donald Trump Jr. saying, you're not prying the meat out of our hands, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna eat twice as much meat today.

• 1:32:11Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, really.

• 1:32:12Rich Roll?

  None of it is rooted in reality. Joe Biden never said that. Like, it's not factually correct in any way. Anyway, I digress. Continue.

• 1:32:19Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying that that the extreme right is not factually correct?

• 1:32:23Rich Roll?

  All right. But it was a thing that went that that just exploded on Twitter.

• 1:32:30Adam Skolnick?

  It just shows you, like, when you're trying to have nuanced discussions with children, it's very difficult, because like, we're trying to have-

• 1:32:36Rich Roll?

  Now, now, we're creating a welcome mat for all people, Adam.

• 1:32:40Adam Skolnick?

  But when you're trying to have a nuanced conversation about about something like meat and problems, or police and problems, there are, there is a section of the public that is not only going to not listen, but then to purposely use this issue to divide the country.

• 1:33:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:01Adam Skolnick?

  It's unfortunate.

• 1:33:02Rich Roll?

  100%.

• 1:33:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:33:04Rich Roll?

  I loved how he brought the Good Food Institute into this discussion because Bruce, friend of the pod many times over, who is the founder of Good Food Institute, produced this wish list calling for $2 billion in funding, half of it for research and half of it to set up a network of innovation centers. And Ezra is basically saying that he'd like Congress to actually dream bigger, but the larger point being that it actually wouldn't like, in the grand scheme of the federal budget, like this isn't that much and it really wouldn't take all that much to supercharge this industry.

• 1:33:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:33:43Rich Roll?

  A moment when we could benefit tremendously from investment in this sector.

• 1:33:48Adam Skolnick?

  So the sector meaning lab-grown meat?

• 1:33:51Rich Roll?

  Lab-grown and plant-based.

• 1:33:52Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, so both, a little bit of plant-based, a little bit of lab-grown meat.

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:56Adam Skolnick?

  And that the idea would be, you know, you can't, I mean, I think what Ezra is conceding is he's not asking everyone to become vegan, it's just not going to happen.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  Right, that's where his realistic, you know, yeah.

• 1:34:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right, and so that the lab-grown meat part of it is for people who are going to eat meat. And, you know, I get, the reason I get torn sometimes on some of this is that like there, he even, he even calls for, there are small producers that are producing meat that are less, they're not the CAFOs, it's not causing the big problems and they're not as heartless with the, with the animals. However, obviously, when it comes to meat, 90% of the meat that's out there in the market is coming from big corporations. And so to replace a big corporation with another corporation that's growing it in a lab, I have less of a problem with that. It's not like we're talking about we're replacing mom and pops with, you know, all of a sudden this big company that's going to suck up

• 1:34:52Adam Skolnick?

  all the dollars, like Amazon or Walmart has done with mom and pop stores. That's not what's happening here. It's big companies that are involved and they typically, when it comes to animal feed, you know, CAFOs.

• 1:35:07Adam Skolnick?

  They basically pay a pittance to the farmer that doesn't even own the animal just to feed them as quickly as possible. And they barely pay them. And the farmers are on leases and a lot of the times they have financial problems.

• 1:35:21Rich Roll?

  It's an indentured servitude model where they're servicing debt.

• 1:35:23Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:35:23Rich Roll?

  And the idea of the bucolic, you know, family farm. Certainly, there are some of those, but that's not how we're feeding the world or America.

• 1:35:33Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  So I think the idea, you know, the counterpoint to this is that this is not the solution. Regenerative agriculture is the solution. And there's some truth in that, but at the same time, it's a bit of a red herring. Because although it's certainly better to, if you're going to eat meat, to make sure that your meat comes from a farm that is dedicated to

• 1:35:57Rich Roll?

  regenerating the soil, that takes care of their animals and provides a, you know, a range-free, you know, life to them and grass-fed and all the like, like the Chester's biggest little farm and all of that.

• 1:36:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:36:09Rich Roll?

  The problem is that you can't scale that to meet the level of demand.

• 1:36:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:36:15Rich Roll?

  That the world is, you know, requiring at the moment. There just isn't enough land. All of our land is already devoted to these animals. And to the extent that we pivot away from that, people don't understand how much of industrialized plant agriculture is going, something like 75% of that is going to livestock feed.

• 1:36:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:36:35Rich Roll?

  It's going to the animals, right? So we need a better solution. We need all solutions on the table. Plant-based, lab-grown, you know, it's going to be really interesting to see how this develops. It's developing rapidly and quickly. Just, Josh Tetrick at Just is now serving lab meat overseas. I think in Singapore, they're serving it in restaurants right now.

• 1:36:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56Rich Roll?

  You know, there's still some issues around getting it to a certain scale so they can drive the cost down. Because ultimately, to win this war, whether it's plant-based meat or lab-grown meat, they're calling it cultured meat now. That's the, that's the term, the favorite term at the moment.

• 1:37:11Adam Skolnick?

  Sounds good.

• 1:37:12Rich Roll?

  It keeps changing.

• 1:37:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  First, it was cell-based meat. It's cultured meat now.

• 1:37:17Rich Roll?

  You have to create a product that tastes as good or better than what currently exists. And it has to be at the same price point or cheaper than what exists right now. It's the only way that you win. And I think we're moving in that direction and that's exciting. And I celebrate Ezra for shining, you know, the New York Times spotlight onto this issue.

• 1:37:39Adam Skolnick?

  Well, in that regard, you do need government subsidies because government subsidizes GMO corn and government subsidizes, you know, like these industries.

• 1:37:47Rich Roll?

  But I don't think we're talking about subsidies here. We're talking about a level of investment in research, which is different. When I hear subsidy, I'm like, I bristle. What we need to do is be done with the subsidies that are propping up, you know, corn and all these other products that are creating cheap, commodified processed foods that are making people sick.

• 1:38:10Adam Skolnick?

  It's a great story because he gets into so much, kind of setting up the problem with animal agriculture and even getting into like the, you know, so much of the way capitalism works just by nature is that we, you know, all these ripple effects that are sometimes, sometimes they're positive, but oftentimes they're negative, all these negative ripple effects. The producer of a product, whether it's a piece of single-use plastic or steak, they don't have to pay for all that. The government picks up that tab or the public has to deal with the ramifications. And so if you actually paid the true kind of real world cost, including cleanup for your messy

• 1:38:51Adam Skolnick?

  café, to have the steak, the steak wouldn't cost 10 bucks, it would cost 50 bucks.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  Right, and a Big Mac would cost, I think, $7 when you do the math on that. If you excise out the extent to which it's subsidized.

• 1:39:05Adam Skolnick?

  So he gets into that. It's a really good piece. I liked it. Rich, I have a question for you.

• 1:39:09Rich Roll?

  What's that?

• 1:39:10Adam Skolnick?

  Would you eat a lab-grown, excuse me, cultured steak?

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I've been asked that before. I haven't decided yet. I need to know, you know, I'm on a wait-and-see approach. I suppose I would just out of pure curiosity.

• 1:39:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Rich Roll?

  But it's not like I'm waiting for that to happen or I can't wait for that to happen. Like I've been eating plant-based for so long. I don't have a taste for that anymore. So it's not like I crave it. I don't need it.

• 1:39:40Adam Skolnick?

  It's not all of a sudden like steak will be good for you, right?

• 1:39:43Rich Roll?

  No, but I, but certainly, you know, when people say they're, you know, the ick factor, right? Like, oh, this is brood. Like, what is this? It's freak food. But when you really look at the way animals are raised and slaughtered, that, you know, the manner in which they end up at your grocery store, they're pumped full of antibiotics. They're, they're basically living in their own feces. They're brewing with disease. Or that's what's gross, right? That's the real problem. So to the extent that we can produce meat without the suffering and out without all of these, you know, upstream problems, certainly that's going to be more palatable. But, you know, there's going to be an arc in

• 1:40:25Rich Roll?

  getting culture, you know, to, to cotton on to that. Like, there'll be an adoption period, I suppose. And I think that we'll be better off for it because even though it's not something that I necessarily, you know, find myself looking forward to, I, like Ezra, acknowledge the reality that, you know, not everyone's going to get struck plant-based or vegan. I did. And, you know, I, I always enjoy it when people, you know, step into this lifestyle that has done so much for me and I can't evangelize it enough. But I'm realistic in, in that, you know, I'm not going to, there's, there's, you know, a lot of people that aren't going to be convinced.

• 1:41:05Adam Skolnick?

  You know who's been convinced and is now vegan?

• 1:41:08Rich Roll?

  You?

• 1:41:09Adam Skolnick?

  No, Mookie Betts.

• 1:41:11Rich Roll?

  Who's Mookie Betts?

• 1:41:12Adam Skolnick?

  Rich Roll.

• 1:41:13Rich Roll?

  Is this, is he an athlete?

• 1:41:14Adam Skolnick?

  He is the starting center.

• 1:41:17Rich Roll?

  I follow fin swimming.

• 1:41:18Adam Skolnick?

  He's the starting center fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, sir.

• 1:41:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, he is.

• 1:41:21Adam Skolnick?

  Two-time World Series champion.

• 1:41:23Rich Roll?

  I couldn't name one baseball player in the entire league.

• 1:41:27Adam Skolnick?

  Now you got Mookie Betts.

• 1:41:28Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:41:29Adam Skolnick?

  Get him on the pod. All right, cool.

• 1:41:32Rich Roll?

  Let's do listener questions.

• 1:41:34Adam Skolnick?

  Listener questions. Oh, wait, we have one more thing.

• 1:41:38Rich Roll?

  We do?

• 1:41:39Adam Skolnick?

  One more win of the week.

• 1:41:40Rich Roll?

  We do. Another win of the week.

• 1:41:42Adam Skolnick?

  My Octopus Teacher won the Oscar.

• 1:41:44Rich Roll?

  Last night.

• 1:41:45Adam Skolnick?

  Last night.

• 1:41:46Rich Roll?

  Congratulations.

• 1:41:47Adam Skolnick?

  Congratulations, team behind My Octopus Teacher and Netflix. Any thoughts? Any, any thoughts for you?

• 1:41:53Rich Roll?

  I love the movie. I, when I, when I saw that they won last night, I was super excited about it. And then I, and then I found myself feeling bad because I was a little bit.

• 1:42:04Rich Roll?

  What's the right word?

• 1:42:06Adam Skolnick?

  Podcast regret?

• 1:42:07Rich Roll?

  A little bit, like a little, little, maybe a little bit too jocular and.

• 1:42:14Adam Skolnick?

  You were a little hard on the narrator.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  Right, well, as I recall, I mean, I haven't gone back and listened to it, but.

• 1:42:22Rich Roll?

  We were celebrating the movie, but I also said, you know, listen, like the sort of elephant in the room is that this guy, you know, is struggling with, with. His mental well being.

• 1:42:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:42:33Rich Roll?

  And I was curious about how that worked with his relationship with his son. When he starts putting pictures up of, you know, he sort of puts the serial killer board up of like all the photos and I was like, what's his son think when he's doing that?

• 1:42:47Adam Skolnick?

  I thought it was just like how he organized his art.

• 1:42:49Rich Roll?

  I was just having a fun, lighthearted moment.

• 1:42:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:52Rich Roll?

  And I forget that a lot of people watch and listen to this and we got an email.

• 1:42:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:58Rich Roll?

  From his wife?

• 1:43:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:43:00Rich Roll?

  Producer of the show.

• 1:43:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:03Rich Roll?

  She was very happy that we, that we spoke highly of the movie and then I felt really bad.

• 1:43:07Adam Skolnick?

  No, but she actually said something that I don't think we, we brought up in the podcast is that. She said she actually does swim with him and so like, cause there was some speculation is like, yeah, his son, towards the end, his son gets in the water with him. But now his wife also swims with the group and she at first didn't want to, cause she was kind of scared in the cold and all that. And then she got in there and she's one of the regulars.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  Right. So that was a really nice email to get.

• 1:43:31Adam Skolnick?

  It was.

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  Congratulations to all of them.

• 1:43:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Rich Roll?

  Well deserved.

• 1:43:34Adam Skolnick?

  Well deserved. Great movie. Beautiful movie.

• 1:43:36Rich Roll?

  All right. Listener questions.

• 1:43:38Adam Skolnick?

  Listener questions. This is Stephen from Charleston, South Carolina.

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  Hey, Rich. This is Stephen Jackson calling in from Charleston, South Carolina. And you guys have my permission to play the clip on the air. No problem. Just calling in with a question about. Uh, what to do when you feel like you've hit a wall motivation wise? So I signed up for the four by four by forty eight and just feeling pumped after doing a couple of events before that, that my ultra running journey was just on an upward momentum and trained really well for the four by four and did really well. But afterwards, I feel like I have just hit a wall with motivation to keep going and keep training for the next thing.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  So, yeah, in your experience and Adam's experience, uh, what are some tips to overcome that little bit of plateau or valley, um, after a big event like that? And, uh, get back on the road feeling good and not feeling motivated. So, yeah, man, thanks so much for all you guys do. Love the pod, the books. Uh, been in a follower now for two years or so and hugely inspirational. Thank you for impacting so many people, including myself. So, yeah, man, thanks. Bye.

• 1:45:01Rich Roll?

  Have you been to Charleston?

• 1:45:03Adam Skolnick?

  I have not. Been to Savannah, which is like Charleston junior.

• 1:45:07Rich Roll?

  Charleston is such a cool place. They should have a swim run there. It would be a great place to. I don't know. Not that I'm aware of.

• 1:45:14Adam Skolnick?

  They should have one.

• 1:45:15Rich Roll?

  It's such a cool city and there's so much water surrounding it that you could like run down these historic streets and then jump in the water. And I don't know, I think it would be cool.

• 1:45:25Adam Skolnick?

  It'd be amazing.

• 1:45:26Rich Roll?

  Um, Stephen, thank you for your question. Listen, uh, post-race blues is a normal response. Any athlete who's been in the game for any period of time has peaks and valleys. You hit plateaus, et cetera. So I think you're, first of all, like, it's okay that you feel that way. Um, every athlete has gone through that. It's not abnormal, so I wouldn't beat yourself up for being in that spot. And not only is it okay for you to take a break, I would advise taking a break. You can't just power through race after race after race after race. And it's just this endless upward trajectory. It doesn't work that way.

• 1:46:06Rich Roll?

  You have to build in periods of rest, periods of recovery, and that kind of mentality should apply to how you plan out.

• 1:46:19Rich Roll?

  Not just like your training blocks, like week by week, but also day by day and year by year. Like, these things are seasonal, right? And you can't, if longevity is an aim or a goal, you can't just hammer incessantly. You've got to, you've got to build this into your program. And now that you've had a taste of this, hopefully you can understand why this is so important. At the same time, you don't want to be that guy who's rubber banding in and out of shape, gaining weight, losing weight. To some extent, that's okay. But you don't want to get too far out of it, that when you get back into it, you have this, you know, very long period of trying to get, you know, lose a bunch of extra weight and get into shape.

• 1:47:03Rich Roll?

  You want to stay in contact with your fitness. So you never want to move too far away from it. Because it's so much easier to stay in shape than it is to get totally out of shape and then spend all your time trying to get back in shape. And that way, you never feel like you're actually making progress. So, a couple of suggestions that maybe might be helpful for you. First of all, mix up your training. And you can do this by cycling it seasonally, like I mentioned. Try different things. Like, if you're running all the time, get on a bike, or get in the water, or go to a yoga class, or hit the weight. Or do something else that breaks up the monotony of just running all the time, I think is important. And you've got to keep it fun and not so serious.

• 1:47:48Rich Roll?

  Like, if you're always in this performance mindset of chasing these races and these goals, it's easy to kind of lapse into this, you know, this state where you're taking yourself too seriously. And every, like, every minute, you're focused on your training and you're going to burn out. So, you've got to find the joy in all of it. And I think if you can connect with that, that will build some longevity into this journey that you're on. So, again, mixing in some strength, some cross-training, other aerobic activities. Summer's coming up in Charleston. I'm sure there's, you know, things you can do on a boat. I don't know, like, what goes on there.

• 1:48:28Adam Skolnick?

  Steven, there is a swim-run challenge in June.

• 1:48:31Rich Roll?

  There you go. I don't know what his deal is with swimming, but maybe he can get into that. I also think... And this is direct from the creator of the four by four by 48, David Goggins himself. It's important to stop over indexing on motivation because motivation is an unreliable motivator.

• 1:48:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Rich Roll?

  It really is. We tend to think like, well, I'm not motivated, so I won't do it. It's very fickle. It's very temporal and it shouldn't provide the foundation of your why. So instead, I always tell people to think more about it in the context of the values that you're trying to prioritize. So instead of saying, I don't feel motivated, the idea would be to say, I am an athlete. Or I am somebody who does hard things, right? To create identity around it as opposed to this fluctuating emotional state that you can't really create for yourself.

• 1:49:35Rich Roll?

  And I think if you can contextualize what you're doing in that manner, you'll create a more sustainable fuel for yourself. I also think that you need to ask yourself if you're training simply to get a result, to say you did it, or you crossed that finish line, or you hit that PR. Or are you training because it does bring you joy? It's what, it's an expression of who you are. Because if you think of yourself as an athlete or somebody who does hard things, then you understand that we don't train when we're motivated to do so. We train because this is who we are and what we do.

• 1:50:17Adam Skolnick?

  I like it. That's all really good. I would just add, or just not even add, but just like emphasize what you said. I think David would tell you, if your brain is saying, I don't want to do it, then you flip that right away and say, if that's what he hears, he's right out the door. If he hears, I don't want to fucking do this shit.

• 1:50:35Rich Roll?

  That's a muscle, you know?

• 1:50:35Adam Skolnick?

  He's like, just that means you have to go do it and you just force yourself to do it. And it does take time. Like you say, it's the same thing you're saying. Telling yourself you're an athlete or I'm someone who does hard things is the same thing as saying, well, I don't want to do it today. Oh, that means I have to do it today. So it's just however you want to do it, you're training the brain to flip it. And I think he'd say that and. The other thing I would say is I'm a big believer in cross-training, just like you said, I think it really does help. It makes you, it brings the fun into it. So whether it's swimming, or riding a bike, or whatever it is. And then, you know, the zone two training. Maybe he's running too hard. You know, like, like zone two, I've found like, I enjoy running

• 1:51:20Adam Skolnick?

  like, in a way that I never enjoyed it before.

• 1:51:22Rich Roll?

  Kind of takes the pressure off. Like, you can feel tired, and it's late in the day, or, and you're, but you're like, well, it's just a zone two run.

• 1:51:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:51:29Rich Roll?

  Like, you don't have to sweat it. Don't be fixated on your garment, and all the kind of devices, and hold yourself to some standard, that every time you go out to train, you've got to be better and faster than you were the day before.

• 1:51:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right. If you just, like, decide, I'm gonna lay back and do, you know, an hour of zone two, you know, then, then, you still do get a sweat. You still do burn calories. You still do get some, some positive benefits.

• 1:51:54Rich Roll?

  When you're going on heart rate, too, it's not, you're not measuring yourself against a pace, where then you either feel bad or good about yourself dictated by that. You're just training where you're at. You're not training where you think you should be, or where you were last year at this time. Train where you're at.

• 1:52:10Adam Skolnick?

  Love it. Good one. Great question. The, I should have prefaced this, all these questions are kind of run oriented, which is good. I like, I'm starting to try to curate this moment.

• 1:52:20Rich Roll?

  No Finn swimming questions today?

• 1:52:22Adam Skolnick?

  No, we've had enough merman.

• 1:52:23Rich Roll?

  I'm training for the world championships in Finn swimming, Rich.

• 1:52:26Adam Skolnick?

  Enough merman talk, for one day. You guys were like, the OG Instagram mermaids.

• 1:52:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know. There was no, there was barely an internet back then.

• 1:52:34Adam Skolnick?

  You were the OG internet merman. All right. Casey from Illinois.

• 1:52:39Speaker 03

  Hello, Rich and Adam. This is Casey from Illinois, and I am running the Chicago Marathon for the first time in October. And I was wondering if you've had any, like, after race, after run tips? And thank you for all you do. Love the podcast, the books, and okay to listen to the podcast. Thank you.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  Thanks, Casey. Did he say after race, after run?

• 1:53:04Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I thought it was just any race, then after run tips, but let's, let's just go with what you got.

• 1:53:11Rich Roll?

  Right. Cause I saw this typed out before I listened to it. And now I'm wondering whether I need to rethink this, but I'm going to answer it the way that I feel like answering it. Hopefully this is helpful to Casey. First of all, with respect to race tips, there's this maxim that you shouldn't do anything on race day that you didn't do in training. Race day is not the time to test out a fancy new pair of shoes or a new pacing strategy, or some kind of new nutrition protocol, or some gel that you've never tried before. Training is all about testing, testing, testing. So that by the time you, you reach a race, you already know exactly what you're doing. The race is merely the execution of what you've already done.

• 1:53:51Rich Roll?

  So if you've trained properly and you visualized it, then it just becomes about showing up, enjoying yourself and celebrating the journey that got you there. So having fun, enjoying it, I think is super important. The whole idea of running a marathon is to have a positive experience. It's going to hurt, of course, but if and when you feel like it's all falling apart and you feel terrible, you should also know that that isn't necessarily a predictor of anything because in a, in a long race, things change. You can feel terrible, then you'll feel good, then you'll feel terrible again. And you learn to just keep going no matter what. And with that, to adapt to any unforeseen variables that get thrown in your direction.

• 1:54:34Rich Roll?

  A lot of times athletes, they visualize, they train and they're very attached to the race unfolding in a very specific way. And the minute something goes wrong, like you step in a puddle and suddenly your foot's all wet or. You know, I don't know, somebody bumps you when you fall down. Anything unforeseen can throw somebody off their mental game and they have a hard time kind of getting back into it. So I think a sort of understanding that there's going to be variables that get thrown in your way and learning how to be resilient with those is super important and something to prepare mentally and physically for in your training. In addition, on race day, you should know what your strategy is and you should implement

• 1:55:18Rich Roll?

  that, meaning run your race, not the race that the person next to you is running. It's very easy, especially when there's a lot of people around you and people are passing you, that you can get caught up in what others are doing. And it takes a certain level of confidence and discipline to not let any of that impact your plan that you've set for yourself. So sticking to your plan is key. And that also means that on race day, you're going to have all this extra energy, you're going to be very excited, there's going to be a lot of crowd and whatever. And if you find yourself feeling like you're like five miles in and you feel amazing, a lot of athletes throw their race plan out the window and just start speeding up because

• 1:56:02Rich Roll?

  they feel great, only to like explode at mile 18. So if you feel amazing, resist that urge to go faster and stick to your plan. In terms of after race, which I think is really the core of what Casey wants answers to, I think after your race, it's important to do an inventory of what went right and what went wrong. You can write it out in a journal, just, you know, in free hand, like everything that you thought about, every emotional experience, what it felt like physically, where it went to plan, where it didn't go to plan, you can mine the data.

• 1:56:42Rich Roll?

  And all of that is, you know, an ample opportunity to learn from the experience that you just had. But the important thing is In the aftermath of the race, have fun, go to the beer garden, whatever, enjoy yourself, make sure you hydrate, fuel up, stay warm, you know, ice your legs. I think active recovery in the days that follow is super important. If it's your first marathon, you're going to be unbelievably stiff and have trouble going up and downstairs or even walking around. But you've got to, you shouldn't just lay in bed. You should get up and move and go on walks and try to get the blood flowing in a, in a, in a, in a low grade way. And that'll help flush out all the lactic acid and help you recover a little bit more quickly.

• 1:57:26Rich Roll?

  But there's no need to go running for, you know, I don't know, a week or 10 days or something like that. Like allow your body to heal. And I think another mistake a lot of athletes make is they want to get right back into it too quickly and they underestimate just how much their body gets beat up in, in, you know, running something like a marathon. So giving your body the space and the time to repair itself takes longer than you might imagine and providing that opportunity for yourself, I think is important.

• 1:57:57Adam Skolnick?

  Go to the beer garden. Advice I never thought I'd hear Rich Roll deliver on this.

• 1:58:03Rich Roll?

  I'm not going to the beer. Well, I can go to the beer garden. I'm not going to drink the beer, but he can drink the beer if that's what he wants to do.

• 1:58:09Adam Skolnick?

  Um, I always enter any sort of race with one plan. Just don't come in last.

• 1:58:16Rich Roll?

  Why? Well, what's wrong with that?

• 1:58:18Adam Skolnick?

  With what? I'm coming in last?

• 1:58:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The lantern rouge.

• 1:58:21Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sure as I age, I will even let that go.

• 1:58:24Rich Roll?

  This is the extent of your competitive fire.

• 1:58:29Adam Skolnick?

  The extent of my ego, egotism. I don't want to come in last.

• 1:58:33Rich Roll?

  I would suggest not even thinking about that at all because that means that you're gauging your performance off of other people.

• 1:58:41Adam Skolnick?

  I know. It's true.

• 1:58:41Rich Roll?

  You should just think about executing your race the way that you trained for.

• 1:58:46Adam Skolnick?

  And I'm glad we didn't get into my shaming of not wearing goggles when I swim. We'll have to do that another time.

• 1:58:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's right. We didn't even talk about that. So Adam and I, we'll quickly recap this before the next question, the final question. Yeah, I'm talking to Adam on the phone the other night and he's telling me about how his face mask is big. What do you call, I don't even know what you call.

• 1:59:08Adam Skolnick?

  I took, I took three waves on the head on my way in for my last swim and, which was fun. I enjoyed getting thrashed and ragdolled because it was not that big a surf, but I did, I did get messed up. And I lost my mask. I wear a, I wear a mask.

• 1:59:23Rich Roll?

  He wears a mask. And so I just, I'm like, listen buddy, all right, as somebody who's competed in swim run competitions.

• 1:59:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:59:32Rich Roll?

  From an etiquette perspective, a real swimmer would never wear a face mask.

• 1:59:38Adam Skolnick?

  I'm a breaker of etiquette.

• 1:59:39Rich Roll?

  Get on the goggles and dispatch this, it's good that it got lost. It's time, all right? It's embarrassing to go swimming with you in the ocean and you're wearing a face mask. You are not the octopus teacher.

• 1:59:52Adam Skolnick?

  Wait.

• 1:59:52Rich Roll?

  You are a swim run athlete.

• 1:59:54Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. Let me push back just for a second. I wear a Sphera mask by.

• 1:59:59Rich Roll?

  I don't care. What are you talking about?

• 2:00:01Adam Skolnick?

  Well, the Sphera mask was designed for open water swimmers.

• 2:00:05Rich Roll?

  Listen, Aquasphere also makes goggles.

• 2:00:09Adam Skolnick?

  They do.

• 2:00:10Rich Roll?

  For open water swimming, but I would highly suggest the Phinis line of goggles.

• 2:00:14Adam Skolnick?

  Phinis.

• 2:00:15Rich Roll?

  Including the smart goggle that might interest you.

• 2:00:18Adam Skolnick?

  Can I interest you in a smart goggle? There you go. Took my lashings.

• 2:00:23Rich Roll?

  So while we're at it, yeah, no, no more masks, dude. Come on. What are we doing here?

• 2:00:27Adam Skolnick?

  I, I promise.

• 2:00:31Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 2:00:32Rich Roll?

  All right, let's finish this.

• 2:00:33Adam Skolnick?

  Here we go. One last question from a couple of badass adventurers in the great north.

• 2:00:39Speaker 04

  Hi Rich and Adam, this is Asha and Savannah. We are two girls from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, and we have decided to run 500 kilometers barefoot, starting this run on June 21st, 2021.

• 2:00:58Speaker 05

  So, we're one month into training and have just a few left, which is why as plant-based vegans, we're hoping to link arms with you to receive the proper nutritional wisdom to make this 500 kilometers a success.

• 2:01:13Speaker 04

  Rich, your journey to your first ultra gave us the confidence that we are capable of this feat. We know we can do this.

• 2:01:23Speaker 05

  So, call us anytime and as we like to say, keep rolling on.

• 2:01:28Speaker 04

  And just a side note, you can totally play this on the air. You are welcome to call us at any time, legit, and we really do look forward to rolling on with you.

• 2:01:37Speaker 05

  Awesome. Ciao.

• 2:01:39Rich Roll?

  All right, first of all, a couple of things. I feel like this is much more about like, hey, Rich, will you call us than it is like a legitimate interest in me answering this question?

• 2:01:51Adam Skolnick?

  No, but this is you calling them.

• 2:01:53Rich Roll?

  Asha and Savannah, were they both talking back and forth on this?

• 2:01:57Adam Skolnick?

  It seemed like it, it seemed like it, yes.

• 2:02:00Rich Roll?

  I love these women. This is awesome. 500 kilometers barefoot. I like how they have only been training a month and there's only like two months left or less than two months before they're gonna do this. So, that's amazing. I like that they're plant-based vegans and I'd be happy to link arms with them. Maybe I should call them at some point. So, wind in your sails, this is very cool. I want to know more about this adventure. Are they running on pavement, I suppose?

• 2:02:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, or trails.

• 2:02:32Rich Roll?

  What exactly is going on here? Do they have roads in Kalawanya, British Columbia? I think they do, right? That's a terrible thing to say.

• 2:02:41Adam Skolnick?

  I think they have roads.

• 2:02:44Rich Roll?

  Did they pave the roads up there? That's pretty far north. I'm just kidding. You guys are awesome. Very cool. I'm here to support you 100%. And although I'm not sure you really need any advice because I don't know that that's what this is about. I think nutrition is very personal. So specifics, I don't think are going to be super helpful to you guys. Like I said in the answer to the previous question, test, test, test. Test all this stuff out. You guys have, you know, plenty of time to work out your nutrition regimen in the lead up to this adventure. So when you start, you should know exactly what works for you and what doesn't. If you want to stay on the whole food tip.

• 2:03:28Rich Roll?

  What's worked for me and what has worked for many other people are things like sweet potatoes, which are easily digestible when you're running at a low pace. They kind of work like nature's gels. Dates are great. Almond butter is great. Coconut water for hydration. I think you need to figure out some estimate of how many calories you're burning per hour. And then from that, figure out how many calories you need to be, you can reasonably take in on an hourly basis to make sure that you're replenishing yourself as much as possible without upsetting your stomach. And the upset stomach thing is the big thing, right? Like when you're testing, you have to almost overdo it to figure out where that line is

• 2:04:12Rich Roll?

  and which foods your body is able to digest better than others to figure out what's going to work for you. And also understanding that no matter what you do, when you're tackling an adventure like this, 500 kilometers barefoot, you are very quickly going to go into a caloric deficit. You're not going to be able to eat that much when you're running. When you're cycling, it's a little bit easier, but you're always going to be coming from the rear in terms of meeting your body's caloric needs, which means it's really important that you figure out a schedule so that you're taking in as much as you can, like I said, without upsetting your stomach, even when you're not hungry. Like there'll be moments where you're like, I'm not eating, you know?

• 2:04:54Rich Roll?

  And you need a crew member who's going to say, we knew you were going to say that, but you have to eat right now because you're not. You're not eating for that moment. You're eating for the following day. So even though if you feel great and you don't want to put anything in your stomach, you have to understand that's going to imperil your body's ability to repair itself and come back the next day and the next day and the next day. So super important to stay on top of it. If you're open to some performance nutrition products, I can shout out a couple of podcast sponsors. Youcan for slow carbs, they're great.

• 2:05:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 2:05:34Rich Roll?

  It's very easily digestible. You can put a ton of calories in a water bottle and just sip it and it will really, that's been very helpful, especially for something like this. I would highly suggest you check that out.

• 2:05:46Adam Skolnick?

  Would you suggest like regular, like every 30 minutes I'm going to, I'm going to have a sip, every hour I'm going to have food?

• 2:05:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it could be, I mean, everybody's different. Like some people, every 20 minutes, you know, it's 50 calories or something like that. So you just create this slow drip. What you don't want to do is like spike your blood sugar and then have, and then have like a crash, you know, that's, that's what you're trying to avoid. So the kind of slow carb, like what would you call it? The carbohydrates that are in something like Youcan are designed to not spike that blood sugar, but to kind of give you a slow drip, you know, of the energy, which is exactly what you're looking for. For electrolytes, you know, coconut water is great, but you really want to make sure that you're staying on top of that proper ratio and balance.

• 2:06:36Rich Roll?

  So Element, you know, another podcast sponsor, they're great for that. There's no sugar or artificial ingredients in that. You know.

• 2:06:44Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 2:06:45Rich Roll?

  Doing the Goggins thing that have worked for you. So maybe check those out and make sure that when you're getting those rest periods, the recovery in between, that you're doing everything in your power to.

• 2:06:58Rich Roll?

  Not just replenish those calories, but repair your body for the next day. So ice baths, if that's possible. If you don't have a Theragun, I'm just shouting out all the sponsors.

• 2:07:07Adam Skolnick?

  You are.

• 2:07:07Rich Roll?

  Theragun, you know, but these are products that, that work and are helpful and to make sure that you, you know, are getting the sleep that you need. That's the most powerful recovery enhancer.

• 2:07:16Adam Skolnick?

  It looks like Kelowna is on a Fingerling Lake.

• 2:07:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, did you look at the map?

• 2:07:22Adam Skolnick?

  Just east of Vancouver, where it's like the British Columbia wine country area. You know how you, there's wine, there's wine country up there. So I think that's where it looks like. And so it can always jump in the lake.

• 2:07:31Rich Roll?

  Depends on the route, right? But if they're near the lake, maybe they can get it.

• 2:07:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. If there's no ice bath, just like jump in that lake for a while.

• 2:07:37Rich Roll?

  But I don't know if they're doing this. Are they, are they, do they have a crew? Are they being supported? Is there a van? Are they just going straight through? Are they going to sleep? Lots of questions. So many questions.

• 2:07:47Adam Skolnick?

  And I have one other question. How do you?

• 2:07:48Rich Roll?

  I feel like it's, they did that on purpose. So then now I have to call them.

• 2:07:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. And how do you care for the bare feet? Like when you're taking breaks?

• 2:07:55Rich Roll?

  I don't know. They gotta call Tony Riddle. I have no experience with that. I really don't know. But that's, that's Tony Riddle's department.

• 2:08:01Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Anyway, it was a wonderful question. You guys are amazing and we looking forward to hearing more about your incredible run.

• 2:08:10Rich Roll?

  Sending you love and strength.

• 2:08:12Adam Skolnick?

  We are.

• 2:08:12Rich Roll?

  All right. I think we did it.

• 2:08:14Adam Skolnick?

  We done did it.

• 2:08:15Rich Roll?

  Thus concludes another successful episode of Roll On.

• 2:08:20Adam Skolnick?

  I deem it a success.

• 2:08:22Rich Roll?

  I think it is.

• 2:08:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Can I, can I fact check a couple of things?

• 2:08:25Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 2:08:26Adam Skolnick?

  One, point of information, Mookie plays the outfield, mostly in right field, not center field.

• 2:08:32Rich Roll?

  Is that supposed to make me care about baseball?

• 2:08:34Adam Skolnick?

  Listen, he's plant-based and he's one of the best players in the league.

• 2:08:37Rich Roll?

  That's awesome. Cool.

• 2:08:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Just like Chris Paul, plant-based, great basketball player. And then the other thing is you asked me if, if it was me who'd become plant-based?

• 2:08:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:46Adam Skolnick?

  I'm 98% plant-based.

• 2:08:48Rich Roll?

  What, what's with this 2%?

• 2:08:50Adam Skolnick?

  What is with the 2%?

• 2:08:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:08:52Adam Skolnick?

  I'm a 2% omnivore.

• 2:08:54Rich Roll?

  Listen, Brogan is lining up to take your seat.

• 2:08:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'm not helping myself.

• 2:09:01Rich Roll?

  Get on board.

• 2:09:02Adam Skolnick?

  Brogan, don't use that against me.

• 2:09:06Rich Roll?

  All right. Is that all the fact checking we're doing today?

• 2:09:09Adam Skolnick?

  That's all the fact checking.

• 2:09:11Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna fact check you on your swimming face mask situation. We're gonna talk about that next time.

• 2:09:16Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna bring it in.

• 2:09:18Rich Roll?

  Burn that thing. All right, we're done.

• 2:09:23Rich Roll?

  I feel good. You feel good?

• 2:09:25Adam Skolnick?

  I feel great.

• 2:09:25Rich Roll?

  Awesome.

• 2:09:26Adam Skolnick?

  Hey, it's good to be back.

• 2:09:28Rich Roll?

  It is good to be back, right? Follow Adam at Adam Skolnick, I'm at Rich Roll on all the stuff. Leave us a message, 424-235-4626 to check out links to everything we talked about today, including the stuff about all the products and, I don't know, we talked about a lot of stuff, Ezra Klein's article. Check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. There's also a link to that in the description below if you're watching on YouTube. Please subscribe to us. We would really appreciate it on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the stuff. And that's it. We're gonna be back here in two weeks. We took a, we had a week off, so a lot of energy.

• 2:10:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Was I too much?

• 2:10:13Rich Roll?

  No, it was good.

• 2:10:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:15Rich Roll?

  We made a symphony.

• 2:10:17Adam Skolnick?

  Symphony of conversation.

• 2:10:18Rich Roll?

  More music to come next time. Appreciate all of you. Thank you for tuning in and listening. I don't take your attention for granted and I do not produce this show alone. Certainly, Adam Skolnick, sitting across from me, played a small part in today.

• 2:10:34Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you, sir.

• 2:10:35Rich Roll?

  And of course, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff for which he does not receive enough credit. Blake Curtis, who created the video version of today's podcast. I was in here Sunday afternoon. Blake was in here putting the finishing touches on the... The Jeremiah Ellison episode, Burning the Weekend Hours. If you haven't checked it out, you should watch it on YouTube because we have all this B-roll from the Square and kind of cruising around Minneapolis. Yeah, it's really nice to do. Great job with the edit, as he always does. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Davey Greenberg, Minneapolis native.

• 2:11:16Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 2:11:16Rich Roll?

  Couldn't make the trip, yeah, unfortunately, because he was on vacation. But he's here today to shoot some amazing portraits. Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK for advertiser relationships. And theme music, as always, by Tyler Trapper and Hari, who are in the process of trying to name their band.

• 2:11:35Adam Skolnick?

  You mean Trace Primos?

• 2:11:37Rich Roll?

  Trace Primos, yeah. We'll see. I don't know.

• 2:11:42Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think that's gonna make it.

• 2:11:43Rich Roll?

  I really want to redo this, this theme music. I think it's time. I think the, the audience would rebel or revolt.

• 2:11:50Adam Skolnick?

  Can't we use one of their new songs?

• 2:11:52Rich Roll?

  I don't, I don't mind the music because people have kind of an attachment to it now, but I don't like how I say "The Rich Roll Podcast." It's like, come on, man. We could do better, can't we?

• 2:12:02Adam Skolnick?

  Listen, can Brogan and I do an a cappella number?

• 2:12:05Rich Roll?

  I would welcome that. Let's make that happen.

• 2:12:11Rich Roll?

  Jason could write a little music for that.

• 2:12:14Adam Skolnick?

  Jason?

• 2:12:14Rich Roll?

  We'll do it.

• 2:12:15Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 2:12:16Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple days with another episode. Notes from Minneapolis to be continued. Until then, peace. Plants. Namaste.