Roll On: A Little Bit of Everything All Of The Time

Insane feats of endurance. Space-traveling billionaires. Dystopian musical comedy specials. Record-breaking freediving depths. And of course, UFOs. Today is a little bit of everything, all of the time. Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein myself and my podcast co-pilot Adam Skolnick break bread on matters high-minded and mildly entertaining. For those new to the show, ‘Roll On’ is about stories that deserve a brighter spotlight, buttressed with a bit of show and tell, wins of the week, and rounded out with answers to questions posed on our voicemail, which you can ring up at (424) 235-4626. Aside from serving as my magnanimous sidecar hype-beast, Adam Skolnick is an 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. Some of the many topics covered today include: Richard Branson’s successful spaceflight and the billionaire race to space; the Pentagon’s efforts to de-stigmatize reporting UFO sightings and their recent release of unclassified reports on aerial phenomena; Our summer must-watch list; Robbie Balenger’s Colorado Crush & Timothy Olson’s PCT FKT attempt; Lachlan Morton’s Alt-Tour; a 2021 Tour de France wrap-up; and Vertical Blue freediving records In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you adjust to post-pandemic parenting? How do you create a healthier body image? Will there be future RRP gatherings and events? Thank you to Eric from South Bend, Zach from West Virginia, and Chris from Rockland, California for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll616 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon616 Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, fellow travelers. It is I, Rich Roll, once again, after a brief respite, the nature of which will soon be clear, here in brotherhood with my podcast husband, Mr. Adam Skolnick, Master of Pen, Scroll, and Word, here to pontificate, to traverse a diversity of terrain, both high-minded and perhaps frivolous. For those new to the Roll On edition of the podcast, this is all about stories, big and small, what catches our attention, what deserves a brighter spotlight. We typically buttress that with a bit of show and tell. We share a few wins of the week, and we round it all out by answering some of the questions

• 1:55Rich Roll?

  dropped on our voicemail, which you can ring up at 424-235-4626. What is going on, my man? Just sitting here contemplating the magnificent interdependence of all things.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  Well, that should be chalked up as frivolous.

• 2:12Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, it's supposed to be frivolous?

• 2:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:14Adam Skolnick?

  The way I approach it is very frivolous, though. I approach it like, yeah, like, all the people that can give me, end up working towards giving me my snacks.

• 2:23Rich Roll?

  Listen, a little existential angst is, is good, you know, fuel for the fire.

• 2:28Adam Skolnick?

  But I don't think it's angst, you know, it's like, I have, maybe it's fatherhood, or maybe it's insomnia, but I have been focused on the great mesh of society and how so many people play their role. And in so doing, you know, society works and it's kind of frays sometimes and there's like little holes that we have to patch up, but for the most part, we are so interdependent, we don't even think about it. We don't really take time to think about how much others do for us and we do for others. Just by playing our role, I think it's a beautiful thing.

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  Did you do DMT over the weekend?

• 3:06Adam Skolnick?

  I wish.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Adam Skolnick?

  I wish.

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  But cogs in the wheel of a matrix that although perhaps flawed at times, does cohere.

• 3:15Adam Skolnick?

  It coheres.

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 3:17Adam Skolnick?

  It feels coherent.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 3:18Adam Skolnick?

  At most of the time, even.

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  We're just, we're tiny little cells.

• 3:23Adam Skolnick?

  We are.

• 3:23Rich Roll?

  In the microbiome of a greater ecosystem.

• 3:26Adam Skolnick?

  We're ants in the.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  We play our small little part with, with being blithely unaware of the greater mechanisms at play.

• 3:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right, and occasionally, things fail, like when the sewage system of Los Angeles failed for like seven hours and 17 million gallons of raw sewage spilled out around Dockweiler Beach in the Santa Monica Bay. It fails sometimes.

• 3:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Adam Skolnick?

  That is not a criticism of the good people of the sewage treatment plant. It just happened that it was a failure.

• 3:54Rich Roll?

  Shit goes sideways. It is weird.

• 3:55Adam Skolnick?

  Literally shit went sideways.

• 3:57Rich Roll?

  Here, everybody knows that for a period of, I don't know, you might know better, how many days after there's a rainstorm that you just don't go in the ocean? And we all have just normalized that, like, okay, you don't go in. And then at some point, we decide, I guess it's okay to go back in.

• 4:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, no, now, but there, there is a way to figure it out. You can go on the LA County website, but after this, they were really taking a lot of tests. And so now everything is good, except for like one beach. So we're back in. I got back in on Saturday. I was like a week out of the water.

• 4:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Adam Skolnick?

  Got the gills wet again. It was fun, but everything's good. We have a family of red-tailed hawks in the yard that live in our yard, which is pretty cool.

• 4:35Rich Roll?

  That's cool. You've moved into a new abode.

• 4:37Adam Skolnick?

  We moved into the Hawks Nest. I guess that's what I'm gonna name it, maybe.

• 4:41Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 4:42Adam Skolnick?

  I'm trying to name it.

• 4:50Rich Roll?

  On that subject of being cells in a greater

• 4:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  macroorganism, you really get that. That really gets hammered home when you are in a plane and you're descending into Los Angeles and you just see the grid.

• 5:04Adam Skolnick?

  I agree.

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  It just goes forever and all the cars on the freeway that are like blood cells delivering oxygen to the various organs.

• 5:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:12Rich Roll?

  So that it can all work as a greater system. And it makes you think, on some level, we are just unconsciously participating in some grander play where we play this tiny little role that allows the whole thing to function. And it's a trip, man.

• 5:28Adam Skolnick?

  It is a trip. We're all the stars of our own great grand opera that no one else is watching.

• 5:34Rich Roll?

  How do you know? Somebody very well may be watching.

• 5:38Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe. But also, the honeycomb that is New York, kind of the same thing. You go, you drop in and you're, that's when you can feel small in a city. You know, often, for me, I like to get out to nature to feel the reductionist. But that's what's some of the beautiful things about New York. One of the many things that's so exciting about New York is that you feel so small in this amazing hive of activity.

• 6:01Rich Roll?

  I feel very at home there and I feel very alive. And also, I don't necessarily feel small. I feel much more plugged in than I do here in Los Angeles. So on the metaphor of the hive and the bee, am I taking pollen from Los Angeles and pollinating New York? Or is it vice versa? I don't know. There's some sort of cross-pollination happening.

• 6:23Adam Skolnick?

  You're cross-pollinating, my friend.

• 6:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But I did spend nine days in New York, which is why we had to take a bit of a respite from Roland because I was out of town. It's my first trip back there since before the pandemic. I think I visited shortly before everything locked down and it was frickin' awesome to be there.

• 6:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Rich Roll?

  I just get such an energy boost from being in the city. And despite what people may be hearing about law and order and about everything being shut down and it being a city monopolized by fear. My experience was very different. I mean, I was in lower Manhattan. You know, if you go to midtown, there's a lot of stuff that's shut down and who knows what's going on in all those office buildings. But downtown, there's just so much young energy, like everybody's out on the street. And all the cafes have, you know, created these outdoor dining situations that, you know, by all accounts, look like they're going to be permanent. Yeah. Which has made a lot of the streets much more walkable, much more bikeable. A lot of the streets on the Lower East Side are actually cordoned off to traffic. Is that where you were, Lower East?

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I stayed on the Lower East Side. I had a bike that I could ride around, which was awesome. Cool. And it was so much fun. And what's great about New York is all the synchronicities that you put yourself in a position to experience. And my history with New York is that there is no other place on earth where that happens with such frequency. Like, I ran into, so people know Davey Greenberg, who shoots photographs for us. I ran into Davey's brother, who I'd never met. I just knew what he looked like from Davey's Instagram. Oh, really? You never, you didn't plan that? No, I just, I just saw him and I was like, hey, Niall, you know, what's up? And then I ran into Davey's girlfriend. Oh, really? Who was like staying in the same hotel as me. I mean, it was, it was wild. And

• 8:11Rich Roll?

  it's just so fun to be in the flow of life there. And everything is so accessible. Everything's five to 10 minutes away and you can get so much done. And I just felt this resurgence of life, like I felt like myself again, which was really cool. Where does Rich Roll stay in New York City? I stayed, I stayed at the Public Hotel. Okay. I'd never stayed there before. Public NYC? But it's pretty centrally located, like right in the Bowery. Cool. It's pretty great. The reason for that trip was Yes. uh, multifold. I mean, it came about because, uh, Daniel Hoom agreed to be on the podcast. That episode just went up. Uh, I got to dine at his extraordinary 11 Madison

• 8:52Rich Roll?

  Park and followed up the next day by doing the podcast with him. He was so delightful and what an extraordinary privileged experience it was to enjoy his crazy cuisine. I mean, it was amazing. Not to

• 9:06Adam Skolnick?

  You know, repeat yourself on this podcast. Do you get into all the dishes in that podcast? I haven't read it. I haven't listened to it yet.

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  No, no, no.

• 9:14Adam Skolnick?

  So give us some highlights. Give us the highlights.

• 9:16Rich Roll?

  I can't remember the names of all of them. They're so exotic. But basically, he converted this restaurant into a 100% plant-based menu. And these experiences are like five hours long. Like you go into the restaurant, they greet you by name. Like they curate this unbelievably personal experience where you feel really special.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  And then they just start bringing dishes out. And the servers know all the backstory on everything. And they can explain to you how these things are made. And it's all very elaborate and very unique. Like not just what you might expect with a plant-based menu, but stuff that's like very outside of, you know, very surprising in many ways. All the dishes are pretty small, but they bring so many that by the time you're done, you're sated.

• 10:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  But you're not feeling, you know, typically if you go to like a super fancy restaurant, particularly one that's of, you know, a French influence. For example, the dishes tend to be really rich and you just feel very heavy and it's very meat laden. But here you felt, you felt content, but also energetic, which was cool. They take everybody into the kitchen at one point to give you this tour.

• 10:25Adam Skolnick?

  It's immaculate, that kitchen.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  And I know, it's crazy. I was like, how do you keep this place so clean?

• 10:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Rich Roll?

  With this huge portrait of Miles Davis in there and like some words of creative inspiration. And there's so many people working back there. It's this unbelievable machine where Daniel has to be head chef, but also host. He has to share personal moments with every patron. Like it's, you know, quite a few hats that he has to wear. But it's a machine that's like super well-oiled and was pretty amazing.

• 10:55Adam Skolnick?

  That is, that's incredible. You went with Jeff Gordner, right?

• 10:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

• 11:00Adam Skolnick?

  And did, did he hook up that, that taste? Did you call him as soon as you, to try to get in?

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  Well, what happened was when the news broke, and I've told this story before, so I don't want to belabor it. But when the news broke that, that he was going to be reopening the restaurant with a plant-based menu, the food world like exploded. I thought, oh, that's cool. Like, I didn't realize the magnitude of that announcement, but the whole food world kind of lost their mind. Yeah. And Jeff texted me and he's like, you got to get on this right away. And I was like, well, hook me up. Like, that's cool. Like, let's do it. He connected the dots. Daniel got right back to me and we kind of went from there. That's cool. So, yeah, it was great. So that was really the, that's what anchored the trip, but I also was able to sit down with Eric Adams, who is most assuredly going to be New York City's next mayor. He had just clinched the Democratic nomination for the

• 11:50Rich Roll?

  mayoral candidacy, but New York City is 70% Democrat, so it's essentially a foregone conclusion that he's going to clinch it in November. And what's interesting about him is that he's been on my radar for many years. I've gone back and forth with one of his chiefs of staff as Brooklyn Borough President over the years about getting him on. And for whatever reason, we just didn't sync up schedules, et cetera. And I've learned to trust that, you know, time, like, I just trust the timing of these things, that they're supposed to happen. Yeah. When they're meant to happen. And it was so cool to do it right after him clinching

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  this Democratic mayoral position, which makes it more compelling than had I done it like two years ago, because he is going to be the mayor. Right. Throughout the campaign, it's really been a law and order campaign. It's all about police, policing, police reform. There's been an uptick in violence and gun violence in New York City. Is it safe? How are we going to make it safe, et cetera? And what's been lost in that discussion is this insane health story, health history, that Eric Adams has, which is a big part of his advocacy. Well, he's an ex-cop, right? He's an ex-cop. Yeah. He was, you know, a police officer for many years, resigned as a captain, and

• 13:10Rich Roll?

  within the police department was a reformer at a period when it wasn't necessarily cool or safe to be a reformer. Right. Being a black police officer. And he was able to make a certain amount of changes within that construct. Then he went into politics. And of course, that's why much of the, the sort of debating and punditry around this campaign has been about police reform and, you know, the police and what that looks like in New York City going forward. But- What's been lost is this story of personal health because he, I think it was about five or six years ago, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. When he went into the doctor,

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  it was very advanced, like I think stage four. He went into the doctor because he was losing his eyesight. He couldn't read his alarm clock, like he could barely see. And he had numbness in his extremities, in his feet, in his hands. And he went to the doctor and the doctor was like, "You're way down the line on type 2 here. You gotta go on all these meds. You're probably gonna lose your sight within the next year, year and a half. If you don't get on top of this, like, we're gonna have to look at amputation." Like, that's what happens when type 2 gets out of control. And he, something inside of him, it just didn't sit right, that he was suddenly gonna go on this panel of medications for the rest of his life and that there was nothing he could do about it. And he went

• 14:31Rich Roll?

  home and he Googled reversing type 2 diabetes. And he doesn't know why he used the word reversing as opposed to treating or managing, but he did. And that resulted in all this information about Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neil Bernard, people who have been on this podcast, who have been talking about the benefits of a plant-based diet to treat and reverse some of these chronic lifestyle illnesses, including type 2 diabetes. He went to Cleveland, he met with Dr. Esselstyn, he met with Dr. Bernard, and he adopted a whole food, plant-based diet. And within a couple of months, he'd reversed all of his symptomology and his blood markers came down. His A1C went from way out of control to

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  below normal. And he became this, not just convert, but champion of this lifestyle. And he started to advocate for changes in nutritional policy in Brooklyn, with the hospitals and with the public schools. And that's a big part of his platform, should he become mayor. Interesting. I didn't even know about any of that. And I only had an hour with him, so the conversation focuses on that. But he's very charismatic, as you might suspect. And he's the sort of, you know, latest iteration in a long line of charismatic characters who become New York City mayors.

• 15:51Adam Skolnick?

  But in the context of the race, he's the centrist, right?

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's very, he's very centrist.

• 15:55Adam Skolnick?

  In the context of the Democratic Party, he was on the, he was on the right side of like that.

• 15:59Rich Roll?

  Sure. He's not about defunding the police.

• 16:01Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  He understands the police department needs reform.

• 16:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  But he is a very much, he's a Democrat, but he's a law and order Democrat.

• 16:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. He's more in the Biden mold.

• 16:10Rich Roll?

  Uh, yeah, he's, he's, he's up the middle.

• 16:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  He's up the middle. So that was cool. I got to meet with the folks at 10,000. We had a big design meeting. We're cooking up some cool stuff, um, that I can't get into specifics about now, but we're going to be doing some really fun stuff in late fall and I'll have more information about that. But it was the first time that I had met the whole team in person. That was cool. Uh, I got invited to go to the observation deck of this new skyscraper called One Vanderbilt, which is still under construction. Parts of it are still under construction.

• 16:41Adam Skolnick?

  That's a brilliant business move to open a commercial office building now.

• 16:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, this is a, this is such a, uh,

• 16:49Adam Skolnick?

  It's gonna become the amusement park.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  This is such a gargantuan building. It's been going on for years. It's been years and years and years in the making. But interesting you say that because actually all of the commercial space in this building is occupied or leased because, and I asked the question to, you know, the guy who invited me up and he said that there will always be, for premium, um, office space, it will always, you know, his sense was that it will, it will always be filled. It's the lower and mid-level kind of commercial space in New York City that's going to be problematic. But this building is built right next to Grand Central Station and there's a tunnel underground where you can go right from the train to the building. So it makes it very convenient for high rollers who live in Connecticut or Long Island to

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  come in and work and still expeditiously like get home. But this building is 96 floors high, right in midtown.

• 17:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 17:44Rich Roll?

  And, you know, Manhattan is essentially, you know, we think of it as flat, but right where Grand Central is, is like a hill. I think it's the highest point on the island.

• 17:53Adam Skolnick?

  Bunker Hill?

• 17:54Rich Roll?

  Bunk, is it Bunker?

• 17:54Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know.

• 17:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that, I don't think that's in New York City.

• 17:57Adam Skolnick?

  That's Boston, right?

• 17:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's Boston. You got your Revolutionary War geography off.

• 18:00Adam Skolnick?

  McGraw's Hill? No such thing.

• 18:02Rich Roll?

  But this built, they're building this incredible kind of tourist attraction, uh, that involves a glass elevator that goes on the outside of the building with a glass floor on it.

• 18:12Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 18:13Rich Roll?

  Which was not operational the day that I was there, but I was able to get up to the observation deck on the 96th floor and you go outside and you have this 360 degree experience of seeing all of Manhattan from the perspective of midtown and you look right at the Empire State Building and you're essentially at eye level with their observation deck, which is insane.

• 18:33Adam Skolnick?

  It is insane.

• 18:34Rich Roll?

  And they're creating all of these, you know, kind of extravagant experiences for tourists. So that was cool to go up there because it was still under construction.

• 18:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 18:41Rich Roll?

  It was like a hard hat tour.

• 18:42Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool.

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  You know, be up there.

• 18:44Adam Skolnick?

  I saw that you peaked Casey's New York, New York MB Casey Neistat commented on your observation deck photo.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, I took that, yeah.

• 18:53Adam Skolnick?

  Anything New York.

• 18:54Rich Roll?

  Always a coup if Casey likes your photo, I suppose, right?

• 18:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he was all excited.

• 18:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the flip flops up against the glass.

• 19:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 19:02Rich Roll?

  With the view.

• 19:03Adam Skolnick?

  The California bra.

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Oh, and I, another random synchronicity, I'd been going back and forth with Chris Chavez, who listeners or viewers will remember from Adam and I talking about the influencer mile where Chris challenged Malcolm Gladwell to a mile and Malcolm put him in the grave.

• 19:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  And we'd gone back and forth about trying to connect, but I got really busy and this is what tends to happen when I go to the city. Like, I've learned to not overschedule and still my time gets totally occupied. So I have all these people that I'd love to hang out with. I was gonna go running with Hella, I was gonna go running with Lindsey Krauss, like, and Mary Kane, and like, none of that happened.

• 19:42Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 19:42Rich Roll?

  Because I was just pillar to post, filled up. But I remember thinking like, well, maybe I won't see Chris this time, but maybe I'll run into him. And I was riding my bike through Greenwich Village and then I just spotted him jogging down the street, which was cool. And I yelled his name out, he had earbuds in, he didn't hear me and I was like, well, maybe that's not Chris. And I whipped around, caught up to him and just waited till he looked at me and then we had a little moment.

• 20:09Adam Skolnick?

  Nice.

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  It was special.

• 20:10Adam Skolnick?

  That is cool.

• 20:11Rich Roll?

  So you were the first person that I texted that photo to.

• 20:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Rich Roll?

  I told him, I was like, Adam's gonna be so happy that I ran into Chris Chavez.

• 20:17Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  And that was cool. And I love that about New York. Like, that like, was so fun. It like, made, it's simple things like that that just, you know, made me so happy.

• 20:26Adam Skolnick?

  Big city, a small town. Do you do, so obviously, we're gonna get into one of the movies that you saw out there and then you had the big dinner. Was that basically it for your nightlife or were you out at night too? Were you all day and night? Because when I'm in New York, it's like, I leave at like... You know, leave the room, whatever, and then you're not back until like, yeah, you don't go back to the room.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  You know, because I was doing podcasts and having meetings and stuff like that, I have to keep my energy high. So I'm not a, I'm no longer, although there was a time where it was all about staying out all night in New York. That is not my relationship with the city anymore. So, yeah, so no, I, I mean, I was out late when I had dinner at 11 Madison Park because that, I think the reservation was like 7:30 and I don't think I got home until like midnight.

• 21:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  I saw the Bourdain doc, which we're going to talk about with Jeff Gordonier, who invited me to see that.

• 21:17Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  So I was out kind of late for that. But other than that, I was back in my hotel room at nine and I would just, you know, basically watch the tour to France and fall asleep.

• 21:26Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Adam Skolnick?

  Good shit.

• 21:29Rich Roll?

  What else can I share about that? I think that's it. I mean, great trip. I love New York City so much.

• 21:34Adam Skolnick?

  Do you ever think about?

• 21:36Rich Roll?

  I want to spend more time.

• 21:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I'd love to be more bi-coastal. I get so much done in a single day compared to Los Angeles.

• 21:43Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  You can meet, you can have like four or five meetings and still be cool. In LA, you can have like one meeting a day and it takes up your whole day to drive across town, do all that kind of stuff. So I just feel more plugged in socially to humanity than I do here.

• 22:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It's less alienating.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Adam Skolnick?

  Because, you know, it's.

• 22:04Rich Roll?

  Well, here you have to seek out the flow of life.

• 22:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 22:08Rich Roll?

  And in New York, you just walk out the front door and you're smacked in the face by it. You can't avoid it. And so you're participating in the flow of human activity, whether you want to or not.

• 22:18Adam Skolnick?

  Which is exactly what we talked about at the top of this show. We are all participating.

• 22:23Rich Roll?

  That's right. Microbes flowing through the gelatinous.

• 22:27Adam Skolnick?

  We're all airborne microbes.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  The gelatinous cellular matter.

• 22:34Adam Skolnick?

  That does sound appetizing.

• 22:37Rich Roll?

  This is typically the point in the show where we turn our attention to recapping whatever the Iron Cowboy is doing, but we no longer can afford to do that because he is no longer waking up every day and doing an Iron Man.

• 22:50Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 22:51Rich Roll?

  What are we gonna do with ourselves?

• 22:52Adam Skolnick?

  I wonder what he's doing right now.

• 22:55Adam Skolnick?

  We could just keep doing it.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  Putting on a little weight and enjoying his life.

• 22:58Adam Skolnick?

  What are you doing right now? Oh, you're still sleeping?

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  That would be great if we just continued with Iron Cowboy updates on just like, well, I played golf today.

• 23:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. He's probably got like a three handicap or something silly.

• 23:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, I think he's just normalizing at the moment, but what we can do, there are a couple interesting prolonged endurance feats that are underway right now, so we could supplant the Iron Cowboy by talking about those.

• 23:28Adam Skolnick?

  What do you got?

• 23:29Rich Roll?

  Well, first, what I have, I'm glad you asked, by the way. I've got Robbie Ballinger's Colorado Crush, which is super interesting. Robbie, former podcast guest, ultra runner, plant-based beast, ran across America. His name came up in the Hella episode as well.

• 23:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 23:48Rich Roll?

  He's in the midst of this summer-long quest to conquer a series of ultra-running challenges that collectively he's calling the Colorado Crush. And it started with him running the Leadville Marathon, which he completed. Then he ran the Colorado Trail, which is 500 miles. He did that. He went back to Leadville and did the Silver Rush 50. That was July 11th. And now he's in the midst of attempting to summit all 58 peaks in Colorado that are over 14,000 feet, called 14ers. I don't know how many he's done at this point, but he's knocked off quite a few of them. He basically wakes up every day and knocks one out, and he's in a van traveling around

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  from mountain to mountain.

• 24:34Adam Skolnick?

  Is he living in a van?

• 24:35Rich Roll?

  I think so. Yeah, him and his wife. They're cruising around in like a converted van at the moment.

• 24:40Adam Skolnick?

  Does she run also, or she support?

• 24:42Rich Roll?

  She's supporting. Yeah, she's supporting. So.

• 24:45Adam Skolnick?

  And he's got Leadville 100 coming up.

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  And then he's going to complete it with the Leadville 100 in, at the end of August, August 21st. So three runs, and just so people know, like Leadville is at 10,000 feet.

• 24:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:57Rich Roll?

  So this guy's spending a lot of time at insane altitude. And a lot of these 14ers are, you know, mountaineering, he's wearing a helmet. It's not like he's running up like what you would imagine to be a trail. Like these are, some of them are pretty crazy ascents, so.

• 25:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, most of them have trails though. I don't think that he's, but.

• 25:15Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. But then you get above the tree line and you got to boulder and do stuff like that.

• 25:21Adam Skolnick?

  Can I shout someone out? This, an Outside editor, the Outside Magazine editor that, you know, I guess not really a colleague. I'm so freelance, but she just left there and is now a freelancer herself. And Dan Schwartz, who writes for Outside and others, they are incredible mountain bikers and are now taking their mountain bikes onto hiking trails, single track trails. And they rode up Mount Elbert, which is one of those 14ers. And it's the first one that they've done where they're riding their mountain bikes past duckers that are just like mystified. And they made it all the way up a 14er.

• 25:57Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 25:58Adam Skolnick?

  It's the first one that they've done. And I don't know how many people do that out there, but it seems kind of pioneering and interesting and weird.

• 26:04Rich Roll?

  And like technically challenging.

• 26:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, technically very challenging.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  Especially when you get above the tree line and you're going over boulders and rocks and stuff like that.

• 26:12Adam Skolnick?

  So shout out to Gloria and Dan.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  We should probably also shout out Reese Robinson. Reese is a kid who went on one of our retreats to Italy several years ago, him and his mom. And then he came and did a bunch of photo and video work for us several years ago. He lived with us for a while. And he was alongside Robbie on the Colorado Trail.

• 26:33Adam Skolnick?

  And that's the, that's 500 miles north to south? Or is it?

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  I don't know, actually. I should know that.

• 26:38Adam Skolnick?

  Is it east, west or west, east?

• 26:39Rich Roll?

  I'm poorly researched today.

• 26:40Adam Skolnick?

  But it's a trans Colorado trail.

• 26:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, basically. Basically. So much love, Robbie. We're paying attention. Sending you good vibes.

• 26:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, man.

• 26:49Rich Roll?

  You can check him out on Instagram where he's sharing his daily experience at Robbie Ballenger, B A L E N G E R. And we also have Timothy Olson, also former podcast guest from way back in the day, episode 78, which was in 2014. Crazy, awesome, ultra runner, super cool guy with a crazy backstory, who's in the midst of an FKT attempt on the Pacific Crest Trail. And he's got about, well, as of yesterday, he had 250 miles left, which isn't much. I think he's clocking off at least 30 to 50 miles a day.

• 27:25Adam Skolnick?

  30 to 50?

• 27:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Adam Skolnick?

  50?

• 27:30Rich Roll?

  All of these guys are doing double marathons a day in order to break these FKTs.

• 27:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, his wife is 35 weeks pregnant and they're doing this as a family adventure, which is so.

• 27:41Adam Skolnick?

  She's like, okay, dude, you can do it, but I expect 75 a day from here on out.

• 27:47Rich Roll?

  Clock's ticking, baby's coming, wherever you are on the trail.

• 27:51Adam Skolnick?

  So it's his baby moon?

• 27:53Rich Roll?

  I guess so, right?

• 27:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  I guess so.

• 27:55Adam Skolnick?

  Get it in, Timothy.

• 27:56Rich Roll?

  So that, those two things, I think those are two good things to take the place of the Iron Cowboy.

• 28:03Adam Skolnick?

  100%.

• 28:04Rich Roll?

  Capture people's attention and.

• 28:05Adam Skolnick?

  So in a couple of weeks.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  Send these guys some love.

• 28:07Adam Skolnick?

  A couple of weeks, we'll, we'll circle back on, on both those, right?

• 28:10Rich Roll?

  Right. So we're going to take a quick break now. When we're back, we got a big story. We've got much more to report from the endurance world. We're also going to do a summer watch list.

• 28:21Adam Skolnick?

  We are doing the Ritual Summer Watch List.

• 28:24Rich Roll?

  And the Adam Skolnick.

• 28:25Adam Skolnick?

  It's more like the Ritual Summer Stream List.

• 28:28Rich Roll?

  No, you had mentioned we should do like, like a graphic like Obama does.

• 28:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  These are the books that I write.

• 28:35Adam Skolnick?

  You should be doing that for podcasts.

• 28:37Rich Roll?

  Here's the stuff you should be watching.

• 28:38Adam Skolnick?

  For your, for your, for your podcast watch list.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  We'll work on that. All right. We'll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

• 28:54Adam Skolnick?

  It's so good to be back here with you.

• 28:56Rich Roll?

  Do you like my "I love carbs" t-shirt?

• 28:58Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. I like that you're like, deep in the inside baseball, because you're kind of being ironic about the carbs v. protein erroneous, false equivalency that most plant-based people have to bump up against when they meet their Uncle Tony for ribs. I mean, he's having ribs. We're having french fries.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  I don't follow any of what you just said.

• 29:23Adam Skolnick?

  Don't you know, like, don't plant-based people always have to, "What do you do for protein?"

• 29:27Rich Roll?

  No.

• 29:28Adam Skolnick?

  "Where do you get your protein?"

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  Well, it's a clickbait t-shirt, because people are so carb-phobic.

• 29:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  You know, and they don't realize that.

• 29:34Adam Skolnick?

  You're turning the tables on that protein discussion.

• 29:36Rich Roll?

  Yes. Yes. It's a Picky Bars t-shirt. Jesse Thomas sent it to me.

• 29:41Adam Skolnick?

  I like it.

• 29:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Adam Skolnick?

  I actually genuinely love carbs. I'm not just trying to get clicks, okay?

• 29:47Rich Roll?

  You are?

• 29:47Adam Skolnick?

  I love carbs.

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  I'll give you some clicks. I'm happy to give you clicks.

• 29:50Adam Skolnick?

  Bagels, sourdough bread. I want it all. I want all the yeast.

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  All the yeast?

• 29:55Adam Skolnick?

  All the gluten.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  I feel you, man. What is our big story today?

• 30:00Adam Skolnick?

  Hang on, let me.

• 30:00Rich Roll?

  Mr. Skolneck.

• 30:02Adam Skolnick?

  Our big story: Outer space. Branson beats Bezos in the race to see which billionaire can get to outer space faster and deeper. That's where we're at.

• 30:13Rich Roll?

  Do they really go to outer space? I would call it very much inner space.

• 30:18Adam Skolnick?

  Well, James Hamblin says.

• 30:19Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 30:20Adam Skolnick?

  Who is James Hamblin again?

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  James Hamblin is a, he's an author. He's a preventive medicine doc.

• 30:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  Who, he wrote a book called Clean, that was all about his experiment of not using soap or shampoo or anything like that for a year. I think he's on the faculty at Yale? I'm not sure, but he's a very interesting guy. I love following him.

• 30:39Adam Skolnick?

  Did he get divorced within that year?

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  No, I don't think so.

• 30:40Adam Skolnick?

  No divorce?

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  No. Not that I know of.

• 30:43Adam Skolnick?

  No, he wasn't become estranged?

• 30:44Rich Roll?

  I think he has a dog.

• 30:45Adam Skolnick?

  Did the dog divorce him?

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  No. Why?

• 30:47Adam Skolnick?

  Well, he's no soap for a year? What do you mean, why?

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Well, he wrote a book about, it's kind of a microbiome-oriented thing, like, we're overly sanitized. Anyway, he's a great follow on Twitter, James Hamblin, H-A-M-B-L-I-N, but he had a great tweet, which was, "Billionaire saying they've been to space like people saying they've been someplace because they had a layover in the airport." Which is kinda true, right?

• 31:12Adam Skolnick?

  It's a good tweet.

• 31:12Rich Roll?

  Like, shoot up, you're up there for, you know, a couple of minutes and then you're back down.

• 31:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but at the same-

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  You didn't really go to outer space. Now, listen, I'm as excited as anybody that people are going into space.

• 31:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 31:24Rich Roll?

  So it is this weird thing, like, it's very inspirational and I celebrate any kind of technological breakthrough.

• 31:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 31:32Rich Roll?

  But you have to balance that against sort of the indulgence component of it, especially when it's in the context of billionaires, you know, competing against each other to who can get out there first.

• 31:44Adam Skolnick?

  So this is a spectrum of people going out to the outer spectrum. There's Branson who got there first. I think he went 50...I read about this a little bit ago, so my stats might be slightly off, so don't at me, but I think it was like 53 miles above Earth was Branson, and then Bezos is going 60 plus.

• 32:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:05Adam Skolnick?

  Cause he's in more of a rocket.

• 32:06Rich Roll?

  So he might be later, but he's gonna go higher.

• 32:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And then, uh, someone, actually, I think, I forget who this person is, but it's an international billionaire, has effectively chartered a SpaceX spacecraft, and they're gonna do like a 10-day orbit. So they'll be even higher, I believe. And then there's someone else who's chartering a spaceship to go to the space station. So, these are all tourism, you know, it's on the spectrum of tourism. None of this is, is, you know, state-sponsored or, or highly trained. They're, they're definitely getting some training, but it's not like that highly trained thing. But in terms of this, to me, it's like, if you get up to see the curvature of the Earth, you experience zero gravity for a few minutes, or whatever it is, that's space to me.

• 32:53Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, if you're fully zero gravity, you're in the darkness, you're seeing the blue marble. I mean, you're in space. I think it's, I think it's, uh, and there is something monumental about that achievement. If you just look at it in the vacuum, and then if you look at the look on the face of Branson and his colleagues, who he, who he chose, or who somehow got selected, one was like this, the astronaut trainer, there was, you know, one was the communications specialist. There was two women and two men from the staff of Virgin Galactic that were chosen, and you see how happy and excited and thrilled they are. You cannot fake that, you know, you know? So to me, that just shows space. I mean, I'm gonna give- I'm gonna give him creds. I'll give space creds.

• 33:35Rich Roll?

  Listen, there's a lot to celebrate here. I mean, it's so extraordinary that private industry has pioneered what, you know, the government has been unable to execute on, you know, ever since we landed on the moon in the 60s and then NASA kind of faltered for so many years due to funding or whatever, and the fact that technology has caught up with this, you know, obscene aggregation of wealth that's allowed these guys to indulge, I think indulgent is still, you know, it's still an accurate word, to indulge their fantasies by pushing technology forward in this way, whether it's for selfish reasons or competitive reasons

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  or on behalf of humanity and the pioneering human spirit, the result remains the same, that, that at the same, essentially at the exact same moment in the grand spectrum of time, you know, three or four, you know, fat cats have created competitive rockets to go into space. I mean, the fact that, that Branson went last week and Bezos is going like in two day, I mean, by the time this podcast goes up, he will have gone.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Jeffrey Bezos.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  We're gonna talk about that.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Jeffrey Bezos. Jeffrey Bezos.

• 34:58Rich Roll?

  It's so.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  You did it!

• 34:59Rich Roll?

  It's so weird. It's so bizarre, though, you know?

• 35:04Adam Skolnick?

  I like trolling Bezos, but he's got Blue Origin. Have you seen, did you see like Twitter go on, like they showed his logo?

• 35:13Rich Roll?

  No.

• 35:13Adam Skolnick?

  And his head was like newly shaved and glistening, and then there's the logo of Blue Origin, which is vaguely phallic, and then the rocket was behind him. It was trifallics.

• 35:23Rich Roll?

  What is, what is with Bezos and phallic iconography? Like, the little arrow on the Amazon thing is highly phallic.

• 35:31Adam Skolnick?

  You know?

• 35:33Rich Roll?

  What's going on there?

• 35:34Adam Skolnick?

  He's the big baller, baby. BD.

• 35:37Rich Roll?

  I will say that Branson had really beautiful, huge windows on his craft, didn't he?

• 35:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's more feminine.

• 35:45Rich Roll?

  Although I heard something about, I should have researched this, but there was that video of him riding his bike to the launch pad.

• 35:53Adam Skolnick?

  Branson?

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and apparently he didn't actually do that, like that was faked. I don't know.

• 35:59Adam Skolnick?

  It is a very, I will say this, in the, in, you know, if you're looking at it from a climate perspective, there's something both inspiring and grotesque about it.

• 36:08Rich Roll?

  Sure. That's why it's confusing. Like, I don't have, you know, a hard take, one way or the other. Like, we need to move forward, and this is our, you know, kind of genetic prerogative or disposition, right? We're always innovating, and there's something to be celebrated in these kinds of breakthroughs. Like, they're unbelievable. And yet, are they distractions from addressing the problems that demand our full attention right now?

• 36:34Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I don't think-

• 36:34Rich Roll?

  Would those resources be direct, better directed at, you know, solving climate problems that are, you know, that have an immediacy to them? I mean, you see those videos of, of, of Germany with, you know, the flooding and the water going, and like, the fires that are breaking out so early in the season, and the incredible drought that we're experiencing here in California. Every year, we notch up in terms of the cataclysms that we're facing right now. And I feel-

• 37:01Adam Skolnick?

  Did you say something about drought? I was, I was busy drinking my naturally alkaline spring water from Arowan.

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  Tenderfoot, privileged motherfucker. How dare you?

• 37:10Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think Greta's gonna really-

• 37:11Rich Roll?

  As we sit here, outside Malibu, talking into microphones.

• 37:16Adam Skolnick?

  Who made this microphone? Was it made carbon neutral?

• 37:19Rich Roll?

  A couple of assholes.

• 37:21Adam Skolnick?

  No, but like, Greta is not gonna be happy about the space race.

• 37:24Rich Roll?

  Of course not.

• 37:25Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 37:26Rich Roll?

  Of course not.

• 37:26Adam Skolnick?

  I kinda want her to like, show up as Bezosports.

• 37:30Rich Roll?

  You billionaires in your spacecraft, munching caviar as you look down on the blue planet that's dying.

• 37:40Adam Skolnick?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Greta as Angela Merkel.

• 37:43Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 37:44Adam Skolnick?

  That was good. Angela.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not good with the accents.

• 37:47Adam Skolnick?

  I like that.

• 37:48Rich Roll?

  Not good with the accents.

• 37:48Adam Skolnick?

  That was great. But the reason that we're talking about this space story, I've kind of got a curveball for you. Because we led with the billionaires, but in reality, the most interesting space story, in my opinion, of the last few weeks are UFOs. Now, in late June, the Pentagon released an unclassified report prepared by a secret government program that had been collecting reports on aerial phenomena since 2007. Now, before 2007, there was a similar program that stretched from 52 to 1969, where 12,000 cases were reported by civilians or military personnel about unidentified flying objects or just aerial phenomena in general.

• 38:31Adam Skolnick?

  And then from 69, nothing happened. Like you said, that period where kind of nothing really happened. Yes, we had the space shuttle and all of that, but the Pentagon was out of the business of trying to figure out who else is up in outer space. And then in 2007, they launched this new program. And there has been, you know, from what I could tell, 7,200 cases reported in the last 15 years or so. 12,000 from 52 to 69, 7,200 from 2007 to 2017. And in 2017, the Trump administration ordered the Pentagon to declassify and come up with a report. What's going on?

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  I like that Trump did that, by the way.

• 39:13Adam Skolnick?

  Do you think Trump was trying to find his real dad?

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 39:16Adam Skolnick?

  From outer space?

• 39:17Rich Roll?

  I don't know. It's kind of a stroke of genius that he inserted that into some bill to make sure that this stuff would come out.

• 39:25Adam Skolnick?

  He just wanted more conspiracies. He's like trying to hit a conspiracy that'll work in his favor. So he orders that and it just was revealed, the report came out in June. And in that report, most of them are explained away as natural phenomena or military, classified military drills that people didn't know about and they couldn't really tell them. So they just let the kind of the conspiracy filter. But there's like over a hundred, I can't remember from that Kevin Roos that he sat in at the daily, but it was over a hundred that they don't know what it was.

• 39:59Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, we've all seen the video from like, I don't remember everybody's name because this is a curve ball and I didn't like write all this stuff down, but the video from the fighter pilots.

• 40:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 40:12Rich Roll?

  Where multiple pilots are seeing the same thing at the same time and they're discussing it and the thing goes, you know, it just drops precipitously at an insane, you know, velocity and doing all sorts of things that no manmade, you know, vehicle is capable of. And there's a lot of confusion and, and wonder about what actually is going on. Like it's kind of amazing.

• 40:32Adam Skolnick?

  It is amazing.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  So on one level, if you look at it, you think, I've been waiting my whole life for UFOs to be discovered. I guess we're calling them UAPs now, right? Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon?

• 40:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. Because some of them are not flying objects. Some of them could be natural phenomena.

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  So there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't really be talking about anything else but this. Like it's so, it would be like if you could verify that these truly are alien.

• 40:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Rich Roll?

  It would just absolutely change everything. But then we just go right on to Twitter scrolling.

• 41:05Adam Skolnick?

  Well, let's, let's, I think before we get into that, let's, let's, let's get one thing out of the way here. Does Rich Roll believe in life from other planets and UFOs?

• 41:15Rich Roll?

  Well, to quote Mulder, "I want to believe, Adam, I want to believe." I mean, just by sheer numbers.

• 41:27Rich Roll?

  I have to believe that it's possible when you think of the billions and the trillions of, you know, stars and galaxies and solar systems that are out there.

• 41:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Rich Roll?

  The percentages are very much in favor of some type of life form being somewhere.

• 41:41Adam Skolnick?

  Some type of intelligent life form.

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, intelligent life form. I think where it gets tricky is that we project our idea of what intelligent life form means.

• 41:51Adam Skolnick?

  That's true.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  We're basing it on, you know, a carbon-based life form and we imagine it will have, you know, appendages and limbs and a brain and all of that.

• 42:00Adam Skolnick?

  I think of whales.

• 42:01Rich Roll?

  Well, that has a brain.

• 42:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  It's a big brain, right?

• 42:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 42:07Rich Roll?

  How we conceptualize an organic organism, I think, is limited. And I think we're limited by the capacity of our own brains. Like, we still, there's so much about physics that we still truly are baffled by, including dark matter, et cetera. So, you know, we're endeavoring to try to understand the mysteries of the universe, but I think we're limited in the same way that, you know, the brain of a snake is never going to be able to understand human language. Like, it just, it exceeds the capacity of that organism to comprehend. And I think we have huge limitations in our ability to comprehend everything.

• 42:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 42:47Rich Roll?

  Perhaps technology can serve as a proxy to help us better understand certain things that are beyond our capabilities, but I think there's a certain hubris with human beings that we think we could be all-knowing, when in fact we're handicapped in ways that we're not even aware of.

• 43:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  So, that being said, my point being that life forms could take a shape and a structure that is beyond anything that we've contemplated or could contemplate. So, when we think of UFOs and flying saucers and what we see in the movies and on television, that's a pretty limited imagination of what's actually truly possible.

• 43:28Adam Skolnick?

  Spielberg is gonna be so pissed when he hears you say that.

• 43:30Rich Roll?

  And like, first of all, if somebody's gonna sit, like, we're already doing drones, right? So if somebody's, if these truly, these UAPs truly are alien, we can't assume that they're manned in a way that we would, you know, understand them to be. Why would they do that?

• 43:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  And why would they care about us? Are they observing us in the way that we observe in Ant Hill?

• 43:51Adam Skolnick?

  Like, no, it's, it's, it's more like Chris Columbus, just bumbling their way to discovery.

• 43:55Rich Roll?

  You think so?

• 43:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's just a total accident.

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  It's more strategic than that?

• 43:59Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, if, if they're as intelligent as we are, it's just human. It's just alien error, just like human error. They're gonna like accidentally, they got here.

• 44:07Rich Roll?

  You're projecting a human sensibility onto, onto an alien intelligence.

• 44:12Adam Skolnick?

  I just think life bumbles its way forward. Evolution, that's the one thing that Darwin forgot to get into in evolution. Accidental evolution. That's, that's, most people just evolve accidentally. And like, we, you know.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

  Well, that's what natural selection is.

• 44:25Adam Skolnick?

  That's it.

• 44:26Rich Roll?

  You know, competition and select, we select for the, the happenstance genes that are favorable.

• 44:31Adam Skolnick?

  But I'm with you, though. I can't believe that there's so many stars out there, so many galaxies, and there's not another planet, like, with really good music, you know, and like, good restaurants.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So that capsule that's floating out in space right now, that's, that has the phonograph, that's playing music, you think that'll ever find an audience?

• 44:56Adam Skolnick?

  No, I think there's gotta be life out there. There's gotta be intelligent life, it's gotta happen. It's, it's gonna, like, it's gotta be, like, I can't see how it wouldn't. Like, it's pretty silly to think that we're the only game in the, in the universe, right? It seems ridiculous.

• 45:11Rich Roll?

  Well, we seem to be on this trajectory.

• 45:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Rich Roll?

  Hurting towards self-destruction.

• 45:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 45:16Rich Roll?

  And just basically, you know, imploding our planet. But what if we're the, the younger sibling in all of this? And, and, and, you know, other forms of us out there have all done the same.

• 45:26Adam Skolnick?

  Ah.

• 45:27Rich Roll?

  Far in the past.

• 45:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  And we're the sole remaining viable planet. Because this has repeated itself time and time and time again.

• 45:35Adam Skolnick?

  We're going so deep right now.

• 45:36Rich Roll?

  That's a very, that's a very dark, depressing way to look at it.

• 45:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's gonna be more like a Mars Attacks thing. Remember Mars Attacks? Where Jack Nicholson's the president and everyone's all like, "I knew the aliens are here, it's gonna be beautiful, we love you." And then they attack.

• 45:52Rich Roll?

  I watched Independence Day the other day with my daughter and her boyfriend.

• 45:58Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, nice.

• 45:59Rich Roll?

  I forgot how much fun that movie is.

• 46:00Adam Skolnick?

  I haven't seen that in so long.

• 46:02Rich Roll?

  You know, Will Smith doesn't come on screen in that movie until like 25 minutes in.

• 46:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he has to fix it.

• 46:07Rich Roll?

  He does fix it in the end.

• 46:09Adam Skolnick?

  He does.

• 46:10Rich Roll?

  Perhaps the greatest president performance in a movie. Bill Pullman delivering the speech.

• 46:16Adam Skolnick?

  Really? You're going Bill Pullman.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  And then getting in the, becoming the pilot at the end.

• 46:20Adam Skolnick?

  You're going Bill Pullman as the greatest president.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  Maybe not among, I would say definitely among the greatest cinematic presidents in that movie.

• 46:30Adam Skolnick?

  So, Bill Pullman, then Daniel Day-Lewis is Abe Lincoln.

• 46:33Rich Roll?

  Uh, no, I don't know about that. I mean, for sheer acting performance, I'm talking about like, you know, the guy in the White House, sitting president, he's gotta make hard decisions.

• 46:46Adam Skolnick?

  And he does a good job.

• 46:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 46:47Adam Skolnick?

  If only there was a script when things got hard.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  I don't know. We got off track here.

• 46:52Adam Skolnick?

  We know, this is perfect track. We're headed towards the summer watch list.

• 46:56Rich Roll?

  It is crazy that there are all these sightings.

• 46:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 46:58Rich Roll?

  And it's really hard to dismiss. And when you have legitimate military, you know, pilots and high-ranking officers who are taking this stuff seriously, it does give you pause.

• 47:09Adam Skolnick?

  It does.

• 47:09Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. And yet, at the same time, and this argument has been made by many, everybody's got a 4K camera in their pocket right now, and yet every image and video clip that we see still looks like the fuzzy stuff that we saw as kids. I mean, I used to buy these little books about UFO. I was obsessed, you know?

• 47:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 47:29Rich Roll?

  And they're all so grainy.

• 47:30Adam Skolnick?

  You did? Tell us about that. Wait, you used to buy little UFO, Little Rich used to buy UFO books?

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went down a UFO rabbit hole as a kid.

• 47:37Adam Skolnick?

  Really? How old were you?

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know, 12, 10, something like that.

• 47:41Adam Skolnick?

  You used to draw them?

• 47:42Rich Roll?

  No, but I got really into Star Trek.

• 47:45Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  I went to Star Trek conventions.

• 47:47Adam Skolnick?

  Did you really?

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  I did.

• 47:48Adam Skolnick?

  Did you dress like-

• 47:49Rich Roll?

  I mean, my dad take me to a Star Trek convention.

• 47:51Adam Skolnick?

  Who were you? Were you Spock?

• 47:52Rich Roll?

  I didn't dress up. I remember, I vividly remember my dad just being baffled because there were grown men and women in full Star Trek costume as we wandered the convention hall at this thing.

• 48:04Adam Skolnick?

  Dude, I want the archival foot- You know, if you ever go on David Cho's show, which will be on the show-

• 48:09Rich Roll?

  We're gonna talk about that.

• 48:10Adam Skolnick?

  You would, he would find archival footage of you in a Star Trek outfit.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  I don't think so, but back to the point. No crisp, definitive video footage when everybody has a cellphone in their pocket? And why did these things always happen over, you know, desolate areas of the ocean? A lot of it was, those recent ones that the military captured, I think were off the coast of San Diego.

• 48:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  Or in, you know, over some-

• 48:36Adam Skolnick?

  Which does make sense.

• 48:37Rich Roll?

  Cornfield and-

• 48:38Adam Skolnick?

  Because San Diego is a nice place to visit, and if you're gonna come to the Earth, San Diego would be high up on the list of places to visit.

• 48:45Rich Roll?

  Well, then why not be right over San Diego? Why are you 20 miles offshore? Like, near a military base?

• 48:52Adam Skolnick?

  Ooh, so you're saying it's some sort of spy craft?

• 48:54Rich Roll?

  I don't know. Are we getting anywhere with this?

• 48:56Adam Skolnick?

  The whole point is not to get anywhere. It's to entertain people with your musings on outer space and UFOs.

• 49:02Rich Roll?

  I don't know that I have any take on this that, that everybody else doesn't have. I mean, I, I do wanna believe, and I think it's fascinating. And it is wild that the government, in fact, has been collecting all of this information in a systematic way for a very long period of time. And my understanding, I wish I'd done a little bit more research on this, is that that report that came out is only part of the picture. Like, there's still a bunch of classified information that they haven't disclosed.

• 49:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right, exactly.

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  So what is that about? And why aren't they disclosing that? What does that say?

• 49:37Adam Skolnick?

  I think that's in the sequel. The report's sequel.

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  Are they ever gonna release that, or is that just wrapped up?

• 49:44Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's-

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  We need, we need like Snowden to figure out how to crack them.

• 49:49Adam Skolnick?

  Now you've gone from Mulder and Scully, and you're into Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith category in that, that next report.

• 49:55Rich Roll?

  I like that mashup. I like that mashup.

• 49:58Adam Skolnick?

  So before we date ourselves with more old content, I want to ask one thing because me personally, when I heard from someone I met actually at Swim Run, who works at SpaceX, told me about, was the first person to tell me about this, this group of people that's going to be orbiting on a spacecraft. And I thought, God, that would be so cool to be the journalist, like to be the old, kind of like the logbook writer, the old, what do they call that? The scribe that's brought along on the, on the, you know, transcontinental ship to, to write about life on the ship. It would be so fun to do that. Like, I would take, I would go check it out. Like, even though I'm-

• 50:36Rich Roll?

  Would you go up in the craft, though?

• 50:37Adam Skolnick?

  I would go up in the craft.

• 50:38Rich Roll?

  Someone's gonna die. One of these things, one of these things is gonna explode.

• 50:42Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. It's gonna happen.

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's built into it. I mean, part of the SpaceX model was building in, into the budget that a certain number of these rockets are gonna explode. It's part of, it's part of this journey.

• 50:53Adam Skolnick?

  We've seen that unmanned ones explode.

• 50:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:56Adam Skolnick?

  We've seen it. It's going to happen.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  So is a billionaire gonna die doing that?

• 51:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. Hundred percent. No question.

• 51:04Rich Roll?

  But you'd go up in it anyway.

• 51:05Adam Skolnick?

  But it's not gonna be Bezos. His luck's too good.

• 51:08Rich Roll?

  He just stepped down as CEO, though.

• 51:09Adam Skolnick?

  Jeffrey Bezos.

• 51:14Rich Roll?

  All right. That's a good segue to get into what we're gonna talk about next, which is our summer watch list.

• 51:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. The ritual first annual. Ritual summer stream. Must streams.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  We both made lists of things that have captured our fascination and attention and things that we think are worthy of you guys checking out, some of which, you know, are very much in the zeitgeist and perhaps you've already seen, some of which are a little bit off the beaten path. But at the very top of my list is Bo Burnham's Inside. This thing- Haunts me. Like, I saw it maybe, I don't know, three weeks ago. When did I text you and said like I-

• 51:52Adam Skolnick?

  He was right after we recorded last time. It was like the weekend after.

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  I think it was about three or four weeks ago.

• 51:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:58Rich Roll?

  I can't stop thinking about it.

• 51:59Adam Skolnick?

  Oh my god.

• 52:00Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. I truly think this is a master work, what this guy accomplished. And for people that aren't familiar, Bo Burnham is a stand-up comedian, he's a film director, he's a writer, he's done many things. He's kind of a theater kid who grew up on the internet and went viral as a young kid, singing songs and telling jokes on YouTube and on Vine and has matured into a pretty prominent talent in Hollywood. He wrote and directed the movie Eighth Grade, which I loved. I thought it was magical and a really special movie. And he's done a number of comedy specials over the years,

• 52:39Rich Roll?

  but this comedy special, and I hesitate to even call it a comedy special because I don't really think that that captures what exactly it is. It's sort of a private concert film. There is a comedy special component to it, but it's performance art. It's isolation theater and it really is cinema.

• 52:58Adam Skolnick?

  But DIY, DIY cinema.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  DIY. He basically took the pandemic year to create this special. He did the entire thing in his little guest house, where he lit it, he shot it, he wrote it, he performed it, he edited it, and created this really compelling, multi-layered, profound piece of art that, I don't know, I'm at a loss to figuring out the language to describe it because it is so unlike anything I've ever seen. And I think it operates, it entertains and operates on so many levels. And the reason why it haunts me and has stayed with me is because of that multi-layered aspect to it. Like, you can watch it

• 53:45Rich Roll?

  on its surface and be entertained by it, but the more you think about it, the more you realize like- How deep he's probing issues of isolation, issues of internet culture.

• 53:58Adam Skolnick?

  Depression?

• 53:58Rich Roll?

  Youth, youth culture, depression, loneliness, suicide. And, and, you know, the attention seeking that is part and parcel of his generation. As somebody, I think he was born in 1990, grew up on the internet. The internet has always been, you know, who he is and where he has gone to perform. And this interesting, difficult, challenging relationship that he has with social media in the sense that it birthed him and has given him this outlet. And yet it's also so destructive and emotionally debilitating at the same time.

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  And he probes all of this stuff with songs, with interludes, with, you know, think pieces that are peppered throughout this whole thing. And you see this trajectory from, you know, kind of opens and he's in a, it's relatively light and gleeful as it begins. And there's a slow degradation of his mental wellbeing throughout the course of the hour until, you know, he's quite despondent at the end and, and has to find, you know, some salvation.

• 55:08Adam Skolnick?

  But I think it's kind of like, cause he gets, you can sense the darkness in it really early. I mean, it is a very, to say it's very dark is not to put you off. It's dark, but in a way that great art has to be in a way. You know, it's, it's the most honest, I think the best piece of satire for the internet age that we have seen. I don't think it even gets anywhere, nothing I think that I've seen could even come close to the commentary that's in this. It shows you how, you know, this is like people, who was the first comic to swear? You know, like Lenny Bruce, like this is like, to me, for sure, all time great comedy work of art. You know, it's like for, of its age, there's nothing that even comes close to being able

• 55:53Adam Skolnick?

  to push buttons like this that I've seen in a long time.

• 55:56Rich Roll?

  It's such a trope to say, voice of a generation. You know, it's such a trite turn of phrase, but I think it is, it is apropos in, in his. Case in the case of this work. I mean, it's unbelievably self referential. It's meta and the level of self awareness that he brings to it like. The idea is that he is authentically performing and bearing his vulnerable self while also reviewing it at the same time. So it folds in on itself. And he's also letting you know that he knows that at the same time. So it begs the question of what is truly authentic? Is this vulnerability true or is this a performance? And you're not quite sure where that lies like when he's breaking down, is he really breaking

• 56:40Rich Roll?

  down or is he winking at you and saying this is part of the performance as well?

• 56:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, it's as a, as a performance art piece, it doesn't even really matter. Like there was some blowback I heard that people are saying, oh, you know, he's trying to pretend that he's lived in that room for the whole year and it's actually a guest house of really nice house and he has a, you know, partner that he lives with and he's got a great life and he's not depressed like that. And I'm like, well, first of all, you can't fake that kind of introspection and genius. And it usually does come with a very big, dark side and he grew up religious too. So like that, that is in there as well. And from what I read, I don't want to speak for him, but that's what I read. So to me, that kind of criticism, which is there's always going to be haters, but I did, I did hear there was pushback on him. I'm like, this is a piece of art.

• 57:29Adam Skolnick?

  Like, you know, for you to try to say that, it's like, it doesn't have to be his.

• 57:34Rich Roll?

  That's part of the art. That's part of the conversation. Like that self-awareness extends to his understanding that he, you know, he, he knows that the audience knows that he has a partner who's a successful film director and that he probably, you know, makes quite a bit of money doing what he does.

• 57:51Adam Skolnick?

  It is great.

• 57:52Rich Roll?

  So is this performance, is it real and where is that line? I mean, It almost doesn't matter. The commentary remains, you know, significant, I think, whether or not it's true, to the extent to which it's true. But I think you're correct. Like, he was degrading, you know, and it's this confluence or this overlap of analyzing how the internet impacts all of us in that self-referential way, him as observer but also participant, at the same time, a commentary on the pandemic and the progressive isolation and mental emotional despair that goes hand in hand with that.

• 58:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And then, you know, two songs. One is, uh, Welcome to the Internet, which is a, starts with a polka. Welcome to the internet. And he goes into this, you know, this quote you have here. Could I interest you in everything all of the time, a little bit of everything all of the time? Apathy is a tragedy and boredom is a crime, anything and everything all of the time. I mean, that song might be the single best critique of the internet I've ever seen or heard.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  And it goes on and on and on. And it's amazing.

• 59:05Adam Skolnick?

  Like, you can't say enough how great the songs are. They're like earworms and they're satire. Like, you're like, you don't really tend to listen to like comedy songs for fun, but like, but it's deeper than that. And, um, you know, whether it's that one or White Girls Instagram.

• 59:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, White Girls Instagram is probably the catchiest one. I'm sure on YouTube it's got insane views at this point, you know?

• 59:29Adam Skolnick?

  I want to sing them all.

• 59:31Rich Roll?

  He makes this music video of this song, White Girls Instagram, that is just so on the nose. It's unbelievable.

• 59:38Adam Skolnick?

  And then he, and he uses autotune, which you know is also part of his satire. And what's amazing-

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  Well, he did that on stage in another, uh, in another show that he did where he was, he was sort of doing commentary on Kanye and he started doing this autotune song about why the Pringles jar wasn't wide enough for your hand to go in it.

• 1:00:00Adam Skolnick?

  Because people on the internet are doing autotune stuff.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  And it's also, and also he self-flagellates himself in this, in this martyr, you know, this sort of satirical, "I'm a martyr white guy." Like, "I'm aware, like, should I be talking about social justice issues, but I'm a white guy, no one needs to hear from me." Like, that internal battle that he's having that is layered with the fact that, over time, like, he's had missteps on the internet and said jokes that, you know, were inappropriate or whatever. As somebody who grew, like, his whole life, the guy's been performing on YouTube. So, as a kid, you know, you're gonna look back on that stuff and cringe. So, now here he is, you know, growing up, and he turns 30, like, while the plot unfolds. And what does that mean?

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  Like, to be an adult and look back on this, you know, chronicle of your life that plays out in the digital space? And a big part, or recurring theme of the show, is him watching himself.

• 1:00:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  Which is this beautiful, poignant metaphor for how we all are learning how to navigate the intersection of our three-dimensional lives and our digital lives, right?

• 1:01:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Rich Roll?

  So, this idea that he's, he's, um, uh, there's, there's this authentic burst of originality and creativity, and then you see him watching himself on a laptop and editing it, you know? And isn't that the perfect statement for what this is all about?

• 1:01:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, he makes fun of Twitch, he makes fun of, like, everything. He makes fun of, like, YouTube wrap-up commentary, like, whatever the...

• 1:01:34Rich Roll?

  Well, the commentary video where he's singing, and then he, and then he pops up in the corner and he's doing a, he's doing a reaction video to his video, and then it just continues to tile. He's reacting to the reacting video.

• 1:01:48Adam Skolnick?

  He's so good, dude.

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  Like, that's the meta, you know, kind of space that we're in. And then when he's a Twitch streamer and he's the video game character. And, and as the Twitch streamer, he's like, "I'm gonna make him cry."

• 1:01:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  Fast forward to later in, in, in the arc where he actually cries and has this, you know, emotional breakdown.

• 1:02:07Adam Skolnick?

  I think there's definitely depression in his makeup somewhere, because I don't think he can really fake it that well. Like, you know, and, and I think he's more channeling what used, what might have happened in his life to make great art versus pretending things had to happen. And, um, which is what great acting is. And I think, um... In addition to Welcome to the Internet, there's That Funny Feeling, which is kind of similar type song, but more of a, like an acoustic song, but it's more about the smartphone. You know, like, and it's the same idea, though. Like, you know, we're, it's, see, to me, it's more like, instead of, it's not really about learning to, to deal with this new space that we all find ourselves in, self-referential space, it's more like, this is a bad idea.

• 1:02:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:52Adam Skolnick?

  Which is, like, it's, this, this is going wrong. It's not like, you know, it doesn't end, it's not going to end well.

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  It doesn't end well, and, and a couple interesting observations on that. First of all, he did zero press on this.

• 1:03:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  He didn't do, as far as I could tell, he didn't do any interviews, he just put it out there on Netflix, it exploded, everybody's talking about it. But it's not like he went and did a bunch of talk shows or podcasts. He's done that in the past, he did that for eighth grade, he did a whole promotional tour, he's not one who, you know, isn't, isn't, you know, somebody who has experience doing that kind of thing. But in this case, he just like, put it out there and has said nothing, like a true artist.

• 1:03:30Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  Which I think is fucking cool, as much as I'd like to have him on the podcast.

• 1:03:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 1:03:34Rich Roll?

  You know, clearly, he's not doing that. And I think there's this, yes, this is what social media and the internet is doing to us. And there's kind of a beautiful, you know, third act sequence in here. I mean, thinking of this, much like a Sartre play, like Montferré, c'est la zéro, like, he's stuck in this house, he can't get out of it, he's struggling to open the door and get out, and every time he pokes, he looks out the window, he shuts the shades again, he finally summons the courage to get out, at the end, he gets out, and what does he do? He immediately tries to get back in. And that idea, I think he says it outright in the show, that we're now living in a world

• 1:04:15Rich Roll?

  in which the only reason to go outside is to gather resources, collect the resources required so you can come back in and fortify your digital life.

• 1:04:24Adam Skolnick?

  It's very interesting and crazy to think about it like that. It's true. It's like the digital life and he gets into sexting and some of this stuff is like even without the pandemic would be voice of the generation type stuff. You know what I mean? Like because there is more isolation even before the pandemic. But after the pandemic, we all feel like, wow, what we want to go out, but what's it like? And it's like a lot of people may, some people are probably diving into it and getting back out there. But more people, it's a, it's a one step

• 1:04:57Rich Roll?

  We've acclimated to, to a more immersive digital life.

• 1:05:01Adam Skolnick?

  We have.

• 1:05:01Rich Roll?

  And how many people are gonna just double down on that? You know, even if and when the world opens back up?

• 1:05:08Adam Skolnick?

  So I wrote down a couple of things I could think of, like in terms of where this fits on the pantheon. You know, all time great specials, you have Richard Pryor, Live at the Sunset Strip, Eddie Murphy's Delirious, Robin Williams at the Met, Chris Rock's special, when he had Four Cities, Ali Wong's Baby Cobra, I think was a zeitgeist and incredible. But this is less straight comedy like that. You know, this is more performance art, too. So then you have Sandra Bernhardt and John Leguizamo's one man show from the 90s. But this is, it's funnier than those two. And it's, it's as funny as any of the, the best standup comedy performances, but it also has that performance art and, and he's making it himself. I think it's the most wildly original brilliant

• 1:05:52Adam Skolnick?

  comedy special I've ever seen. That's my.

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  Well, I, I struggle with even comparing it to those other standup comedians because it is so different. To me, it's more like Peter Boghossian or who's the, the walking to Cambodia guy?

• 1:06:08Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  What's his name?

• 1:06:10Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know that.

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  I don't know. Look that up. He was a, he was a one man show guy, Tribeca, you know, theater dude who did, who did a bunch of one man shows that were pretty profound, like back in the early 80s.

• 1:06:21Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  Who was kind of a contemporary of, of David Byrne and, you know, some other

• 1:06:27Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:06:27Rich Roll?

  People like that. Anyway, it stands on its own. And I think what distinguishes it even more is the cinematic quality to it. Like it really is a movie and the intentionality that he brings into the lighting.

• 1:06:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  And the camera framing and the interludes in between. These musical numbers and sequences are those quiet moments. And I think those say as much about who he is and where our culture is than, you know, the, the big kind of splashy numbers themselves.

• 1:06:58Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. I mean, the, the lighting is spectacular.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  It's insane.

• 1:07:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Adam Skolnick?

  Like what he can do with just a couple of things, it's, it's, uh, yeah. So congrats to Bo Burnham on an incredible piece of work and it's a must see.

• 1:07:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Adam Skolnick?

  It's a must stream.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  A final thought on that, and you know, I'm probably spoiling it for people who haven't seen it. Not that there's really anything to spoil because it's so experiential. It's not about plot or anything like that, but you know, there's that, when I say it, it's haunted me, there's that clip of him where he's sitting and he's watching like his first video when he was a kid playing piano, you know, and you're just like, your heart breaks and you wonder, what is he thinking about that? And how does that inform what he does now? And the whole thing ends with him sitting, there's a close up on his face and he's watching the finished special, like he's reviewing it again. And again, it's that like, we're always observing ourselves.

• 1:07:55Rich Roll?

  As authentic as we're trying to be, we're creating a calculated version of whatever message we're trying to put out there. And the very last frame is him cracking the slightest smile, like just a little smile and you can tell he's pleased. Like he's pleased with this thing that he created, as painful and as hard rot as it might have been. Like he knows that he said what he wanted to say. And it's kind of a beautiful way to end what is a very dark and disturbing and at times depressing look at, you know, the gestalt of, of, of culture.

• 1:08:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Anyway, I can't recommend it enough. I know.

• 1:08:33Adam Skolnick?

  We should probably add a spoiler alert at some point up top.

• 1:08:36Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, I think, you know, whatever.

• 1:08:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:08:40Rich Roll?

  Regardless of any of that, I don't think any of that spoils it.

• 1:08:43Adam Skolnick?

  I don't either.

• 1:08:43Rich Roll?

  Because like I said, it's not a plot driven thing. It's an experiential thing.

• 1:08:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Rich Roll?

  I will also say that as much as I was impacted by it, like my boys who are 26 and 25 and more, you know, in the age range of Beau, like absolutely loved it. They can't stop talking about it. My 14 year old, like totally dug it, is very meaningful to Jaya. So it operates on different levels for different age groups. And I think for young people, because we're older and we don't have that relationship to the internet, even though a substantial portion of what I do is online, there is something about, there's a relatability, I think, for Gen Z and perhaps even millennials, who will be able to connect with his message in a way that, you know, even as impactful as it was for me, that I can't access.

• 1:09:30Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm. I think as we go through this list, one thing that kind of ties it all together is archival footage. And the fact that in every one of these instances,

• 1:09:39Rich Roll?

  Your entire life is documented.

• 1:09:41Adam Skolnick?

  Incredible archival footage. Yeah, it's like, we all have footage like that somewhere, you know, like a lot of us.

• 1:09:47Rich Roll?

  But not like him.

• 1:09:48Adam Skolnick?

  But not like him.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  If you, if you're, you know, if you're 15 years old right now, your entire life.

• 1:09:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:09:54Rich Roll?

  Is sitting in the cloud.

• 1:09:55Adam Skolnick?

  The documentaries are gonna be there, yeah.

• 1:09:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Rich Roll?

  Speaking of archival footage, that's a good moment to pivot to the next must watch of the summer, which is Roadrunner, the new Bourdain documentary. That thing is rife with so much archival footage. It was shocking just how much of Anthony Bourdain's trajectory was captured on film. Because the documentary tracks his arc from the early days when he was the chef at Les All, Les All, I think that's how you say it, all the way through all of his successes and ultimately his demise. And I love the documentary. Jeff Gordon, he invited me to a press screening when I was in New York City, the week before it came out. It's now out in theaters now. I don't think it's streaming, but I'm sure it will be soon.

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  I was very moved by this. I mean, I would suspect like you, Anthony Bourdain, you know, holds a, holds a large place in my, in my consciousness. His passing was, was, was a tough one, I think, for all of us. And I don't quite know what it is about him, but he was able to connect with so many people in such a profound, meaningful way. And I think the documentary does a really good job of helping you understand who this guy was and what made him tick. You have not had a chance to see this.

• 1:11:20Adam Skolnick?

  I have not seen it yet, um, cause it's not streaming and I only stay at home.

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  You're here now.

• 1:11:28Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, wait, I got outside for a little bit. I go home or to the beach, Rich. That's

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Right. You've never met Anthony Bourdain. I've never met him.

• 1:11:36Adam Skolnick?

  No, I never met him. But you know, as us Lonely Planet writers, like, we're like the road warrior hacks of your, um, going to places that he, that he's gone to with his crew and eating some of, you know, in these similar restaurants and, and finding that like ethnic food that nobody's seen, you know, that Jonathan Gold here in LA and the Anthony Bourdain oversees aesthetic is, it figures prominently in almost all Lonely Planet writers. I mean, that's what, that's what we aspired to and did in our own way and expressed in our own way. So very kindred spirit stuff there. And, and, and obviously the, the work itself is great. And then he's got the kind of somewhat Daoist, uh, you

• 1:12:18Adam Skolnick?

  know, eastern philosophy that he's appropriated is the wrong word, but that he's, cause he actually cared about it and studied it. And so I can relate to that. Um, and so, uh, you know, definitely when he died, it was, it, you know, it was shocking, to be honest with you and, and, and sad. Uh, but someone I always have admired and, and continued to admire. And I'll, I'll watch anything with him in it. So I'm really looking forward to this.

• 1:12:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Just utterly compelling to watch him. A captivating, charismatic personality who had this expansive joy for experiences of all kinds. And irrespective of however successful he became, was really just like one of us. Like he was an everyman and he was much more interested in having a conversation with a random guy on the street than he was about going to some velvet rope event.

• 1:13:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  And I think what's interesting about him. And the documentary affirms like this take that I've always had, which is that this guy essentially was an untreated alcoholic. I mean, I'm convinced that this was the case.

• 1:13:26Adam Skolnick?

  Big drinker.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  So he had this heroin problem. He kicked heroin. He kicked hard drugs as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:13:32Adam Skolnick?

  Without going to Narcotics Anonymous, right?

• 1:13:34Rich Roll?

  But, but he's this extreme personality and that ism inside of him divorced itself from hardcore substances, but remained active and would latch on to anything and everything that could kind of take him out of whatever emotional disaffection he was experiencing. And that extremism made him this larger than life personality. So it was in many ways his strength and what endeared us, all of us to him so profoundly, but also ultimately, paved the way for his demise. I mean, he continued to drink and, you know, smoke pot and stuff like that. So it wasn't like he actually got sober. But you see over the course of

• 1:14:18Rich Roll?

  this documentary, how he latches on to certain, not just substances, but people, experiences. Like he goes from, you know, being just the guy who just smokes like crazy to being an insane jujitsu practitioner. And that becomes his obsession, a healthier obsession, of course, than some of his other ones. Travel experiences that obviously underscore, you know, why those television shows that he did impacted so many people. But, you know, a brooding, dark guy who was an incredible writer and an incredible friend.

• 1:14:54Adam Skolnick?

  And thinker.

• 1:14:55Rich Roll?

  Thinker. The person who would really invest a lot of time into his friendships and really was curious about what made other people tick and, you know, really appreciated his friends, I think, in a way that we can all learn from. But I think ultimately where it all really begins to unravel is when he gets involved with Aja Argento near the end and she becomes his obsession. And he remarks early in that relationship, a self-awareness that this potentially could be his demise. And the documentary, I won't spoil it, but it kind of plays this out. And you see how everything starts to line up for him to

• 1:15:33Adam Skolnick?

  I didn't realize that.

• 1:15:34Rich Roll?

  meet his fateful end.

• 1:15:36Adam Skolnick?

  Was he an escapist? Because I think about escapism a lot because I think I have that in me.

• 1:15:42Rich Roll?

  Well, I think escapism can mean different things. I mean, I look at it, as I always say, through the lens of recovery and addiction. And I just see somebody who was an untreated addict and had a profound, whether it's a hole in your spirit or inability to just sit with yourself that drove a lot of those wild experiences and compelled him to go to places other people wouldn't go, like Beirut, when it's being bombed and places like that. That's a very addict thing. Like, I need to be where the action is. I need to get with the most dramatic woman. I need to be where the action is happening. And that's exciting,

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  and it's intoxicating, and it's ultimately a distraction for whatever emotional issues you're having, because you don't have to sit with yourself and deal with yourself. And you see the pain and the tension between that pull, that drive inside of him, and the fact that he has a wife and he has a kid, and the, what's the right word for it? The kind of, he tortures himself over his relationship with his child in that he's not sure he's being a good dad, and he so desperately wants to be a good dad. And yet, he has this huge life that all of us look at and say, "I would be happy if I

• 1:17:03Rich Roll?

  had that life." And you realize that that life is disconnected from whether or not you're going to be happy, because that's the relationship between you and you, and it has nothing to do with the externalities that are swirling around that guy, or any of us.

• 1:17:17Adam Skolnick?

  Having lived on the road for eight months a year for seven, eight years as a Lonely Planet author, eight, nine months, and you're chasing cool destinations and going weirder and weirder places that I call it weirder, more unusual places, is a better way of putting it, to get further and further away from the known world, our own culture, and our own selves. A lot of people called that the dream job. Most people wouldn't last one year doing that. You know, to last seven or eight years was a lot for me. There's people out there still doing it that I know, although the pandemic has halted a lot of those contracts. But most people would not last one year.

• 1:17:59Adam Skolnick?

  You know, the New York Times had the 52 places journalists and all of them, a lot of them have written about it afterwards. And a lot of them were, I mean, so far, I think they were pretty exhausted by the end. And I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a great lifestyle.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  Like Lonely Planet, Lonely Writer.

• 1:18:15Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it's like Jeff Gordon said about like needing a healthier lifestyle after years of eating and being a great food critic. And he taps into some of that same stuff. It's different than that because we're not getting that same. But you do get some of those meals, you know? So you do have, you do have a little bit because we're writing about food. But we're also staying in crappy places and nice places. You know, we're on the ferries, we're on the rickety airplanes you read about. You know, I can't tell you how many Indonesia flights I took. And after every trip to Indonesia, because Indonesia has a very bad air safety record, you could look it up. It's not good at all. And after every trip over there, when I've done, you know, 30 domestic flights, I'm happy that I made it out. You know, like, like that kind of stuff. But that's part of the appeal too.

• 1:18:57Adam Skolnick?

  But in the end, you're, you know, there is an element like, I want to do that. I love my, the fact, I live in a small place in LA and I can open the door and the doors to the whole world. But you do lose, you know, you, my, my situation came with a failed marriage. It came with missing lots of weddings and of friends. It came with missing birthdays and holidays. And, you know, I couldn't imagine doing that with, with Zoom at home now.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:19:23Adam Skolnick?

  And so, yeah.

• 1:19:23Rich Roll?

  You're also not an addict. You know what I mean? Imagine the guy who's like, oh my God, I'm going to get on this plane and it might crash. Like, let's get in it. You know?

• 1:19:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:19:32Rich Roll?

  That's the difference.

• 1:19:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, maybe not.

• 1:19:35Rich Roll?

  I mean, there's a, there's a sequence, there's a sequence in the movie where they go to the Congo and they kind of walk through that very predicament.

• 1:19:41Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Adam Skolnick?

  But I'm not an addict. You're right. I'm not, I'm not in that level, but I can understand that kind of chasm between your, your life and the connections in your, in your world.

• 1:19:53Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:19:54Adam Skolnick?

  And so I'm really looking forward to this. Now, there is a controversy that came up, late, late game controversy.

• 1:20:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:01Adam Skolnick?

  Um, where apparently a couple of emails that he wrote, they went to AI and deep faked his voice. They fed this program, all of his, you know, all this recorded stuff that he spoke, all his narration from, you know, a bunch of files. Maybe it was like dozens of hours. And it came up with a deep fake of Bourdain's voice to narrate his own emails. And the family, the people connected to Bourdain are saying that wasn't approved. The director says it was approved. Does that disturb you? Does it change the way you look at the movie?

• 1:20:42Rich Roll?

  I think that they shouldn't have done it. I think it was wrong headed of the director to, to go in that direction. I guess I could understand why. It's like he wanted to animate these words that Bourdain had written. And what better way to do it than to put it into his voice? He didn't, he never actually said them out loud. But when you're making a movie and you want to show rather than tell, I can see why that would be a creative choice. But my sense is that they didn't really completely think it through. So the director said, we cleared this with the estate, et cetera. Everybody was cool with it. The family says something differently. The consensus is essentially that this is something that Bourdain, who

• 1:21:24Rich Roll?

  is, you know, the very emblem of authenticity, would not be into.

• 1:21:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  The idea that he would be resurrected from the grave to say something that he never actually said, even though he actually wrote it.

• 1:21:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Rich Roll?

  I think was. You know, perhaps in poor taste, I think the wrong creative choice. I think that it could have been ameliorated if he decided that he still wanted to use that as a storytelling device to put a caption in the movie itself to say like, we recreated this off of, you know, an algorithm or something like that to let the audience know. So there was some transparency in it. I saw the movie before this controversy came out, so I was unaware of it completely. So my screening of it was not informed by that awareness going into it.

• 1:22:12Adam Skolnick?

  You lost yourself in the movie more than like if you'd known.

• 1:22:15Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, had I known going into it, would my reaction to the movie be differently? I'd like to think not. Like, to me, this was a mistake, but I don't think that it should, you know, cloud people's, it shouldn't be a reason to not see the movie. Like, I think it's a distraction. Like, it's a beautiful work of art. Like, this movie is actually really quite good, and I was very moved by it. And I want everybody to see it because it's an extraordinary chronicle of one of the most, you know, iconic figures of our time.

• 1:22:46Adam Skolnick?

  I think the most, one of the most charismatic figures last 30, 50 years.

• 1:22:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And to the extent that this is a controversy that would motivate people not to see the movie or to, you know, protest the movie, I think is wrong-headed.

• 1:23:01Adam Skolnick?

  Fair enough.

• 1:23:02Rich Roll?

  So they shouldn't have done it. I'm, you know, I'm not happy that it happened. It could have been handled in different ways, but don't let it be a reason to not see the movie. Because the movie, you know, standing on its own two feet, outside of that controversy, is really worth seeing.

• 1:23:16Adam Skolnick?

  I separate the offense as like, someone who doesn't understand the harm that deep fakes could cause. It, the problem is, it is kind of a hand grenade, the deep fake thing.

• 1:23:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's something, it's sort of like, oh, this was slipped in here and no one said anything about it. So what's gonna happen in five or 10 years?

• 1:23:33Adam Skolnick?

  It does make you wonder.

• 1:23:34Rich Roll?

  And how is this gonna work its way into other works of art?

• 1:23:36Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:23:37Rich Roll?

  And is there an obligation to be transparent about this if you're gonna do it, or should we not do it at all? And I think that's an important conversation to have.

• 1:23:44Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. So, big picture, the criticism of it is good and important because hopefully it'll Scare off other people from doing this.

• 1:23:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, next time, you know, directors will think twice as they should.

• 1:23:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  As they should. A couple of, before we segue, a couple of the characters that pop up in this movie, you've got David Chang, who I always like. David Chang's the best, man. Every time he talks, like, I just, I can listen to that guy tell stories and

• 1:24:08Adam Skolnick?

  Do you watch his show?

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  Talk about. I've watched some of it. I listen to his podcast. I'm a huge fan. And the other David, David Cho, is also in this movie. Talk about charismatic. Like, that guy is captivating. Like, he figures prominently in the Bourdain doc and is part of a sequence that ends the movie that just leaves you wrecked.

• 1:24:29Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:24:30Rich Roll?

  There's something about David, he's so, he allows himself to be so emotionally vulnerable. Like, nothing is off the table and he'll tell you everything. And his emotions are just right on the surface, talking about Anthony and his relationship with him. I found to be very impactful. There's also a short sequence with Iggy Pop in the documentary.

• 1:24:51Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful.

• 1:24:52Rich Roll?

  But Iggy Pop drops a crazy truth on Anthony Bourdain that I can't stop thinking about. I won't spoil it, but that in and of itself, it's worth the price of admission to this movie.

• 1:25:03Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 1:25:03Rich Roll?

  Speaking of David Cho,

• 1:25:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  We're gonna go from the Bourdain doc and David Cho's appearance in that movie right into The Cho Show.

• 1:25:12Adam Skolnick?

  The Cho Show, baby.

• 1:25:14Rich Roll?

  How do you feel about The Cho Show?

• 1:25:15Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I was skeptical. I was skeptical going into it because of his backstory. I don't know, you know, the backstory being he's this graffiti artist that I think got famous at first because he went to Facebook headquarters and he did a piece and got paid in stocks.

• 1:25:32Rich Roll?

  So what happened was, yeah, he got hired. He was a young artist. And he got hired by not just Facebook, but I think Zuckerberg personally and maybe some other, you know, people in that kind of startup Silicon Valley world, like a bunch of high net worth people. But he came to Facebook and he painted a bunch of murals and stairwells and things like that. And he took stock instead of, instead of cash. And when Facebook

• 1:25:59Adam Skolnick?

  Which they would never do anymore.

• 1:26:00Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:26:02Adam Skolnick?

  That was pre Cheryl.

• 1:26:03Rich Roll?

  Those shares, when Facebook went public.

• 1:26:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:06Rich Roll?

  Were worth $200 million.

• 1:26:07Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:26:08Rich Roll?

  So he made $200 million.

• 1:26:10Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:26:11Rich Roll?

  For painting their office. He sold those shares and cashed out. Had he held on to those shares, you know what they would be worth today?

• 1:26:19Adam Skolnick?

  I have no idea.

• 1:26:20Rich Roll?

  $1.3 billion. That's how crazy that is.

• 1:26:24Adam Skolnick?

  So he's both a genius and he screwed up.

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  Well, he's definitely a genius and he's definitely screwed up. And that's part of his charm and his charisma.

• 1:26:32Adam Skolnick?

  But I don't think he'd want the 1.2.

• 1:26:34Rich Roll?

  I cannot look away from this guy.

• 1:26:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  Everything that I see him in, every interview that I, he was on Rogan, I think he's been on Rogan a couple of times. Fascinating. He's just absolutely fascinating figure.

• 1:26:46Adam Skolnick?

  This show is so wild and original, so chaotic. It's like you're dropped into his brain.

• 1:26:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:54Adam Skolnick?

  And you're living in his brain and he's living in his brain and everyone gets invited in. It is, it is, um, I wasn't prepared for how brilliant it was. I thought it was going to be a vehicle for a guy who like does cool art. I wasn't prepared for it because I didn't know much about him. And, um, all I knew was that story that everyone talks about. Um, and I knew that he had some weird thing with women that came out. He dresses that head on.

• 1:27:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He also had a podcast for a while that was completely off the rails.

• 1:27:24Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. Yeah. And I just thought maybe it's going to be too weird for me, but it's not. It's, it's like right up my alley. And the one thing I'll say, and I'll spin it back to you, but is that he lives in his childhood home.

• 1:27:33Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:34Adam Skolnick?

  And the reason that's poignant for me is that, uh, we just moved into my childhood home. I'm renting my, my childhood home right now. And, I mean, he bought his.

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:45Adam Skolnick?

  Um, and we don't know the chain of custody of that house, but I'm renting it. And it was weird for me. It was like a whole process for me to go back. Um, you know, this is in David Cho's fashion. I'm, I'm going to reveal something of myself in this Jamin Cho review, but, uh, You know, I was, I felt weird about it. Like, I didn't want to live there. And, yeah, it's a nice place. It was always a nice place. There's good memories there. There's less good memories there. There's bad memories there. But, you know, we need more space and, and like, looking at the real estate market and me being the escapist that I am, and investing in real estate, it's just terrifying for me. And so this opportunity came up. The renters had moved out and, and my folks offered it to us. I knew April wanted to be there.

• 1:28:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's great for Zuma, but for me, I wasn't super into it. And like, I didn't really want to live there. And even after we moved in, I'm like, don't, like, it still doesn't feel like me. But to see what he did to his, I'm not about to like, start painting the walls.

• 1:28:43Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, he just turns the whole house into an art studio.

• 1:28:45Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah. It's like, it's like-

• 1:28:46Rich Roll?

  Just paint everywhere.

• 1:28:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's bizarre.

• 1:28:48Rich Roll?

  Clay.

• 1:28:49Adam Skolnick?

  I couldn't like, think straight in a place like that, but it just, it gave me permission to own my situation, if that makes sense. So like, so early on in the episode that I watched, which was episode two with Will Arnett and Denzel Curry, this really brilliant young musician.

• 1:29:06Adam Skolnick?

  I just thought it really kind of gave me permission to own where I'm at, in a way. And I didn't expect that from a talk show. Like, so, you know, when you go that deep, I have such respect for it. And it works. It's not just like going deep to try to be cool. It's like authentic. It works.

• 1:29:22Rich Roll?

  It's so authentic. And I think there's a method to the madness that plays into why he's in that house. And the very strange, you know, manner in which this show unfolds, because it's nothing if not, you know, anarchy and chaos, you know, but he's so vulnerable and he's so creative and he's so original that you're riveted by it. And so these episodes essentially work like triptychs. Like, there are a couple, usually three interviews that are, that you toggle back and forth between. He's talking to interesting people while he's also painting their portrait and doing strange role play. Like, I watched

• 1:29:59Rich Roll?

  two of the episodes, three, we should say, it's streaming on FX. There's only four episodes. I watched episode three and four. Three is with Rainn Wilson, my friend Neil Strauss, and Erika Garza. Episode four has Steve-O. And Maya Erskine in it and Val Kilmer pops up. I mean, Val Kilmer is like, it's insane, this guy, but I can't even describe this show because it doesn't like, like Bo Burnham's Inside, it doesn't match up to anything that we're familiar with.

• 1:30:29Adam Skolnick?

  But Bo's show is even more accessible in a way, it's a little more straightforward. It's not like this is go, you go from one guest to the next.

• 1:30:38Rich Roll?

  You know, imagine David Cho covered in head to toe in paint and throwing paint on the wall and, you know, covering his face in clay and then extrapolate that into this show that's a pastiche of interview meets art project meets performance art with animations and archival footage of him as a kid.

• 1:30:57Adam Skolnick?

  And great use of extras, dancers.

• 1:30:59Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:31:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:00Rich Roll?

  But truly what it is, is an excavation of his psyche and a process for him to heal his emotional childhood trauma, which I think is part and parcel of why he lives in his childhood house. Like, he's a prisoner of certain loops that play out in his head that become manifest. And you can see him struggling with how to overcome them. And so many of his conversations are about, you know, processing that in real time in conversation with people who have analogous childhood trauma experiences.

• 1:31:37Adam Skolnick?

  And in his childhood trauma, like, well, he has two that he talked about in episode two, that was, one is when he was four years old, he was sent away to Korea, ripped away, like, his parents shipped him off because they needed to get rid of one kid because they, they had a financial problem, I think, and they had to, like, move in with the family members, but they didn't want three kids. And so they chose him because I think he thought he was the oddball and he, and that just messed with him. Can you imagine being four years old and being sent away? It's like, I can't even imagine that. And then, while he was over there, he suspects, he doesn't have clear memories of it, but suspects sexual abuse in Korea, I believe so. And, um, you know, where I live now is where my childhood trauma happens. So it's like,

• 1:32:19Adam Skolnick?

  That's what I mean by permission. It's like a deeper recognition.

• 1:32:23Rich Roll?

  But also an opportunity. Like, there's a reason why you're back in this house. You have, you have an opportunity to not just revisit that past, but work through it. So that you can develop a new and healthier relationship with your past and with this domicile. Like, I think it's a gift in certain ways that might feel uncomfortable right now. But I think the show shows you a guy struggling in real time with just how to do that.

• 1:32:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing. It's like, it's amazing that like, that that's like the key. I just didn't expect. So, you know, you gotta make it your own, though. You gotta, you gotta work, you gotta do the day to day stuff. And he does do the work. He guides them on a guided meditation. There's nothing I want more right now than the David Cho guided meditation.

• 1:33:07Rich Roll?

  I think what draws me to him is that he, it's one thing to say he's, he's vulnerable, but he has such a big heart. Like, he leads with his heart. Like, it's just, it's right on the surface. Like, he wants to connect with other people so profoundly. And you can see his struggle. And that's very appealing. Like, there's a humanity to that guy that is really irresistible and utterly fascinating. And at the same time, he lives his life, yes, he's got a lot of money. But that aside, like, he allows himself to be so free and childlike. And his art is all about trying, like, doing everything that he can to make sure that that doesn't get calcified.

• 1:33:50Adam Skolnick?

  It's so physical, his art. It's incredibly physical. And he's not the only artist that's like that. There's a lot of really physical. But he is exceptionally physical, and it's all about losing trauma. I mean, the episode, you should, when you watch episode two, what he and Denzel Curry create together is, is magical. Like, I didn't even heard of Denzel Curry before. And he's really special. I can't, I can't wait to listen to more of his music. And, and really special guy. So.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  I had to watch the other ones first, because I'm friends with Neil Strauss, who always gives unbelievable advice and feedback on matters emotional and psychological, especially with respect to overcoming trauma.

• 1:34:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:34:31Rich Roll?

  And Steve-O, who doesn't love Steve-O. And David goes right to the heart with Steve-O and gets just gold out of that guy. While he's like painting, what he does is he paints these portraits and then in the middle of them, like they're, they're sort of participatory, like the subject is participating in how the portrait unfolds. And I know that's a big part of the curry thing.

• 1:34:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, because they actually.

• 1:34:52Rich Roll?

  Where you paint it, you destroy it, you reconfigure it, you reimagine it, and it has like nine lives before it's complete. And it's cool to see that kind of unfold as a result of and a reflection of the conversation that they just had.

• 1:35:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I would say it's not for everybody. I could definitely see some people being turned off by the nature of it, the jagged nature, the chaotic nature. Um, you know, I will say that. So just, I'm not, I'm not saying, don't watch it because I think it's great. But, um, I could see people being, it's avant garde. Let's put it that way.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But, you know, get over yourself and check it out. That's what I say.

• 1:35:29Adam Skolnick?

  You're avant garde, Rich.

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  Uh, final thing that I want to do really quickly here is to shout out Chris Nie and her new show, We the People. Um, she's created this children's show that was produced by, I believe the Obamas Production Company. It features people like Amanda Gordon. And it's kind of like, uh, a really upgraded version of Schoolhouse Rock in many ways. Chris, if you're listening, uh, thank you for creating this beautiful thing. I, I, I believe Chris listens to the podcast and I just wanted to acknowledge her and this amazing work. There's a great profile of her in the New York Times and I'll link that up in the show notes. So if you've got kids and you're looking for something edifying for your child, check out We the People.

• 1:36:11Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna check it out. I have not seen it yet. Congrats, Chris. Uh, on the kid note, uh, we watch a lot of Bluey in our house. I don't know if anybody with kids that knows Bluey, Bluey is.

• 1:36:21Rich Roll?

  I miss those kid days and yet I'm so happy I'm not there anymore.

• 1:36:25Adam Skolnick?

  But you know what? As great a work of art as Show Show and Bo Burnham is, Bluey is a juggernaut. Bluey is one of the best animated shows of all time. It's, it's amassed half a billion views. It is considered one of the, one of the best shows on television now, and it comes from Queensland, Australia. Um, it's the biggest show in the history of the Australian Broadcasting Company. The creator is Joe Brum.

• 1:36:52Adam Skolnick?

  And he is like, kind of this, this dad that geeks out on play and learns about play. And that's what's so beautiful about this. It's a family of four. You've got an older girl named Bluey, a younger girl, about four years old. So like a six-year-old and a four-year-old, four-year-old named Bingo. And then you have the dad. The dad is named Bandit. And I'm spacing on the mom's name. And Bandit is arguably the best, you know, that's what called, The Guardian calls him arguably the best screen dad of all time. Comes up with the most amazing games. And so like dad goals wise, Bandit is the man. But what's great about it is it's hilarious and it's beautiful and it's fun. And anyone of all ages could watch it. My four-year-old nephew turned me on to it.

• 1:37:35Adam Skolnick?

  Zuma's too young to even enjoy it, but April and I watched it ourselves. Cause it's that good. And these days Hollywood A-listers are gunning to be in guest roles for season three. And I think it just shows you, what I'm getting out of it is how much play can do for not just the kids, but for the grownups and what kind of that space it opens up in your brain. It's so realistic, even though it's just these four dogs and it's very touching. So that is, has been high on my list. But also watched last night, the first episode of The Hundred Foot Wave. You heard of this documentary series on HBO? It's the Nazaree doc. Yeah. And episode one is, is a big history of, a great history of big wave surfing,

• 1:38:17Adam Skolnick?

  including the toe-in intervention that Laird and his crew was part of. And it's mostly focused though on Garrett McNamara, who by that time was a kind of 35-year-old pro surfer that had opened up a shop because he needed to make money and he had kids. And he never really wanted to be the shop owner. The shop was doing fine, but he didn't really love that life. And then all of a sudden, he's on the beach when Laird and his guys are out on a Zodiac, getting pulled into the mountains beyond the, the regular surf break. And it just opened up his whole mind and possibility. And Garrett McNamara is the first guy to get barreled at Jaws.

• 1:38:55Adam Skolnick?

  And he was approached about, and this is something that in my Maya Gabara story that I got into, just a local guy at Nazare sent him an email and started to say, hey, you gotta come surf these waves. He was like the first guy to surf that wave. Not just, so he's not just the first guy to surf it, but he built the entire infrastructure of how to surf it. So he went over there, he studied the wave with hydraulic and, you know, whoever, hydro, whatever, the people who, the engineers that understand how the wave was made, he studied it with academics. He then went to the local kind of motorcycle dealer and got that, figured out a way to get jet skis and get funding

• 1:39:37Adam Skolnick?

  for the jet skis. He taught local people how to ride the jet skis and how to be safety people. He found other surfers to come in, including Andrew Cotton, who was a plumber in Devon, a young plumber in Devon, but also was riding big waves in Ireland with his buddy. And none of his Hawaiian friends would come over. He invited everyone, all the big names, none of them would come over, none of them believed him. And so he called these two guys he'd never met, they did a Skype call, invited them over, and together surfed this wave. So at its biggest. And eventually he sets the record and that'll be part of this documentary and then I'll go forward from there. But he eventually set the world record there at 78 feet, which is what, why he was on CNN. Is that still the record?

• 1:40:20Adam Skolnick?

  Uh, no. The record has, it's like, I think someone finally did get the 100-foot wave last year, last winter, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Don't quote me, but I think there's an argument that someone maybe eclipsed it. But it just gets into how he built the entire infrastructure, his intensity, his greatness as, as an athlete, as, as a leader, which I was able to interview him for the Maya story. So I knew a little bit about that, but I, I wasn't really fully prepared to see it. And part of the reason It's more impactful when you see that is because there's so much archival footage. Again, incredible archival footage of him from way back with he and his family and how they put this whole thing together in Nazaré. And, um, and so that's just episode one. Philip Glass does the score.

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:41:05Adam Skolnick?

  The photography is insane.

• 1:41:06Rich Roll?

  Who produced this and where is it available?

• 1:41:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's on HBO, so it's HBO Max.

• 1:41:11Rich Roll?

  How many episodes is it gonna be?

• 1:41:13Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know how many episodes. I should have, I should study up more before I get here. Yeah, next time.

• 1:41:18Rich Roll?

  HBO likes to drip these things out. I prefer the Netflix model, just put it all out at the same time, you know, and let people binge it.

• 1:41:26Adam Skolnick?

  Let's see.

• 1:41:27Rich Roll?

  I have had some emails with Garrett over the years about getting him on the podcast. So that's renewed my enthusiasm for learning more about this.

• 1:41:36Adam Skolnick?

  He's such a, and he's a great interviewer and he'd love to talk about this. And it's, what's amazing is what he told me that's quoted in the New York Times piece was, you know, no one believed him. And he's like, why not? Like Mavericks gets 68 feet like once every few years, you know? You might get 60 foot waves, you get 60 foot waves in Hawaii every, you know, not all the time, but it does happen, but it's not very common. And here in Nazaré, it's like 60 to 80 feet, 30, 40 times a year. And so it's like.

• 1:42:05Rich Roll?

  Why do you think no one believed him?

• 1:42:07Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it doesn't, it's different. It's not a reef break, it's a beach break. So it's harder to, it doesn't have the traditional thing where you know where it's gonna break. You know where the channel is. That's part of what's interesting in this first episode is coming to terms with the fact that it's a beach break, so the break moves. And so there's not really one safe area and safe zone. And it's a different shape than a lot of these waves. And so that, I think that was some criticism, like it didn't seem like the typical barrel. And you know, there was just a lot of excuses, but Garrett is always like, no, no, no. It's always been like the epic ride.

• 1:42:40Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm definitely gonna check that out.

• 1:42:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:43Rich Roll?

  I think that concludes our summer screener list.

• 1:42:47Adam Skolnick?

  That was a good one.

• 1:42:48Rich Roll?

  What do you think? You did have a parting shot, though.

• 1:42:50Adam Skolnick?

  My parting shot? Oh, yes. Is there too much content, Bo?

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  Can there be too much content? I think the better question is, will there ever be a monoculture again? Like, we grew up in an era where there are huge hits, and whether it was a movie, or a TV show, or an album that came out, that everyone would talk about at the same time. And I think with few exceptions, that's a bygone era.

• 1:43:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:18Rich Roll?

  And I think the trend is gonna be more content and more specialization. And that makes it less likely that we're gonna have a shared experience in terms of, you know, entertainment, books, movies, television, music.

• 1:43:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Rich Roll?

  And is that, I think, and even the bigger question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• 1:43:39Adam Skolnick?

  Or is it just a thing?

• 1:43:40Rich Roll?

  It is definitely a thing.

• 1:43:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  I don't know if it's just a thing.

• 1:43:44Adam Skolnick?

  It's just a thing.

• 1:43:46Rich Roll?

  Uh, yeah, until ultimately, every single person will just have their own unique silo. And we'll all be, we'll be living in 10 billion different silos.

• 1:43:57Adam Skolnick?

  And we'll only be watching our own silo.

• 1:43:58Rich Roll?

  We'll be watching ourselves, like Bo Burnham, locked in his house and inside.

• 1:44:03Adam Skolnick?

  How's it going this week? Well, I had one view, and one, one list, one download.

• 1:44:08Rich Roll?

  I was my own view.

• 1:44:09Adam Skolnick?

  I got five stars.

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  Or everybody watches everybody else's thing one time. So everybody gets one view, but that one view isn't you. I don't know how that works.

• 1:44:18Adam Skolnick?

  Welcome to the internet.

• 1:44:20Rich Roll?

  Yes. We're all living in our own private Truman Show, self-aware, yet unable to escape.

• 1:44:26Adam Skolnick?

  Could I interest you in everything all of the time?

• 1:44:30Rich Roll?

  A little bit of everything, all of the time. All right. We're like, two hours into this, and we have a long way to go.

• 1:44:37Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, awesome. Wait, is that good?

• 1:44:39Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:44:40Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna feel like Bo at the end.

• 1:44:42Rich Roll?

  Or is it just, it just is?

• 1:44:44Adam Skolnick?

  It just is.

• 1:44:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:45Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know.

• 1:44:45Rich Roll?

  Well, let's pivot. We got a few wins of the week. We can rifle through these pretty quickly, but we've gotta get through them, because I can't do a podcast and not talk about this stuff. First up, of course, yesterday, the Tour de France concluded. Adam, I know you're allegiance to freediving, so I'm not sure if you're aware. Of this bike race that was happening over the course of the last month.

• 1:45:07Adam Skolnick?

  I used to love that, the Phil Liggett commentary on the old Tour de France.

• 1:45:11Rich Roll?

  I've got a good Phil Liggett story.

• 1:45:13Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:45:13Rich Roll?

  First of all.

• 1:45:14Adam Skolnick?

  Is he still around?

• 1:45:14Rich Roll?

  Phil, um, yeah, Phil Liggett is around. I mean, Paul Sherwin died. I think he died. He died, can't remember how many years ago. I think he had cancer. But they used to do it together and Phil, them together, I mean, all time, like the greatest.

• 1:45:28Adam Skolnick?

  Do you remember the John Tesh Phil Liggett stuff on like Live World of Sports? But like they, they covered.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  I think they covered it. I don't remember that, but nobody, there is nobody like Phil Liggett. Who can keep you occupied and fixated for six hours straight while cyclists are riding through cornfields, past old fortresses and castles and just regale you with endless stories. And I mean, it is an unbelievable talent. He is the GOAT. But several years ago, I took the boys to the Tour of California, Tyler and Trapper. We joined my friend, John Moffett, and I'm friendly with Craig Hummer, who was doing commentary at the time. And Paul and Phil were in the booth. We were in Solvang. It was the time trial of the Tour of California. And Craig Hummer came out and then Paul Sherwin came out.

• 1:46:19Rich Roll?

  And Trapper, who's really great with voices and impersonations, does an unbelievable Phil Liggett impersonation. So I was like, Trapper, you gotta do your Phil for Paul. So he did it and Paul was like, come with me. And he takes us into the booth and Paul Sherwin's like, Phil, Phil, you gotta hear this. You gotta hear this. I mean, Trapper's like 14, 16 or something like that. And Trapper goes into a full Phil Liggett routine for him and he was just delighted.

• 1:46:48Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 1:46:48Rich Roll?

  Such a highlight. We were talking about it last night at dinner.

• 1:46:51Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  Anyway, do you know who won the Tour de France?

• 1:46:56Adam Skolnick?

  I know he was Slovenian.

• 1:47:00Rich Roll?

  I'm talking about the Tour de France, not the Tour de France, the Tour de France.

• 1:47:05Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 1:47:06Rich Roll?

  The original Tour de France. I'm talking about

• 1:47:09Adam Skolnick?

  The alt tour.

• 1:47:10Rich Roll?

  The alt tour.

• 1:47:11Adam Skolnick?

  La, I can't, is it something Morton, Lachlan?

• 1:47:15Rich Roll?

  Lachlan Morton. Lachlan Morton, this is an unbelievable story. I'm working really hard to get Lachlan on the podcast because I gotta know more about this. For those that don't know, Lachlan Morton is a professional cyclist on the EF, Education Nippo team. He was not picked to be on the Tour de France team. And this guy, being no stranger to all manner of crazy ultra endurance challenges, he held the Eversting record at one point, he's done all kinds of cool stuff, decided that he wanted to ride the entire Tour de France course solo and unsupported in this beautiful nostalgic throwback to the spirit of the original Tour de France, which started in 1903, when it really wasn't a professional affair. It was

• 1:47:58Rich Roll?

  really devised to sell newspapers and was populated by cyclists who were kind of like blue collar guys who were just out there hustling to do something hard and make a little prize money. So he goes off and rides 3,424 miles by himself. Not only does he ride every stage of the Tour de France, he rides all the transitions in between. And for a lot of these stages, there's like hundreds of miles in between where they finish and where they start the following day. So 3,400 miles, 215,000 feet of climbing, the entire route plus the transitions, and he beats the Tour de France to Paris by several days. And he arrived there, so the tour ended on Sunday, I think he got there

• 1:48:42Rich Roll?

  like Tuesday morning or something like that, which is unbelievable. 18 days, 220 hours on the bike.

• 1:48:48Adam Skolnick?

  18 days, 3,424 miles.

• 1:48:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:48:52Adam Skolnick?

  So what is that? That's like almost 200 a day, almost.

• 1:48:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, at least. I mean, his final day, he rode 340 because he was in the south of France and had to get all the way to Paris.

• 1:49:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's almost 200.

• 1:49:05Rich Roll?

  And he does it. I love this guy. He was having problems with his knee and the shoes, the cycling shoes. So he customized these Birkenstocks. He modified them so that it would alleviate the pain in his knee and I think also to avoid some like trench foot issues. So he literally rides the whole thing in Birkenstocks.

• 1:49:24Adam Skolnick?

  So clip in Birks?

• 1:49:25Rich Roll?

  And he's sleeping, you know, in a sleeping bag on the side of the road and he's stopping in cafes to eat. He's patching his own flats and being his own mechanic and along the way raises $660,000 for World Bicycle Relief, which purchased 4,000 bikes, distributed to those challenged to increase access to education. So there's a beautiful like service element to all of this.

• 1:49:49Adam Skolnick?

  Which does show you how expensive bikes are these days.

• 1:49:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know what model of bike. I read it somewhere, the model of bike that they're, but they basically distribute them to like kids who can't afford them, who are in impoverished areas where they can't get to school and stuff like that. I mean, this was like an internet phenomenon, first of all, like people.

• 1:50:06Adam Skolnick?

  Bigger than the Tour.

• 1:50:07Rich Roll?

  People were losing their minds. Yeah, EF, the team reported, I mean, look, the Tour de France is on NBC every day. So that's reaching, you know, a ridiculous amount of people. But in terms of EF's own social media feeds, they reported that their social media posts that involve what Lachlan was doing outperformed posts that they were sharing from the actual Tour de France by a vector of two to one, which is fascinating. So the question becomes, what can we learn from this? Well, Jason Gay at the Wall Street Journal has some thoughts on that. The Wall Street Journal and Jason covered this extensively. I think he wrote three articles about this. But he essentially says like, this is a model

• 1:50:49Rich Roll?

  for how a modern sports operation can widen its ambitions and grow its audience. This idea of this authentic homespun adventure that is accessible to people that they can follow online, that they feel an emotional connection with and kind of in an aspirational sense feel like perhaps they could do one day as well. Like, nobody's going to be able to, you know, hammer the individual time trial at the Tour de France at 40 miles an hour. But the idea of just getting on your bike with a, you know, with a sleeping bag and riding around France until you finish. Is aspirational enough that I think it really engendered that kind of grassroots

• 1:51:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's the Iron Cowboy effect.

• 1:51:29Rich Roll?

  Digital support. Same idea.

• 1:51:31Adam Skolnick?

  Except in one case, the tour and the professional people associated with it are promoting it and want it to happen. And the other people, the Ironman people are like pretending it's not happening.

• 1:51:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, maybe it would be different if you could sign up for the Tour de France if you just paid enough money. You know, that's the difference. Like, Ironman is, they didn't want to cannibalize their brand.

• 1:51:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:51:52Rich Roll?

  I think they were short sighted in that regard.

• 1:51:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:51:54Rich Roll?

  It's a little bit different here. But I think the point being, and this is the point that Jason Gay is making, like, this should be studied in business schools. Like, every sports organization should understand that these kind of events are percolating up. We saw it with the Iron Cowboy. We're seeing it with Robbie Ballinger. We're seeing it with Timothy Olson and all kinds of people all over the country. And a lot of this is emergent out of the pandemic and races getting canceled, saying, "I'm going to figure out this thing for myself and I'm going to share it transparently as it unfolds on on digital media." And it's sort of like the difference between posting an image on Instagram that's highly edited and filtered and looks perfect versus an Instagram story that's just raw and on the fly and authentic. And there's something about that rawness

• 1:52:38Rich Roll?

  that we're compelled by. And I think what Lachlan did is extraordinary, I think far more difficult than people realize, and just so fucking cool, you know, to challenge the orthodoxy in this way. And so when I asked you who won the Tour de France, like, Lachlan Morton got there on Tuesday. Those guys got there on Sunday. Who won the Tour de France?

• 1:52:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Lachlan.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So I hope to make it happen to get him on the podcast. I'm working on it because it's just a fascinating story. On the subject of the Tour de France specifically,

• 1:53:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:53:10Rich Roll?

  Do we really need to spend a lot of time here? I mean, anybody who cares probably watched it on TV, but I did want to shout out Mark Cavendish, who at 36 years of age and in the waning days of his career, won four stages. He tied Eddie Merx's record with 34 total stage wins, which is unbelievable. Especially when you consider that, you know, he basically was in this state where his career was essentially over. He hadn't won a stage in five years. He hadn't won the green jersey. This is the second time that he's won the green jersey. The first time was 10 years ago. And he almost hung it up. He got a one-year contract with this team. He wasn't going to go to the Tour de France. He wasn't training to go to the Tour de France.

• 1:53:53Rich Roll?

  And then their lead sprinter, Sam Bennett, this Irish guy who was last year's green jersey winner, gets injured, can't attend, they elevate Cavendish to go to the Tour. There was zero expectations of this guy, you know, doing anything significant. And he ends up winning four, four stages, runs away with a green jersey. I mean, it's crazy. And, you know, over the past couple of years, he's dealt with Epstein Barr virus, he's had several crashes, there's been some depression, all kinds of stuff that, you know, would indicate that, you know, his days of being in top form were in the rearview mirror. So, how can you not love that story? It's unbelievable.

• 1:54:32Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:54:33Rich Roll?

  A little bit of drama. He threw a tantrum a couple of days ago in front of a bike mechanic. People lost their minds a little bit on Twitter.

• 1:54:41Adam Skolnick?

  Did they?

• 1:54:42Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of bagging on him. But listen, man, you don't win the green jersey a second time and win four stages unless you're a bit of a perfectionist. And so he had a little bit of a hothead moment.

• 1:54:52Adam Skolnick?

  Who cares?

• 1:54:53Rich Roll?

  You know, get over it.

• 1:54:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:54:54Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:54:54Adam Skolnick?

  Now, you don't have to be-

• 1:54:55Rich Roll?

  He's always been, on Instagram, he's always talking about his teammates and how much he loves them and how much, how grateful he is for all their support. So I think he just had a moment, you know?

• 1:55:04Adam Skolnick?

  You're allowed to have moments in life. I mean, like-

• 1:55:08Rich Roll?

  We have to allow people-

• 1:55:09Adam Skolnick?

  We have to allow people to be not nice sometimes. It's okay.

• 1:55:12Rich Roll?

  He regretted it. He apologized. I think that apology was genuine.

• 1:55:16Adam Skolnick?

  Who knows?

• 1:55:16Rich Roll?

  You know, these guys are exhausted.

• 1:55:18Adam Skolnick?

  We're not talking about him because he's the nicest guy on, in town. We're talking about him because he did something only Eddie Merckx had done before.

• 1:55:23Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:55:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:25Rich Roll?

  Speaking of doing something only one other person had ever done before, my favorite kind of emergent talent out of the Tour is Wout van Aert. This guy's unbelievable. Twenty-six years old, not a newcomer to the Tour de France. He's been around for a little bit, but he won a sprint stage, he almost won a second sprint stage. He almost out sprinted Cav in another sprint stage. So he almost took home two sprint stages. But he also won a mountain stage. A climbing stage where he was in, he broke away from the pack and he won the individual time trial, which is like unbelievable, like the versatility of this guy. So he won the final sprint stage on the final day on the Champs Elysees, beating Cav. Nobody

• 1:56:06Rich Roll?

  has won a sprint, climbing and time trial stage since Bernardino in 1979. So to me, that's super exciting to watch him. And of course, we have Tadej Pogacar on a second win. This kid's only 22 years old, second yellow jersey from Slovenia. They make them hard in Slovenia. I can tell you, there's a lot of crazy ultra endurance athletes, exceptional ultra endurance athletes from Slovenia.

• 1:56:32Adam Skolnick?

  There's another Slovenian we're going to talk about in a little bit.

• 1:56:35Rich Roll?

  There is, isn't there? Before we do that, um, yeah, so this guy, yellow jersey, but also the white jersey, because he's the outstanding young rider and the polka dot jersey winner. I mean, where does this guy go from here?

• 1:56:48Adam Skolnick?

  To a bigger closet. He's got to get one of those Home Depot closet installers and just like, he needs a bigger closet because the closet space in Europe is smaller.

• 1:56:57Rich Roll?

  Okay. I don't know what you're talking about, but

• 1:57:00Adam Skolnick?

  You said where he goes from here. He's got all these jerseys.

• 1:57:03Rich Roll?

  He does. Yeah. I'm sure he'll hang them on his wall or do something. But unbelievable performance. He was never really challenged at all throughout this whole thing.

• 1:57:11Adam Skolnick?

  So he's set up for perhaps like, like, uh, you know, he's set up for, for potential, you know, a couple more of these.

• 1:57:19Rich Roll?

  Legend, legendary status. Um, I did want to shout out the announcers, like, we're unplugged at our house. So I don't have television. I don't even know if I have like an NBC streaming. I don't have Peacock or anything like that. But when I was in New York City, like I said, I would go home every night and watch the tour and went into that thinking, how exciting is this tour going to be? I hadn't really been following cycling that closely, but I thought it was a super exciting tour. And I think that the commentators deserve a lot of credit for that. Again, you know, Phil Leggett being the GOAT. But right next to him, Bob Roll, my namesake. You know how many times I get discounts? And when I go into bike shops, when I, when I go into a bike shop and I need to buy something, invariably

• 1:58:03Rich Roll?

  they're like, are you related to Bob Roll?

• 1:58:05Adam Skolnick?

  And you say yes.

• 1:58:07Rich Roll?

  I say yes, and I get a discount.

• 1:58:12Rich Roll?

  Paul Burmeister, who I was not familiar with, but also Christian Van de Veld. Shout out to Christian. Those guys did an unbelievable job.

• 1:58:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right on.

• 1:58:20Rich Roll?

  Thank you for riveting me. What else we got to talk about?

• 1:58:24Adam Skolnick?

  Well, we have Hard Rock 100.

• 1:58:27Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:58:28Adam Skolnick?

  Tell me about Hard Rock 100. 100 miles, 33...

• 1:58:31Rich Roll?

  Turning into an endurance report card here, I think that's going on. But yeah, Hard Rock 100 was this past weekend. This race, I can't wrap my head around how difficult this race must be. It's a 100-mile foot race with 30,000 feet of elevation gain at 11,000 feet of altitude. And they haven't run this race in the past couple of years. In 2019, there was snow and some risk of avalanche, so they canceled it. In 2020, of course, COVID ended that from happening. So it hasn't happened in a little while. But it was a pretty exciting race this year. The top three men all broke the previous counterclockwise record of 23 hours and 28 minutes, up by Kylian Jorner in 2015. In

• 1:59:16Rich Roll?

  first place, this guy Francois De Haene, finished in 21 hours and 45 minutes, which is the fastest time ever. I guess the clockwise version of the race, they alternate year by year, is a little bit easier. And Kylian had that record at 22:41. But it's a huge accomplishment when anyone runs 100 miles in under 24 hours.

• 1:59:36Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:37Rich Roll?

  And these guys are getting 33,000 feet of elevation gain, and this guy does it in 21 hours and 45 minutes. Like, it just bends my mind.

• 1:59:45Adam Skolnick?

  Dude, that's another level.

• 1:59:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And second place went to Dylan Bowman, podcaster, podcast fan, I think. What's up, Dylan? 22 hours and 45 minutes. He'd never done that race before. So that's a huge accomplishment for Dylan and super cool to see. Unfortunately, Courtney De Walter, that podcast is going up August 2nd, I think. We recorded it a while ago. Hard Rock was one of two races that Courtney was really keying in on for this year. She was running in fourth place overall. Like, so Dylan Bowman, Ryan Smith, and Francois were the only ones ahead of her.

• 2:00:23Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 2:00:24Rich Roll?

  But started having stomach issues, and at 62 miles, she dropped out. So that's a bummer for her. So I hated to see that.

• 2:00:32Adam Skolnick?

  You can't eat or drink, you can't.

• 2:00:33Rich Roll?

  You're done.

• 2:00:34Adam Skolnick?

  You're done.

• 2:00:34Rich Roll?

  I think stomach issues turned into some other kinds of issues and it was just the right thing to pull out. She's running UTMB in August, so back to the drawing board and hopefully she's healthy and figures all that stuff out so that she can crush it there. But the woman who won, this woman Sabrina Stanley, she's the returning champ, did it in 27 hours and 21 minutes. Like, it's just mind bending to me, like, at this kind of altitude and this kind of elevation gain that these people can run that fast. So, anyway, that's that, that's cool. I wanted to update everybody on Jason Caldwell. We talked several weeks ago about the Great Pacific Race. Jason and his teammates Angus Collins, Gus Barton,

• 2:01:13Rich Roll?

  and Duncan Roy, who were attempting to break the record for, how do you call it, like, the fastest ever to row from San Francisco to Hawaii, which I guess is the Guinness record for human-powered crossing of the mid-Pacific. They completed it, it's 2,400 nautical miles, only 50 have attempted this. They met all kinds of weather and huge swells and all that kind of stuff, but they broke the record by nine days. Which is insane.

• 2:01:42Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable. I was following that story with you, and I mean, that's just incredible. Nine-day.

• 2:01:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:48Adam Skolnick?

  Record shatter.

• 2:01:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:50Adam Skolnick?

  So now...

• 2:01:51Rich Roll?

  How long were they out there? Let's see, they started on May 31st and they finished... What day did they finish? I don't know what their cumulative time. Yeah, they've been done for a little while.

• 2:02:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, it was like 28 days or something like that.

• 2:02:03Rich Roll?

  I saw an interview with Jason and he was saying that the big challenge immediately was that they can't walk. Like, they haven't, like, literally, other than walking from one end of the boat to the other, they haven't walked in a month.

• 2:02:14Adam Skolnick?

  Jelly legs.

• 2:02:15Rich Roll?

  They have to figure out how to walk, and there's some kind of weird atrophy and all the weight loss that...

• 2:02:19Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 2:02:20Rich Roll?

  ...they experience, yeah.

• 2:02:21Adam Skolnick?

  So they're like, they're like, just torsos on twig legs, kind of cruising around?

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  I don't know. But rowing requires a lot of leg strength, too.

• 2:02:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 2:02:28Rich Roll?

  So, I don't know how that works.

• 2:02:30Adam Skolnick?

  So maybe it's just that...

• 2:02:30Rich Roll?

  Different types of muscles.

• 2:02:31Adam Skolnick?

  We can get them like... A certain kind of like one of those, uh, those sit down bicycles. They can get around that way.

• 2:02:39Rich Roll?

  Uh, uh, recumbent.

• 2:02:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they're recumbent. They're in recumbent space.

• 2:02:43Rich Roll?

  I can see you on a recumbent.

• 2:02:45Adam Skolnick?

  No, you can't.

• 2:02:45Rich Roll?

  Going up and down PCH.

• 2:02:47Adam Skolnick?

  I would never, never in a million years be seen on a recumbent.

• 2:02:50Rich Roll?

  Weird beard and the little, you know, rear view mirror.

• 2:02:53Adam Skolnick?

  If this, if this experiment renting the family house goes awry, I could escape on a recumbent.

• 2:02:59Rich Roll?

  The recumbent bicycle is a close cousin to the snorkel mask. It's the, it's the cycling version of swimming snorkel mask.

• 2:03:12Adam Skolnick?

  Not in my world, my friend.

• 2:03:14Rich Roll?

  So like cyclists look at recumbent cyclists, the way swimmers look at people that wear snorkel masks. Maybe that'll help you understand.

• 2:03:21Adam Skolnick?

  I'm glad the mask came back. I'm bringing the mask to Cho's house.

• 2:03:24Rich Roll?

  I didn't plan that. It came back very organically.

• 2:03:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, good job. I'm glad it's back.

• 2:03:30Rich Roll?

  The audience demands it.

• 2:03:32Adam Skolnick?

  Um, speaking of my swim mask, there's been a freediving competition going on.

• 2:03:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:38Adam Skolnick?

  Vertical Blue, which is, uh,

• 2:03:40Rich Roll?

  We couldn't get through this podcast without a freediving update.

• 2:03:43Adam Skolnick?

  Vertical Blue is the Tour de France of freediving, baby. It's, it takes place in, uh, Long Island, Bahamas, at a place called Dean's Blue Hole, uh, which is just off the beach, steps off the beach. There's a sinkhole, like a limestone hole that goes down to 202 meters. So 630, 660.

• 2:04:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:04:02Adam Skolnick?

  Feet, whatever that is. And they drop a line. William Trubridge, one of the best in the history of the sport, lives there, discovered the place as a freediving destination, created the infrastructure for it, much in the same way that Garrett did for Nazaré, Will did for freediving. And what's beautiful about it is there's no current. So like, conditions are always good. I mean, sometimes the visibility is better than others and it's always nicer to have some viz. But really, when they're going deep, it doesn't matter that much. It only matters for the pictures. And this year is seeing some of the most incredible records that I've, I, I can't remember seeing, uh, this many records. So I'm going to have to put on my phone so I don't miss anyone because it's a, it's a big deal. And everyone needs their, you know, needs the recognition.

• 2:04:47Adam Skolnick?

  But let's start with Alexei Molchenov, who we've talked about before, who is, The record holder for two of the three disciplines on the men's side. The constant weight record, which is a monofin. Basically, they call it constant weight because anytime you do competitive freediving, whatever weight you swim down with, you have to bring up with you. So really, all the dives are constant weight. It's just a bad name for, it should be called the monofin.

• 2:05:08Rich Roll?

  There's no event where you're, you're carrying some big weight and then when you get to the bottom, you drop it and come back up.

• 2:05:15Adam Skolnick?

  That used to be the way. So in the early days, like in Big Blue, where that was, you know, the early days of freediving, they were competing in variable weight, which is that you could take a weighted sled down and then swim back up, you know? Now, it's all swim down, swim up. And so he got, he broke his constant weight record, which was 130 meters. He got to 131 meters. But more impressive than that in certain ways was his free immersion dive, which is you pull down along a line, free fall to the bottom, get your tag, and you pull a line, not wearing any fins at all. You pull a line all the way back to the surface. That's, he did that to 126 meters. And the dive was four minutes and 45 seconds. And it looked like he'd walked around the block. I mean, obviously, it was incredible.

• 2:05:58Adam Skolnick?

  But to be underwater and doing that kind of physical activity that long, it's just remarkable. This guy-

• 2:06:04Rich Roll?

  Four minutes and 45 seconds.

• 2:06:05Adam Skolnick?

  Four minutes, 45 seconds. This guy is doing things that just haven't seen before. You know, he's broken the record on bi-fins, dynamic. He's broken the record in ice, and he's doing it all. The only thing he doesn't have is the constant no fins record, which is still Wills. I think it's 102 meters. And that's on the men's side. But Alenka Artnik, which we've also talked about her, she's a Slovenian. And when I was covering the sport for One Breath, Alexey's record was still at 128 meters, so it was still close. Alexey's mom, Natalia Molchanova, the most decorated in the history of the sport, had the constant weight record on the women's side at 101 meters. Now, the thought was she could have gone much deeper than that. She just didn't have to. And that's been Alexey's philosophy too.

• 2:06:49Adam Skolnick?

  Why should I put the effort out to break the record just to push it a meter when no one's threatening it? But, you know, lately- Alenka Artnik and Alessia Zaccini, an Italian, have been pushing each other. And on this, the beginning of this, you know, I wrote about Alenka when she got to 114 meters in the Red Sea earlier this year. Alessia Zaccini was in Italy during lockdown. She couldn't, she couldn't go anywhere. She couldn't train in anything but like a 60-meter pool that Italy has finally when they opened up. And she's watching Alenka do amazing things. Well, on day one of Vertical Blue, she hit 115 meters and broke the record.

• 2:07:25Rich Roll?

  By a meter. It was a 114 before that. So she broke it by a meter.

• 2:07:29Adam Skolnick?

  And she held it for about 10 minutes and Alenka got in right after her, hit to 118. And then just the other day, two days later, got to 120 meters. So she continues to advance to levels.

• 2:07:43Rich Roll?

  Those are huge gains.

• 2:07:44Adam Skolnick?

  It's huge numbers. I look at Alenka as potentially the biggest threat to Alexi's overall record, just because she's showing.

• 2:07:50Rich Roll?

  If she's improving at that rate, she could get to 131.

• 2:07:53Adam Skolnick?

  Because she has the capacity to equalize and she's coming up without threat of blackout. So she's got something down, some relaxation, some power. Unbelievable athlete. Today Alessia was set to dive to 118 meters, so I think she's still trying to go for it. Meanwhile, Alessia also broke the no fins record on the women's side at the same competition, 74 meters without any fins. And she did that as a tribute to the person who held it before, which is Sayuri Kenoshida, who died very young in a freak, not a diving accident at all, just a freak accident in her home in Japan. And so Alessia kind of gave that shout out on her social media. So we'll link to all the social media accounts that we're mentioning here.

• 2:08:35Rich Roll?

  That's a trip.

• 2:08:35Adam Skolnick?

  Two other records to note. One is a by fins record for men, Arno. I'm going to space on his last name. Arno has got to 116 meters.

• 2:08:49Adam Skolnick?

  On 116 meters with bi fins and another French woman who I had not kept track of before. She broke the women's side on bi fins.

• 2:08:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:58Adam Skolnick?

  And so, you know, we'll link to all of these accounts to make sure that.

• 2:09:02Rich Roll?

  But we have Alenka's Instagram up here. It looks like it's like a five minute video.

• 2:09:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:07Rich Roll?

  Did you want to show us a little bit of that?

• 2:09:09Adam Skolnick?

  Let's look at it. This is, this is what the Dean's Blue Hole with a monofin dive looks like. And you'll see her at the beginning, kind of breathing up on the surface.

• 2:09:17Rich Roll?

  So for people that are, are listening and not watching, what's the Instagram account? It's at Alenka underscore, I think.

• 2:09:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. At Alenka underscore Artnik, A R T N I K.

• 2:09:28Rich Roll?

  So there she is. She's going down. I mean, we're not going to watch all five minutes of this, but. There's no line here. I don't see a.

• 2:09:34Adam Skolnick?

  There is a line. You can see it.

• 2:09:36Rich Roll?

  Oh, there it is.

• 2:09:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you see it. And so she's just passing the sandfalls. So as you go down in this, in this limestone hole, sand continues to pour off these cliffs and it looks like the photo negative of a waterfall. To be in this place, it's magic. I mean, look at that. And look at her elegant kind of movement.

• 2:09:54Rich Roll?

  So 120 there is showing the depth.

• 2:09:57Adam Skolnick?

  No, the depth is here.

• 2:09:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, for 40. All right.

• 2:09:59Adam Skolnick?

  There. And then you have the second. So, you know, the idea is to go a little faster than a meter.

• 2:10:04Rich Roll?

  120 is the record. Yeah.

• 2:10:05Adam Skolnick?

  120 is the record. That's what she's going for.

• 2:10:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:10:08Adam Skolnick?

  Arnaud Girard is the bi fins record on the men's side. And he got to 116 meters and Alexi has told me he's maybe going for the bi fins record also. So he, so Arnaud has to watch his back on that.

• 2:10:26Rich Roll?

  There's shit. So she, oh wait, she hit it. Like, let's see where she eclipses the record there.

• 2:10:34Adam Skolnick?

  She gets all the way down. So in order to get the record, it's not just getting to the bottom. You have to make it to the, you have to make it all the way back to the top unassisted. And then you have to demonstrate to the judges that you're still lucid.

• 2:10:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:10:46Adam Skolnick?

  You can't blackout.

• 2:10:47Rich Roll?

  If you blackout, you're DQ'd.

• 2:10:49Adam Skolnick?

  You're DQ'd.

• 2:10:49Rich Roll?

  So you, it basically is, it disincentivizes you from pushing too hard.

• 2:10:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Cause if you, if you don't make it through unscathed, it doesn't count. On the women's side, Alice Madolo, who's a dentist in France, and she did the, the women's bi fins record to 95 meters. Cause if you're looking at this. It does help to have the monofin. It's much bigger, it's much wider, and when you do the dolphin kick, you're just pushing so much more water.

• 2:11:18Rich Roll?

  She has a pretty wide kick. I mean, there's different types of monofins also that vary in their flexibility. But the key is, they can also use, they can expend a lot of energy because they're relying on your thighs and your core to propel you. So if you really, you know, put your energy into it, you can deplete yourself very quickly. But if you, if you have a very malleable fin and you have a very slow, graceful, methodical kick to it, you can move, and this is what they're perfect at, of moving expeditiously without oxygen expenditure.

• 2:11:59Adam Skolnick?

  Well, yes. But I mean, remember, she's been underwater for two minutes already, or like almost two minutes, and then she has to start kicking all the way back.

• 2:12:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12:08Adam Skolnick?

  And, you know, you've already been, you've been holding your breath that long, and now you have to sprint, basically.

• 2:12:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:13Adam Skolnick?

  And, you know, without taking a breath.

• 2:12:15Rich Roll?

  Here she is, she's breaking the surface here. It's been three minutes and 20 seconds.

• 2:12:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, 28, I think. She has to flash the sign, take everything off her face, and say, "I'm okay." First, you have to take the nose clip.

• 2:12:27Rich Roll?

  You have to demonstrate like motor acuity, right?

• 2:12:29Adam Skolnick?

  And it's a sequence.

• 2:12:30Rich Roll?

  If you'd be able to take your stuff off and show, right.

• 2:12:32Adam Skolnick?

  You have to clear your face of all equipment, flash the okay sign and say, "I'm okay."

• 2:12:38Adam Skolnick?

  And show the tag.

• 2:12:38Rich Roll?

  Do people ever do that and then blackout?

• 2:12:41Adam Skolnick?

  If they don't, then they have to hold it for like 10 seconds. That's why there was a delay there before the judge gave it to them. The judge wants to know that they're not going to do that.

• 2:12:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Adam Skolnick?

  Usually, by the time you're to this, and you're like, "I'm okay," that's when you're going to black out by then. So I've seen near misses.

• 2:12:56Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's cool, man.

• 2:12:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:57Rich Roll?

  Awesome.

• 2:12:58Adam Skolnick?

  That's it.

• 2:12:58Rich Roll?

  All right, vertical blue update complete. I think we've done our, we've, this has been an endurance roundup like no other. We had a whole thing, we were going to talk about the Olympics, but we're at like over two and a half hours here. Let's get to the listener questions.

• 2:13:11Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 2:13:11Rich Roll?

  And table the Olympics for next time because it's going to, there's going to be a lot of Olympic stuff to talk about in the weeks to come.

• 2:13:17Adam Skolnick?

  All right, listener questions. Eric from South Bend, what do you got?

• 2:13:21Speaker 03

  Hi Rich and Adam, this is Eric Lees. I'm calling from South Bend, Indiana. So my question is about parenthood. Adam, like you, I also became father this pandemic. And as difficult as the pandemic was, the one positive was that it allowed me to be present for my family in a way that I would never have thought possible. You mentioned that you recently went on a trip out to see the Iron Cow, where it was your first business trip since the pandemic began. So I'm calling to see what sort of advice both of you have for parents who maybe got

• 2:14:02Speaker 03

  used to being ever-present for their children, being hands-on. What tips you have, advice for transitioning back to normal post-pandemic life where we're required to be done from the nine to five and transitioning back to what would be a more normal parenting children relationship? Thank you for all you do. Rich, I've been listening since 2016. And Adam, I love Can't Hurt Me, especially your reading of it. Fantastic. Both of you have done so much for my personal development and I really appreciate it. Thanks and roll on.

• 2:14:40Rich Roll?

  Excellent.

• 2:14:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:42Rich Roll?

  You are a very good reader.

• 2:14:44Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you. And when you say such nice things to me, your odds really shoot up about being played on the air.

• 2:14:52Rich Roll?

  Is that what it is?

• 2:14:53Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 2:14:53Rich Roll?

  Adam is the one selecting these things.

• 2:14:56Adam Skolnick?

  Didn't, I didn't even see that until just now.

• 2:14:58Rich Roll?

  No, it's cool. You deserve it.

• 2:15:00Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 2:15:01Rich Roll?

  That's a great, yeah, it's a great question. Do you want to go first? I feel like on some level, he's speaking to you because you have young kids and I can chime in, but maybe you want to lead out here?

• 2:15:12Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I guess my lead would be.

• 2:15:18Adam Skolnick?

  I think it works, you know, like it takes communication and, you know, right up like for Iron Cowboy, when it was even a discussion or a possibility, we were talking about it. And then as it approached and we picked our dates, there was still discussion of it. In the end, we found a way to make it work for all of us. So when it came to our trip, we actually got April and Zuma in with the grandparents and situated so she had support and backup for that specific trip. But in general, in terms of getting back to what we're more used to, it hasn't really, like when I'm home working, I'm still, I still

• 2:15:58Adam Skolnick?

  have my chunks of time with him. So I do the breakfast, I do, then I work, I do breakfast and play with him in the morning, then I do work all day. Sometimes I'll do a run with him in the stroller in the afternoon. And I'm in charge of kind of late afternoon into dinner and, and bath time and that kind of stuff. So we have our, we chunk the day out. And if I'm in town working, I can plug into those chunks. Like when I'm here at the studio and I don't get back until after, you know, five or close to five o'clock, that's more like the nine to five schedule. Then I'll still, I'll come in and I'll still manage everything, you know, before dinner, getting him ready for food, doing the, doing the bath

• 2:16:42Adam Skolnick?

  time and transitioning towards bedtime. I'll do that. So that doesn't change. So to me, like the way I look at it is, how can you chunk out the day so that you plug in where you can, so that he still has a hands-on experience with his dad, so that your wife or partner has some sort of dependence that she's not in it on her own? And how else you can do it? And the other thing that we're doing is we're kind of trying to get other childcare going. So we've been engaging with nanny stuff and we have a nanny now that we think is working, but he's been a pandemic baby. So he hasn't been super comfortable with other adults, really. He loves other kids, but other adults scare him.

• 2:17:21Rich Roll?

  Right, hasn't acclimated to having other people around.

• 2:17:23Adam Skolnick?

  And so we're in the position where we can have childcare, professional childcare, but it hasn't really been super smooth to implement that. So we're hoping that that helps because, you know, April needs a break too, so we can bring our best to the, to Zuma. And Zuma needs to be comfortable with other human beings and be, and be confident in different settings. So, you know, my best advice to you is, I was really hungry to get back out and reporting in a different way and not just because I was like home with the with the family, but because the pandemic itself had made me hungry to get back in the human connection and not just report from the desk. And so I really had a good experience with it. It worked out great for all involved.

• 2:18:04Adam Skolnick?

  We didn't miss a beat. You know, I am parent B. So, you know, April does such a great job that makes my job a lot easier. And, um, and so in my house, she leads, she's the lead and I just try to help where I can. And so that hasn't changed. So I don't have any specific advice for you other than make sure that you chunk out the time and show up for your periods.

• 2:18:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think that's good advice. I mean, I, I, I think the first thing that I want to say on this is, and I'm not the first person to say this certainly, but this idea of back to normal, I get where you're coming from, like this idea that we're, you know, headed back into some version of what we experienced pre pandemic, but I would encourage you to try to find other phraseology for that or to think about it a little bit differently. Because no matter what is to come, I don't think it's accurate to say that we're going back to normal, or at least we shouldn't be going back to whatever that was prior.

• 2:19:08Rich Roll?

  And my hope is that, you know, even if you must return to an office and, and a more typical nine to five experience, I mean, Adam, I think your, your words are wise, but you do have a, an interesting career in that you don't go and, you know, sit in a cubicle in an office building all day. It's different. You have a little bit more domain and control over how you structure your day. But, you know, in, in this particular context, Eric,

• 2:19:35Rich Roll?

  That you seize the moment, the opportunity that you've been given to take this experience that you've had over the last 18, however, many months, the lessons that you've learned along the way and the tactics that you've kind of honed throughout the pandemic to reframe your relationship to work in the workplace and how you relate to your kids. So I guess what I'm saying is, what has your experience been over the last 18 months? How has that changed or improved how you relate to your kids? How has it changed or informed your relationship to work? And now that things are presumably opening back up, how can you take that into this

• 2:20:17Rich Roll?

  next phase so that you're not just pivoting back to what happened prior to the pandemic, but creating something entirely new? Secondly, you know, I don't want to hold myself out as a parenting expert. The pandemic has been really hard on our kids. They're at an age right now where they really don't want me talking about them on the show, so I'm not going to go into specifics, other than to say it's been really challenging for them, for us as a family, figuring out, you know, Julie and I's parents, trying to figure out how to best support them. And that being said, yes, of course, I think a lot of parents have experienced more present time with their kids by dint of sheer proximity, if nothing else, just being in the house

• 2:21:02Rich Roll?

  with your kids all the time. For me personally, this is unlikely to change that much because my work life, you know, is not going to change that drastically, other than travel. But I have been doing my thing the way I was doing it before, kind of throughout the pandemic period. But I think what I want to say is that when you venture back into the workplace in a more conventional way.

• 2:21:29Rich Roll?

  That that connection with your kids that perhaps you're getting less of all of a sudden, I want to encourage you to think about it from a different perspective, not from a perspective of time spent or volume of time spent, and more about the quality of the time that you do spend with them. So as you weather this transition to less total time spent together, I think it would be advisable to increase the presence of mind that you bring to the time that you do spend together. That's good advice. Because I think how present you are with them, when you're with them, is the

• 2:22:09Rich Roll?

  most important thing. Like, can you completely give yourself over to their cares and their interests when you're with them, unclouded by distractions like your phone, or distractions like your to-do list? You know, how present are you actually when you're with your kids? And I think the quality of that interaction is what you should focus on, because you're gonna have less control over the volume piece of it. Like when Zuma's playing with the doorstopper, boing, boing, boing. And listen, you know, when your little kid is like doing something, you're like, this is like... This is cool. Yeah, but you could be like, "I have no interest in this. I'm gonna look at my Twitter." Or like, "While my kid is doing this, I'm with my kid." Yeah.

• 2:22:52Rich Roll?

  But how can you really be present for that experience and find a way to be compelled or interested in that when it's happening? And I think ultimately, a lot of parents like sort of wring their hands and feel guilty about not being with their kids all the time, or there's gonna be some separation anxiety when the kid is acclimated to that. But I think ultimately, you know, as somebody who has older kids, what's more important is to be a living example in the world of somebody who is fulfilled and purposeful and, you know, out there, you know, pursuing something aspirational, whether it's through career or other interests, and to, you know, be a living embodiment of that, I think,

• 2:23:35Rich Roll?

  is powerful for the child. It's less about, it's not really about like, "Oh, I spent all day with my kid," than making sure that that time spent is quality and that the kid is aware, like, when you're not there, you're doing this thing that, you know, engenders their, their respect. I think that's, that's, you know, a really key thing. Because if you're at home but you're depressed...

• 2:23:58Rich Roll?

  You're spending more time with your kid, but you're not in a good frame of mind. What's better? Well, going out in the world and coming home fulfilled.

• 2:24:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 2:24:05Rich Roll?

  I think, and then, and, and, and being available to your kid for their needs in those moments, I think is, is really more important. And I would say also, you know, to extend that a little bit, and as a parent of kids who are older, like, and as trite as this sound, like, time goes crazy fast. Your child changes with such rapidity. I mean, Zuma is in a phase right now where I'm sure week to week, you know, you can, you can gauge those differences.

• 2:24:32Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:24:33Rich Roll?

  And, and thinking more about that, you know, I think will help you, you know, understand the profundity of it and that you really do want to be there for all of it, to embrace all of those changes, to not, you know, when you're with them, to not wish they were that younger version of themselves, but to meet them where they currently are. And, and to do this, we really have to be mindful and present. And that might be easier when the world is stopped and harder when it resumes the velocity that's more typical. So it means like amping up or refocusing or doubling down on, on those practices. And I would conclude by just saying being proactive with their needs rather than reactive is important. Understanding it's not about, you know, creating amazing experiences, like we're going to

• 2:25:15Rich Roll?

  go on this crazy wild adventure, than just being there for the mundane. Like those mundane, everyday experiences when you really show up in our present can be as meaningful and memorable and profound as, as, you know, the crazy roller coaster ride or the trip to Costa Rica or whatever it is.

• 2:25:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right. It sounds like Eric has got a baby about Zuma's age and that he is really enjoying the hands-on and is worried what, you know, about disconnecting a little bit from that to go, if he has to go out back out of the house for work. But I would say just make sure, for me, it's like, if you, if you're like, okay, if I have to be somewhere at 8:30 or 9:00. I can still do the morning. I can own the morning. And if you've been used to kind of sharing all day duties with your partner, you just have to chunk out the stuff you're gonna own. And that's what I've had to do from the beginning, because I've been working since like the first few weeks.

• 2:26:16Adam Skolnick?

  And working in the house. Now, because I've been working in the house, she can just hand them to me if she needs to, or I can be there, you know, and I can work at night. But for the most part, I think that advice stands, and I think your advice stands too, is that means stay present. And, you know, it's okay to like fail at being present sometimes too. So, yeah. At least that's what I say to my wife.

• 2:26:42Rich Roll?

  All right, let's move on.

• 2:26:43Adam Skolnick?

  Moving on. To West Virginia.

• 2:26:45Rich Roll?

  Zach in West Virginia.

• 2:26:46Adam Skolnick?

  West Virginia.

• 2:26:48Speaker 04

  Hey, Rich and Adam. Love the podcast. Quick background, my name is Zach. I'm a lawyer. My wife is a lawyer, and we are vegan and raising our 20-month-old vegan. We are from wild and wonderful West Virginia. My current issue is this. I love endurance sports, running, biking, swimming, rowing, et cetera. I love to move. I also struggle with self-image because I'm a skinny guy. I feel that I have good muscle tone, but I'm six foot two and weigh 165 pounds. I battle with my ego and image issues internally all the time, and force myself to do two to three-month lifting phases to try and build muscle.

• 2:27:32Speaker 04

  The thing is, I don't really like lifting. Rich, I know you have discussed lifting more yourself this year, so I wanted to know why and if you like it. I guess what I'm asking is, what is the best way to get over my body issues and just do what I love, which is cardio and endurance sports? Thanks, Rich and Adam. Keep up the inspiring work. I ran my first marathon because of you, Rich. If you ever get the chance, visit West Virginia. I feel like you two would love it, and I would love to host you and show you around. Peace. Plants.

• 2:28:03Rich Roll?

  Zach coming in hot with the invite to West Virginia.

• 2:28:06Adam Skolnick?

  I want to go to West Virginia.

• 2:28:07Rich Roll?

  I've been to West Virginia.

• 2:28:08Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 2:28:09Rich Roll?

  I grew up in Maryland. I've been to West Virginia many times.

• 2:28:11Adam Skolnick?

  I want to go adventuring in West Virginia with Zach.

• 2:28:15Rich Roll?

  I think that would be well advised.

• 2:28:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:18Rich Roll?

  Interesting question. I think there's a lot to unpack here.

• 2:28:24Rich Roll?

  I think this is really not about weightlifting. And whether or not you like it, or can learn to love it, or what my experience is with it. And really all about Zach and his relationship to Zach and these body issues. You know, I'm curious about where that comes from and what that's all about. I mean, look, you're 6'2", you're 165 pounds. So yeah, you're a skinny guy. If you, for health reasons, if you needed to put mass on, which I'm not sure that you do, then that's one thing. But this is really all about your self-consciousness and your insecurity. Because there's a lot of endurance athletes out there who would kill for that profile.

• 2:29:09Rich Roll?

  Like, most dudes are trying to lose weight and get lean. To, you know, have that, you know,

• 2:29:18Rich Roll?

  power to weight ratio that you probably have. So...

• 2:29:21Adam Skolnick?

  And to be quicker. I mean...

• 2:29:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, the pull into the weight room to put muscle mass on feels like, A, you don't enjoy it. But do you not enjoy it because you actually don't like the physical process of lifting weights? Or do you not like it because you feel like it's counter to who you are or what you really want to be doing, which is out there running and swimming and biking and all of that stuff?

• 2:29:46Adam Skolnick?

  Or do you not like it because you're not good at it?

• 2:29:49Rich Roll?

  Or yeah, because as David Goggins would say, who cares if you don't like it?

• 2:29:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 2:29:53Rich Roll?

  Sometimes it's good to do things you don't like.

• 2:29:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 2:29:56Rich Roll?

  Like, it doesn't matter if you don't like it.

• 2:29:57Adam Skolnick?

  It's good to be a beginner at something.

• 2:29:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's good to be a beginner. And also, if you continue to do it, or you find a way to make it more fun by having friends or, you know, involved or whatever, you can learn to like something that originally you didn't like. Especially as you develop some momentum and you start to see some gains and stuff like that. But really, I don't know that this question is about weightlifting at all. It's really about... Your internal self-consciousness, like, why are you self-conscious at this weight? It's not like you're 120 pounds. Like, you're skinny. But what is the genesis of that insecurity? Like, where does that come from? What is contributing to it? And how can you get honest with yourself? You know, how can you excavate that? Get honest with yourself, work through it so that you can just be comfortable with who you are?

• 2:30:43Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think that's the real weight room here. You know, the emotional weight room. I like that. You could go into the gym and, you know, goggins it out and put on a bunch of masks. But let's say you do that. You still haven't really... You've then kind of put on a costume to shroud or mask whatever that insecurity is. But have you really dealt with it? Like, so I would encourage you, like, I don't know if you're in therapy or you have some tools to work through this. But perhaps do some journaling and an inventory of the things that make you feel insecure or childhood experiences that anchored, you know, this connection that you have between your weight or your skinniness

• 2:31:26Rich Roll?

  and how you see yourself or how others like interact with you. Because really, the bigger kind of challenge here is to get comfortable with who you are, no matter whether you put on masks or not. So how can you get over the issue? What drives it? And I think, you know, a good place to start with all of this is with a self-love practice. Like, how can you learn to develop a greater capacity for self-acceptance? So on that note, if you haven't listened to it already, my podcast with Kamal Ravikant could be a good place to start or re-listen to that. Because it was a while ago. I would suggest picking up his book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It.

• 2:32:09Rich Roll?

  And I think that might give you some tools to begin this journey. The other thing I would question or wonder is whether there's some childhood trauma here. Was there some bullying when you were a kid? Like, how can you resolve whatever that is? And I don't want to project because I don't know what that experience is or was. But how can you find, you know, a way to make peace with yourself and that past? Or that association that you have between, you know, your body image and how you feel about yourself internally?

• 2:32:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's contentment in what you are and who you are and what you have. It's very easy to compare yourself to other people. It's normal. And if you're skinnier than most people at 6'2", then you might feel that way.

• 2:33:01Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I look at myself and wish my body was differently sometimes, different sometimes. So I understand that impulse. What do you think about swimming for upper body building stuff as opposed to the gym? Does that work for everybody?

• 2:33:17Rich Roll?

  I mean, it sounds like this guy's an ectomorph. So yeah, he could probably put on some mass doing that, but if he wants to do it quickly, you know, the gym is going to be a better avenue. But since he enjoys swimming, if he upped his swimming volume, maybe that would help him do that. But, you know, look, swimming is an endurance event. You know, it's an aerobic, you know, exercise in and of itself. So if mass is his big thing, like the gym is the only way, you know, is the way to do that. Or, you know, it sounds like he's got a fast metabolism, all of this stuff. But I think all of those, again, are distractions from the real issue, which is his emotional relationship with himself.

• 2:33:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and just being happy. I mean, it sounds like you have a great life. You do amazing stuff. You have work that's satisfying. You have a great partner. You live in a beautiful place. I mean, I'd say just ride, run and swim. If you don't like the gym, fuck it.

• 2:34:09Rich Roll?

  And if you think you're skinny, turn on the Tour de France and look at those guys.

• 2:34:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, look at the guy who won the Tour de France.

• 2:34:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he looks like a 12-year-old boy.

• 2:34:16Adam Skolnick?

  That's not helping. That's not rich. That's not helping. Rich, stand down.

• 2:34:19Rich Roll?

  He weighs 120 pounds. I don't know how much he weighs, but...

• 2:34:23Adam Skolnick?

  Those guys are like 140s to 150s, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they could be tall, too.

• 2:34:27Rich Roll?

  And lighter. A lot of them are tall.

• 2:34:31Adam Skolnick?

  But, you know, I grew up super skinny as well, and I wish I was still skinnier.

• 2:34:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would like to be 165 pounds right now.

• 2:34:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, sweet spot. I think 180 for me.

• 2:34:44Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 2:34:44Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 2:34:45Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Zach.

• 2:34:46Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, Zach.

• 2:34:47Rich Roll?

  Last one, Chris from Rockville, California, not to be confused with Rockville, Maryland.

• 2:34:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I didn't know we had a Rockville.

• 2:34:55Rich Roll?

  No, Rocklyn.

• 2:34:56Adam Skolnick?

  Rocklyn.

• 2:34:57Speaker 05

  This is Chris Jones from Rockland, California. My question is, you know, pre-COVID, there was some discussion, Rich was pondering, having some sort of like podcast gathering or maybe setting up something different than the, for instance, the retreats, which are hard for maybe normal listeners to get to in terms of Italy or Ireland and things like that, where maybe there could be some sort of like, I don't know, some sort of gathering of wellness. And I can see Adam maybe some sort of freedive and all sorts of fun guests and kind of a wellness explosion. It seems like we're sort of moving past. I realize there's all sorts of concern

• 2:35:42Speaker 05

  about, there's probably some trepidation as to whether we might have some future issues with different variants and whatnot, but I'd love to see something happen where you've gathered people together, maybe on a biannual basis or something, and just celebrated what you guys do. Thanks.

• 2:36:02Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Chris from Rockland, not Rockville.

• 2:36:06Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, Chris.

• 2:36:07Rich Roll?

  I have put some thought into this, but one thing I didn't ponder or think about was Adam leading a freediving symposium.

• 2:36:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, not a symposium, a mask fitting, a mask fitting experience.

• 2:36:20Rich Roll?

  A mask fitting, yes.

• 2:36:21Adam Skolnick?

  Swim mask fitting.

• 2:36:22Rich Roll?

  Two day, a six hour intensive.

• 2:36:24Adam Skolnick?

  A six hour intensive on the superiority of masks to pedestrian goggles.

• 2:36:30Rich Roll?

  I love it. Yeah, so we do do these retreats in Italy. Covid canceled last year. We're doing that one next May, but obviously those are pricey, you know, tickets and they're limited to not very many people. So how do we create experiences that are more accessible and affordable to everybody? Covid obviously put a clamp on any of that manifesting, but when I was in New York, I had some good talks and meetings about getting the podcast tour up on its feet. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like or when that's going to happen. It's not going to be for a little bit, but for certain, at some point, we're going

• 2:37:12Rich Roll?

  to take the podcast on the road and do a multi-city tour and some mid-large-size venues, which will be organized around some other events over the course of the day or the weekend there with a group run or et cetera, things like that. So we're working on that kind of stuff. There's possibility that something's going to go down in New York City in the fall. I'll keep you posted on that. Not sure how that's going to pan out quite yet. I don't have details on that. In terms of other kind of wellness-oriented weekend-type or week-long events, I can't say there's anything specifically in the works for that. I'm always trying to gauge like how my bandwidth and how much energy and time that I have.

• 2:37:56Rich Roll?

  There's some speaking stuff coming up, some travel coming up. I've got a new book coming out, so it's hard to always figure out how to allocate that time and to do it in a way that's sustainable for me and, you know, makes sense with everything else that's going on. So I appreciate the interest. We'll put some thought into it. I think it would be cool to do some kind of, you know, I don't know, wellness sort of retreat-type thing that is not at the price point that the Italy retreat is and makes it a little bit more accessible. We had put some thought into that, you know, basically like two years ago, doing like a camp sort of situation where a lot of people could come and it would be more affordable. But we never got out of the gate on that because of the pandemic, et cetera.

• 2:38:41Rich Roll?

  So we're revisiting all of that and I'll keep you guys posted.

• 2:38:44Speaker 02

  Ritual conference-type thing.

• 2:38:47Rich Roll?

  It's a lot of work, man.

• 2:38:48Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 2:38:48Rich Roll?

  And also, it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy and resources. Most of those things lose money at the same time.

• 2:38:55Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 2:38:55Rich Roll?

  So it's like, alright, podcast tour with the podcast, with the book.

• 2:38:59Adam Skolnick?

  Podcast tour.

• 2:39:00Rich Roll?

  How do all of these things fit and make sense so that I don't burn out and just become exhausted?

• 2:39:05Adam Skolnick?

  When do you need my rider for the podcast tour? When do I need to file that?

• 2:39:08Rich Roll?

  Soon.

• 2:39:09Adam Skolnick?

  Soon?

• 2:39:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What's going on the rider?

• 2:39:11Adam Skolnick?

  If I see any, any red in the sides of the shoes that are on my feet, any red at all in my dressing room, I'm gonna freak the fuck out, okay? No red. I better not see red.

• 2:39:22Rich Roll?

  What else?

• 2:39:24Adam Skolnick?

  What else? I don't know. Actually, I really like the color. I don't mean to offend people who like the color red. Please don't cancel me for that.

• 2:39:32Rich Roll?

  You have been surreptitiously canceled for not liking red, Adam.

• 2:39:36Adam Skolnick?

  I think I'm in Bo Burnham's head.

• 2:39:38Rich Roll?

  I look forward to your exciting and specific rider. But the tour will happen at some point.

• 2:39:44Adam Skolnick?

  Alright, let's do it.

• 2:39:45Rich Roll?

  That's very real. And I am excited about that. I think that's gonna be really cool.

• 2:39:48Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna put together five to 10 minutes of a crowd warm-up stand-up for you. Just for you.

• 2:39:53Rich Roll?

  That is something I look forward to.

• 2:40:07Rich Roll?

  Alright, we gotta wrap this up.

• 2:40:09Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 2:40:09Rich Roll?

  How do you feel, man? I think we did. This might have been our longest one.

• 2:40:13Adam Skolnick?

  You know, this is what happens when we are away from each other too long.

• 2:40:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:17Adam Skolnick?

  There's a lot to catch up on.

• 2:40:18Rich Roll?

  There's too much to catch up on. It's also boiling hot in here because we had to turn the air conditioning off. We're sweating like crazy.

• 2:40:24Adam Skolnick?

  And there's a lot of great athletes doing amazing stuff.

• 2:40:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:40:27Adam Skolnick?

  Very impressive.

• 2:40:28Rich Roll?

  I can't, once you crack, it's like, it's like when you plan a wedding. Well, if I invite this person, then I have to invite this person. I can't talk about these events and I don't want to leave anyone out because it's true. Like so many athletes are doing so many amazing things and I want to just share love with all of them.

• 2:40:43Adam Skolnick?

  With the Olympics on deck. It's unbelievable.

• 2:40:45Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 2:40:45Adam Skolnick?

  What a time to be alive, Rich.

• 2:40:47Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable. In the meantime, until we're back two weeks from now, follow Adam at Adam Skolnick on Instagram and Twitter. If you want your question fielded, leave us a message at 424-235-4626. You can check out links to everything that we talked about today in the show notes, which you can find on the episode page at richroll.com. Please don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple and Spotify, or wherever you enjoy this content. And that's it, man. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Blake Curtis for videoing and editing today's

• 2:41:27Rich Roll?

  show for YouTube. Jessica Miranda for graphics. We have Grayson Wilder for portraits here today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK, David Kahn for advertiser relationships, and theme music by my boys Tyler Trapper and Harry. Thanks. I love you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome episode. Hope you enjoyed this. Hope you enjoyed Daniel whom. And we got a lot more where that came from.

• 2:41:54Adam Skolnick?

  If I smell rosemary, even the hint of rosemary in that dressing room, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

• 2:42:00Rich Roll?

  You're fired.

• 2:42:03Adam Skolnick?

  Brogan, you're in.

• 2:42:05Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:42:06Adam Skolnick?

  Plans.