Roll On: High Peaks, Cold Seas & Our Climate Code Red

Melting ice caps. Raging wildfires. Record-breaking heat waves. The climate crisis is here, and we’re not doing enough about it. Suffice to say, no wonder Greta Thunberg is so pissed off. Aside from discussing burgeoning climate disasters, in today’s edition of ‘Roll On’ Adam Skolnick and I pontificate on the positives and pitfalls of perfectionism, arctic swimming, laundry done right and more, all rounded out with a cameo from renowned yoga instructor, endurance coach, and friend Ted McDonald. For those new to this segment of the podcast, aside from being my bi-weekly sidekick hype beast, Adam Skolnick is a waterman, writer, activist, and veteran journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. Adam writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently using the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Other topics covered in this episode include: lessons on productivity & workflow learned after Rich’s trip to Telluride; endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh’s 10km swim around Greenland; the chaos ensuing in Afghanistan & the arrogance and destruction of imperialism; takeaways from The International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent climate report; and why sustainable land management, regenerative agriculture, and reforestation are critical to saving the planet. In addition, we answer the following questions: What do you do when your self-care routine starts to feel stale? How do you find the right coach when training for an endurance race? As an athlete, how important is it to maintain a yoga practice? Thank you to Nate from Colorado and Heidi from Northern California for your questions, and Ted McDonald for your help answering them—including one of my own. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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. What's good, my beautiful hype beasts of all things health and wellbeing? I hope this transmission of goodness finds you well and thriving. My name is Rich Roll, once again, in deep communion with my literary-minded, echo-warrior, swim-run, brobarian Adam Skolnick, snorkel-mask-wearing friend of sharks, rider of currents, penner of words. Together once again, and for those who are new, Rollin' is our view-askue edition of the pod, wherein we prognosticate, pontificate, expound, and expatiate on matters both noteworthy and trivial, all buttressed with other bits that have leapt across our transom, underscored

• 1:56Rich Roll?

  by a few wins of the week, and piloted to safe harbor with listener questions dropped on our voicemail at 424-235-4626. Adam, how goes you?

• 2:10Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know. I'm apparently unverifiable.

• 2:15Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 2:17Adam Skolnick?

  Instagram.

• 2:17Rich Roll?

  Are you quietly petitioning Instagram to get verified or something?

• 2:20Adam Skolnick?

  Instagram can't and will not verify me. Therefore, I am questioning my own existence. Am I me?

• 2:29Rich Roll?

  It's an existential void.

• 2:30Adam Skolnick?

  Is this all a simulation?

• 2:32Rich Roll?

  Your self-worth is inextricably connected to your verification status. I can verify you, but that's all meaningless.

• 2:42Adam Skolnick?

  Does your verification of me include a blue check mark or not?

• 2:45Rich Roll?

  The invisible star chamber that is the Instagram verification board has yet to acknowledge your presence.

• 2:54Adam Skolnick?

  I do not meet their standards.

• 2:55Rich Roll?

  We're gonna have to do more podcasts, I guess.

• 2:57Adam Skolnick?

  The only thing I can think of.

• 2:58Rich Roll?

  Is there another Adam Skolnick out there that works at Ben & Jerry's?

• 3:01Adam Skolnick?

  That's my problem. There are no other Adam Skolnick on Instagram. Therefore, I will never be verified.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  Maybe if you change your account name to The Real Adam Skolnick.

• 3:13Adam Skolnick?

  The Real.

• 3:14Rich Roll?

  Official Adam Skolnick.

• 3:15Adam Skolnick?

  I might just go the other way and just go The Real.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's always funny when somebody on Instagram has the account name official something, but then you're like, yeah, but I don't even know who that is.

• 3:25Adam Skolnick?

  You've never heard of him.

• 3:25Rich Roll?

  Are there a bunch of other pretenders to the throne?

• 3:28Adam Skolnick?

  Story of my life, I don't know who's famous anymore. The people I think are famous are getting less famous.

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  I mentioned your employment with Ben & Jerry's. We should clarify for the record because I think there's some confusion out there.

• 3:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  When we joked about that the other day, some people actually believed that you literally got off your shift at Ben & Jerry's and came to do the podcast.

• 3:48Adam Skolnick?

  No, I did. I do. I scoop ice cream at Ben & Jerry's.

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  Okay, now we're clear.

• 3:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I just want to make that clear to everybody. Three days a week, I work a Ben & Jerry's graveyard shift. Whatever that is.

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  In between posting stories on the New York Times.

• 4:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, in between. Sometimes there's downtimes in the career and you have to pick up an ice cream scooper.

• 4:11Rich Roll?

  But only the vegan flavors.

• 4:13Adam Skolnick?

  I won't even touch the dairy stuff, which is a problem in my shit.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  Right. You have to talk to HR about that?

• 4:19Adam Skolnick?

  Like, four days a week, I talk to HR and the other three, I work the shift.

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 4:28Adam Skolnick?

  I got my own, I got my own scooper too. I don't, I don't use the community scoopers because it's pandemic. So I bring my own scooper in.

• 4:35Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 4:35Adam Skolnick?

  And then I actually-

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  Right, that's never touched-

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  Right, I whittled my own scooper.

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 4:40Adam Skolnick?

  I whittled it.

• 4:42Rich Roll?

  I think, uh, there's a whole podcast we could do on just this and this alone.

• 4:47Adam Skolnick?

  The Whittler?

• 4:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Rich Roll?

  I don't know, I'm at a loss for words.

• 4:52Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  I will say, since we, since we last convened and we shared about you out swimming with that photograph of the white shark nearby, that caused quite a reaction in people.

• 5:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  We shared that.

• 5:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  It was interesting.

• 5:07Adam Skolnick?

  Was back out there again on Friday, and I've been in that area multiple times since then, but it was back out there with the Malibu artist.

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  He said he was gonna post a video version of that, but I haven't seen that yet.

• 5:19Adam Skolnick?

  No. I mean, he, I, we were out there and he had, he had a shark, we were watching him. Before I got there, he was following a shark. I got there, he's following a shark and these swimmers were swimming right to the shark before I even got in the water. And as soon as the sharks heard them coming or felt them coming, it boned out. And we saw it like disappear off video. The swimmers didn't even know. Because like I said many times before, there are, or I said last time, we talked about this, there are swimmers that are there almost every day.

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Adam Skolnick?

  And it's, you know, especially for triathletes in the Santa Monica area, they're, they're out there. And, um, and so, you know, they just didn't, they didn't see the shark, they didn't know the shark was there. Shark saw them, took off.

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 5:59Adam Skolnick?

  Which made me feel better about the whole thing.

• 6:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on the Malibu artist account, there's video of sharks swimming directly underneath surfers and they're completely unaware.

• 6:08Adam Skolnick?

  That's San, San Diego.

• 6:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, is that where that is?

• 6:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. But, yes. And, you know, he also was sharing with me that he is, like, he found this aggregation point that the scientists, marine biologists, didn't even know about at the Shark Lab down in Long Beach. And now, the long, he went up there to check it out again. And we're talking about an aggregation site, 30, 50 sharks up north of Los Angeles. Um, and they're out there in the night, all day, and he, they know, we don't really know what they're doing there. But, uh, different size shark, different ages. Most of them are like under 10 feet, but still, it's a big amount of sharks. Um, and a 10 foot fish is still a big fish.

• 6:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 6:47Adam Skolnick?

  And, uh, apparently the Shark Lab was there on a liveaboard and they were pole spearing tags onto the dorsal fins. So it's like piercing, it's like piercing an ear.

• 6:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Adam Skolnick?

  Except they didn't- Go and ask to be have their ears pierced.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:00Adam Skolnick?

  So the shark lab is tagging them.

• 7:01Rich Roll?

  Benefit of drone technology.

• 7:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Rich Roll?

  The fact that he's been able to identify these sharks that flew under the radar of the scientists who are studying that.

• 7:12Adam Skolnick?

  And nobody believed him until he dropped the footage. You know, like people, because no one believes just Joe Blow off the street. I'm the marine biologist guy I know, but and they didn't know. And so then there was this ABC, KBC did something on the area where I swim. And they said they there were a dozen sharks in the area. He's never seen a dozen there. He saw six there one day when I was swimming. There was four there on Friday. They're there.

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you're looking good, man.

• 7:41Adam Skolnick?

  Hey, thanks, buddy.

• 7:41Rich Roll?

  You posted on Instagram in your swim run attire.

• 7:45Adam Skolnick?

  I did.

• 7:45Rich Roll?

  And you're looking fit, man.

• 7:46Adam Skolnick?

  Hey, thank you.

• 7:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Adam Skolnick?

  I'm in my sans neoprene swim run attire.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  I know, right?

• 7:51Adam Skolnick?

  Zuma's turning one soon. I have to.

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  Balancing your swim run training against raising an infant through the first year is no small thing.

• 7:59Adam Skolnick?

  Dude, I am, I am trying to stave off dad bod at all costs, but it wants me.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Gets harder and harder, man.

• 8:07Adam Skolnick?

  But Zuma's first birthday is proof that I do exist.

• 8:11Rich Roll?

  When does he turn one?

• 8:13Adam Skolnick?

  At the end of this month.

• 8:15Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 8:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  Congrats, man. That's cool.

• 8:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's cool. And he's walking and he's, you know, vocalizing all the time and he's saying some words and he, you know.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  Becomes like a real human.

• 8:26Adam Skolnick?

  He's, he's moving from primate stage to homo sapiens stage. It's very exciting.

• 8:32Rich Roll?

  Very cool.

• 8:32Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks. How are you, man? You were in Telluride.

• 8:35Rich Roll?

  I was, yeah. I was in Telluride for four or five days. It was a quick trip. The occasion was attending a wedding there, but we have some friends there. So it was great. It was, you know, Telluride is, is, aside from the fact that it's just an absolutely magical place, anybody who's visited there can attest to that. It's really a beautiful part of the world in southwestern Colorado. It's not easy to get there.

• 9:01Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 9:02Rich Roll?

  And Julie had gone ahead of time with the boys. They drove. I was following with. The two younger ones and we were flying, we had a layover in Phoenix before catching a flight to Montrose, which is still an hour and a half drive from Telluride. But we only had a half an hour layover in Phoenix. Our flight left late out of LAX, we missed the connecting flight. Ouch. And the next flight to Montrose wasn't until the next day. So when we disembarked in Phoenix, I went to the gate attendant and said, you know, I don't want to wait a whole day, I'm just going to rent a car. But we had checked two bags and I needed to get those bags back and they sent me down to baggage claim, promised me that they would come through with the rest of the luggage for the flight. They did not.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  I went to another gate attendant and they said, you're going to have to wait two to three hours to get your bags. Sure enough, it did take three hours. And this is because, you know, the airlines are in disarray right now. They're laying people off, they're understaffed, they're canceling flights all over the place. They're laying people off and are understaffed? Yeah, it's because the economics of it are all upside down right now, I guess. So anyway, we left our house at like 6:00 a.m., but we didn't leave the Phoenix Airport until like 5:00 p.m. And ended up getting a pickup truck, drove to Flagstaff, spent the night, drove into Telluride the next day. So it took a full two days to get there, which was not great. I mean, I love road trips. My younger kids, not so much, although it ended up being fun.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  They were less enthusiastic about the whole thing. But you drive through some, you know, once you get north of Flagstaff, you're in all this native country and it's quite spectacular and beautiful. You go through four corners up into Colorado and it's magical. And when you get to Telluride, it's like a real life Whoville. You know, I went on some amazing runs, there's this gondola that takes you from The old, you know, old Telluride downtown up in the mountain village. That's like free public transportation. It's really spectacular.

• 11:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's like rented a bike. Three sides of mountains, right?

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. Yeah. You're in this like

• 11:10Adam Skolnick?

  Slot.

• 11:11Rich Roll?

  Cauldron, you know, and there's just waterfalls everywhere and it's really magical. The wedding was great. It was attended by our mutual friend Ted McDonald.

• 11:21Adam Skolnick?

  Teddy Mac.

• 11:21Rich Roll?

  Just might be dropping by later today.

• 11:23Adam Skolnick?

  Ooh, Teddy Mac's.

• 11:24Rich Roll?

  Spoil it. More about Ted a little bit later. But yeah, it was great. My wife is still there. The boys stayed longer too. They just got back last night. It was really, it was really a cool experience, but there was some interesting things that happened when I was there, not the least of which was there was a death on the Via Ferrata. Do you know what the Via Ferrata is?

• 11:45Adam Skolnick?

  I do not.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  So Via Ferrata is a term, I don't know the exact translation, but it's a general term for climbs where there are cables kind of

• 11:57Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 11:57Rich Roll?

  pinned into the side of, you know, a raw like rock face.

• 12:02Adam Skolnick?

  Like Half Dome has.

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  Sort of, and it allows you to kind of clip in and go, go laterally, like horizontally along the rock face and you're

• 12:11Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, on the face.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on the face. So you're like thousands of feet up, but you're clipped in and it's quite a tourist attraction in Telluride, this particular Via Ferrata. And every time I go, people are like, you gotta do the Via Ferrata. You gotta do it. It's like I'm being bullied into doing the Via Ferrata. I'm terrified of heights. I'm always like, I'm good. I'm not doing the Via Ferrata.

• 12:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Stop with the, stop with the Via Ferrata. It sounds like, you know what?

• 12:35Rich Roll?

  I just feel like I'll be trapped, you know, clipped in on this rock face, looking thousands of feet down, terrified and unable to like escape or get out of it.

• 12:44Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it sounds like a mafia.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  Which probably why I should do it.

• 12:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, like in a mafia assassination plot. Hey, Rich, come with me to the Via Ferrata, huh? And don't, you don't need anything.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Don't worry about it.

• 12:52Adam Skolnick?

  Don't bring anything. Don't bring anything.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  They say you need to clip in, you don't have to worry.

• 12:56Adam Skolnick?

  You don't need anything. Trust me.

• 12:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we laugh and we jest, but the, there are tours, like proper tours where a guide will take you across and it's all safe and you're always clipped in and all of this. Apparently, two women went up on it while we were in town without a guy doing it on their own, and a woman apparently unclipped for reasons unbeknownst to anybody and fell to her death, like she down, I think like a thousand feet, like.

• 13:25Adam Skolnick?

  So she's walking like face down on this thing or whatever?

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  You're just kind of going, you know, from, you're just going, you're like facing the wall and you're.

• 13:33Adam Skolnick?

  On a slight ledge?

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on a ledge, and you have two clips. So you would, you unclip one to move and you always have one clipped in. So I don't know why this person would have been completely unclipped, but apparently that's what happened. And she.

• 13:49Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry to hear that.

• 13:50Rich Roll?

  She perished. I had dinner with David Holbrook, who's the founder of a thing called Original Thinkers, which is sort of a Aspen Ideas, Nantucket Project sort of festival that I've spoken at, at the past. It's a really cool event.

• 14:05Adam Skolnick?

  In Telluride?

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  In Telluride, yeah. He lives there. He's a filmmaker, the son, interestingly, of Richard Holbrook.

• 14:13Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 14:14Rich Roll?

  And he's a filmmaker. He made a documentary about his father called The Diplomat that you can hunt on HBO. Super interesting guy who was living in New York City and relocated his family to Telluride in like 2013. And his son, who's 19, leads, he's one of the people that takes groups up on the Via Ferrata. He's like a really accomplished climber. But he also participates in, in search and rescue. So he was part of the search and rescue team that had to recover this woman's body.

• 14:47Adam Skolnick?

  Ouch.

• 14:48Rich Roll?

  And we saw him, he was quite shaken up by that. So, yeah, man, that stuff's for real. But other than that, you know, Telluride is just, it's unbelievable. Had a, had a great time. And I think. What I wanted to share about that experience is getting out of LA and kind of putting some distance between me and my work, et cetera. You know, it's one of those experiences that allows you to kind of reflect on, you know, what you're doing with your life, how you're doing it, things that you want to change. I did a bit of a life review and had a bit of an epiphany around the systems that we have here at the podcast and what we can change, what we should change, what we should hold on to, what we should let go of.

• 15:31Rich Roll?

  And it really connected me to this profound kind of tendency towards perfectionism that I have and balancing that against efficiency. Because I think, you know, I have this proclivity towards being a perfectionist, you know, this idea that I'm the only one who can do this and I have to do it and it has to be this particular way and if it's not, it's a failure. And I think I've held on to that because, or I've created a narrative around that, that that has fueled part of my success. But at the behest of kind of hamstringing us in terms of like how we grow and how we

• 16:13Rich Roll?

  kind of expand and the many ways in which I think it continues to hold me back and the show back and reflecting on how I could get into a headspace of letting go of those, some of those things so that we can work a little bit more loosely and more efficiently with, you know, how we do things. Because I think there's positives and pitfalls of perfectionism based on my experience. Like it, for me, it's like, it's allowed me to set a very high standard and strive to adhere to that, but ultimately I end up becoming the bottleneck for every decision. And now we're running this operation where there's a lot of people involved.

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  We have a brand new hire, Dan Drake is here. Shout out to Dan. Dan Drake. His first day. And so that involves managing people, that involves empowering people, that involves a decision tree where lots of decisions are getting made. And we have a system right now where I end up like having to yea or nay a lot of decisions that I really shouldn't. Be in a position to do. And I think like it's, it's, it's part and parcel of what leads to burnout and exhaustion. Like when I was in Telluride, I still had to get a show up and then the night that I was flying back, there was a show going up and I couldn't just like take a break because the post-production cycle, and I think a lot of people don't realize this, is really protracted with this

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  show. Like I've got to get this, you know, we get this blog post up and we have all these photographs and how do we create, it's like publishing a magazine for every episode because the web piece of the show is kind of an aesthetic cornerstone to the whole thing. And yet, the truth is, I don't know if anybody who listens to this show goes to the blog post in the webpage to listen to it or to watch it. It looks great, but we're spending so much time getting that up on its feet when truly it, it, it's not really that related to moving the needle in terms of-

• 18:22Adam Skolnick?

  But you've always had that, like when I was a guest on the show years ago, I was struck by how everything, like your, the look is all very cool and stylized and, and unique and that has always been part of your, your package. And I think it has set it apart. It must have attracted visitors. Having that aesthetic has always been part of what you're doing.

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  Sure. And that's, that's what keeps me wedded to it at the same time.

• 18:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Rich Roll?

  However, like when I listen to a podcast, I never go to the website.

• 18:50Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  I think the, the percentage of people that go and visit that page is probably really small. And when you balance that against the number of hours and all the toil that goes into creating that, the question then becomes, is that worth it?

• 19:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Especially when we're putting out a book every year. Excuse me. Where people can have that experience in book form versus trying to make that happen every single week. However, in the process of creating those pages, we're doing a lot of the legwork for stuff that ends up in the book. For social stuff, right. So, but, but I want to work towards a place where as soon as we're done doing the podcast, I can walk away and I don't have to worry about it, which is the way most people do it, right? Yeah. Other people get it up on its feet, you trust them, it's good, you move on to the next thing. And if I could free up that time, would it not be better to add another show or two every month?

• 19:45Rich Roll?

  Would that be more impactful or important than creating this pristine webpage? Yeah. For posterity? I don't know. So that's just one of the things that, that, that, you know, has been on my mind and I'm not sure how to solve that, you know? And as somebody who's always been kind of a solo operator, you know, I struggle with growth and the responsibility that, that comes with that. Because I think managing people and figuring out systems really doesn't meet my strengths or nor my past experience. But this is what growth is, right? Yeah. So anyway, the other thing I will share and will put the telly ride trip to rest is on the way back, the travel saga continued.

• 20:29Rich Roll?

  Because we made our connecting flight in Phoenix, but in the Phoenix airport, there was a guy who was kind of creating a little bit of drama. Oh, yeah. And I knew that if he got on our plane, there was probably going to be a problem. Like he was sort of flagrantly taking his mask off and he was hitting his vape pen. In a lounge. In, in the airport terminal. Right, yeah, right. Because he was trying to attract attention. Right. Like his goal was to be the center of attention. Not only does he get on our plane, he ends up sitting right behind me.

• 21:03Rich Roll?

  And the volume just turned up to 11 on this guy trying to attract attention to himself. And he was gonna do it through charm, or jokes, or the volume of his voice, or if need be, conflict, all of which ensued to the point where finally, a gaggle of flight attendants descended upon him, demanded his ID, and told him that he was banned from American Airlines. And when we landed, he got escorted off the flight. And when we got off the plane, he was sitting with a couple cops. And this is a weird thing, as somebody who's been...

• 21:35Adam Skolnick?

  That's anxiety driving.

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  You know, a patron of commercial aviation for a very long time, I've never seen anything like that happen. But if you peruse social media, it would appear that this is happening all the time.

• 21:48Adam Skolnick?

  It's one of those common things that you never see, right?

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  Their minds. Like that video, did you see the video of the guy who got duct taped to his seat?

• 21:56Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 21:57Rich Roll?

  After he was trying to fight, I don't know the circumstances around that, but, you know, people are on edge, man. People are angry, and it seems that commercial aviation is this Petri dish for acting out in a way that seems new.

• 22:13Adam Skolnick?

  New? The commercial aviation is a capsule for acting out? It's like the new subway? It used to be like the New York subway was the place that you saw the crazies every once in a while, and now it's taking to the skies?

• 22:26Rich Roll?

  Or it's almost like a pulpit for people to, you know, act out in a very particular way, knowing that they're gonna be filmed?

• 22:33Adam Skolnick?

  It's a stage. The whole world's a stage. It's the Shakespearean comeuppance of aviation, commercial aviation.

• 22:41Rich Roll?

  Somebody should put a theatrical production on of, you know, shit that goes down on airplanes.

• 22:46Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? I wish he had just gotten up and said, "Listen, you can ban me if you want, but I am doing the final monologue in Macbeth."

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Well, the interesting thing is that when he was told that he was being banned from American Airlines, he was gleeful. It was almost like his goal was achieved. And I'm like, that's such a strange, like, he actually wanted that to happen.

• 23:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 23:09Rich Roll?

  So what is going on with the individual who is so in need of that kind of attention, no matter the circumstances?

• 23:18Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I'm not a psychiatrist, but I will answer that question.

• 23:23Rich Roll?

  You are Ben and Jerry's employee in good standing is what you are.

• 23:27Adam Skolnick?

  I think that that's what you need. You need to add another show. It's just me at Ben and Jerry's. Just, you know, scooping ice cream and talking with my coworkers.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  That sounds like a new TikTok channel for you.

• 23:41Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Anyway, before we move on, you are on TikTok now, sir.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  I am.

• 23:47Adam Skolnick?

  How you like it? How's the water in there?

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  Well, first of all, first of all, the account Rich Roll was taken by somebody who's never posted a TikTok. So I am, my account is at I am Rich Roll.

• 23:58Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, I like it.

• 23:59Rich Roll?

  And our boy AJ here in the house has been creating TikToks for that channel, taking clips from the podcast. But I think that, yeah, so I am there and, uh, and it's, it's growing. People are enjoying, like, taking some of the best of the show and putting little.

• 24:13Adam Skolnick?

  Dude, we need a dance number.

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  Slivers up there. But yeah, I haven't done a TikTok in the true kind of spirit of TikTok. Like performing for the camera, but my behind the scenes mentor on all things TikTok is, is Joanne Molinaro, the, the Korean vegan.

• 24:29Adam Skolnick?

  I was just thinking.

• 24:29Rich Roll?

  She's my consult. So I just haven't, like, right now AJ's handling it. I haven't made a TikTok myself. I should say that.

• 24:36Adam Skolnick?

  Joanne, we're gonna need, uh, three of your best choreographers over here and then we'll do a roll on dance.

• 24:42Rich Roll?

  The lighting, the, yeah, exactly. Like, we need something. I don't know what that's gonna be.

• 24:48Adam Skolnick?

  Something has to happen.

• 24:49Rich Roll?

  Much to my children's chagrin, I am on TikTok.

• 24:52Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying Davey, the photographer Davey Greenberg is on TikTok.

• 24:55Rich Roll?

  He's a beast on TikTok, sharing all of his training in the lead up to his first marathon. Davey's killing it. He did his longest run to date, 10 miles at a, an 8:01 pace. Is that correct, Davey?

• 25:11Adam Skolnick?

  Dang, son.

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. He's gonna be ready to go come LA marathon time. All right, let's pivot.

• 25:17Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 25:18Rich Roll?

  Enduro Corner.

• 25:19Adam Skolnick?

  I love Enduro Corner.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  Yes. What have we got this week? We got high peaks and cold water. First up, we have to give kudos to Robbie Ballinger. We're kind of checking in on him every week in the spirit in which we, you know, checked in on the Iron Cowboy. He is closing in on his Colorado Crush update. For those that are new, he's in the midst of this summer-long quest to conquer the Leadville Marathon, which he did. Then he ran the Colorado Trail, which is 500 miles. Then he did the Silver Rush 50, which was also in Leadville. And he's almost completed summiting all 58 Colorado peaks over 14,000 feet. I think

• 26:01Rich Roll?

  he's on 56 today. As of yesterday, he had done 55. And then he's going to culminate this whole thing with the Leadville 100 on August 21. But all seems to be going to plan. There was one peak that he was very close to summiting and then had something going on with his ears or his eyesight. Oh, really? He was only like hundreds of feet away from the summit and he backed down and went back down, according to what he shared on Instagram. So I don't know if he went back up that peak or not. I'm a little unclear on that. But he appears to be healthy and enervated and excited. Enervated? Enervated. Meaning low energy? Oh, enervated means low energy? Energy, enervated, I think, means drained of all, of energy.

• 26:42Rich Roll?

  Oh, it does? I've been using that word wrong. As somebody who prides himself on vocabulary. Your vocab is one of your strengths. Yeah. Plead guilty to misusing that word, then. Energized, I should say. I didn't mean to enervate you. And interestingly, it's being chronicled by Reese Robinson, who had a tenure working with us on the podcast. Oh, yeah? Making videos and stuff. So shout out to Reese as well. So we'll keep you posted on that. In a similar sort of endeavor, Scott Jurick made an attempt at an FKT, his second FKT attempt on the Appalachian Trail. He set the record going south to north a couple of years ago.

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  Completing that trail in 46 days, 6 hours and 7 minutes. This time, he was going north to south. It's a 2,193 mile trail. His goal is to do it in 40 days or under. The problem with starting in the north is there's these crazy elevation changes. There's not a lot of opportunity to kind of acclimate to that level of rigor. And he ended up pulling out after a week with a with a torn quad muscle, which is kind of a bummer.

• 27:58Adam Skolnick?

  Bummer.

• 27:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So hopefully he'll heal up and make another attempt on that. The the FKT for going north to south is set is held by Carl Metzler, who did it in 45 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes. He did that in 2016. And Scott's FKT going south to north was bested by Karol Sob. I think that's how you say his name, Sobbi. Karol Sob, I think is how you say it.

• 28:30Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 28:31Rich Roll?

  Who did it in 41 days, 7 hours and 39 minutes. So he beat Scott's record by almost 5 days. So Scott had really shouldered a pretty ambitious goal with trying to do this in 40 days or under. And hopefully he'll heal up and get after it again. Let's catch up.

• 28:52Adam Skolnick?

  Carl Metzler, that's the name that's in the Goggins book. He was the, he won the Hurt 100 when David was trying to qualify for the first Badwater that he did. And he remembered.

• 29:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, he's a legend.

• 29:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. David remembered him coming down. He's just never seen a better athlete at that point in his life, seeing Carl run on these crazy slick trails.

• 29:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, Scott is an absolute beast. So the fact that Carl has the north to south. At 45 days. I mean, that's wild.

• 29:24Adam Skolnick?

  They're both. I mean, they're both. Yeah, these are two of the legends of the sport.

• 29:27Rich Roll?

  Sure. No doubt.

• 29:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, moving from high peaks to cold water.

• 29:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  Spend a little time on cold water right now. Is there, is there an update on Lewis Pugh and his Code Red Arctic Swim? His Speedo diplomacy?

• 29:41Adam Skolnick?

  Speedo diplomacy is, is good to go. He got approval for his charter flight from Reykjavik to Lulu Satt. But there were only seven seats that he was allowed to have and apparently Ridley Scott is sending a film crew.

• 29:59Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 30:00Adam Skolnick?

  So there is going to be a documentary at the other end of this. And so there was no spot for your humble reporter.

• 30:09Rich Roll?

  No seat, no seat for Adam Skolneck.

• 30:12Adam Skolnick?

  Adam Skolneck.

• 30:12Rich Roll?

  In the Ridley Scott universe.

• 30:14Adam Skolnick?

  The unverified are not invited, first of all. And second of all, his swim moved. So originally I was going to do this story and it was going to be around now that I was going to be out there because he was planning it for like the window is opening from like the ninth or so. And, you know, when we were planning this, commercial flights were available. Everything was open. Would have been super easy to get there. But now the swim is taking place on the 25th. So the only way I could do it is either only get there for the first couple of days of the swim because it's a 10 kilometer swim, but he's only going to do about a kilometer to a kilometer and a half every day.

• 30:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:50Adam Skolnick?

  Because the body, because it's the coldest ocean in the world, basically. It's literally right where the glacier is melting into all the the ice melt that we're here about is happening where he's swimming.

• 30:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:59Adam Skolnick?

  And so he is going to be, you know, in rough kind of mush ice or whatever it's called that like where the glacier, there's going to be times where he's actually in slush, possibly, possibly. He doesn't want to be because it's rough and, and, and not so good on the body, but he, he's only doing about 20 to 30 minutes in that water every day. And anyway, long story short, he, the swim starts on the 25th of August. Zuma's birthday is the 29th of August. I'm not missing first. I've missed a lot of stuff. My life, I'm not missing my son's first birthday. So I did try to get there after that. I looked into getting out on the 30th and trying to get there for the end of his swim.

• 31:41Adam Skolnick?

  And that, you know, commercial flights are just impossible to come by. There was a seat on the 23rd, but again, that wouldn't work for me. So one of your listeners reached out and tried to get me through the like all the scientists and how they get there sometimes on a National Guard plane that US provides. All these different interesting ways. And they've been like a listener of yours who's Danish, but lives in Norway has been like calling Air Greenland for me. I mean, the, the, the community has come to try to get me there, but it's just not going to happen. So unfortunately I won't be there, but I'll be paying close attention. You know, he, it really is kind of the, the eloquent Al Gore in Speedos that we need right now. And he's kind of

• 32:23Adam Skolnick?

  different than Greta. Greta's, you know, leads with, with her fire and Lewis is, is really, he's also very motivated and passionate, as passionate and as alarm. He's alarmed and

• 32:36Rich Roll?

  He's been doing this for a long time.

• 32:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he's exactly where she is in terms of knowledge of this stuff and how alarming it is. But he's just more, he's just got a polished, more of a diplomats kind of tone.

• 32:47Rich Roll?

  Well, how, I mean, how old is he now? He's probably like 58 or something like that?

• 32:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, maybe he's a little older. I think he's 52, 50. I think he might be your age, actually.

• 32:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. So for those that don't know, this swim, as you mentioned, 10 kilometer swim at the mouth of the Alulissat Ice Fjord.

• 33:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 33:07Rich Roll?

  Which is basically in Greenland. The world's fastest moving glacier. It moves at something like three meters a day, near freezing waters, wind chill. It's crazy. What he's attempting to do. And he's been sharing on, on social media, his training swims because he's in Iceland right now. And he was swimming in some river the other day and there was a drone shot from above. That was pretty spectacular.

• 33:29Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing what he does. It's, it's, it's kind of cool to like merge adventure with a mission like this and, and you know, I would really want you to, I've been wanting to write about him for years, just didn't happen this time, but you know? That's the way it goes. Yeah. Pivoting to Antonio Arguelas. So Antonio Arguelas was attempting, someone I know, who I covered in 2017 when he did the North Channel, the last of the Ocean Seven, and he became the oldest at age 58 to ever accomplish the Ocean Seven. He was the seventh to ever do it. Do you know what all seven of them are? Yes, let's rattle them off.

• 34:07Adam Skolnick?

  Catalina, English Channel, Gibraltar, Cook's Strait, Japan, it's Tsugaro Strait in Japan, the Molokai to Oahu. Right. And, and the North Channel. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, in 2017, he swam from Northern Ireland to Scotland. So that was, that's the North Channel. And so that's the coldest one, that's like 55 degrees. The one that it's really hard. That's the one Kim Chambers came out of and was like, basically had to be hospitalized immediately after. It's 35 kilometers still. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean, and, but, you know, I, Kim Chambers actually introduced me to Antonio. They, they did a cross-border swim from San Diego

• 34:52Adam Skolnick?

  to the other side of Tijuana. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember her talking about that. Right after Trump was elected. So I did that story and then stayed in touch with Antonio. And then I reached out to him. He happened to be in North, in Ireland, preparing to do the North Channel. And, and so then we did that story and he made it. And, you know, I actually also ghostwrote, something I haven't really spoken publicly about too often. I ghostwrote his memoir, The Forever Swim. He approached me around the same time that Goggins did. And, and so I finished the Goggins book and then finished his. You didn't, I didn't even know this until this morning. Well, it was published on the Spanish language. So he, I got, we translated it. And then now it's, it's available in English, I think, on Amazon.

• 35:37Adam Skolnick?

  And also the audiobook's available, though he didn't narrate. I wish he did. He's a really interesting guy. He was inspired by the 1968 Olympics, the, the first Mexican to win a swimming medal in the 1968. And he immediately signed up for swim, to get into swimming. Local YMCA and then over the years, he and his brothers all got into it and they sold like there was no good. At that time, it was hard to get licensed to import goods from other countries into the into Mexico. It was very controlled economy. It wasn't. It wasn't an open economy. And so they ended up selling on the black market at these swim races, Speedo, whatever they could get, good goggles, decent swimsuits.

• 36:19Adam Skolnick?

  He ended up connecting with the person who had the Speedo license in the United States in North America and started to get the good stuff. And over time, through his high school career, he was going to try to become an Olympic Olympian at age 17. He narrowly missed making the team at age 17, but ended up at Stanford through his through his connections in in the Speedo world. He finished high school in the Bay Area and was involved in in the the swim clubs up there, one of the best swimmers up there. Ended up in Stanford, but he, you know, he just wasn't. He wasn't elite enough to to to really make a splash. And so he, after a year, he got out of, he quit the team and focused on his academics and ends up being

• 37:05Adam Skolnick?

  in high, high up in government in Mexico. And so his book is about his swims, but it's also about kind of the modern history of Mexico, which is really interesting and and his life story. So.

• 37:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I didn't know anything about him and he's old enough. He's, I think he's like eight years, seven or eight years older than me.

• 37:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 37:24Rich Roll?

  That we didn't overlap at Stanford. And I read that when he, when asked about why didn't you swim at Stanford? He said it wasn't the right fit and that's usually code for like, I don't get along with Skip Kenny. Like anybody who is, you know, has some connection to the Stanford Swimming Universe has heard some version of that story. Cause Skip is a, you know, he's a, he's a, he could be a challenging character for certain people. So I immediately assumed that, but that was not actually the case.

• 37:50Adam Skolnick?

  No. So he, he.

• 37:53Adam Skolnick?

  He got along fine with Skip. What he didn't like was basically his role on the team was he was breaking water for the best women. And so like, he just didn't like being in that position of not being good enough. And he felt like he just wasn't right. And so he backed off and he doubled down on his business. He ends up like, getting the, getting the, the contract to, to supply all the swim gear to the Pan Am Games while he's still in college.

• 38:20Rich Roll?

  Becomes this wheeler dealer entrepreneur.

• 38:23Adam Skolnick?

  And he still is. But he is, so anyway, he was attempting to do the double. He did the Catalina, the English Channel double. He did the Catalina double in 2019, became the oldest to ever do it. He's 62 now. And his goal was to then do the English double. And he, it was a really glassy day, flat day. And he got to France in 13 hours or so. Was doing great. Came back, got within two miles of Dover. And he'd been vomiting all day. And he hadn't been feeling well in his stomach. And he started hallucinating, which sometimes happens in these 24 hour swims. He thought it was because of the hypothermia, although it was only like, 62 degree water, which is, you know,

• 39:04Rich Roll?

  Not cold.

• 39:05Adam Skolnick?

  Not cold. It's cold if you're gonna be in it for 24 hours, but it's not cold for him. But he just wasn't feeling it. And he got a complicated current. And so with two miles to go, they made the decision that it was getting dangerous. And also, you know, the boat, apparently the boat was breaking down. And so he was drifting away from the boat. He didn't realize the boat was breaking down. So it was getting dangerous. So he came out. And then he got to Dover and, you know, the plan was for him, he and his wife Lucia to go to Paris and enjoy a vacation. He always kind of does that after one of these swims. And he, he, the stomach just wasn't getting any better. And it got to the point where he couldn't even stand up. And he was rushed to the emergency room. And it turns out, he had gallstones while doing this.

• 39:49Rich Roll?

  My god.

• 39:49Adam Skolnick?

  And one of the galls, one of the stones got in the canal, between, I guess, the gallbladder and the stomach, maybe?

• 39:54Rich Roll?

  The duct.

• 39:55Adam Skolnick?

  In the duct. And so it got into that duct, and it was lodged there. And he ended up needing a procedure, but like, so he had gallstones, and still almost made it.

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 40:05Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, he's amazing.

• 40:06Rich Roll?

  That's wild. Is he gonna make another attempt, you think?

• 40:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes, definitely.

• 40:10Rich Roll?

  Well, speaking of, of, of... Cold water swim's not going to plan. Our boy Chris Hout, my coach, Coach's Corner, mainstay, made an attempt last week to swim across Lake Tahoe, Trans Tahoe. It's a 21.8 mile swim in very cold water. I don't know many of the details, but on Instagram, one of his crew members was sort of sharing clips. It began in the dark, I think maybe at something like 2 or 3 in the morning or something like that. And after a few hours of swimming, Chris ended up with hypothermia and pulling out of it. And all I can tell

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  you about that is Chris is one of the hardest men I've ever met. So anything that fails Chris had to be brutal beyond. So I had some texts with him this morning. Apparently, his kids were ill in the days leading up to this. And then he got quite sick in the day or two, like 48 to 72 hours after this. So he wasn't tip top, I think, is basically what happened. So

• 41:24Adam Skolnick?

  That's cold water.

• 41:25Rich Roll?

  He may be making another attempt in September. I don't know. But unfortunately, that one didn't go to plan. And you know, Chris is, you know, he's got that Nordic blood. But that cold water, you know, unlike, unlike Antonio, I mean, Chris is very lean. He didn't put, a lot of these open water, cold water swimmers, they put on all this heft. They look all paunchy. They're fit. They just need that subcutaneous fat to keep them warm. Chris, Chris not got none of that.

• 41:54Adam Skolnick?

  Antonio has what he calls Bio Preen.

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well earned.

• 41:58Rich Roll?

  Bio Preen, that's good. Chris was putting in monster swim sessions though to get ready for this. So my heart's a little bit broken. And all I gotta say is, I don't know how these guys do it. I can't stand cold water. It's really hard for me. And on the subject of cold water, before we take a break here, I gotta share my new

• 42:21Rich Roll?

  Streaming obsession, which is this show called The North Water. Have you checked it out yet?

• 42:27Adam Skolnick?

  I, I, I'm trying to get April into it. We watched the trailer and she looked at him and she goes, Colin Farrell's in this?

• 42:33Rich Roll?

  Yes. So, this is a new mini-series that's streaming on AMC Plus. You can get it on Amazon Prime. I'm only two episodes into, I guess it's five episodes total. And it's a show that's set in the 1850s in England about whaling, set on a whaling ship. It does star Colin Farrell as just, I mean, this guy explodes off the screen. He's like a barrel-chested homicidal alcoholic, completely feral, master harpoonist called Henry Dax.

• 43:14Rich Roll?

  And he's just a fucking savage in this show. It's unbelievable. And then Jack O'Connell, who plays this surgeon on the whaling ship, who's suffering from PTSD from his experience being deployed to the colonial war in India. And he's addicted to laudanum and he's kind of like the ballast.

• 43:39Adam Skolnick?

  I feel like in every 19th century drama, someone's got laudanum. Someone's taking laudanum.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He's way down the rabbit hole on laudanum.

• 43:50Adam Skolnick?

  There was laudanum in the, in the Berlin thing, right? Babylon Berlin.

• 43:54Rich Roll?

  Babylon Berlin, I think, yeah.

• 43:55Adam Skolnick?

  And Deadwood has laudanum.

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, Deadwood does too. Well, and then in, in The Nick, it's, it's like opium and heroin and morphine.

• 44:05Adam Skolnick?

  So they moved on from laudanum in The Nick?

• 44:08Rich Roll?

  It seems to be part of the time. Well, look, man, nobody knew better, right? Why not? There's a scene where he goes into the pharmacy and he's trying to finagle extra laudanum. No, with the pharmacist before he gets on the whaling ship. So he has a, a supply that's gonna last him for the tenure of this adventure. But this show is just unreal.

• 44:29Adam Skolnick?

  Do you have any extra laudanum? You already asked me that. Did I though?

• 44:33Rich Roll?

  Must be pretty good. I mean, he nods out like it's heroin. I don't know exactly what laudanum is, but...

• 44:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's like morphine, I think, right? Liquid morphine or something?

• 44:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And look, I gotta say... Colin Farrell, I just think it's fascinating. He's making, it's an extraordinary performance by him. He layers this murderous nature that he has with a certain kind of gentility. And the more I see him in recent things, the more I'm becoming increasingly convinced that he truly is one of the all-time greats. He's making super interesting career choices.

• 45:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  Starting with The Lobster, then he did True Detective. Did you see The Gentleman?

• 45:12Adam Skolnick?

  I did not see The Gentleman.

• 45:14Rich Roll?

  He is on fire in that movie.

• 45:17Adam Skolnick?

  You know, my favorite is In Bruges. I think that's a masterwork.

• 45:20Rich Roll?

  It is. It is. You can't take your eyes off of him. And it's like, I mean, they get on this whaling ship, I'm not going to spoil too much of it, but they start venturing north to Greenland, past Cape Farewell and into the Baffin Bay. Maybe you could have hitched a ride on this whaling ship to get up there to see Lewis Pugh. It doesn't look like a good time, but there's plenty of laudanum.

• 45:42Adam Skolnick?

  Lou, it's me, I'm here!

• 45:44Rich Roll?

  The time passed. And they kind of decamp onto these ice floes and Colin Farrell gets off and he's walking around on the ice just clubbing seals.

• 45:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, as you do.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. It's so vicious and harsh and visceral and disturbing. It's sort of like, you know, Apocalypse Now meets Joseph Conrad and, you know, with Werner Herzog vibes, but you had a better...

• 46:07Adam Skolnick?

  Or The Revenant meets Master and Commander.

• 46:10Rich Roll?

  Yes, The Revenant meets Master and Commander might be the best.

• 46:13Adam Skolnick?

  But which belies, which you kind of, there's a question there is like, who is going to watch this? Like, I liked it.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  I like it, yeah.

• 46:23Adam Skolnick?

  But like, and it, like, it looks like a massive production.

• 46:26Rich Roll?

  It is, yeah.

• 46:27Adam Skolnick?

  Like, how many, how much money got put into that?

• 46:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, they have a legit, like, a legit vintage whaling ship that they're literally on.

• 46:35Adam Skolnick?

  Is that like an 80 million dollar production?

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  I think they filmed in the fjords around Norway.

• 46:39Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 46:40Rich Roll?

  I'm pretty sure is where they filmed it.

• 46:41Adam Skolnick?

  They got the cheap fjords.

• 46:42Rich Roll?

  But they spared no expense on this thing. It's super interesting.

• 46:48Adam Skolnick?

  Well, yeah, I mean, and so you love it. So this is great. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna watch this thing.

• 46:54Rich Roll?

  We have, we have a cold water theme running through this show today.

• 46:57Adam Skolnick?

  We're ice cold, baby. We haven't even gotten to the, to the next cold water subject.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 47:02Adam Skolnick?

  Which is kinda hot.

• 47:03Rich Roll?

  That's true.

• 47:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  Um, before we take a break, I, I should say also on the subject of, of things that I'm watching that I'm enjoying. I just finished The White Lotus last night, which is amazing. Have you been watching that?

• 47:14Adam Skolnick?

  No, I've, I've, I've opted out of The White Lotus so far.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, you gotta check it out.

• 47:18Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 47:19Rich Roll?

  Mike White is a genius. What did he do last? What was his last thing? Enlightenment. He did that show Enlightenment. He used to have a production shingle with Jack Black called Black and White.

• 47:29Rich Roll?

  Um, he's great. He just has this incredible ability to kind of capture, um, the zeitgeist and create these characters that are archetypes that are all identifiable. Like each person in this show, you're like, I know somebody like that.

• 47:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  It's amazing.

• 47:45Adam Skolnick?

  I'm interested in it, you know, being a long time travel writer and seeing like some of these five star properties and, and just kinda, so that aspect is interesting.

• 47:53Rich Roll?

  Well, he definitely mines the territory of colonialism and, and kind of, you know, like the idea, you know, it's sort of almost like Westworld. Like they go to this place and they, they kind of artificially craft this Hawaiian experience within the enclave or within, you know, behind the walls of a very, you know, fancy resort. And they filmed the whole thing at the Four Seasons in Maui during the pandemic.

• 48:16Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 48:17Rich Roll?

  It was closed down. They took it over and were able to execute like eight episodes of this show when everything was shut down. In short shrift, like it looks like it all came together and was, and he wrote every episode. I mean, the guy is brilliant.

• 48:31Adam Skolnick?

  Damn you, Rich Roll. I'm in a reading phase. So I'm in a reading phase.

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  These are both very literary shows though. Okay. So you can, you can use that excuse.

• 48:42Rich Roll?

  Um, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more interesting thoughts.

• 48:57Rich Roll?

  And we're back. Should we share a few parting thoughts on the Olympiad?

• 49:02Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 49:03Rich Roll?

  Where do you want to start?

• 49:05Adam Skolnick?

  Um, I think, uh, you know, for me, the, the final event, which is the marathon, Kipchoge, winning that, running away from the field with eight miles to go and basically sweltering, you know, 98 degree with 90% humidity type conditions. And the way he finished it was just spectacular. And then friend of the pod Knox Robinson, wrote, um, something for the Tracksmith newsletter that I loved. Uh, you know, I always love reading his stuff.

• 49:38Rich Roll?

  Such a good writer.

• 49:39Adam Skolnick?

  He's amazing. I just, I just want him to write more, you know, that's it. But, uh, he had these quotes, this from when he was at a training camp, because he wrote a profile on Kipchoge for GQ, but this, this, this kind of were outtakes from a training camp when he visited there in the Rift Valley in, in 2019. I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was 2019. And he had this great quote in his story. This is Kipchoge talking, "In our place here, we actually don't believe in success. We believe in great preparation, which will be translated to success. We don't want to actually put success in front of our minds. If we do, we are not doing the job. We want to do the job first and then success is realized."

• 50:22Rich Roll?

  And like, it's so profound.

• 50:24Adam Skolnick?

  It's like, but like, that's for everything, right?

• 50:27Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, everything in life.

• 50:29Adam Skolnick?

  The work I do, I often think of results first and then you have to stop yourself, but like, like, it doesn't matter, like, that is so immaterial of the process of writing, of creating something great. You know, like, the creation of something great is in the day-to-day process. Like Davey's experiencing now with his training and all of that, it's like, that, like, you can't worry about what's going to happen in the future.

• 50:50Rich Roll?

  Process over results, journey over destination. And it's what you learn along the way that kind of girds you for whatever success you, like, either you succeed.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  Or you fail and you learn something along the way.

• 51:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It's like you leave it out on the floor and, you know, live with it because you've done everything you can do.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  Right. But detaching from that kind of goal oriented mindset and just falling in love with the grind is the journey. And, you know, I remember from when Knox was on the podcast and talking about, you know, I think he's made a number of trips to that part of the world and spent quite a bit of time with not just Kipchoge, but like a lot of those elite marathoners, experiencing how they live their lives day in, day out. And it's very simple. You know, we get caught up in the gadgets and the metrics and the goals and this and that. And they're just literally going out, you know, and like, just the basics.

• 51:46Adam Skolnick?

  The habits.

• 51:47Rich Roll?

  You know, sleep, eat, train, run, have fun.

• 51:51Adam Skolnick?

  So apparently the other thing that I kind of was struck with, my last thought on the Olympics were these two mothers that dominated. And one is Faith Kipchoge, also Kenyon, trains with Kipchoge or started to in the last couple of years. She won the 1500 meter race five years ago, and she was defending her gold medal, but she also just had a baby two years before. And so she's a mother, and now she's running faster than ever before. She wasn't even necessarily favored in her race. There's a dominant Dutch runner that had won the 5,000, 10,000. She was going for the triple. And she'd been winning all the races at the 1500 level. And she just took off the last 200 meters and dominated.

• 52:33Adam Skolnick?

  And her posts about what it was like to get back to elite status and be faster even than before, as a mom, really, really, really moving stuff. And how much it took to get her body back into that competition mode. And then Alison Felix, of course, another champion, the most winningest, the winningest track athlete ever in the United States history for the, I think maybe in history, 11 medals. She won with her own shoe after she had gave birth. Nike low balled her on some offer. She-

• 53:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that was big news when basically she was pregnant and the way that Nike works its contracts with its female athletes, there was something like a 70% drop in her salary. And just basically a lack of long-term support for-

• 53:23Rich Roll?

  People that are having children, basically the message being like, well, you're never going to be back to form. So we're just not going to pay you in a manner that's to measure it. That created a big kind of hullabaloo. Lindsey Kraus wrote a bunch about that that put Felix into kind of a mainstream conversation around female athletics and to see her not only come back and perform at a high level, but to just absolutely crush it.

• 53:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 53:52Rich Roll?

  And that image of Allison walking with her daughter to me is like one of the iconic images of Tokyo.

• 54:00Adam Skolnick?

  Absolutely. She won, I think, ended up being bronze in the 400 in an amazing race that the Bahamian legend, she defended her gold. Her name's escaping me, but she was amazing. Allison came in third and then the four by 400, the women just destroyed the field. I mean, they were ahead by so much and she was one of the, one of the members of that.

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  And now like the winningest, winningest track and field athlete ever eclipsing Carl Lewis's 10 medals.

• 54:29Adam Skolnick?

  And her, and she did it wearing her own shoes, Saysh, I think. S A Y S A H is the brand. So Saysh or Sash, I don't know.

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  Pretty cool.

• 54:38Adam Skolnick?

  But that's her brand. And so, you know, props to two moms. Cause you know, Serena Williams gets a lot of credit for being the mom that's coming back and how hard it is to come back and be at the top of her sport. And she's gotten to the finals multiple times. Now we're talking about, this is kind of the first time I can remember mothers with young children actually winning gold and becoming the world champion. I mean, that's...

• 55:01Rich Roll?

  And also, you know, without the resources that Serena has.

• 55:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  You know, at the same time.

• 55:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool.

• 55:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I mean, it's cool that Serena's doing it too. It's not to, not to knock her, but just to, as comparison, as a yardstick, like that's the level these women are at.

• 55:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Also shout out to Molly Seidel for the bronze in the women's marathon.

• 55:20Adam Skolnick?

  Her second ever marathon or something.

• 55:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. It's crazy, right?

• 55:24Adam Skolnick?

  That's maybe the craziest story ever.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 55:27Adam Skolnick?

  Second ever marathon, or is that right, or third?

• 55:30Rich Roll?

  I'm not sure.

• 55:31Adam Skolnick?

  First ever was the trials.

• 55:33Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 55:33Adam Skolnick?

  And she qualified.

• 55:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, is that true? Yeah, I think that's wild.

• 55:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Rich Roll?

  Pretty cool story. It is interesting, looking back on Tokyo and, you know, I'll fully admit, I wasn't wed to the television in the manner that, you know, I have with past Olympiads. You know, part of that's just being busy. Another part of that is just being untethered from, you know, we don't have cable, so it's not as accessible for me. And the time difference, you know, there's a lot that's been written about a drop in viewership. I don't know how much of that has to do with it being pandemic oriented and just a weird Olympics in general versus this age of social media where it's impossible to not know what's happening, when it's happening.

• 56:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 56:15Rich Roll?

  The idea that you're gonna wait, not know, sit down at prime time and watch it unfold on NBC is just not reality anymore.

• 56:24Adam Skolnick?

  I think it's also a lack of star power. Uh, you know, there was no Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps or, I mean, Simone was there, but even she didn't, like, she ended up having to pull out and so, of some events. So, um, I think there was a lack of star power, to be honest with you.

• 56:39Rich Roll?

  But I think, I think the idea that you can look at, like, Nielsen ratings or whatever and say viewership is down, but I would suspect that engagement was as high as it's ever been. It's just that people are consuming this in short clips on social media. They're going to YouTube or they're seeing a little clip on Twitter or Instagram. They're consuming it, they're just consuming it in different ways. So the traditional notion of gauging, uh, you know, viewership and engagement with the public, I think is antiquated.

• 57:06Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt. I mean, it's happening across all sports. You know, all major sports are having to wrestle with the same thing.

• 57:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I feel, I still feel for the athletes, like, the idea that as soon as you're, you're, you're done competing, you have like, I don't know, 24 or 48 hours to skedaddle and get out of there, like, the whole experience was shortcut or truncated due to COVID. And there's a really interesting piece that an athlete called Race Imbadin, who's a fencer, I believe, wrote for The Guardian and basically just giving his firsthand experience of what it was like to be there. This was his third Olympics. Um, and, and just lamenting the fact that Typically, you know, the, the, the value of the experiences and all the people that you meet and the encounters that you have and going to the dining hall and just, you

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  know, meeting all the athletes. So like, none of that. It's like everywhere you went, there was nobody there. Like, it was just lonely. He had his teammates, but a lot of athletes, like, feeling lonely and isolated. And, you know, on top of that, he points a sort of finger at the IOC, which is an easy target. And it's inherent, you know, hypocrisy in that it stands for supporting the athletes, but really, it's just about profiting off the shoulders of the athletes and not really catering to their, to their needs. So, you know, I think there's some issues that we need to unpack. Alexi Pappas came by the house the other day, who is an Olympian, for those that don't know, was

• 58:40Rich Roll?

  competed in the Olympics for Greece in track and field. She made a movie called Olympic Dreams. And a lot of that movie is about being in the dining hall and meeting all these other athletes. And I said, what is your, you know, you weren't here, but like, what is your, have you talked to some of your friends who were there? And she just said, I feel bad for, you know, all those athletes there that, that were kind of robbed of that type of experience that made it so meaningful, you know, for me.

• 59:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:04Rich Roll?

  So, anyway, because that's what makes the Olympics. But hey.

• 59:08Adam Skolnick?

  So anyway, LA's next, 2024. And people don't know this, but you and I, when we first started talking about doing something together, it was going to be built around maybe going to Tokyo and covering the Olympics in a profound way for the RRP.

• 59:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Adam Skolnick?

  Should we roll out that game plan for LA?

• 59:23Rich Roll?

  I think we should, man.

• 59:25Adam Skolnick?

  I think we should, too.

• 59:26Rich Roll?

  We've got time to plan for it.

• 59:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Rich Roll?

  I think it could be really great. It's here. There's no reason not to do that.

• 59:31Adam Skolnick?

  You've got friends of the pod that could be really good. Like, Alexi would be great.

• 59:35Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 59:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  Of course. We could build a team around it. I mean, yeah, I guess we can sort of say it publicly now, but there was a plan afoot for us to take the podcast to Tokyo, set up shop, get a lead sponsor involved so that we could get a location that was either in the village or just outside the village, and create a lounge where athletes and, and all the kind of fancy people that attend the Olympics could drop by, eat food, hang out, and we would just podcast every day.

• 1:00:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:00:05Rich Roll?

  Livestream it, get these athletes off the podium after they did their five minutes on the Today Show to get the real story and kind of... Beat the networks at their own game by creating, you know, really rich content.

• 1:00:17Adam Skolnick?

  And we were gonna do some narrative stuff too, man on the street stuff, I think, yeah.

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so now we have LA to look forward to for that.

• 1:00:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:00:24Rich Roll?

  Plenty of time to plan.

• 1:00:25Adam Skolnick?

  Gotta do it.

• 1:00:26Rich Roll?

  Doing a daily show.

• 1:00:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, where's, where's the, but you gotta figure out where the, where your studio.

• 1:00:33Rich Roll?

  Where it would be.

• 1:00:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the makeshift studio.

• 1:00:35Adam Skolnick?

  Downtown by the.

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  Wherever like, you know, the kind of center of gravity is, I mean, being inside the village is really, I don't know that that's really where you want to be because only the athletes can get in there.

• 1:00:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  But, you know, like any big event, just outside of the village, there's, you know, basically these locations that corporations take over to create experiences for the attendees and the athletes like to go there. So it would be about figuring out where that might be.

• 1:01:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right around the SC campus, right? Isn't that where it's all gonna be?

• 1:01:04Rich Roll?

  I guess, I mean, LA's so sprawled out.

• 1:01:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Rich Roll?

  So it would be a matter of looking at where all the venues are and finding, you know, I, I would assume, is the vil, is the, is the village gonna be down by USC?

• 1:01:16Adam Skolnick?

  They're building a massive, another big arena, like, right next to the Natural History Museum right now.

• 1:01:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:24Adam Skolnick?

  I was just at the Butterfly Garden, so I saw that. Listeners, the Butterfly Garden is fabulous.

• 1:01:29Rich Roll?

  Stop playing your man card.

• 1:01:30Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry. Sorry, I'm a dad now. I don't know if you know, I go to the Butterfly Garden.

• 1:01:34Rich Roll?

  Um, all right, well, more to be revealed on that.

• 1:01:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Rich Roll?

  Let's pivot to a couple more serious matters. Obviously, it's Monday, what's the date? August 16th, when we're recording this. This will go up Thursday, the 19th. Today, as of today, we're in the midst of quite a bit of chaos in, in Afghanistan with everything that's going on there. Just to kind of recap, not that people are unaware of this, after two decades of, of US occupation, $2.26 trillion spent. US pulled its troops out recently and the result is, of course, this power vacuum that's quickly been filled by the Taliban, which has moved unbelievably swiftly to seize

• 1:02:20Rich Roll?

  control of the entire country, culminating in President Ashraf Ghani fleeing and the occupation of Kabul in the last day or two. Taliban just took the presidential palace, I think today, if not yesterday.

• 1:02:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yesterday, I think.

• 1:02:35Rich Roll?

  We've all seen the scenes at the airport. It's absolutely horrifying. And, you know, there's a lot of, a lot being written about the Biden administration dragging its heels despite weeks of warnings, being incredibly slow to extract US citizens and civilians and embassy employees. There's this delayed withdrawal that's been causing death and chaos. I don't know if you've seen Edward Snowden's rants on this on Twitter right now, but he's like all over this.

• 1:03:05Adam Skolnick?

  Is he really?

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Because apparently Biden, there's a, there's an article that I'll link up about this, but Biden had said, I think just a couple of weeks ago, that the likelihood that there's going to be, you know, the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country would be highly unlikely and kind of dismissing comparisons to the fall of Saigon as being out of hand. And of course, that's exactly what we're seeing. I mean, he said point blank, the Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army. They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you're going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. And that's exactly what you're seeing.

• 1:03:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:44Rich Roll?

  Just hours before I came into the studio today, I saw a video of one of the C-130s taking off from the airport and two people, I mean, the plane must have been a thousand feet above the ground. I saw at least two people falling to their death who had been clinging on to the wheels or something, you know?

• 1:04:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. There was, there were more people as it was taking off. I think some people slipped down and decided not to die. And the other two thought they could stay on there.

• 1:04:13Rich Roll?

  Absolutely horrific.

• 1:04:14Adam Skolnick?

  That shows you what, what people are feeling about the Taliban taking over everything.

• 1:04:23Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, I, the Taliban might not be as, as great as the North Vietnamese Army, but possibly the Afghanistan military that we helped build is not as good as the South Vietnamese Army.

• 1:04:34Rich Roll?

  I think that's probably really where, where the truth lies.

• 1:04:37Adam Skolnick?

  There's some, there's some something there.

• 1:04:39Rich Roll?

  The fact that it just toppled so immediately, you know, is unbelievable. And, and in such, you know, stark contrast to the dollar spent and, you know, the soldiers deployed over two decades.

• 1:04:52Adam Skolnick?

  But not shocking, you know, like if you've read anything, I brought in this book. CJ Chivers wrote The Fighters. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times, the best war reporter, possibly of his generation.

• 1:05:08Adam Skolnick?

  Iraq war veteran of the first Iraq war and then spent a lot of time in combat zones. And it's just a master work of battlefield nonfiction. And if you read that, you can't but think this is exactly what was going to happen. And also that we should be out. So as opposed to like, for me personally, my feeling on this is, is when 911 happened, I was all for Biden, I was all for the US to, to go in and get the Taliban out. Cause obviously we know Taliban gave safe harbor to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

• 1:05:49Adam Skolnick?

  And the Taliban are zealots that were murdering gay people and women and assassinating them in soccer stadiums. They were, they blew up the Buddha statues. They were anti-intellectual, anti-human rights and pro Sharia law. And so, you know, we, it would be good to get rid of them is what I thought. And I still thought that, I still, I still think that that was the right move. I didn't. Anticipate 20 years of war and occupation. I mean, basically trying to repeat what the Soviet Union failed to do. It just doesn't make any sense. And, and listen, if, if what you built with 20 years and 2.26 trillion dollars topples in a month, then maybe it wasn't the right thing to do.

• 1:06:33Adam Skolnick?

  And if you look at it from the perspective of the guys who are the warfighters, you know, the guys in the US military, as horrible as this pretends to be for women across Afghanistan and, and all sorts of people, but basically intellectuals and women and, and LBGTQ in Afghanistan, as awful as this could be, could become for them.

• 1:06:53Rich Roll?

  It will, it will become.

• 1:06:56Adam Skolnick?

  It almost certainly will become, you know, uh, is that like, should we be, should we be there bolstering, stapling together this hollow structure that can get blow over as soon as we're not there? I mean, is that what we should be doing? Is that what we should be asking our children and brothers and sisters to die for? I mean, it's, it's an open question. If you read this book, you will think no. Because, you know, if you're not wanted there, which we weren't wanted there by a large swath of the population, then it's not going to work. And, and there is an argument to be made because we were there, the Taliban is more tolerated, not less tolerated. Now the Taliban has to run the country.

• 1:07:39Adam Skolnick?

  And, you know, there's going to be bloodshed. It's horrible, but at the same time, it's like, who should be doing that work? And, and that's what we're going to find out what's going to happen. That's not to downplay it. I'm not downplaying it. There's a great episode on the Daily from one woman's perspective, what she's going through in this process. It's very moving. It's horrible, but that's my thoughts on it.

• 1:08:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's amazing how fast it's happened. And I was seeing just today, the media landscape there has already shifted. Like people that own storefronts are taking down posters of women and they've removed music from the airwaves and the news channels are already, you know, reorienting their reporting to ensure that they're not offending Taliban sensibilities. Like, it's unbelievable that it feels almost overnight. And I think when it comes to... Judging or addressing the immediate decisions pulling out, not pulling out. How quickly did we get there to evacuate people? What could we have done differently?

• 1:08:46Rich Roll?

  All of that really seems futile. What we really need to do is telescope up and evaluate the arrogance of imperialism in its totality, right? And this sensibility of like, we're the saviors. We're here to help and we're going to impose military force. And that's going to transform your country into a democratic utopia. I mean, how many times does that experiment have to fail? And how many lives have to be lost? And how much money has to be spent before we get the message that this is not our problem to solve? And it's not through our, it's not our sensibility

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  to impose on such a foreign country to begin with.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:09:36Adam Skolnick?

  I agree with you.

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, I think the question is, what happened? Like Afghanistan in the seventies was like the jewel of the backpacker trail. Like when the Lonely Planet guides were first coming out, the very first guide. You know, Kabul is like, they loved Kabul and they, and they spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and travelers were there all the time in the seventies. You know, it wasn't far from India, India and Kabul and Afghanistan.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  But then the Cold War started. The Soviets started encroaching and then we propped up the Taliban to compete with the Soviets.

• 1:10:14Adam Skolnick?

  We didn't prop up the Taliban. So we, we, we definitely got weapons and funds to different, I guess, I don't know if it's tribes, but different, different factions of this kind of, because Afghanistan is-

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  Well, it's the progenitor of the Taliban.

• 1:10:33Adam Skolnick?

  Well, what ends up happening, I think, if Charlie Wilson's work is this movie that we both love, Mike Nichols movie, Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay. And it talks about this whole Soviet era. And I think what happens after they routed the Soviets and came out- There's that scene at the end where like Charlie Wilson is trying to get more funding to get social services back going in Afghanistan and and basically they didn't want to fund that. Nobody wanted to fund that then. And so what ends up happening in that vacuum, I think you had forces from Iran and elsewhere coming in with money. And that's when the kind of the more Sharia law Islamist. But you know, I I'm not 100% sure, but that's

• 1:11:14Adam Skolnick?

  my that's what I I think is what happened. And that's when that started to to take place in the 80s. So.

• 1:11:20Rich Roll?

  There's an interesting perspective that that was shared today by Dean and Aisha Shiraz, friends of the pod, neurologists who actually met in Afghanistan. They were both there during their younger years. That's in contrast to this idea that our occupation was this paper tiger and it was all in futility and look how quickly it it disintegrated. And their perspective is like, listen, you know, yes, that's true. But at the same time, a lot was done to empower women, support women's rights and and create, you know, two generations or a generation and a half of women who are in a very different place

• 1:11:59Rich Roll?

  as a result of that influence. And now, you know, us evacuating the the area and the intrusion of the Taliban and the overtaking puts an end to that. And not only puts an end to that kind of movement, but also, of course, imperils the very lives of these people.

• 1:12:21Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt about it. I agree with that.

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  A lot of people are going to get executed.

• 1:12:25Adam Skolnick?

  It seems that way. Christiane Amanpour on CNN, who I love, was interviewing a spokesman for the Taliban who happened to be in Qatar, like another like, why is the spokesman for the Taliban in Qatar? Like, what is going on? Like, who is funding this operation? And and that person was saying that we've we've put out word there. There's will be no reprisals. We will not X, Y, and Z. You know, no one's going to get assassinated. Nobody to be no reason to be afraid. Come to work. Blah, blah, blah. There's also been reports already of summary executions of soldiers that were in the Afghan military, some civil servants. So that report happened. She confronted him with

• 1:13:07Adam Skolnick?

  that. There's a five or six minute clip that I've got here that was on her Twitter that we could put up there. So, you know, it remains to be seen. It doesn't seem like it's going to be good. And I'm in that in that sense, but like, what are you supposed to do? Like, you know?

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:13:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, like, what are what are the choices? I don't I would say this no matter what, like, what are the choices? I remember when Obama was running for president and he was like, we're going to get out of the wars. And he didn't get out of Afghanistan, probably because he didn't want this thing happening. But, but, you know, at some point, you have to either decide, okay, we're here for 100 years, or you pull out like eventually. So.

• 1:13:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But more will be revealed.

• 1:13:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  Soon. Shall we pivot?

• 1:14:01Adam Skolnick?

  Pivot to another.

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this was going to be the big story. We're like an hour and a half into the podcast. It was supposed to all be about what we're going to talk about next. But, you know, this is how this goes, right?

• 1:14:13Adam Skolnick?

  This is what happens.

• 1:14:17Rich Roll?

  The climate change conversation.

• 1:14:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. No wonder Greta is so pissed off.

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  No wonder Greta is so pissed off. Climate change gets real. So we're bringing this up because the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, released its sixth report on climate change in land. It came out last week. It is the culmination of 500 plus authors, I believe, with 14,000 papers cited. And it's this really robust synopsis, essentially, of where we're at with climate change. And it ain't good.

• 1:14:52Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:14:54Adam Skolnick?

  Essentially, what it says is that by 2030, we're going to be at 1.5 degrees warmer than what would be natural without human influence and the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And no matter what we do between now and 2050, it's 2050, not 2030, no matter what we do between now and 2050, we will not be able to stop that rise to 1.5. Right now, we're at 1 or 1.1?

• 1:15:23Rich Roll?

  I think we're at 1.1.

• 1:15:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, 2050 should be in the next 30 years.

• 1:15:27Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:15:28Adam Skolnick?

  1.5 is-

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  Right, no matter what we do for the next 30 years, we're going to see this rise, this escalation, and there's going to be, obviously, repercussions to that that are unavoidable at this point.

• 1:15:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  That's if we completely shut, if we just said, and this came out in the daily podcast, that came out yesterday, today?

• 1:15:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, two days ago.

• 1:15:51Rich Roll?

  Two days ago, basically saying like, if we just flicked the switch on carbon emissions today and went to zero immediately, we'd still have 30 years.

• 1:16:00Adam Skolnick?

  Of rise.

• 1:16:01Rich Roll?

  Of rise.

• 1:16:02Adam Skolnick?

  To 1.5.

• 1:16:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Adam Skolnick?

  But there's this window where we can take action, because if we don't, if we do nothing, if we keep it as it is now, it won't be 1.5.

• 1:16:12Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:16:12Adam Skolnick?

  It'll be two, or three, or four, perhaps. And each little chunk means more fires, more flooding, more potential crop failures and crop failures and geopolitical instability.

• 1:16:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And irreversible, no matter what we do, is ongoing ocean acidification, ice cap melting, rising seas. You know, we've just experienced July, I think July was the hottest month on record, as long as they've been recording this stuff. Fires, the floods in Germany, all these things that we're seeing. So the report is coming out in the midst of an experiential-

• 1:16:56Rich Roll?

  Experiential experience, can I say that?

• 1:16:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you can say it.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  Where we're all kind of having a tactile relationship with climate change.

• 1:17:03Adam Skolnick?

  Cause it's happening.

• 1:17:03Rich Roll?

  In a way that does feel unprecedented, like it does feel like a tipping point.

• 1:17:07Adam Skolnick?

  Like, cause there's droughts here, there's fires in Turkey, there's fires in, um, all over, there's heat wave, you know, there's that crazy melt in Greenland. So yes, everyone's feeling it.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  And I think that what's, what's a little bit different about this IPCC report is that it's so irrefutable and it's so vetted with so many authors and so many papers cited, that it becomes just absolutely undeniable that this is happening right now. And yet, and the Daily Podcast pointed this out as well, there is this sense among the public, like, okay, you know, you're sounding the alarm again, like this is the same, you've already sounded it, like we've become, it's sort of a cry wolf thing, like we've heard this. And there's a numbing, I think, that happens with people and a disconnect between

• 1:17:58Rich Roll?

  good intentions. I think most people don't want these things to happen. And if they were given an opportunity or an on-ramp to participate in meaningful change, they would take it, but there's a lack of agency or a lack of education, understanding and opportunity to get involved in something that would be helpful. And I think that creates a sort of paralysis among most people. It's like, okay, well, what do you want me to do?

• 1:18:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:18:25Rich Roll?

  And, you know, meanwhile, I'm gonna go to work and live my life.

• 1:18:29Adam Skolnick?

  Or, you know, you post something you think you're helping and really...

• 1:18:32Rich Roll?

  Right. Or, yeah, some of the things that we're deluded into thinking are helpful are actually like placebos or, you know, pacifiers.

• 1:18:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Um, Aussie actor filmmaker, Damon Gamo, I think is France's name, has a...

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  Damon Gamo.

• 1:18:49Adam Skolnick?

  Damon, Damon, Damon Gamo.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  Damon Gamo?

• 1:18:53Adam Skolnick?

  Damon. I love Damon's work. Damon has a great, uh, I call it a rant, but he's kind of more, more, um, calm than that. And he kind of is imploring people to find their agency because there is this window of time that we can fix things. We know, and what's cool about this report is there is kind of like also a how to to keep things down. One is sustainable land management, reforestation, regeneration and soil preservation.

• 1:19:22Adam Skolnick?

  You know, alternatives to animal agriculture, wind, you know, aquaculture, kelp farming, that kind of stuff. Create more carbon sink so we can pull carbon out of the atmosphere and then have a more sustainable future. But also, you know, one thing that I read in this report was income stratification, economic stratification is really bad for climate. If there was less poverty and less, those extremes were a little bit closer together, we have a better chance of getting under that three-degree, two-degree marker. And this is all based on computer models. So if you haven't read up on this, basically what happens is we have more data than ever. The data started to kind of get accumulated in 1961, apparently.

• 1:20:07Adam Skolnick?

  That's like the big, big time when it started happening. Now there's more buoys out there collecting water temperature, there's more weather models and computer models and better computers. And so what they do is they feed this data into one computer model, to a computer model that says, okay, what's going to happen, extrapolate out 10, 20, 30 years from now. And then they do this, they take that same model, but they feed it basically the old numbers, the numbers without human, you know, intervention, without the greenhouse gases being admitted, and what would have been the natural climate in that same period of time. And that's how you get this stuff.

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:44Adam Skolnick?

  And so it's not an exact science, but it's kind of like what's likely, what's extremely likely, what's most likely.

• 1:20:49Rich Roll?

  And those models and those algorithms are just getting better and better and better at figuring all of this stuff out.

• 1:20:56Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it made me think of Elizabeth Kolbert's book, Six Extinction. She has another book out now, it's more directly related to climate change. And I brought it in here, but she talks about how humans transcended evolution as soon as we painted like the woolly mammoth on the cave walls, as soon as we created a way of communicating that was not verbal, that was the beginning of us transcending evolution. By that she means beyond the control of nature. Now we can dictate our own lives, no matter what nature throws at you. Not exactly that, but like basically, obviously nature's still king, but you can innovate

• 1:21:37Adam Skolnick?

  around it and still create, nurture your lives and communities and villages and this whole entire agricultural-based societies.

• 1:21:49Adam Skolnick?

  And that requires a certain number of genius and a certain certain manner of genius. But you can't separate genius and madness. And like, if you're gonna have genius, you're going to have madness. And so we have madness, right? We have like the madman on your airplane ride, the mass shooter, the Taliban, you know, zealots. There's madness kind of within our genius. And part of the madness is, what do we do? It's paralysis, you know? It's like, we have this pandemic and we didn't do anything about it for months, you know? Because we are like, in some ways, the frog in the boiling water. We don't believe it till it's there. And maybe there was a little bit of that in Afghanistan, too. And we see it with climate change now.

• 1:22:30Adam Skolnick?

  The pandemic certainly saw it in a more compressed nature. And that's happening with climate change right now. You know, what to do is a great question. Like, what do you, what, what do you do? What does Paul Hawken say?

• 1:22:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think what to do, answering that question, begins with going back to the sixth extinction and the thesis of that book, which is that the minute humans created a dualistic relationship with the planet through innovation and genius and madness, it created this sensibility that there is us and there is the planet. We are who we are and this is nature outside of us. And I think that mindset is at the core of everything that we've created and destroyed. So Paul Hawken, to, you know, piggyback on what you just mentioned, came on the podcast last week.

• 1:23:29Rich Roll?

  He's got this beautiful new book called Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. It's an incredible solution-based book. And he came on the day that the IPCC report came out. And irrespective of the kind of doomsday dystopia that that

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  Picture paints, he still maintains quite an optimistic disposition in that the solutions to this problem are available to us now. And this book kind of goes through all of them, you know, energy, land, food, you know, et cetera, all of the different ways. It's sort of a follow up to Drawdown. Yeah. But it has a very kind of spiritual holistic approach. It's less about like, oh, here's a company doing something interesting in, you know, like growing seaweed underwater. It's more macro in terms of systems. And I think the sensibility or the intention behind it is to get us into a mindset of non-dualism in our relationship with the planet, like

• 1:24:30Rich Roll?

  short of having a spiritual reconciliation where we understand that we don't live outside of nature, but we, and we're not part of nature, we actually are nature. And we move towards a regenerative symbiotic relationship with the planet. Until we're able to do that, we're not going to be able to solve these problems. Like you can hang your hat on, you know, like, oh, we should do wind power and that's great. But what we really need is a collective consciousness upgrade in terms of how we're thinking about this problem and approaching it. And he's a gift. The book comes out, I think the podcast is coming out in mid September or something like that. So there's a little bit of a wait before that happens and you can preorder and I highly suggest everybody preorder his book. I think

• 1:25:13Rich Roll?

  it's going to be a big deal when it comes out. But I think what's so kind of amazing and frustrating at the same time about all of this, and this comes up in the daily podcast, is that we have all these solutions right now. Yeah. It's really a function of will and most of the will being political will. Like, imagine a situation in which we appointed like a global dictator or some kind of global star chamber that could supersede the decision of any president, right? Who just said, here's like, you have one month before you have to stop producing, you know? Right. Cars that work on, you know, traditional engines and you, you guys over there, you have,

• 1:25:58Rich Roll?

  you have six weeks before no more fracking or something like, like we don't have that world. It doesn't work. And so we're trying to turn around these Titanic sized systems that have so much history and momentum behind them on a ticking time bomb schedule. And I despair of our ability to do that.

• 1:26:18Adam Skolnick?

  So, so I think you nailed it. They can't be, we can't turn them around. They have to turn themselves around. And so that, that's happening with shareholder activism where people are actually going into these companies, buying in and hitting shareholder meetings. It's happening with lobbying of governments because governments do spend a lot of money and subsidize X, Y, and Z and can help in that regard. All of that takes agitation from the outside. And so.

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it puts pressure to create the political will. The question is, is it enough pressure?

• 1:26:52Adam Skolnick?

  But the institution has to self govern itself. It has to, it has to accept this is science. And if we want to be in business, we have to do X, Y, and Z. If we want to continue to function, and it's happening. Ford's putting out electric, like that stuff is happening. Now, electric vehicles is also one of the drivers, correct me if I'm wrong, of this like desire to mine the bottom of the ocean. So it's like the problem which gets us back to Colbert is like, you know, beware of the unintended consequences of good intentions. Like all of these fixes, what, what is that going to engender?

• 1:27:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Because that, well, that goes back to dualistic binary thinking, right? And, you know, instead of holistic systems thinking, and that's what regeneration is all about. It's like, these systems are incredibly complex. No matter how well intentioned you are about like this being a solution, there are all these downstream implications of whatever decision that you make, whatever technological innovation that you, you know, push forward, that you can't necessarily foresee. And so truly, the only real solution is to live symbiotically in nature, in accordance with the. rhythms of the planet and that requires us to develop a new appreciation for you know indigenous wisdom and how you know millennia of human not millennia but however

• 1:28:13Rich Roll?

  back you know far back humanity goes where people were so in touch with their natural environments that they understood how to live in a manner that allowed them to survive and thrive while also you know tending to the greater well-being of the macro sphere and so can we do that is it possible in our you know technology first age to pivot society back to that level of you know engrossed rich relationship with the natural environment that supports us or are we just gonna punt and go to Mars Mars and hang our hat on like well

• 1:28:58Rich Roll?

  we're gonna we've always figured out a way to innovate our way out of this and so we're

• 1:29:02Adam Skolnick?

  right well that's that's one line of thinking I don't buy that because like that's not being a steward and that's that's not the the type of thinking that you're talking about from that Paul Hawken is promoting yeah a circular more kind of holistic way you know we're we will see but I think watch Damon's great rant because he's Damon is asking us to find our agency he's asking us to find our agency which is why we're talking about it right we're talking about it so that everyone starts talking about it like you know amongst each other at work wherever we need to talk about it because it's it's the same it's exactly what Greta has been saying for about

• 1:29:47Adam Skolnick?

  three years now she's been saying this same stuff like she must think that like like who does she live with yeah I mean she's been saying exactly what's in this report for three years if I'm if I'm not wrong yeah so

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  but it begins it begins with changing ourselves yeah to bring it down to a Buddhist perspective like you can't change the world until you inhabit this you know the sensibility that you're you're living your life in accordance with those rhythms yourself like that puts you in a position to create a ripple effect out

• 1:30:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, there has been, this is not to say there hasn't been examples in human history where external fixes have worked. I mean, it worked in World War II. But like that, there was a lot of self-preservation involved in that because Nazi Germany was invading other countries.

• 1:30:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And now we're asking, and the Daily Podcast points this out as well, like, we're asking people to self-sacrifice for the betterment of a future generation, to be, you know, communitarian in our choices. And so that's asking a lot of people to do. We've seen people do it in the past. Yes, their backs were up against the wall, Nazis, et cetera. This is a little bit different. But in an era where, you know, we don't have a draft and people are not acclimated to any kind of civil service, are we able to, you know, kind of cohere around this idea? And when you look at, you know, all you have to do is open up Twitter and see how we can't even agree on a shared reality, to think

• 1:31:20Rich Roll?

  that's a moonshot.

• 1:31:22Adam Skolnick?

  It is discouraging. And you look at Afghanistan as an allegory for the failure of an external fix, how you can't fix something from the outside. You can't kill a dark thing. You can't, from the outside, you can't do, you can't, that kind of thing won't be sustainable. It may be, it may work for 20 years, go into remission, but it's going to come back unless you're always, always there with your thumb on it. And, uh, and so now we're talking about this type of thing, an external fix, you know, can we, can we adjust, or do we have to all adjust, you know, at the same time, like, come together and all adjust? We've, we've done that. You know, the pandemic is also a lesson that we can do some things pretty quickly. Um, you know, it didn't, it's not, it hasn't worked 100%.

• 1:32:04Adam Skolnick?

  We've had our problems. We still have Delta, blah, blah, blah. But we did get a vaccine. We have gotten people, you know, there's less people getting hurt now in the city that we're living in or getting sick now than there were before. It has worked to some degree.

• 1:32:18Rich Roll?

  Right. But I look at it through like an addiction model. Like, I imagine, you know, we're all addicts to our lifestyles and the conveniences, you know, to which we orient our lives. And we need to have, we need to hit a bottom with this. So the elevator is going down. How far down does it have to go before we go, holy shit, like, I need to change?

• 1:32:38Adam Skolnick?

  Well, also, like, the

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  How much more pain does the earth have to suffer? How many cities are gonna have to, you know, be underwater?

• 1:32:45Adam Skolnick?

  Well, because you never imagine yourself in the city underwater. Because like, like, with a pandemic, at least you're like,

• 1:32:50Rich Roll?

  It's like, well, I'm good. It's cool. Like, look, we did these other good things. We'll figure this out. Like, it's, it's, it's very similar in that regard, our relationship to it. Because we're so terrified of having to let go of the things that we've become accustomed to.

• 1:33:05Adam Skolnick?

  Right. There was a certain amount of self-preservation involved in the lifestyle adjustment with the pandemic. But this is like, you can't really imagine yourself in the city that's inundated by floods. Like, one of the things in this report is that these tidal floods that used to happen once a year, maybe, are gonna happen four times a year or something like that. Like, all these, the rainfall gets worse, everything gets worse, the droughts become more frequent and common.

• 1:33:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And we're seeing that, right? We're seeing that in our lifetime.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  I don't know, man. But just to, like, end this with a couple of things that we actually can do in our lives that are practical. Here's an idea. It has to do with laundry and washing your dishes.

• 1:33:49Adam Skolnick?

  Do you do your own laundry, Rich?

• 1:33:52Rich Roll?

  Sometimes.

• 1:33:53Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes.

• 1:33:54Rich Roll?

  I do. But I'm now gonna do it differently than I have historically done it by virtue of revisionist history, Malcolm Gladwell's latest episode called Laundry Done Right, where he digs deep on laundry, which sounds weird.

• 1:34:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:34:13Rich Roll?

  And of course, has a revisionist take on how to do it correctly. So I will freely admit that my approach to laundry in terms of trying to be a good ecological steward has been to make sure that I purchase the eco-friendly soap that's made with natural ingredients, trying to limit the number of loads that I do. But what I have not done has paid, is, has been to pay attention to water temperature. And what this podcast explains, it's kind of fascinating, is that all of our focus on

• 1:34:53Rich Roll?

  the chemistry of our soap is misplaced when that focus should be placed upon

• 1:35:01Rich Roll?

  Water temperature because I don't know the stats. I'd have to listen to it again. Maybe you know offhand because I think you listened to it more recently.

• 1:35:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, on the way here.

• 1:35:10Rich Roll?

  But most of the kind of ecological damage is a result of using warm and hot water.

• 1:35:15Adam Skolnick?

  It's something like 70% of energy can be saved. So it's about it's about carbon. It's about it's about greenhouse gas emissions. So you save 70% of emissions if it's warm water versus cold and 90% of it's hot water versus cold.

• 1:35:28Rich Roll?

  Right. And so rather than getting the eco-friendly soap, we should be looking at the chemistry that goes into creating a detergent that allows you to effectively wash your clothes in cold water.

• 1:35:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right, because most detergents, they they end up washing better in warm water.

• 1:35:47Rich Roll?

  Right. So we all go to warm, especially with the lights or I mean the whites and lights and stuff like that.

• 1:35:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  Which I've done many times. And and, you know, getting soap that that causes too much suds because it uses more water because the the cycle won't stop until all the suds are gone. And you end up using like ridiculous amounts of water and the amount of energy that it takes to heat that water is really where the environmental damage is taking place. So if you if you had a polymer that would allow you to wash your clothes in cold water with very little suds, that's kind of like the holy grail. So Malcolm goes and visits like this chemical engineer Procter and Gamble and he just falls in love with corporate America.

• 1:36:30Adam Skolnick?

  Specifically with the engineers at Procter and Gamble. Yes.

• 1:36:34Rich Roll?

  But it was interesting, you know, and it has changed how I think about this. And of course, the close cousin to laundry, which is detergent.

• 1:36:43Adam Skolnick?

  Dishwashing.

• 1:36:43Rich Roll?

  Dishwashing detergent.

• 1:36:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:45Rich Roll?

  Similarly, where, you know, I often I generally like rinse my dishes before I put them in the dishwasher. And apparently, at least with respect to the latest dishwashers, you don't need to do that. And most of the ecological damage, because the new dishwashers are so eco-efficient and capable that you shouldn't rinse your dishes beforehand and you would save a tremendous amount of water.

• 1:37:10Adam Skolnick?

  They say that if you have eight dishes or more, run the dishwasher every night.

• 1:37:16Rich Roll?

  Right, which I would never do.

• 1:37:17Adam Skolnick?

  That saves more water and energy than if you had the hot water on for two minutes.

• 1:37:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:23Adam Skolnick?

  And so, which I would never do either, but I will say this, I am a cold water clothes washer.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  You are.

• 1:37:29Adam Skolnick?

  I've been a cold water launderer for at least 10 years.

• 1:37:33Rich Roll?

  So, this is the thing that comes up in the podcast. They're like, they make this decision that if you're gonna hire somebody, the first question, maybe the only question you need to ask them is how they do their laundry.

• 1:37:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:37:43Rich Roll?

  If they say they're a cold water person, you, you, you hire them immediately.

• 1:37:46Adam Skolnick?

  Because the idea is like, they, he, he actually hires his friend's firm to go and do like market research into who are these cold water washers? And they all end up having like incredible detail oriented like recall and what models they buy and why they're doing everything. And I am like not that cold water washer. I'm not the guy that's like super hyper detail oriented about every deep thing they do. I'm more of an intuitive cold water washer.

• 1:38:10Rich Roll?

  You just knew. You just like, I feel like cold water is the way to go.

• 1:38:14Adam Skolnick?

  I'm an intuitive.

• 1:38:15Rich Roll?

  It makes sense.

• 1:38:16Adam Skolnick?

  I do the right thing intuitively most of the time.

• 1:38:18Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, okay. Would April agree with that?

• 1:38:22Adam Skolnick?

  I think so.

• 1:38:24Rich Roll?

  I think we just found the quote, the quote for the podcast. I am, I am an intuitive person. Wait, say it again?

• 1:38:31Adam Skolnick?

  I do the right thing intuitively.

• 1:38:33Rich Roll?

  Most of the time. I think that's how you should introduce yourself.

• 1:38:37Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not.

• 1:38:38Rich Roll?

  At a cocktail party.

• 1:38:39Adam Skolnick?

  Who are these super humans that know all this stuff? And I'm like, I'm not that, I'm not that cold water washer. But I am a cold water washer.

• 1:38:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:47Adam Skolnick?

  I also like how the episode is like, what's cool about it to me is he's, he's kind of, even though it's funny to hear him go into Procter and Gamble and, and talk up the people who make Tide and Tide being, apparently Tide is the best detergent to use in cold water because it keeps your, it's engineered to do it.

• 1:39:04Rich Roll?

  And Cascade is apparently at the cutting edge of science in terms of washing dishes.

• 1:39:08Adam Skolnick?

  But you know, he backs it up because like apparently Procter and Gamble's whole campus is wind powered. Like they're, they are doing the right, this is an example of an organization that is look, that is doing what we're suggesting.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think what's cool about it is that it's so easy to just vilify these gigantic conglomerates.

• 1:39:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  When in truth, reality is more nuanced and complicated than that.

• 1:39:31Adam Skolnick?

  And we have to rebuild trust. Institutions, right? Like from both sides and it's not just right wing who's been going after institutions like the news media. It's also people on the left doing it, especially in the health and wellness and the lifestyle industry. And there is an example, there is a time now to rebuild trust institutions and it feels super weird for me to say it since I felt like a rebel most especially from my teenage years till I was in my 30s and until just recently, really. And now I'm the guy like, yes, we need to have more trust in our institutions, which is just so it like, doesn't seem like even sit right for me to say it, but it is true. I do believe that. And this is an example, this episode kind of shows you why that's true.

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I think it's important to, to

• 1:40:20Rich Roll?

  really unpack these counterintuitive narratives in the sense that, listen, if you're the proprietor of an all natural laundry detergent that creates a lot of suds, I'm sure you're very proud of your product and none, none too pleased to find out that actually your goal being to save the planet, you're working at cross purposes with that?

• 1:40:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:41Rich Roll?

  You know, that's disturbing to find out and at the same time to understand that these big corporate players might be onto something worthy of exploration. Because our instinct is we want to, we want to celebrate the little guy or the person who's, or all natural is, you know, by necessity good. And it doesn't always operate that way. You see the same thing in, in philanthropy, like we are emotional beings and we want to donate to the causes that we feel strongly about. And yet from a kind of an effective altruism perspective, that's not necessarily the best use of your money. Like you could save more lives if you just gave it to

• 1:41:20Rich Roll?

  a company that makes malaria tents as opposed to, you know, some organization that's trying to feed underprivileged kids in a food desert urban environment. But our emotions come into play.

• 1:41:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:41:33Rich Roll?

  And we want to believe certain things and I think that complicates all of this.

• 1:41:39Adam Skolnick?

  One reason this is important is just to underline is that he says in the, in his, his podcast episode, 25 billion loads of laundry are done every year in, in, in the United States and Canada. And so these small decisions actually do extrapolate and create quite a big.

• 1:41:56Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. So if everybody just started only washing with cold water. That would be huge.

• 1:42:02Adam Skolnick?

  It would be huge.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  Or if Procter and Gamble, or whoever, comes up with the ultimate laundry detergent that allows you to clean your clothes effectively without heating the water at all, like, that makes a huge difference.

• 1:42:16Adam Skolnick?

  Didn't Adrian Grenier have, though, a counterpoint to detergent pods?

• 1:42:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he did. So, he's coming, I did a podcast interview with him a while ago, it hasn't gone up yet, you know, kind of actor, environmentalist for a long time. He put up a video on Instagram recently about detergent pods, and I talked about it with him on the podcast. Basically, those pods that are wrapped in a very thin layer of plastic are sold on the premise that you just put them in and that wrapping completely dissolves and allows you to wash your clothes, and it cuts down on container costs, etc. But in truth, and I haven't vetted this, so I don't know whether this is true, but from what I understand, what he said and some other experts that he was interviewing or speaking to about

• 1:43:07Rich Roll?

  this, that plastic becomes invisible and porous, but it actually doesn't dissolve. It becomes like this imperceptible gooey gel that just never, ever goes away and ends up, of course, seeping into our waterways and ultimately into our seas, and no doubt, you know, contributing to all manner of ills, whether we're aware of them or not at this point. So, no detergent pods.

• 1:43:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Although, that could end soon, because Marcus Ericsson at Five Gyres was telling me that there, that he's actually in touch with the people at plastic companies that are looking at a new polymer that will, that will make plastic itself, just all plastic that's wrapped up, could become biodegradable at some point. And if that is true, and that does happen, and that's maybe not in the too distant future, there's actually some tests happening right now, then that, that could be a replacement for that.

• 1:44:04Rich Roll?

  We gotta get rid of plastic.

• 1:44:05Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:44:06Rich Roll?

  It seems like-

• 1:44:06Adam Skolnick?

  It's an innovation that, it's our attempt to innovate out of this mess.

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break and pivot to listener questions, shall we?

• 1:44:15Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:44:24Rich Roll?

  Presto, we're back and we materialized a new human. What's up Ted?

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  How are you, man?

• 1:44:29Rich Roll?

  Good to have you here. Ted McDonald is in the house. He's going to contribute to answering these listener questions. Ted is a longtime friend of both Adam and I, but for separate reasons. Like our lot, like it's weird. Like we've known each other. We, I think, I mean, I've known you for like 20 years.

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, solid 20 years.

• 1:44:47Rich Roll?

  And you know Adam through a completely different set of circumstances for an equal amount of time.

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  Which is wild. You guys know each other through LA Yoga?

• 1:44:56Adam Skolnick?

  That's right. Yeah. And LA Yoga, when I was helping to start that publication, we got in contact because he was doing adventure yoga, which he still does, adventure yoga retreats and was already a yoga stalwart in the community. How do you guys?

• 1:45:10Rich Roll?

  Through the yoga community.

• 1:45:11Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  In LA, through Maha Yoga originally, I think, right?

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  We used to go do yoga together.

• 1:45:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So Ted is not only a very accomplished yogi and yogi yoga teacher, you're a yoga studio owner, you're a yoga practitioner, you're an adventure athlete, an endurance athlete, an iron man, a coach. What else? You do lots of stuff, man. A dad.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  A dad. A dad. Yeah. Kindergarten parent as of Wednesday. But lead groups around the world. I think that's one of the, one of the big things. The retreats have been a huge, a huge asset. And bright point in my life, I would say.

• 1:45:50Adam Skolnick?

  And a junk, he's like the, he joins the yoga kind of left, I guess, would that be left brain? Like the yoga world with the high-performance athlete world.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46:01Adam Skolnick?

  In a, in, in his own life, but also working that way with, with different athletes and clients, right?

• 1:46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think, you know, interestingly enough, I ran my first marathon and took my first yoga teacher training with Max Strom. Do you remember Sarah Powers?

• 1:46:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  And Tia Little.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  I remember Max, for sure.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, exactly. Sarah Powers and Tia Little, way back 20-plus years ago. At the same time I did my first marathon. Never thought I would ever do a marathon. And sort of got convinced, I always say, I got suckered into doing my first marathon and just fell in love. I fell in love with training, I fell in love with racing, I fell in love with the experience and the people and the energy and the vibe, and it was just so great. And I, I'll never forget crossing that finish line and in tears. Because I, first of all, wasn't even believing that I could actually do it.

• 1:46:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  But then, I thought, wow, if I could do this, six weeks prior was not part of my sphere of consciousness. Now, what else is there that I don't know that I can do?

• 1:47:06Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  And that started this whole like, well, I'll try a triathlon and then I'll just start adventure racing and then we'll just keep going. And it was that whole thing. At the same time, the yoga for me was always the glue that kind of kept it together.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:19Adam Skolnick?

  There you go.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. It's really cool.

• 1:47:22Adam Skolnick?

  And he left something off his resume.

• 1:47:23Rich Roll?

  What's that?

• 1:47:24Adam Skolnick?

  He coached me to the fourth place finish in the Catalina Swim Run Experience.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, you were coaching Adam?

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:31Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't even know that.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. How did I not know that?

• 1:47:34Adam Skolnick?

  I think I might have told you.

• 1:47:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you did. I don't know. I don't remember hearing that, but that's cool.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then he fired me. No, just kidding.

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  He got fired, right? Now you're with the Envoi guy, right? Like, what happened?

• 1:47:46Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know, you know, things change.

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:47:48Rich Roll?

  We grow, grow out of these relationships.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:47:52Rich Roll?

  Um, but I never grew out of my relationship with Ted. We haven't seen each other in a long time, but we were both at the same wedding until your ride. It was super nice to reconnect and

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:01Rich Roll?

  meet your family and all of that. And I invited you to come by the studio. Adam was like, he should join for the listener questions. We have questions that are right in your wheelhouse, so why not, right?

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  Why not? I love it. I appreciate it.

• 1:48:14Adam Skolnick?

  I will bow out of listener questions

• 1:48:15Rich Roll?

  Good to have you here today.

• 1:48:16Adam Skolnick?

  this time, because you guys will be there.

• 1:48:17Rich Roll?

  No, go back to Ben and Jerry's.

• 1:48:20Adam Skolnick?

  I've got to get

• 1:48:20Rich Roll?

  There is a whaling boat with your name on it headed to Greenland right now.

• 1:48:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's true. I am the ice cream guy on the whaling boat.

• 1:48:28Rich Roll?

  Just stay off the laudanum. Um, all right, our first question is from Nate from Colorado.

• 1:48:34Adam Skolnick?

  Boom.

• 1:48:36Speaker 03

  Hi, Rich. Hi, Adam. This is Nate from Colorado, and yes, it is okay to play this on the air. First of all, I just wanted to say thanks for everything you guys are doing. Roll On has quickly become one of my favorite parts of the podcast, and I look forward to it every two weeks. I love the off schedule, off program banter too, so don't be self conscious about that. Last episode, you guys answered a question about what doing the work means, but what I am wondering is what you do when doing the work becomes stale, stagnant, or an added stressor to life to try and fit in. I've been quote unquote, "doing the work" for a few years now, having adopted a whole food, plant-based diet, and always having a morning routine that has consisted of some

• 1:49:19Speaker 03

  combination of journaling, meditation, and exercise. But after doing this for several years, I find the practice becoming stale and unfulfilling, and it has developed an almost negative connotation for me. It feels like a chore, and it's sort of become a list of conditions I need to meet daily in order to feel okay about my day, as well as feel good about myself mentally. And at times, it feels like it's adding stress to my life, rather than helping me cope with life. So my question is, have you guys ever experienced this? And if so, how did you handle it, and what advice would you offer? Thanks again for all you guys do. It's a constant source of helpful information and inspiration. Thanks again.

• 1:50:02Rich Roll?

  When self-care becomes OCD.

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:05Rich Roll?

  Ted, you want to tackle this?

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. I, you know, I think, I think that it's, it's important to be aware of the present moment. And I think oftentimes, we get into the, you know, rituals that we're doing, and we lose the fact that every single moment is a friggin' miracle. And it's so intense and overwhelming, that I think oftentimes, we step aside, and we don't allow that in. So I just remember on yoga retreats years ago with Max, right? And being in triangle pose, and looking out the window and seeing, it's Zaka Lake, I don't know, did you ever go to Zaka Lake?

• 1:50:52Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:50:53Speaker 02

  Anyway, just looking out the window and seeing this beautiful blue sky, and these green hills, and then all of a sudden, just weeping. And I thought, what is, what is that? Why is that? And I think I realized it was just because I was so overcome by the beauty of the moment. And I think oftentimes, we lose, and I share this a lot on, on retreats or different conversations, it's like, you know, this glass, right? We can just... Feel the shape of it and the immense thought that goes into it. Or, you know, one thing I was thinking is, you know, when you're journaling, how often do you stop and look at, take a magnifying glass and look at the fibers inside the page?

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  Or, like Deepak Chopra used to say, you know, don't just look and go, oh, wow, those flowers, they look so beautiful. Like, stop for a second and feel the immense miracle that really is the moment. And I, and I, and I don't know if this because, this happens because, you know, you know, being someone who had, you know, who felt like I was gonna lose my life at some point, right? And then, you know, being a sober guy now and having that sort of deep sense of gratitude for the moment? Or if that's something you can develop, you know, as someone who hasn't had an experience like that. But I really feel like, no matter what it is, no matter where you are, no matter what

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  you look at, whether it's a person or a thing, there's, there's this, and it's perception, right? And they talk about this a lot. But it's shifting your perception. So, you know, just one more thought, which is, you know, they talk about ashrams, right? You go to ashrams. You need to be happy shoveling the shit before you can be happy doing the other stuff, right? And until you can be happy doing that stuff, I think it's, it will become monotonous. So, a solution, I would say, Nate, is either to shift your perspective on what is actually happening, or maybe take a break. You know, I think the simple thing is just take a break for a moment and live free.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  And, and, and don't be attached to that routine and have this, you know, free experience of doing things and see what comes up from there.

• 1:53:15Rich Roll?

  Should we just get up and leave and let Ted take over?

• 1:53:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:17Rich Roll?

  I think he just solidified his

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  Good lord.

• 1:53:20Rich Roll?

  Value.

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  I'm sorry for loafing for all these months.

• 1:53:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, no, beautifully put. I love it. Yeah, I think.

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  It's about your relationship to the practices and the rituals. And what I sense is an extreme level of rigidity, where there's a lot of self-judgment packed into the doing or the not-doing, right? There's a referendum on how you feel about yourself and who you are that's based upon whether you're adhering to a very strict set of circumstances. Yes, of course, that becomes unsustainable. And I think the solution does lie in holding these things a little bit more lightly and anchoring yourself in the moment and understanding that it's not the ritual per se, or the practice, as much as it is your awareness around the practice and your ability to be present with these practices

• 1:54:13Rich Roll?

  that are the conveyor belt to the transformation that you're seeking. So it sounds like you're holding on so tightly and you've been doing it for so long. Like, I would suggest that if you've been meditating for this amount of time and the result is frustration, there's something broken in this practice altogether, because that's not the intended result that we're looking for here, right? So what exactly are you doing? What is your relationship to that doing? And, you know, if you're coming out of it resentful and burdened, then something is fundamentally wrong. So it's about letting go of the attachment or the meaning that you're attaching to the results of this practice

• 1:54:58Rich Roll?

  that's causing you to self-flagellate and letting go of it altogether. And I suspect that if you stop doing these things and maybe do nothing, you'll have an uncomfortable period where you're like, "Well, I'm supposed to be doing this thing, so my life's not going to move in the right direction until I go back to doing that thing." That's what you need to examine here. And if you are going to journal, journal about that.

• 1:55:20Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. And I'll just add one more thought that came into my head. I spent years listening to Ram Dass, right? And Ram Dass, he said, "All these different techniques are ultimately supposed to go away, and you're just supposed to be living in the moment." And I think it's a little different if you're analyzing your journaling and your thought-thinking and your, you know, drinking water and you're having your vitamins and you're doing all that stuff. I think there's some stuff that you want to do, because that's your medicine. But I also think there are certain things, like you're saying, that you get stuck in. And I think at some point, some of those need to just go away. And then you just live.

• 1:55:58Rich Roll?

  Right, I feel like it's it's upside down, like, the priority is on on like, the practice, as if the practice itself is the result, as opposed to what you're really trying to do is become more connected. Right.

• 1:56:12Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it's mindfulness, right? You're trying to take mindfulness away from the mat, away from rigidity, and into the world, you know, like, behold the glass, like, I think of, I know Louis.

• 1:56:21Rich Roll?

  There is no glass.

• 1:56:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right. There is no glass. It's like, you know, you want to take that, you want to take that out and be in awe of as, as, like, you can't live your life that way, but you can find moments.

• 1:56:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:56:33Adam Skolnick?

  And so, like, those mindfulness moments, maybe that's it, mindfulness moments, mindfulness moments.

• 1:56:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Because if the practice is drained of its beauty, then you're missing the whole point altogether.

• 1:56:45Adam Skolnick?

  Well, he probably feels that he is missing it, that's why he's asking that question. But also, I mean, I don't think it's that unnatural to hit, to hit a plateau, is it? I mean, like, a.

• 1:56:54Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:56:55Adam Skolnick?

  You know, like, the plateau's happening.

• 1:56:56Rich Roll?

  But that's an opportunity, obviously, that's, that's like, you're on the precipice of a breakthrough, like, something is trying to be communicated to you that could take you to a higher plane. So, focus the mindfulness and the journaling on what that block is and the frustration that you're having, and I think there's, you know, you're, there's, there's this golden opportunity for you to kind of ascend to the next level in your awareness.

• 1:57:21Adam Skolnick?

  The resistance is, like, overcoming that's, like, gonna be beautiful. Yeah. I like it.

• 1:57:28Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:57:29Adam Skolnick?

  All right, let's move on to the Bay Area.

• 1:57:32Speaker 04

  Aloha, Rich and Adam, it's Heidi here from NorCal. So, awesome to hear you guys back on a regular roll, no pun intended there. I have a question for you about finding the right coach fit. Next year, I'm making the leap from Ironman distance to Ultraman, and I've done multi-day events, triathlons.

• 1:57:52Speaker 04

  But nothing compared to Ultraman yet, so I'm really excited. And I've trained off and on for the past 10 years with a triathlon team, taking on some one-on-one coaching before the pandemic has closed everything. So anyway, this year, my team is back and they are training together, kind of like rising like the phoenix. And now I'm thinking about my own coaching situation. And my question is, what are the best questions to interview the coach for a good fit? I think most coaches, including myself as nutritionist, take an intro screening call. I'm interested in data, but it's not the only thing that drives me. And also, I manage bipolar type one, and it's connected to my why. So I'm inspired by Courtney Duhall

• 1:58:35Speaker 04

  for not having a coach. I plan out my, my self coaching by one week at a time. It's worked out well. But I think I could benefit from having an objective, fluid structure, feedback. And yeah, we'll see where it goes. You can have permission to play this on the air. Mahalo. Thank you, guys, both.

• 1:58:53Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Heidi. This question has Ted's name written all over it. So I'm going to defer to Ted. But I will say this one thing. When interviewing a prospective new coach, the only question you need to ask this coach is, what are your laundry habits?

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:59:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right?

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, apparently.

• 1:59:10Rich Roll?

  Do you wash in cold water?

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:13Rich Roll?

  That's it.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  If not, you're out.

• 1:59:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:16Speaker 02

  I was wondering about the dryer, because we hang our clothes.

• 1:59:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  As often as we can. There you go.

• 1:59:21Rich Roll?

  Obviously, that's the best thing to do.

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  I mean, is that better?

• 1:59:23Rich Roll?

  Of course, that's better.

• 1:59:24Speaker 02

  No, you mean, is it better than hot water and when the wash? Like, should I cold water? You still should cold water.

• 1:59:30Rich Roll?

  Cold water and still cold water.

• 1:59:31Speaker 02

  And get tied.

• 1:59:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, opting out of the dryer and washing with hot water does not absolve you.

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:59:38Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I'm glad that's what I got tied, because now I've got this whole, I'm going to talk to DK about it. I think there's all these old school brands that I'd like us to consider for ads.

• 1:59:48Rich Roll?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:59:50Adam Skolnick?

  Brogan and I have been talking about it.

• 1:59:52Rich Roll?

  Twinkies.

• 1:59:53Adam Skolnick?

  Oreos are vegan?

• 1:59:54Rich Roll?

  Twinkies.

• 1:59:55Adam Skolnick?

  Come on, Oreos.

• 1:59:56Rich Roll?

  The underreported nutritional benefits of prepackaged Hostess products.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:00:04Rich Roll?

  All right. Ted, coaching.

• 2:00:05Speaker 02

  Yes, Heidi, I would say that, I mean, I don't know, you know, for me as a coach, one of the first things that I, if I'm going to hire a coach, you know, whether it's a, so I've hired coaches for different events, specific events, right? I trained myself pretty well, but then if I'm doing like Ironman, I had a coach, right? Kilimanjaro, I put together a team for that just because I felt like I wanted to make sure I had the right body stuff and nutrition stuff and supplement stuff and training and all that sort of thing. I, as a coach and as an athlete, I would like to know that someone, that I feel like someone can get me there, right? I mean, that's, it's as simple as that, like, can they, can they get me there? That's the first thing.

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  Is there a vibe, right? Because you're going to be spending some time with them, there's going to be conversations, there's going to be back and forth, email, texts, workouts. Do they understand you? Do they not understand you? I personally, like someone who has had some experience, I don't know, like, they don't necessarily need to have done the Ultraman, but it, you know, some sort of...

• 2:01:15Rich Roll?

  Have they coached other athletes who have done that race?

• 2:01:18Speaker 02

  Either that, or have they, do they understand what it's going to take to get through it? Meaning, have they suffered a certain amount? Do they understand what it's going to take to recover from one day to the next, right? Because it's a stage race versus a 24 or 48 hour non-stop race. So I think those kinds of questions, but I think ultimately, have they had some experience? Is the vibe there for you? And do you think that they can actually get you there? You know, I talked to a guy recently who's, who tried to climb Everest and didn't make it, and he said that he thought it was his coach. So that's either A, passing the buck, right? Or it's maybe the coach was not right, maybe there was not the right vibe there.

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  So I think that it's an important relationship when you take on a big event like that.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's what I would, that's what I would say.

• 2:02:14Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think that's all right. I would agree with all of that. On the vibe piece, I think you need to be clear on what your needs are. Like, do you need somebody to be an emotional support for you? Or do you just need the workouts? Like, do you need feedback? And what does that feedback look like? Do you need emotional feedback? Do you just need metrics feedback? Do you like to be left alone? Do you want somebody to tell you what to eat for breakfast? Like, all of that is going to be different depending upon the athlete. And you want to make sure that you're in a good fit with a coach who can meet the needs that you require. But it requires clarity on what those needs are, first of all, so you're not mismatched.

• 2:02:53Speaker 02

  Right. And I, that's, that's a good, that's a good point, because there's so much that goes into, see, I, I look at, as a coach, you know, I want someone to be getting body work done. I want that to be more balanced. I don't want it to just be metrics and numbers and speed. It has to have, nutrition has to happen properly. Sleep has to happen properly. So there, there is that. And life happens, right? So in any relationship, in any event that we do, stuff happens. Kids, you know, we get sick, kids go to school, they, they're sick, or, you know.

• 2:03:25Rich Roll?

  Is this coach going to be understanding of what the kind of gestalt of your life is?

• 2:03:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and it depends on how deep it is, right? Is it just a simple plan to say, here's the plan, see you later? Or is it actually going to be more of an in-depth relationship? So.

• 2:03:39Rich Roll?

  And do you respond to positive feedback or negative? Like, do you need somebody to say, good job? Or do you want somebody to say, hey, you're really like off the reservation here? Like, are you gonna, are you gonna balk if they give you, you know, some negative feedback? Is that gonna be a problem? Like, all of that is very personal. And I think, with respect to Ultraman, as somebody who's done Ultraman a couple of times, it's very different from Ironman. So, most people that coach Ironman athletes, most likely have not coached somebody for Ultraman. Ultraman is completely different. Like Ted said, it's a stage race. It's fundamentally a cycling race, more than anything, with, you know, a couple of appendages tagged on to it. And the way that you train for it is going to

• 2:04:23Rich Roll?

  look very different from the way that you train for any other kind of triathlon. You don't need to do any transition work. You don't need to do brick work. You don't really need to do any kind of tempo or speed work, for the most part, unless you're already super accomplished and you need, you know, to. To sort of hone that razor's edge. So it depends upon your skill level at the time as well. So finding somebody who can meet all of those needs. I mean, it's a tall order, but very doable. And I'm glad that you're looking for a coach because I think you should have a coach for a race like this. There is this temptation. And I've heard this not just from you, but from other people like, oh, I heard Courtney DeWalter and she's all about intuitive. And it's like, you got to understand, like, she is, you know, an outlier.

• 2:05:05Rich Roll?

  Like, most people left to their own intuition to train the way that they feel are going to lead themselves down, you know, a dark alleyway and it ain't going to be good.

• 2:05:15Speaker 02

  And she had plenty of coaching along the way in the beginning.

• 2:05:17Rich Roll?

  Right. She has a foundation of that, of course.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 2:05:20Adam Skolnick?

  Isn't it a 10 kilometer open water swim, then like, couple of hundred on the bike?

• 2:05:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, forget the 10 K swim, whatever. But like, yeah, you're gonna, you're going 90 on the bike the first day and 171 on the bike the next day. And then you got a little double marathon you got to run in there. But, you know, it's all very doable.

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  That's hilarious. That's the dessert.

• 2:05:41Adam Skolnick?

  My, my advice is to make sure they can do that whistle with the pinkies in their lips. Like, that would be key.

• 2:05:48Rich Roll?

  While swimming the 10 K?

• 2:05:49Adam Skolnick?

  I want a coach that can whistle me like that and then wear a headband at all times on Zoom.

• 2:05:54Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:05:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:56Rich Roll?

  And the proper, and the proper snorkel mask.

• 2:05:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:59Rich Roll?

  Key.

• 2:06:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And do they make you wear a swim mask slash snorkel mask?

• 2:06:05Rich Roll?

  Mandated. All right. We'll do one more question. And this one's from me and it's tailored specifically to Ted since he's here. And I think it's a question that, that I think will be beneficial to a lot of people. And it's basically just about how you, Ted, see the role of yoga in the context of being an athlete. Like, I often look at yoga and wish that I had been an avid practitioner of yoga when I was in my competitive swimming years and understanding the benefits of that, not just for kind of strength and balance and agility, but also restorative and injury prevention. And of course, you know, the

• 2:06:47Rich Roll?

  true benefit of it, which is kind of, you know, spiritual awareness. So how do you think about how yoga fits into being an athlete and performance specifically? And how do you sort of talk about how you recommend yoga for the kind of everyday or weekend warrior athlete?

• 2:07:08Speaker 02

  I recommend yoga for the everyday weekend warrior athlete, you know, two to three times a week if they could, but the truth is, most people are like once a week, right? And that's it. And I almost see it as if you were gonna go run once a week. You could go for a jog once a week and go slow and go two, three miles or four miles or five miles. Once a week is not really gonna get you to a marathon, if you're doing that. So yoga, I think, is a similar thing. And in my opinion, it is, it is, again, like I said earlier, the glue that brings it all together. The first class I ever took was Brian Kest, back in Santa Monica, right?

• 2:07:49Rich Roll?

  Where you used to go up the stairs, and then there'd be like a little chest and you could just leave whatever money you wanted there. It was like donation only.

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:07:59Adam Skolnick?

  Early days of the yoga scene.

• 2:08:02Speaker 02

  I think that, so that day, I fell in love with yoga because it was, it was, as an athlete, growing up, playing baseball and football and lacrosse, back on the East Coast, you know, I started that, I was sore for four days and I couldn't believe it. And I could barely hold my body up. And I thought, wow, this is, this is real, first of all. And it just made me feel so good. And just having stress in life and, you know, I was, at that time, I don't know how sober I was, it was maybe a few years, right? So it was just still stressful. And it was a big sigh of relief for me. And every single

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  class that I went to was a big sigh of relief. And that, then I started doing more. So I did that for almost three years, just yoga. Then I started running. I thought, I want a little cardio in my life. So I'm gonna add a couple miles, a couple times a week. And ran two miles and was sore for four days, because I didn't run for almost three years. Then started to run again and realized how much the yoga practice actually helped me just balance out my body. So from a physical standpoint, in my opinion, I think that it is absolutely 100% necessary because from an athletic standpoint, you're just pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and trying to get faster and stronger and faster

• 2:09:27Speaker 02

  and stronger and faster and stronger. And there's not really a sense, I mean, now in the last maybe decade, there's been a lot more attention to recovery. But in my opinion, yoga is definitely something that people should be doing on a regular basis. Now, obviously, the word yoga is such a huge umbrella. So what I would recommend is, you know, one or two classes a week, that's a little bit more of a flow style, and at least one or maybe two classes a week, that's yin. Because sitting in those poses for a really long time and lengthening your connective tissue, I think, has a huge benefit. I feel like that's one of the reasons why I've been able to keep my flexibility, even

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  though I'll do endurance events still. So from a physical standpoint, I think that's a big thing. I think that, you know, back when I was adventure racing, 2001 through five, basically, is kind of my four, five-year stint in adventure races, and anything from two- to five-hour sprint races, all the way up to 24- to 48-hour races. And I remember passing Team Balance Bar, and the guy was cramping up, and he was freaking out because his body was just locked up. And our team practiced yoga, I mean, we also hydrated, and we had, like, we thought about all this stuff back then. And in a way, it was sort of like, oh, wow, that hasn't happened to us, thankfully. Now, whether it's the yoga,

• 2:10:51Speaker 02

  or whether it's the nutrition, or whether that guy was having a bad day, or just got over some sickness, we have no idea, right? But the point is that I feel like it balanced out my athletic ability and continues to this day. That was 20 years ago, 15 years ago. My goal ultimately is to continue to do what I love to do for as long as I possibly can, and yoga will absolutely 100% be part of that. And so, I don't, to me, I don't know that I'm going to be doing, you know, 100 milers, or, you know, ultimately, maybe a half marathon, trail run when I'm 100 years old, or hike, you know, I don't care if I walk or hike. But the idea is to be active, right?

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  And I think that the the mental aspect and the spiritual, I think spiritual aspect is a whole, you know, other, you know, episode, but the point is that I think from a mental aspect, you you see yourself a little bit differently. And I think that the yoga develops that over time. Oftentimes, people come, as you know, they'll come in because, oh, I have the shoulder thing, or, oh, I have a back thing, or whatever it is. But then, over time, you start to realize, oh, wow, I feel better. And then you start to perform better outside. So, you know, we've talked in the past about the BMC guys. So I used to work with, for about a decade, I worked with a professional cycling team. And it was like pulling teeth to try to get these guys in the yoga room, you know, because there's

• 2:12:16Rich Roll?

  You would share like videos and they're trying to get in the poses, like comical.

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:21Rich Roll?

  You'd go on their training camps and stuff like that.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  That's right. And but they're so steeped in their idea of what cycling, professional cycling is supposed to be, that to have them veer a little bit was so challenging. I think that that's changed in general among athletes. And and I think that's a huge, huge thing. I I think that ultimately, it helps us with everything. It helps us with how we live and how we operate and how we communicate. And I think the yoga practice brings a softer side. It brings the yin to the yang, right? And instead of, you know, 100 miles, 200 miles, 900 miles, it's it's sort of like, hey, you know, let's let's experience this. Let's experience the fiber of our of our network,

• 2:13:06Speaker 02

  the fibers of our journal, and and have that be part of the experience, not just the numbers. And all of us are not competing as professionals. So I don't know, you know, about other people. And maybe it's different when you have to meet these certain metrics and perform a certain, you know, at a certain speed, etc. But I think for me, it's it's a it's a it's a must do for sure, you know, and two or three times a week, I'd say minimum.

• 2:13:35Rich Roll?

  Right. Well put.

• 2:13:37Speaker 02

  That's too much.

• 2:13:39Rich Roll?

  It's like, no, also like just qualify your bona fides here a little bit. I mean, you did Kilimanjaro, you've done all these adventure races. How many have you done? You've done Ironmans, right?

• 2:13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I actually have only done one official Ironman. I remember, so my first marathon was in 2000, then I did the Malibu triathlon.

• 2:13:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  That was my first ever triathlon. And then I went immediately to adventure racing and started with what used to be the high-tech adventure racing series. I don't know if you remember that?

• 2:14:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:14:05Speaker 02

  So I got a couple of people in and I thought, oh, wow, if I can get into the elite division, you know, that would be great. So we found, I was at a mud run. This is before Tough Mudder and Spartan, right? So we were at the mud run at Camp Pendleton and the second place woman was right behind me. First place woman was a bit in front of me, second place. So I just kind of followed her to the showers and heard her talking about marathons. And I said, oh, hey, by the way, ever done any adventure racing? And she said, oh, no, but we were gonna try to do this high-tech. I said, well, I'm building a team. We just did this one, so why don't we start training together? She said, yeah, moving up to Pasadena. She became our female and we started competing and we did the balance bar 24-hour adventure

• 2:14:45Speaker 02

  racing series and we do the Cal ECO series. And it was amazing. I mean, you know, it's funny because, you know, this goes a little bit back to Heidi's question too, which is, there's one thing to do, a workout for an hour, 45 minutes an hour. It's another thing to do one to three hours. It's another thing to go three to five or six. It's another thing to go 10, 11, 12 in a day. It's another thing to go overnight, right? And you mentioned with Courtney, you guys were talking about hallucinations, right? I mean, it's, so it's a whole other experience when you sort of walk through that looking glass. And that's what happens when you go overnight. It's obviously not something, it's gonna be a different thing, Ultraman, right? Because you get to actually sleep a little bit.

• 2:15:27Speaker 02

  But anyway, and then I would say that, then Leadville, and I eventually did Ironman. And then Kilimanjaro was a few years ago, which was amazing. What did you do at Leadville? I got frost bit. Frost nip. Frost nip from Kilimanjaro, yeah. I did the Leadville mountain bike, sorry. Yeah, that's right. Not the runs, to be clear. Because and the bike just happened, actually, a couple of days ago.

• 2:15:50Rich Roll?

  That's right. Alex Howes.

• 2:15:52Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah, he was, I think.

• 2:15:54Rich Roll?

  Well, there was the, they did a gravel version also, I think.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 2:15:59Rich Roll?

  Maybe I'm wrong.

• 2:16:00Speaker 02

  I think Steamboat was the next day.

• 2:16:02Rich Roll?

  Right, the day after.

• 2:16:03Speaker 02

  I think Alex Howes won the gravel. And Stetna, Stetna was pretty high up in Leadville. I don't see, but, but he's now racing gravel, I think, if I'm not mistaken.

• 2:16:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was on BMC.

• 2:16:13Adam Skolnick?

  But you did a 50 mile race too, a run, right?

• 2:16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 50, 50K a few times, right? So, so 100 milers in the, in, in the future, little kids now. So, so training is not as, as ample all that time. But I love, you know, I love, I love seeing what my body can do in a healthy way. So I have no interest in pounding myself into the ground sooner than I need to be. But I do love to experience the unknown in a way. So I love setting up these experiences. That's why I said, let's do Otillo in November.

• 2:16:50Adam Skolnick?

  Right, we're gonna be teammates.

• 2:16:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, you are?

• 2:16:52Speaker 02

  You're gonna try that.

• 2:16:53Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna be tethered to him and he's gonna run.

• 2:16:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:16:56Adam Skolnick?

  And I'm gonna, I'm, yes. I'm gonna try to find a, a chair with, with, like, not a wheelchair, more like a lounge chair with wheels.

• 2:17:03Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:17:05Adam Skolnick?

  Now, then I'll be, I'll be, I'll be the guy on the water. I'll lead the swim. But we're still only gonna do, I think we're just doing the 15, whatever, the 15.

• 2:17:13Speaker 02

  Whatever, yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, whatever.

• 2:17:15Rich Roll?

  That's super cool.

• 2:17:16Adam Skolnick?

  I don't have time to train. I'm in the zero to three hour category.

• 2:17:20Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. The other thing I'll, I'll, I'll add to my, you know, I've been patting myself on the back here. But, but the Inca Trail, so the Inca Trail was just super fun. So normally it's a four day event. And I was leading a retreat to Peru. We had about, whatever, 17, 20 people. And my friend, who's an ultra guy now, he said, hey, man, why don't we, why don't we run the Inca Trail? I said, why, you know, why? You don't do that, right? And he goes, why not? You know, I said, oh, good question. So we talked to Carlos, my guy that I've been dealing with since 2006, going down there. He's my travel guide. And I said, Carlos, come on, man, we gotta, we gotta run the Inca Trail.

• 2:17:58Rich Roll?

  How many miles is it?

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Why would you wanna do that? 22, I think it's just 22. And it goes over a 14,000 foot peak and then down to 11,000, then over 13,000 foot peak, right? So it's not. That big of a deal as far as like a big deal goes, but no one goes in one day.

• 2:18:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:18:14Speaker 02

  Right. And so, and it took, and we didn't, we trotted it and you know, it was kind of run hike and it was his first thing. But to do that and then to get, have you been to Machu Picchu? Have you been to Machu Picchu? Oh my gosh. So there is the sun gate that as soon as you come across and you see the sun, then you're looking down onto Machu Picchu. And every single retreat that I've ever led there, I always walk people up and I have them close their eyes and then they just open their eyes to see Machu Picchu. And you get that same kind of, you know, awe inspiring feeling and to have run all of this over the course of the day and then get there. We were both just going, oh my God, you know, we're just in tears from the experience. So it was a very cool thing.

• 2:18:56Speaker 02

  And the reason I say that is not because, you know, it was any athletic feat. I mean, it is a decent athletic feat, but more so about that's the motivation, I think, is to find these experiences like that. Like running the backbone trail, you know, or mountain biking, like different things. And you've alluded to that on your podcast multiple times, but is to find these things that just push us a little bit more and to, and to give us an experience that we wouldn't necessarily have instead of, you know, living in that little box that we sometimes tend to just fall into.

• 2:19:29Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 2:19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:32Rich Roll?

  Will you come back and do a formal coach's corner?

• 2:19:35Speaker 02

  I'd love to. I'd love to.

• 2:19:37Rich Roll?

  Coach's corner.

• 2:19:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:40Rich Roll?

  Beautifully put, my friend. Thank you.

• 2:19:42Speaker 02

  Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.

• 2:19:44Rich Roll?

  If people want to connect with you, where's the best place to direct them? Do you have any retreats coming up that you're putting together?

• 2:19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm in the midst of putting together a Malibu retreat in November. And then next year I have a few things. I started doing a little research into Bhutan and Nepal. I just, I think that I'd like to hike up a little bit to some Buddhist temples out there. But as far as connecting, you know, Teddy McDonald on all the social media, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Not as active on Twitter, but I would say that Malibu and then, you know, we'll see what happens next year, but I, I just, again, I just, I want to continue to kind of create. You know, the unknown.

• 2:20:30Rich Roll?

  And are you looking for coaching clients?

• 2:20:33Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah, no, it's not. No, it's not.

• 2:20:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:20:36Speaker 02

  Yep. So we got the yoga studio in Malibu. And then do some online stuff, Five Point Yoga.

• 2:20:40Rich Roll?

  Is it open now? Are you teaching in the studio? Or is it still?

• 2:20:44Speaker 02

  I am.

• 2:20:45Rich Roll?

  You are?

• 2:20:45Speaker 02

  So yeah, so since April, we slowly started coming back. And I thought, oh, yay, we're coming back, we're coming back. And then all of a sudden, the Delta variant sort of like put a little bit of a damper on that. But people do still come to the studio. So if you're in Malibu, then definitely come by and check us out. We have a limited amount of classes, but we also do online classes. So if you're looking to get into yoga, I'm happy to sort of give you a little bit of a thing. Actually, I started streaming once the pandemic hit, I started streaming. Adam did a little piece for the New York Times, actually.

• 2:21:14Adam Skolnick?

  He's in the New York Times piece.

• 2:21:15Speaker 02

  Which was great. But just because I felt like back then, it was really important to start to share our resources as individuals. I really felt like that was important. So I thought if there's anything that I know how to do, it's help people move through stress. And it was a really stressful time, so I felt like that was important. And I kept doing that once a week. So usually on Mondays, I do a little yoga for athletes. My friend is the race director for the Malibu Half Marathon, which happens in November. So we kind of stream to my channels and her channel. And otherwise, it's for the members that come and join us. But I'm happy to have any of your listeners be a guest and.

• 2:21:55Adam Skolnick?

  And you do a Jackson retreat in the winter, right?

• 2:21:58Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every year, we go to Jackson Hole. Tony Horton, who's a good buddy of mine, creator of P90X. So he and I lead Ted and Tony's ski yoga trip too. I laugh because it's like one of the most fun.

• 2:22:12Rich Roll?

  Sounds like so chest pounding, though. Like a little intimidating.

• 2:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's funny, people are like, you know, I'm a snowboarder. Or I can't really see, and Jackson Hole is intense, right? So there's plenty of things to do as far as plenty of terrain for beginners, intermediates. And there's plenty of people who will come on the retreat and not ski. Because it's Jackson, it's Jackson Hole, the Grand Tetons are right down the block. Yellowstone is around the corner. Or so. It's an amazing place. So you don't necessarily have to. And the thing is, we do yoga in the morning, yoga in the evening. Tony's a little bit more of a chest pounder, where my whole idea is to help people in the beginning, in the beginning of the day, or the end of the day, either recovery at the end of the day, so yin, or in the beginning of the day, just kind of set you up for the best ski day.

• 2:22:59Speaker 02

  And if you're a skier and you haven't done yoga before, skiing, it will change your life. Because you just feel like a different human being. You just feel ready to, to.

• 2:23:09Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 2:23:10Speaker 02

  The mountains.

• 2:23:10Rich Roll?

  Sounds dope, man.

• 2:23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:11Rich Roll?

  I want to go.

• 2:23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:12Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 2:23:13Speaker 02

  Should go.

• 2:23:14Rich Roll?

  Right on, man. We did it. We kept it under three hours.

• 2:23:17Speaker 02

  We did.

• 2:23:19Rich Roll?

  Yesterday at this time, I thought, there's no way we're going to be able to talk for more than 45 minutes.

• 2:23:24Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:23:24Rich Roll?

  I go through this every, every time. Yeah.

• 2:23:27Speaker 02

  Imposter syndrome?

• 2:23:28Rich Roll?

  A little bit of that.

• 2:23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:29Rich Roll?

  Also, just a sense of being like unprepared.

• 2:23:33Speaker 02

  But they, look at us. We, we read a climate report.

• 2:23:36Rich Roll?

  We did. You feel good?

• 2:23:40Speaker 02

  Me?

• 2:23:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:41Speaker 02

  I feel good. I feel, I feel verified.

• 2:23:43Rich Roll?

  All right. You are. I verify you.

• 2:23:45Speaker 02

  I am thus verified.

• 2:23:46Rich Roll?

  You have, you are, you have a blue check in my heart.

• 2:23:50Speaker 02

  Aw, thanks, man. That's all, that's all that matters. Mostly.

• 2:23:54Rich Roll?

  Ted, thank you for dropping in. I appreciate it.

• 2:23:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely, man. Thanks for having me.

• 2:23:58Rich Roll?

  For sure. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I don't take your attention for granted. Again, you can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. I'm at Rich Roll on all the stuff. If you'd like to send us a question for consideration on the show, leave us a message at 424-235-4626. You could check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll have links to all the stuff that we talked about today. And that's it.

• 2:24:34Rich Roll?

  I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Blake Curtis for videoing the show. We got a new team member, I pointed out. Dan Drake is in the house. He's going to be doing lots of video stuff and all kinds of other yet to be determined stuff. So, welcome, Dan, to the RRP. Jessica Miranda for graphics. David Greenberg for taking portraits today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. We got our boy DK on advertiser relationships. And theme music, as always, by Tyler Trapper and Harry, my boys. Appreciate the love, you guys. See you back here soon. Until then, peace.

• 2:25:16Adam Skolnick?

  And congrats to Jason, 400th episode today.

• 2:25:19Rich Roll?

  Is that right?

• 2:25:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 2:25:20Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that. Thank you, Jason. He is the OG of this organization.

• 2:25:27Adam Skolnick?

  He's the OG coyote.

• 2:25:28Rich Roll?

  Thanks, Jason. Namaste. I feel like Ted should say that.

• 2:25:32Adam Skolnick?

  Namaste. Namaste, everyone.

• 2:25:35Rich Roll?

  Namaste.