Decoding Looksmaxxing: The Crisis Consuming Young Men & The Real Path To Self-Worth

Bone smashing. Steroids. Crystal meth. 13-year-olds letting AI judge their faces. It's called looksmaxxing – and it presents as self-improvement. Underneath, it's a deftly weaponized pipeline to nihilism, misogyny, and self-destruction, consuming millions of young men right now. Adam Skolnick and I sit with all of it this week – what it is, why it's spreading, and what the real antidote looks like. If you have a young man in your life – or you are one – sit with this. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today's Sponsors: Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com Shokz: Visit SHOKZ.com and use code RICHROLL to receive an exclusive offer on your purchase👉🏼https://beopen.shokz.com/RichRoll-OpenFitPro AG1: Get a FREE bottle of D3K2, Welcome Kit, and 5 travel packs with your first order👉🏼https://www.drinkAG1.com/richroll Prolon: Get 15% OFF plus a FREE bonus gift👉🏼https://www.prolonlife.com/richroll OneSkin: Get started today with 15% off using code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.oneskin.co WHOOP: The all-new WHOOP 5.0 is here! Get your first month FREE👉🏼https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Adam Skolnick?

  Clavicular was mid-Jester Gooning when a group of Foids came and spiked his cortisol levels. Is ignoring the Foids while munting and mugging Moids more useful than SMV chat fishing in the club?

• 1:16Rich Roll?

  I've never felt so old in my entire life. Clavicular!

• 1:20Speaker 02

  How's it going?

• 1:21Speaker 03

  If you haven't heard of Clavicular yet, it's only a matter of time before you do. The 20-year-old looks-maxing livestreamer has become inescapable online.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Looks-maxing is the furthest extent that you could take self-improvement. Do whatever it takes to ascend through any and every mechanism out there.

• 1:38Rich Roll?

  Here's how you ascend. You do crystal meth steroids, and you like bang a hammer on your cheekbones for something called bone smashing. What is even happening? Anybody who has fallen into this trap, put the [bleep] phone down.

• 1:54Rich Roll?

  So let's begin with defining this term looks-maxing. I mean, looks-maxing is basically this movement wherein young men are insanely committed to improving their physical appearance. And this entails a spectrum of behavior from what's called soft-maxing behavior, which is like normal grooming habits, like taking care of yourself, brushing your teeth and conditioning your hair and taking care of your skin, to these hard-maxing behaviors, which are more extreme, permanent, or like even surgical interventions. Like, we're talking about the people who like break their legs so that they can extend them and become taller.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  Something called bone-smashing, where you take a hammer to your like cheekbones. For some reason, this is supposed to create, you know, higher, more pronounced cheekbones. There's roid-maxing, taking steroids. It even goes so far, if you like observe this clavicular guy, to like taking crystal meth to suppress your appetite. Now, this, if you've never heard of it before, just sounds like absolute insanity. But this is happening, and there are a lot of young men who are engaged in this behavior or are being heavily influenced by people like this person called Clavicular, who is sort of an avatar of this movement.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  And the essence of it is much more than personal vanity. It is this gamified approach to maximizing your physical attractiveness on the premise that that is truly the only thing that matters, that your entire self-worth boils down to the degree to which you are physically attractive. And not for nothing, it's not for the purpose of... Being able to then go out in the world and get a good job or find a partner. It's truly this, this game in which the point is to ascend this hierarchy in comparison,

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  like this zero sum game where you're ascending this hierarchy in comparison to other men.

• 4:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 4:06Rich Roll?

  It's literally that.

• 4:08Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think, I think it's this, it's, it's basically from my understanding is it's accepted knowledge that unless you're in the rarefied air of this ranking system, then you have no hope of a partnership. You have no hope of making real money in this economy with AI. You have no hope of a good life at all. You're just going to be like a bottom feeder unless you adhere to these principles, unless you pursue this looks maxing, you have no hope, especially if you just genetically look a certain way.

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  What is your explanation for why this has become such a popular trend with young men?

• 4:47Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it's like this, it's like the glow up, glow up gone bad. You know, it's like it's, young women have been under pressure from the way they look and the way they're perceived for the entirety of popular culture. And young men have avoided that same, to, to some degree have avoided that same scrutiny. Social media changes all of that. Now, although they're late to the party, young men are seeing themselves through that same looking glass and they're not liking what they're seeing. And, and I, this branches off incel culture and right wing culture. It's all about this isolated young man who is unhappy

• 5:27Adam Skolnick?

  in their life, trying to figure out a way to, to get better at life. And so, you know, all this self optimizing, it's basically self optimization just mutated into this bizarre appeal to look a certain way, not to accomplish a certain thing or to be a certain person, but to look a certain way. And that itself is the gift. That's the gateway to the good life. And so it's, it's all this stuff that we know has been toxic to some degree in a certain dose, optimization, efficiency, the worship of the successful person. All

• 6:08Adam Skolnick?

  this kind of stuff is now backed up on these young men. And, you know, listen.

• 6:15Adam Skolnick?

  When I was a teenager, I wasn't so super stoked on myself. I wasn't a happy guy. I didn't have a bunch of girlfriends. I wasn't like, I mean, I had friends. I was fine. But I wasn't like stoked on life to be an adolescent with like no girls around. Like, I wasn't really happy. But in our day, it was, I think, more normal. And now it's looked at not just through the kids in your school, but you know, it's you're judging yourself based on this infinite funhouse mirror of social media, and it's just getting twisted.

• 6:47Rich Roll?

  Your entire worth is reflected back to you through the digital mirror of your lived experience. Like, you're measuring yourself constantly against impossible standards that you can't live up to. And, you know, if you're a young man, and you are in that, you know, either adolescent state or post adolescent state, like, listen, it's hard to be a human being, you know, it's particularly hard to be a young person, more so than ever. Like, it's so difficult and fraught. And I'm very like empathetic to that sense of not knowing where you fit in, who you are, how are you gonna, how you're gonna connect with

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  other people and, and, and, you know, develop some degree of self esteem. And like yourself, like, I, you know, like, I was not a vision for you. Like, you know, people know me as like, oh, the ultra athlete, or if you Google me, there's like pictures of my torso and I look very fit. But as a young person, I was an isolated, lonely child who really had a hard time, like, making friends, connecting with other people. And it didn't help that I walked around with an eye, I wore glasses, but I also had an eye patch. I have a, I have a weak left eye. And the idea in the 70s was that if you want to correct that problem,

• 8:14Rich Roll?

  the best thing to do is to put a patch on your strong eye and make your weak eye work out until it gets adequately strong. This didn't work. This is a vestigial, you know, kind of torture device of the 1970s that, you know, I was victim to. And on top of that, I wore headgear orthodontia, you know, this for people that don't know, like wires coming out of my mouth with like a strap around my back. So imagine glasses, patch on the eye, wires coming out of my mouth, like walking the hallways of a school. Like, this is, this is not looks maxing. This is looks minimizing.

• 8:51Adam Skolnick?

  This is like a Johnny Hughes joke.

• 8:54Rich Roll?

  And, yeah, I was, you know, I was sort of a social pariah as a young person and it had an indelible impact on my self-esteem. Like, I was a navel gazing kid who struggled mightily as a young person. And I can only imagine that I would have been vulnerable to, you know, somebody who pops up on my social media feed and who's saying like, listen, comb your hair. Like, you know, what's the entry point to this? Like, you know what? Like, wash your face, brush your teeth, you know, comb your hair, like comb it this way, not that way. Use this grooming product because if you can just up-level how you appear, like, that's gonna make a big difference. And before you know it, now you're moving

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  into this world where then it becomes this strange, kind of deftly weaponized pseudo-scientific eugenics-coded, you know, vocabulary that has to do with like, the, you know, the angle of your jawline and the distance between your eyes and, you know, the, the, the degree to which your clavicle is like, you know, straight or angled down. Like, all of this very bizarre stuff that then gets laden with meaning that is intertwined with self-worth in a really kind of like perverse way where the ultimate

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  Kind of representative of this is Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.

• 10:24Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent.

• 10:25Rich Roll?

  So here we are, millions of young people are being influenced by this subculture. We've got engineer Desmond up there, also a young man. So do you, are you aware of this looks maxing like world?

• 10:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally.

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  And do you know anyone who's in it? Like, how do you understand this? What's going on?

• 10:45Speaker 04

  I feel like half of my friends are like that.

• 10:48Rich Roll?

  They're into it?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  They're into it because I feel like in our age, social media is pretty like, you know, prominent. And then like, everybody is just kind of like terminally online, I would say. And then like, you feel bad, like, you know, because when something gets trendy, like, you know, looks maxing, right? It's like an idea for like, you know, men to like, look better so they can attract like, you know, their partner and stuff. So I think like, everybody is just kind of like, trying to seek like, you know, the approval that they didn't have, I guess.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's almost like a video game, the gamified aspect of it with all these weird terms, the terminology. But beneath it all, not only is it this exercise in self-indulgent, self-obsession, it's deeply nihilistic.

• 11:46Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  It's basically like, the only thing that matters is your physical appearance. And your self-improvement should be restricted to, you know, how you physically appear.

• 11:58Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, it's all, it's all distilled down to that. Like, your self-worth is distilled down to your appearance. And it's something that, like I said before, that young women have dealt with their lives and had to, had to kind of figure out. Now, young men are, are subject to it. I mean, the Patrick Bateman reference is so perfect. Like, there's a scene in the movie, his morning routine, where he ice packs his face and then he does a thousand crunches. And that-

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  It's so mild compared to today's like morning routine, you know- Self optimization, kind of like stuff that you see on social media.

• 12:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and it's also satire about here's this guy who's a psychopath, by the way.

• 12:37Rich Roll?

  He's murdering people.

• 12:38Adam Skolnick?

  He's murdering people and he has to, he wants to look his best. And it's been viewed unironically, millions of times, like it's picked up speed in two, 2023, it was up at 17 million views already. And so like, God knows what it's at now. You know, it's interesting, like back when we were growing up, you know, we could go home and at least not be in the, in the lens, not be in the spotlight and we could just find some solace. But now with all these kids, like Desmond said, terminally online, online or young men terminally online, there's no escape. Because it's not just that you're comparing yourself to the whole world. Your own insular community is now looking at you all the time.

• 13:21Adam Skolnick?

  Like you can't escape from the judgment of your peers. And I think that this, this idea of you can learn how to do things online, which is good, like, you know, the DIY aspect of YouTube is playing into this, like everything that has been helpful to people to learn how to like, do everything from baking sourdough bread to playing the guitar is now being used in a way to kind of, to reexamine how you look and what you look like. And there's a ranking system.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, that's the gamification of the whole thing, you know, it's like there's wins and fails, you know, there's all that like, this idea of moggling is basically like you're showing up, somebody else is standing next to somebody like who is the more dominant force. Like it's all competition, uh, premised on this zero sum idea that, uh, everything is a hierarchy.

• 14:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 14:15Rich Roll?

  Like it isn't, like it isn't a video game.

• 14:17Adam Skolnick?

  Like there's a, a scale of one to nine or something on how you look and a nine is a Slayer and eight is a Chad. These are good. And then if you're four to six, you're a normie. And if you're one to three, you're subhuman. And I mean, that's how and that's how people are getting judged. And you can get judged on in forums where other people judge you sometimes harshly, sometimes they mean well. And and others, you can actually get AI to rate you. There's something called Looksmack GPT or something. Looksmaxxing GPT. There's something called Umax where you can go online and AI and AI will judge you based on how you look, taking photos of your angle. And

• 14:56Adam Skolnick?

  apparently like 13 year olds are into this, like 13 year olds are engaging in some of these practices.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  It would be comical if it wasn't so deeply sad and tragic.

• 15:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, there is a, there is like, you read that tweet and you're like, oh, my God, what's going on? But I know that tweet that you read has something like 12 million views, you know, like, obviously, this is more than just a small thing. And you can't help but think like, how is this affecting the still forming prefrontal cortexes of like, young people?

• 15:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  You know, it's, it's, it's fucked up, man.

• 15:32Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  It really is. And you can empathize or sympathize with the young man who is feeling lost and, you know, comes across something that that seems just self-improvement oriented enough to kind of bring you in, right? But then it becomes, it can become like this pipeline to some not great ideas. Like, you're hooking a lonely person who hears a voice about how to get a better jawline. They end up joining some community or some forum where they're following a creator and learning about this terminology. But essentially, you're being indoctrinated into this comparison economy where, you know, you're in competition

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  with every single person. Looks are everything. And this is going to make you, over time, like, more vulnerable to being

• 16:24Rich Roll?

  Manipulated into some not so great adjacent ideologies like not for nothing misogyny. You know, women are props, they're superficial, you know, they're not really what's important here. The idea that society is a rigged hierarchy, it's all set up against you and this is your only chance. You have to invest in your looks and this is your only way out like it's, it's really tragic.

• 16:50Adam Skolnick?

  It is. I mean, it comes from incel culture, right? So there are lonely, lonely guys who couldn't get, who couldn't figure out a way to communicate with women who feel like they were, and some of them became proudly incel that, you know, were never gonna, they're gonna be celibate involuntarily for their life. And then this became an escape hatch for some guys out of that. And that's why you have teens and tweens, tweens posting detailed measurements of their bodies, photographing every angle of their face. I mean, think about that, a tween boy doing that and putting it up online for judgment. And as, as a way to try to make sure that you are more attractive to the opposite sex.

• 17:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's like this crazed, it's a, it's a anxious neurosis that just continues to spin. And so like it's, you know, how do you, I think the main thing is how do we get out of it? Like, why is, are half Desmond's friends on there? Like, what is going on in culture? Is it that men and women, young men and women aren't connecting as much in normal life? Is Desmond, is that part of the, the draw? That these men are not, they wanna, they wanna meet women and this is their, their way of doing it?

• 18:08Speaker 04

  I think it's also because like right now, we have like, you know, social media and then dating apps, right? I believe you guys didn't use like, you know, dating apps back then. And when you're using like a dating app, from my experience, you're kind of like, you know, shopping around to see like who's attractive first, instead of like actually getting to talk to them. And then girls would kind of like, you know, only kind of like match with you. Once like, you know, if you're attractive enough to them. And since like, you know, becoming like, you know, looks maxing is kind of trendy right now. More guys want to be like, you know, that have that facial feature or like that height and stuff to like, you know, attract the opposite sex, I would say.

• 18:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense that this would be an outgrowth from the gamification of dating and relationships, right? Like, these dating apps are gamified, and so, all right, so how are we gonna play this? But I think what's sort of distinct about looks-maxing is that it's not about, it's not really necessarily about getting attractive to find a mate, it's getting attractive to, like, mog other men, you know what I mean? It's this hierarchy amongst men.

• 19:25Adam Skolnick?

  That's the ultimate, like, I think that's coming from guys that have already gotten enough validation from women, don't you think? And then the next thing that they're promoting is to be above men, like, clavicular.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  The clip that kind of went nuts and put, like, clavicular on the map was when, he was doing a podcast, who was he with, where basically, he was comparing Gavin Newsom and J.D. Vance, and he was basically saying that, like, Gavin Newsom is a Chad, and J.D. Vance, you know, is not looks-maxing enough, you know, like, this guy isn't measuring up, like, in his jawline, you know, he's overweight or whatever. And he was so matter-of-fact in this, like, breakdown analysis, basically saying, like, he was basically saying, like, I agree with J.D. Vance's worldview, but I'm gonna vote for Gavin Newsom because he's the Chad in this equation.

• 20:17Adam Skolnick?

  That's right. It was a right-wing podcast, because these guys typically are, and he was, yeah, he was asked who he'd vote for in a 2028 presidential contest, and apparently, the host of the podcast, I forget who it is, there's no reason to big him up now, was shocked that this guy, who he knows is Republican, picks Gavin Newsom, and it's purely superficial. I mean, it's self-improvement culture gone wrong.

• 20:45Rich Roll?

  Haywire.

• 20:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like the nip-tuck wing of the life-optimization, morning-routine, longevity-extending kind of health-influencer corner of the internet.

• 21:01Adam Skolnick?

  Which is interesting, because we both, in different ways, have been connected to that corner.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I'm like, am I, like, responsible on some level for, you know, kind of planting the seeds for something like this to happen? Because these are topics that I talk about a lot, you know, and it's interesting to kind of, like, reflect on that. But what is the, what is the relationship between this movement and like the alt-right? Like, what is that like nexus all about?

• 21:31Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, Nick Fuentes, it's, it's the Groyporism. It's, it's that, what's the Pepe, it's the Pepe the Frog, right?

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  It goes back to 4chan incel culture and, you know, it's sort of, you know, Nazi youth coded as well. Right? Like, there is a, there is a, the, there is a superior race kind of like aspect to all of this.

• 21:50Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  Uh, that's, you know, deeply unsettling.

• 21:53Adam Skolnick?

  I watched Jojo Rabbit, by the way, again, recently, not for nothing. It's a, it's, it's the, it's a, you know, it's a great satire of Nazi Germany.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  It's like a YTT.

• 22:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's, it's Tago YTT's satire of, of like the Hitler Youth movement, like boy scout version. And in that movie, I bring it up because in that movie, the two kids who are the, who you care about the most, including one who worships Hitler, um, is being mocked because he's a nerd and he's small and he's not the Hitler. He's not like, he is not fitting the stereotype. So that's what's odd about this too, is like, some of these people will never fit the stereotype that they are, um, trying to. There, there's like that part of it too. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's very much connected to that social Darwinistic idea.

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  I want to get into the antidote to all of this, but before that, I just want to mention the article that Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote for The Atlantic on this subject. And, and something that he brought up that I thought was very interesting, which is the counterpoint to this amongst the, amongst right-wing politics is Christianity. Like, we're seeing these two, these are two kind of opposing forces that are emerging in this world. On the one hand, we have this looks-maxing thing. It's all about self-obsession. It's all about superficiality. It's all about competition. And then the countervailing force is, is a...

• 23:26Rich Roll?

  You know, this, this rise of, of Christian values and, and what is it called Tyler? Like the, the woman who stays home, what's that called?

• 23:35Adam Skolnick?

  Trad.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  The trad, the trad wife.

• 23:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  Like, like these are, and these seem to be in conflict with each other or competing with each other on some level.

• 23:43Adam Skolnick?

  It's the fight for the soul of this weird consensus, right? That has like put us in this mess now. There's the, there's the roots in violence, the roots in self-aggrandizement as well as self-hatred. It's like a kind of a weird thing. And then there's this more holistic, but still, I mean, you can't take away violent from the white Christian kind of ideal. There's always been violence underpinning it. But like, when you look at, at, at that world, they're much more focused on constructing some, some world, a new world. This one is like breaking yourself down and breaking everything down to the individual. So it's like these two weird reflections of, of conservative America.

• 24:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's all about individualism and whatever it takes. And it's constructing this familial ideal because that's the right way to live.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's, it's very interesting. It's definitely, you know, those are the ideals, you know? And I, I was thinking about that, that article because he brings up this John B. Calhoun experiment in 1968 where he built a large enclosed mouse, like cage for a mouse colony with abundant food and water. No predators, lots of space for nesting. And at first the population flourished, but later in the experiment, a group of the male mice kind of came like separated from the others and focused all their time on grooming, sleeping and eating and maintaining clean, unscarred bodies and just being the perfect mouse.

• 25:21Adam Skolnick?

  And they disengaged from the community and they stopped reproducing. And eventually the entire population collapsed. So this, this navel gazing, as you said, this, this sole focus on how you look and how you think you're being perceived. Ends up not just in the Dorian Gray way of kind of making you into a monster in some way. It actually, from a social, the social cost is immense. Because it it furthers the isolationism and it furthers the the competition. It furthers all the things that are trying to pull apart. I mean, say what you want about the Kirk's Turning Point. They are trying to build a community. You know, they are.

• 26:06Adam Skolnick?

  And if you agree with them, you can be in the community. It's like, there is a constructive element. I'm not saying I agree with everything, but like, they're they're trying to build something. And this is and this is not.

• 26:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the the mouse experiment makes me think like, oh, if you if you meet everybody's needs, then left to our own devices, it all goes to shit because we just become self obsessed. And we concern ourselves with things that don't matter. Like, there's no looks maxing going on on the precipice of World War Two.

• 26:40Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 26:42Rich Roll?

  This is not happening. You know, like, when there's real problems and we have to come together to solve them, we don't have time for nonsense like this.

• 26:52Rich Roll?

  But when you look at looks maxing, it's black pill nihilism. We're doing it for the laws or whatever. Or, you know, Christianity, family values, traditionalism. These are very different movements, but essentially, what's similar or shared about them is that they're both solutions to this search for meaning. And, you know, like, if if you took this mouse experiment, just imagine, you know, 10, 20 years from now, or whenever it is, when, you know, AI takes all the jobs and we and I assume at some point we'll need universal basic income or something.

• 27:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 27:30Rich Roll?

  And we're just, we just get money in our account every month and we don't have to work and we have to figure out, like, what's the crisis of meaning then? It's it's, you know, you think it's an epidemic now? Like, we have to figure out how to make our lives feel meaningful without having work as an outlet or a vehicle for that. This is only going to exacerbate this very, you think looks maxing is bad now? Like, what's it going to look like when AI has is controlling everything? And we we we are left with nothing but free time.

• 28:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right, I mean-

• 28:04Rich Roll?

  You know, it's terrible, right?

• 28:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  But then back to these two things, Christianity and looks maxing. They're both searches for meaning. They're both answers to this search for meaning right now. This crisis of meaning that we're having. Like, what does my life mean? Oh, it's about physical appearance. Oh, it's about, you know, the nuclear family, or it's about my faith, or, you know, there's different avenues for all of this. And I suppose when you look at it through the lens of like the right wing, it's not by accident that this is happening under the leadership of one of the most, you know, as Chatterton Williams said, like the most narcissistic and superficial president in US history. It's like, okay, well, who's at the top?

• 28:50Rich Roll?

  What does that guy stand for? Okay, downstream of that, that's what we're seeing happening with young people. But I think fundamentally, in this crisis of meaning, what you're trying to solve for is certainty in an uncertain world. Like, what is certain? It's like, oh, here are some rules I can hang my hat on. Like, this is what's important. Like, this competition among men for looks, or, you know, faith in my nuclear family and my sort of status within my community.

• 29:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 29:22Rich Roll?

  But we have to find, not that, you know, that's all good. Like, if you, your faith-based life, fantastic, but with respect to looks-maxing. Like, we need to provide an antidote to this for young men, an on-ramp to, you know, get them off of this track, this pipeline that leads them towards more dangerous ideologies.

• 29:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And the dangerous, I mean, the dangerous, most dangerous ideology is, can't be looks-maxing itself, because some of these young people are getting told to go into ropes-maxing. There's no hope for you, and encouraging self-harm and worse. And so

• 30:05Rich Roll?

  This fatalism.

• 30:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Rich Roll?

  This is what you look like. There's nothing you can do. There's no hope for you.

• 30:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 30:09Rich Roll?

  This is, this is, this isn't, you know, this is just a horrible violence.

• 30:14Adam Skolnick?

  It's horrible. I mean, I have a five-year-old. It terrifies me to even think about like, and what, so what's the solution? I mean, I think some of this is coming from just the very real thing is that guys wanna, wanna be with a woman. We wanna, we wanna have sex. We wanna, we wanna, we wanna fall in love. Um, and, and, you know, in the old days, you had to learn how to, how to kind of make yourself attractive to women in, with whatever you had. And, um, and sometimes that took longer than others, you know? And some, it was easier for some than others. Um, and it's always been that way. But now it's like you said, this gamified version of it, and it's, it's so much more twisted.

• 30:57Adam Skolnick?

  So like, how do we get out of it? Like, what are the, what's the solution?

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  I think in order to answer that question, we first have to look at the tectonic shifts in our media economy. It wasn't so long ago, Adam, when you and I were younger, that, uh, when we looked around at people who inspired us, it could be rock star. It could be, you know, a movie star. It could be a scientist or an astronaut or somebody like that. But these are people who distinguished themselves by doing something excellent, right? They earned through their toil and their talent.

• 31:42Rich Roll?

  They're stationed in life and, you know, have done something, you know, worthy of, of note. They have accomplished something, right? Uh, at the same time, it's funny because we're all, we were talking about this earlier, like, The world is so obsessed with like startup culture and entrepreneurship and like like the pinnacle is like becoming a CEO, right? But when we were kids, like CEOs were dorks. You know, it was like Lee Iacocca was like the, you know, like the example of the successful CEO. None of us were like, I want to be a CEO.

• 32:14Adam Skolnick?

  I still don't want to be CEO. And I don't want to be, I don't want to, I don't want to go.

• 32:18Rich Roll?

  But on the internet, everyone seems obsessed with becoming a CEO. This is like, this is a very unique thing of our, of our time.

• 32:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Rich Roll?

  But that, that turned, we went from that into a celebrity obsessed culture where the earning ratio was reduced because of things like reality TV. Like you just had to be famous and there were many vehicles for getting famous and not all of them by necessity required that you achieve something noteworthy. You know, there was, there was, there was like a broader, a wider path towards celebrity status. And the goal then became to become a celebrity. And if you could become that, then doors would open and you would have a great life. That was the idea.

• 33:04Rich Roll?

  Now we've, we've migrated even beyond that where it's just about attention. It's not even necessarily celebrity. It's about getting a lot of attention. If you can get the most attention, then you can make money and you can do all these other things. Right? And by proxy, I suppose, like live a happy life. Right? But the incentive structure built around getting attention is a very unhealthy one. The way you get attention is by doing outrageous things or having an insane point of view or being contrarian or conspiracy minded or there's, there's different variations of this.

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  But you can go from obscurity to getting extreme attention almost, you know, overnight. And I think that is warping to the brain of, to anybody, but particularly to the brain of a young person.

• 33:57Adam Skolnick?

  So their ambition goes from, I want to be in the rock band or I want to be this great athlete to wow, if only I was like so and so and have the attention, that becomes like.

• 34:09Rich Roll?

  Well, then it become, then it became like, then I want to be a celebrity. Then it became, I want to be an influencer. And now it's just, it's not even that. It's like, how do I get a bunch of attention immediately?

• 34:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 34:18Rich Roll?

  You know, and.

• 34:21Rich Roll?

  Not for nothing, like if you're really good looking, if your looks maxing, probably easier to get a lot of attention. Or if you're making videos about like taking a hammer to your cheekbones and why this is a good idea, that's probably going to get a lot of attention also.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:34Rich Roll?

  So, we're upside down. You know, our, our, our moral compass is, you know, spinning round and round and can't find its true north right now. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, confused young people in, in the wake of this. So, when I think about my own work, the premise of this show is and always has been like, how do you unlock your best and most authentic self? That could be interpreted on a superficial level. How do you, how do you like look your best by eating the right foods or losing weight? Extending that to things like morning routines and daily workout routines and daily nutritional plans and your, you know, everything from your journaling practice to your mindfulness practice.

• 35:16Rich Roll?

  But essentially, the deeper you delve into this and what hopefully I've modeled over the many years of doing this, is that this is not a superficial exercise, that your best, most authentic self requires a deep examination of mind, body, and spirit. And to become more self-actualized by necessity requires self-transcendence. You have to graduate from your self-obsession into a life that is premised upon something bigger and more important than yourself. Looks-maxing is the ultimate expression of self-obsession on some level.

• 36:00Rich Roll?

  There could be no more superficial pursuit than this. Self-transcendence is the opposite of that. And in between, there's all kinds of practices. To get you there. We're all on the spectrum between these two polarities, I think. But to me, that's how I've always interpreted it. And you begin wherever you're at. If you're a looks maxer, maybe the path towards greater self-actualization starts with brushing your teeth, or, you know, combing your hair, or even figuring out how to present yourself in a way that makes you feel better about yourself. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  But ultimately, we have to progress, you know, up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, in our, in our quest for expansion and enlightenment. And those things start to fall away and become less important. But I think at a base level, if you're dealing with somebody who has zero self-esteem, doesn't see any opportunity for themselves, doesn't have the self-belief to take the initiative in life, this is a person who's going to be susceptible to the wiles of the, the social media influencer looks maxer. And that person might only be able to, you know, hear the most basic level stuff, you know?

• 37:23Rich Roll?

  And to that person, it might be revelatory to begin with their appearance, you know? So that when they look in the mirror in the morning, maybe they feel a little bit better about themselves. But the point is you build on that and you're constantly graduating, you know, to different levels. Like, okay, what's next? What's more? It's an ongoing search for meaning and meaning, you know, will continue to elude those who look for it in the context of their own self-regard and self-obsession.

• 37:54Adam Skolnick?

  I wanted to add on to that. What you're talking about is, is a way to have a more meaningful life and a healthier life could begin with a looking in the mirror assessment. But we're talking about a healthier life. You know, a healthier life would never include. Using steroids, which some of these teenagers do.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  But maybe, but maybe eat some healthier food.

• 38:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 38:19Rich Roll?

  And like lose a little bit of weight and the bags under your eyes go away. Like I'm talking, I'm not talking about like.

• 38:24Adam Skolnick?

  No, right. Yeah, no, no.

• 38:25Rich Roll?

  Your jawline.

• 38:26Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just underlying, I'm just saying that's for actually further separation. It sounds like it's starting in the same place, but it's actually not because your intention is always better health. There's always a deeper intention from the get go. When you look at it from this point of view. Um, when you look at it from a looks maxer point of view, it's just how to get something, some weird metric and, and it's by any means possible.

• 38:52Rich Roll?

  It's appearance over substance.

• 38:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Rich Roll?

  You know, it's all about aesthetics and appearance. And, you know, I'm saying that substance is what matters.

• 39:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 39:02Rich Roll?

  And I think, you know, if you're just trying to short, shortcut yourself to something like, yeah, it's like, oh, how you look on the surface. It doesn't matter if there's any depth to you. It doesn't matter what you actually stand for or say, or what your values are. It's just like what's on the surface level. Like, good luck, good luck in life. You will not find meaning or happiness or fulfillment or satisfaction. You can chase that as long as you like, but it only goes in one direction and it ain't good. If you want to find meaning, if you want to resolve your own personal crisis of meaning and you want to find real fulfillment and a path towards happiness and a sense of satisfaction with your life, you are going to have to

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  plum the depths and find something of substance to sink your teeth into. And wherever you're, you find yourself, whatever your lot in life, uh, this shift has to take place from aesthetic dominance to some degree of functional competence and character-based value. So what are your values? What are you not good at? What are you good at? Where does your curiosity lead you? Start with your curiosity. Find something that excites you enough to learn more and develop some degree of skill and competence in it. That's the ultimate self-esteem builder.

• 40:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  Looking in the mirror is always gonna be an empty promise. And the more you look in the mirror, the more faults you're gonna find in yourself, the more you're gonna compare yourself to other people, the more you're gonna gamify your life, and the shittier you're gonna feel. And there's no way out of that trap. The solution is to get outside of your self-obsession, invest yourself in something that has meaning outside of your own personal stake in gain. And putting your phone down, going outside, being in a community with other people, looking to enter rooms with how you can contribute, rather than what you're going

• 41:09Rich Roll?

  to extract in this gamified zero-sum idea of what life is, because that's not what life is.

• 41:16Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  And finding meaning and value in your relationships and in cooperation, not competition.

• 41:26Adam Skolnick?

  And also, it's like, to be honest, to try to appeal to some sort of construct of beauty, you're often not beautiful. I mean, you're often not. You're often either beautiful in an obvious way that is common, or you're not, you don't actually get there at all.

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  Well, anybody who cares that much about their appearance is ghoulish.

• 41:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  And true beauty is reflected in the person who's really engaged with life and has that sense of fulfillment that is, like, you can read it on their face. It's not about the angle of their whatever, it's about like their, the way they carry themselves, their sense of self.

• 42:15Rich Roll?

  That is evident. Like when somebody walks in the room who's really happy with their life and is contributing and feels good about what they do, that is infinitely more attractive than the person with the sculpted eyebrows that creeps you out. Like this whole thing is like gross and creepy and weird and very like American Psycho, Clockwork, Orange. And like, anybody who has fallen into this trap, get the fuck out of it. Like, this is not a path to what you think it is.

• 42:42Adam Skolnick?

  No. I mean, that's the true ascension. When you find somebody who has got-

• 42:46Rich Roll?

  It was like this idea of ascension is part of this whole world.

• 42:49Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right. Like, so basically, clavicular tries to-

• 42:53Rich Roll?

  I can't believe we're talking about this guy.

• 42:55Adam Skolnick?

  This guy apparently is a coach and he gets people to do these things. A lot of this hard maxing, which is the steroids and the crystal meth and the hitting yourself with a hammer.

• 43:06Rich Roll?

  What are we even talking about? This is so insane.

• 43:09Adam Skolnick?

  It's insane. And it's called ascension. But-

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  Yes. Here's how you ascend. You do crystal meth, steroids, and you like bang a hammer on your like-

• 43:19Adam Skolnick?

  Because their face looks different.

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  What is even happening?

• 43:22Adam Skolnick?

  I know. It's hard to imagine why, how we got here, but we got here. I mean, I think it all boils down to this motherfucker right here, dude. This thing right here.

• 43:33Rich Roll?

  It's the fucking phone.

• 43:33Adam Skolnick?

  It's the phone, man. It's the phone. That's what did it. That's what got us here.

• 43:39Rich Roll?

  I mean, the idea that that phone gave birth, that these ideas even exist, let alone have captured, you know, the attention and fascination of millions of young people, is so disturbing to me. Like, what have we wrought? And where is this leading us?

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  The crazy thing about all of this is that it's pitched as a way of getting ahead in life. Like, if you are worried about your lot in life, here's how you get an advantage. And you're being sold a fucking lie. This is not the answer. But the good news is, there is an advantage. It's never been easier, ever, to get ahead of other people because everybody is so distracted by the phone.

• 44:33Rich Roll?

  Put the phone down, read a book, go outside, make friends, build something, do shit together, push heavy weight around, get your heart rate up, you know, commit to doing something hard, set a goal for yourself and commit to achieving it. Push your body, invest yourself in something that is actually esteem building. Contribute to somebody else, show up for another person, do a favor for a friend, touch grass, go out of your way to see people and say yes to new experiences. That's it.

• 45:11Adam Skolnick?

  That's it, man.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  That is the solution to all of this. While everyone else is scrolling, if you can put the phone down and just make your life a little bit more analog and service oriented and constructive with a growth mindset, there's absolutely no limit on what you are going to be capable of achieving because everyone else is handicapped.

• 45:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 45:36Rich Roll?

  So that is the answer and you don't need to be sold a $99 or a $9,999 course to do that. All you have to do is summon the courage and the discipline to put the fucking phone down and start living your life proactively with a degree of intentionality, mindfulness, curiosity and intentionality.

• 46:03Adam Skolnick?

  Well said, because what that gets you is that feeling of self-confidence, that glow that you were talking about earlier, like where, where you can feel that presence of somebody when they come close to you.

• 46:15Rich Roll?

  You have to earn it.

• 46:16Adam Skolnick?

  You have to earn it, but it's.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  You could put lotion on your face and like wax your eyebrows and do whatever crazy shit these people are telling you to do. It's not going to make you feel better. The only thing that is going to give you that feeling of personal satisfaction is when you go and get out of your comfort zone, do something hard, achieve something, fail, make mistakes, learn, do it again. This is how you do it. You have to earn it. You have to put yourself in a situation that is a bit uncomfortable and see yourself through it. That's how you build a self-esteem. You build self-esteem by performing esteemable acts on behalf of yourself and on behalf of

• 46:58Rich Roll?

  other people. And the attraction that you're seeking is not a superficial result of all of this bullshit you're being pitched. Attraction is the byproduct of living a meaningful life. Figure out what's meaningful to you. What are your values? Write them down. What is meaningful? Pursue that. Work hard towards it. Put yourself in those uncomfortable situations where maybe you're gonna fail, or you're gonna get rejected, and invest yourself there. If you do that, you will become much more attractive than you ever will through this other nonsense.

• 47:35Adam Skolnick?

  It's not the glow up, it's the glow in. The way that moths are attracted to light, you have to glow inside. And if you glow in, then you become attractive. Then you're the attractive, then you're like the tractor beam, and people come to you and opportunities come to you.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  I will say that in my monologue about how it's never been easier to, you know, distinguish yourself because of the mass distraction that everybody's experiencing right now. At the same time, it is more difficult to go outside and make friends and be with friends and do things together and cultivate community. Because we don't really have the third spaces that we used to have. I mean, they're not completely gone, but if you're a young person, you know, there isn't the youth centers and the YMCA's and the faith-based organizations and all the like that, you know, young people used to gather after school. So that is a challenge.

• 48:36Rich Roll?

  Not recognizing that, but that doesn't mean that it's not possible. You just have to really, you know, if you want to commit to something, that is a, that is a worthy commitment to make.

• 48:48Adam Skolnick?

  Um, there's a great parents article, like a parents magazine article about this. And it includes a couple of tips for parents. So I'm, I'm just read off a couple of tips that were in there for people. Cause uh, so parents, if you have, you know, tweens and teens that, that you wanna, you wanna monitor this stuff. Um, the main thing is you gotta have some sort of um, uh, survey, it's surveying control of the social apps. It's harder to do that because these kids know how to create fake accounts. But if you can somehow survey what they're getting on social media or, or elsewhere.

• 49:21Rich Roll?

  That's really hard.

• 49:22Adam Skolnick?

  I know it's hard.

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  It's really hard. Like your, your kids are young. Like I'm, I'm just telling you, like, they get to a certain age. Like you're locked out, dude. It's really difficult. Like to have that certain, and, and you don't, you also don't want to be the parent. Where the kid is like, oh, my parents look at everything that I'm doing. Like you're just, you're breeding distrust there. And I don't know, I'm not saying I have the solution to this, but I think a lot of parents are going to hear that and be like, yeah, that's not going to work in my case.

• 49:48Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. That's, so that one, this is coming from the article. So this is good. Cause so the other one they, they recommend is.

• 49:54Rich Roll?

  What article? Where was this?

• 49:55Adam Skolnick?

  Parents magazine. Um, the other one is called, uh, is that, they say, talk about it. And um, combined with an activity of some kind to bring it up, um, to create a strength board of like a whiteboard of what you're good at. And kind of like talk about that with them openly, um, validate their experiences and fact check some of these um, ideas together. Um, how much of that do you think could go, or is that, is that too much?

• 50:24Rich Roll?

  I think, I think these two, these two points of, of advice are in conflict with each other. If you're the parent who's monitoring their social media, then that's a cross purposes with the goal of open communication. Because then they're like, they don't trust you. You know, you're, they're gonna keep, they're gonna have a Finsta account where the real shit's going on, you know? And that's breeding like secrecy and lying and all the like.

• 50:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Rich Roll?

  But that second piece of advice I think is much more valuable, which is the goal is always to have the channel of communication wide open. And the only way to do that as a parent is to establish trust over a long period of time. And create a nonjudgmental environment where the young person feels safe talking about these things. Most young people, especially when the teen years kind of enter the picture, the last people they want to share this kind of stuff with is their parents. And part of that is healthy. It's healthy individuation. You want your child to like, you know, develop some independence and not be so reliant upon the parents.

• 51:31Rich Roll?

  And these are like, um, kind of embarrassing things to talk about. And, you know, there's, there's, there's very few people in that age bracket who are going to just bring this up with their parents. Hey, like, I'm thinking about like banging a hammer to my, you know, cheekbones. Like, any kid who would be considering that is in a pretty lonely, desperate state who's, who I would imagine is already like quite withdrawn. And that communication channel with the, with the parents or the whoever is the authority figure in their life is probably not awesome at that point already. But the underlying principle is correct, which is open communication. How do you get there? You gotta love your kids unconditionally and not judge them.

• 52:14Rich Roll?

  So when they go and they make a mistake, or they fuck up, or they do something you told them they, they shouldn't or can't, you can't come down like a, you know, like a ton of bricks on them. You gotta be like, okay, let's figure it out. Like, why'd you feel like that was, you know, like, tell me, tell me what was going on? Like, try to understand, not judge. Um, and I think over time, you can create a more welcome mat for those types of conversations. But you also can't demand them or solicit them. Like, the kid is in control of, you know, how much information they're going to share, and they decide when they're going to open up. And sometimes you just gotta put the time in until finally they're like, they start telling you about something that happened at school, and you have to make sure that you're really present and available for that conversation.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  And this is something I learned from Lisa Demore, the parenting expert. The Ask Lisa podcast, part of our network. And her whole thing, like, if you want to just take, have one takeaway from this, if you're a parent, the retort or the response to all of this is always just, you know, tell me more. Like, oh, tell me more, tell me more about that. Like, be curious, you know, be nonjudgmental and just be like, oh, wow, really? Like, tell me about that. Like, how did that feel for you?

• 53:30Adam Skolnick?

  Except if they're in therapy, they're going to recognize that therapy talk.

• 53:33Rich Roll?

  Well, but there's a way of like, just being like, oh, really? Like, I mean, you can use different phraseology, but the spirit is like, you know, is just be interested. You know, not look to like, make a declarative statement about right and wrong with everything here. It reminds me of that Netflix show, Adolescence, you know, which is very much about the parents, you know, missing the signals and not being able to decode the vocabulary of young people. Like, the teachers and the parents had no idea what was going on because there's a whole language happening, a whole like, you know, it wasn't looks maxing, but this is kind of like an example of like, something that's going on that I would imagine, you know, a lot of parents of young people

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  might have no idea that this is going on, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast. Hopefully, some young males watch or listen to this, but hopefully, a lot of parents who have young male children, adolescents, teenagers, or the like. The idea behind this is to, you know, kind of hopefully educate and clue, clue in some parents out there who might have no idea that this is the kind of thing that's going on. And if you don't, you're not alone. Like, the internet is a scary place. There's lots of weird shit going on and this is a weird thing, but it's not just a small corner of the internet. Like, there are millions of young men who are falling under the influence of, of this right now.

• 55:01Rich Roll?

  So it's, it's, it's, it's worthy of this conversation, I think.

• 55:05Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. It's great, great to, to talk about it. I just want to urge people who are looking at themselves in the mirror, looking at themselves a certain way, your quirks, the things that you think are. Not ideal, suboptimal, or whatever it is. I mean, our quirks, that's we're all a bunch of quirky, imperfect motherfuckers. And that's kind of the beauty of it. And, and, you know, that great phrase, perfection is the enemy of the good, is pretty apt for this. And it's like, it's like, the goal is to, is to see the beauty in yourself, not to make yourself beautiful.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  If you're in high school right now, and you're watching or listening to this, and you're measuring-

• 55:46Adam Skolnick?

  How'd you find us?

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  You're, you're, yeah, first of all, like, how did you-

• 55:49Adam Skolnick?

  What are you doing here?

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  If you're here, the algorithm did, did something that, you know, like, pulled a magic trick. But I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'm just gonna say it again, because it's fucking true. If you're looking around, and you're like, I'm not the, you know, I'm not the quarterback, I'm not gonna be, you know, the, the king of the prom, or I don't look like these guys wearing Letterman jackets, or whatever it is, right? I'm telling you, you don't want to be those people.

• 56:19Adam Skolnick?

  No, it's better not to be.

• 56:22Rich Roll?

  I turned 60 this year, later this year, and I'm here, promising you, that the most interesting, the coolest, the most accomplished, the most attractive people that I have had the honor of meeting, or hosting on this podcast. I've been doing this podcast for 13 years, we're almost at 1,000 episodes. I've, I've had some of the most insanely charismatic and compelling people on the planet sit across from me. Not one of these people was the quarterback on the football team, or the prom king. They were all the misfits, and the outcasts, and

• 57:02Rich Roll?

  the quirky, weird nerds, who had interests that nobody else, you know, kind of had. And they were left to their own devices, and lost in their imagination, to like, gaze at their navels, and wander around lonely, like, reading poetry, or, you know, listening to Fugazi, or whatever it is. And these experiences become formative, in, in, you know, kind of crafting-

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  The uniqueness that makes people not only special and accomplished in their own right, but beautiful. And that is the true standard of beauty. The true standard of beauty should be inhabiting the fullness of who you are. It's self-accepting of your unique gifts that you have to share and standing tall on your own two feet, even if you're not six foot four and just owning your place with like real self-esteem. Self-esteem that you earned out in the world by not apologizing for who you are or how

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  you look, but instead having the gumption to plant your flag and be the freak that you are. Because I'm telling you, like later in life, all of these painful experiences that feel like they're never going to end are just blips on the radar and data points that if you use them properly can become powerful tools, if not superpowers, in helping you craft an identity that feels right to you and becomes a gift for the rest of us.

• 58:51Adam Skolnick?

  Very well said. The last thing I can contribute to this is if things were going so well at home, I wouldn't have been to 50 countries plus, you know, and six continents. I wouldn't have gone out looking and trying to find my place and find who I am and find happiness. And that external search then led to the internal search. And so like, you know, things not being A+ in your head and heart and in school and at work, it could be just a catalyst to all of this that you're talking about. And so that we have to keep that in perspective, too. It's like a perspective shift in multiple ways.

• 59:34Adam Skolnick?

  And I'd encourage you to do it rather than fall into the trap of supposed quick fixes or demonization of women and girls or yourself, even worse, demonization of yourself and who you are and how you look because.

• 59:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's much more interesting to be interesting.

• 59:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the most interesting person is always the person who is most interested in other people in life, in what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like, so get interested in your own life and in the lives of other people and in the world. The search for meaning, that's innate to being human. We're all on a search for meaning.

• 1:00:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  But what I'm telling you is, you're not going to find the answer looking in the mirror.

• 1:00:26Rich Roll?

  End of podcast.

• 1:00:31Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or a comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors, who keep

• 1:01:15Rich Roll?

  this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae, with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shanice Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created, all the way back in 2012, by Tyler Pyatt,

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  Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Bonjour Namaste