Roll On: Case Studies In Mental Fortitude

Success in all forms demands mental fortitude—a capacity honed through consistently placing yourself beyond comfortable confines. When practiced with daily rigor, an increasingly sturdy mindset becomes a superpower—and the foundation for the purpose-driven life you aspire to inhabit. Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein myself and master of pen, keyboard and dictaphone Adam Skolnick explore the concept of mental fortitude in contexts athletic and political through the lives of two individuals, James Lawrence (aka the ‘Iron Cowboy’) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Beyond RRP hype-man duties, Adam Skolnick is an activist and journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. He writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently awash in his umpteenth draft of an untitled novel—slowly losing his mind in the process. This episode unfurls in a fashion unique. The balance of today’s discussion focuses on James Lawrence—the undisputed king of mental fortitude wrought in physical form—and his mind-bending completion of 101 iron-distance triathlons in 100 days. In addition, we cover a few notable stories, including The Woman Who Fell 2 Miles To Earth, The Great Lakes Jumper and The Great Pacific Race. We also discuss the recent Supreme Court decision backing payments to NCAA student-athletes, wherein I go on a tear against the college-industrial complex. It is here that we depart from standard Roll On protocol and instead segue into my conversation with a man notable for a very different kind of mental fortitude, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The most accomplished runner currently holding elected office (he’s a 2:16 marathoner!), it’s an exploration of the demands, discipline and disposition required to lead a fractured city through the treacherous terrain of social upheaval in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll610 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon610 Final Thought: this episode marks the one-year anniversary of ‘Roll On’ (and on-air bromance with Adam Skolnick). What started as an experimental but intentional response to the many historic moments that greeted us in 2020 has turned into an important RRP mainstay—and a success due in no small part to the incredible work that Adam has and continues to bring to the series. So thank you Adam. Show him some love on Instagram @adamskolnick. Enjoy the show! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. What is up, my conscious collective? It is I, once again, Rich Roll, here after a brief respite, the nature of which we will soon elucidate, breaking organic gluten-free bread with my main squeeze, Mr. Adam Skolnik, master of pen, scroll, and word, here to deposit sound waves derived from ones and zeros into your ear canal. For those who are new, typically, we break down matters ranging from banal to consequential. We do a wee 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

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  dropped on our voicemail, which you can ring up at 424-235-4626. Today, we're going to do things a little bit differently. We're going to hone in and focus on one story, that story being that of the Iron Cowboy and his mind-bending 100, not just 100, 101 consecutive iron distance, Iron Cowboy distance, as he likes to say, triathlons, which is a feat, or a feat of...

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  How do I describe this? A feat of fitness prowess to which both of us, you and I, Adam, bore witness. We are going to share a few wins and then we're going to go to my interview with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, which was recorded during the final week of the George Floyd trial. So, we're not going to do listener questions this week. But before we dive in, a quick word from the sponsors that make this fiasco possible.

• 3:00Rich Roll?

  And we're back. Adam, we have two things to celebrate today, the first of which is the fact that yesterday was your first, your very first Father's Day as a father.

• 3:10Adam Skolnick?

  It was.

• 3:11Rich Roll?

  How are you doing?

• 3:12Adam Skolnick?

  I cannot deny it was a rite of passage, but I'm not festive, Rich. I'm not that guy.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  Why is that?

• 3:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not here to be festive because a day, a certain day, comes up and they tell you it's that day.

• 3:24Rich Roll?

  I also resist the social contract that mandates we celebrate holidays and other people on appointed dates on the calendar.

• 3:31Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. I don't need my wife to paint an Instagram soliloquy of my greatness on a certain day, like these other...

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  As long as she's doing it on other randomly appointed days?

• 3:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, no. I expect it several times a week, just not on Father's Day.

• 3:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 3:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Rich Roll?

  It's sort of like the bridge and tunnel crowd, right?

• 3:52Adam Skolnick?

  Is it?

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  It's amateur day.

• 3:53Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you're like amateur night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but that was a different era. That was the exclusiveness era, exclusivist. This is the inclusion era now.

• 4:05Rich Roll?

  We're both having trouble with our vocabulary today in speaking.

• 4:08Adam Skolnick?

  But no, but it was, you know, it was a rite of passage. It was the first one. I fed my child. I bought paint for his new bedroom. I swim ran. But mostly, I fixated on a 66-year-old German scientist named Julian Diller.

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  Tell me about her.

• 4:26Adam Skolnick?

  She is the, quote, "woman who fell to earth." Did you know about this story?

• 4:31Rich Roll?

  Well, I didn't until it popped up in my Twitter feed and was set ablaze. It was trending on Twitter the other day, this crazy story.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  Incredible. Like, there was a New York Times story about this. Not the first time her story's been told. The headline was something like, "This woman fell nearly two miles to the earth," or something, and survived.

• 4:50Rich Roll?

  I like how the New York Times kind of uses artful, clickbaity titles now to draw attention to stories like this.

• 4:56Adam Skolnick?

  Well, because this is really an environmental science story, but it does have this life and death element. I mean, she's the sole survivor of the deadliest lightning strike disaster in aviation history. It's coming up on 50 years this Christmas. When she was 17 years old, she was flying to the Panguana Research Station in the Amazon Basin of Peru, the oldest Amazonian research station in Peru. And so she lived there. Her parents were these zoologists that set up this station from Germany. And she lived there. They lived in Lima for a while. And then, when she was 14, she got moved to the middle of the jungle. And she was on the flight back with her mother. And all of a sudden, 20 minutes into this 50-minute flight, everything starts shaking.

• 5:40Adam Skolnick?

  The luggage, you know, the overhead compartments open up. It's like, it's like the bad movie, you know? Like, where everything's showering, the people, this has really happened. And she looks out the window, and the wing gets hit by lightning. She sees it. And then, her mother turns to her and says, "It's all over now." Like, in a really steady, like, how German is that, to be that cool? Under, like, just total zoologist. "It's all over now, honey." But what happens is, she's in this bench of three seats near the back of the plane. And the plane breaks apart. And all of a sudden, she, next thing you know, she's flying through the air. No plane. She says, like, "The plane left me. I didn't leave the plane."

• 6:24Adam Skolnick?

  And she starts, you know, she's, she's just doing circles, like a spinning leaf, towards the jungle canopy. And it looks like, she described it as looking like broccoli tops. And she passes out. And she wakes up under that seat with a broken collarbone and... And a bad cut and a torn skirt, but nothing else. And she got swollen eye. And then she's has to hike through the jungle for 11 days with just candy. And and she finds water, follows the water and eventually finds a logging camp 11 days later.

• 6:58Rich Roll?

  It's the craziest story. I just pulled it up on the screen here. Eighty six people on this flight. She's 17. She's sitting next to her mom. And there's that amazing quote about how she didn't feel like she got ejected from the plane. The plane just sort of left her and everything was quiet.

• 7:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  And she's buckled into this seat, a three seat kind of sectional.

• 7:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  And blacks out and wakes up essentially pretty much fine, broken collarbone. But the big thing was that she lost her glasses.

• 7:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 7:30Rich Roll?

  She's terribly nearsighted.

• 7:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 7:32Rich Roll?

  And then has to figure out how to, in the middle of the Amazon, figure out how to find civilization.

• 7:38Adam Skolnick?

  Crazy.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  It takes 11 days and she's 17. So 86 people, everybody dies except her. It's unbelievable.

• 7:45Adam Skolnick?

  And she.

• 7:46Rich Roll?

  How do you fall two miles?

• 7:48Adam Skolnick?

  Two miles.

• 7:49Rich Roll?

  I don't care.

• 7:49Adam Skolnick?

  10,000 feet.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  There must be something about the blacking out part.

• 7:53Adam Skolnick?

  That has to have helped.

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  You go limp and you don't have that, you're not rigid. I mean.

• 7:57Adam Skolnick?

  And she must have been the, I would think that the canopy caught her and so slowed the fall. And then hit like kind of a dense leaf, like leaf litter must be like the loam must be like so thick and and soft earth that that must have helped. I mean, she was, she started to make her way. I think she laid there for a day until the search. Helicopter, the search planes, she couldn't hear them anymore. She thought they weren't going to come for her. And then she looked or like as she walked away, she'd see some of her fellow passengers like, you know, dead in the ground. And she was searching like women's footwear to see if it's her mother. Her mother never painted her toenails. I mean, she was doing that.

• 8:40Adam Skolnick?

  And as she was walking, she realized, I haven't done anything with my life. If I survive this, I'm gonna do some good.

• 8:47Rich Roll?

  Here's this photo of her revisiting the crash site in 1998 with Werner Herzog.

• 8:52Adam Skolnick?

  Werner.

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  Which is so awesome.

• 8:54Adam Skolnick?

  It's awesome because you just talked about Werner.

• 8:59Rich Roll?

  Did you hear that story?

• 9:00Adam Skolnick?

  With Van.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  That Van told about meeting Werner Herzog?

• 9:03Adam Skolnick?

  I haven't gotten to that part yet.

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's great.

• 9:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she tells a great story. Yeah, it's an unbelievable story. This woman and then goes on to be this legendary biologist committed to this particular part of the world.

• 9:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and it's become this preserve with 500 species of trees, 160 types of reptiles and amphibians, 100 types of fish, seven varieties of monkey, 380 bird species, there's hundreds of insect species, there's more bat species in their preserve than all of Europe. I mean, it's incredible. And the story goes on to basically say that we are at 16, 17% of the Amazon has been eradicated. And if you get to 20%, you get to a point of no return, she's saying as a scientist and that, but you know, until that point, if we can preserve more of it, we're in good shape. But we already, she says, the average temperature has gone up four degrees since when she was a kid.

• 10:02Rich Roll?

  Why is this article being written now?

• 10:04Adam Skolnick?

  The 50, I think the peg was a 50 years ago, this Christmas is the, is, you know, the anniversary of this crash and it's this big aviation disaster, you know?

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  I thought the crash was Christmas Eve.

• 10:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's Christmas Eve. I don't know why, you know, but it makes me want to read her book.

• 10:23Rich Roll?

  Well, this is a good way to kick this off.

• 10:25Adam Skolnick?

  You know, there's.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  We started with an interesting story right out of the gate. All I said was, Adam, how you doing?

• 10:31Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it's our one year anniversary.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  I know. Speaking of anniversaries, so we're celebrating this woman surviving this crash.

• 10:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Rich Roll?

  It is also the one year anniversary of us sitting together and doing this thing.

• 10:42Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 10:43Rich Roll?

  How do you feel about that?

• 10:44Adam Skolnick?

  It's been a lot easier than those 11 days, I think.

• 10:49Adam Skolnick?

  But I feel great. I mean, it's happy, I'm happy to be here. I think as we get into the Iron Cowboy stuff, I think I've. I've reached another level of understanding of the power of the Rich Roll Podcast and I am pleased to be here.

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  It's been an amazing iteration and evolution of the show. It's been an absolute joy to do this with you.

• 11:08Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, man.

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  I've really enjoyed it. The audience definitely loves it. We're going to talk a little bit about that in a minute when we talk about the Iron Cowboy. The funny thing is despite all the kind of heavy stuff that we cover and, you know, how intellectual we try to be about all these stories.

• 11:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  The primary focus seems to be on this relationship that we have and the threat that Brogan Grant poses to that.

• 11:31Adam Skolnick?

  The existential threat.

• 11:32Rich Roll?

  How are we working out this social dynamic?

• 11:35Adam Skolnick?

  I still get Brogan comments sometimes.

• 11:37Rich Roll?

  I know. It's unbelievable.

• 11:39Adam Skolnick?

  I know. Well, it's a powerful, Brogan's a powerful man.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  The human mind works.

• 11:44Adam Skolnick?

  But that's good. How are you, Rich? Enough about me.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  I'm doing okay. Speaking of Father's Day.

• 11:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 11:51Rich Roll?

  I celebrated Father's Day with my wife, 6,000 miles away, and she's in Europe right now. Mathis, one of my daughters, was in Santa Barbara. Jaya wanted to know if Jaya could go see a friend. So you can't complain about socially mandated holidays and how you have a resistance to them if you're not going to reap the results of being on what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that with like-minded individuals.

• 12:22Adam Skolnick?

  When you lobby for that, your whole, the wife.

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  No, it was nice. Look, the boys made dinner with Jaya and we watched a movie last night, but it was pretty chill. I did, you know, I was supposed to be, all of this happened because originally I was supposed to be in Sun Valley doing this Eversting event, the 29029 event. So everybody made separate plans because I wasn't even meant to be in town to begin with.

• 12:47Adam Skolnick?

  Were you going to actually do the event?

• 12:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was going to do it. I mean, I did it in Utah. It must have been two years ago, a year and a half ago at this point. I was really looking forward to it, but there was, with Julie being in Europe, there was too much going on with the kids. Mathis produced a pop-up event for 30 vendors in Hollywood, all these

• 13:05Adam Skolnick?

  How cool.

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  nice, cool kids who designed garments and jewelry and all kinds of cool stuff. It was like a frat party for artistic Hollywood kids.

• 13:15Rich Roll?

  At this warehouse, but it was pretty cool. Like she's an entrepreneur, man. She put this whole thing together with a friend and

• 13:21Adam Skolnick?

  I wonder where she gets it from.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  So I wanted to be able to attend that. And also Jaya just started a new school.

• 13:27Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 13:27Rich Roll?

  I couldn't not be here for that.

• 13:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Rich Roll?

  And there's some other things going on. So just, you know, it was the right decision to opt out of doing what, you know, I like doing, which is being outdoors and doing hard things. But family first, my friend. So

• 13:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 13:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was pretty uneventful. Things are opening up here in California pretty rapidly. I'm anxious to get back in the pool. I haven't gone online and checked to see what the pools in my area are doing right now, but I suspect if they're not already fully open, they're going to be soon. And I'm looking forward to that happening.

• 14:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, that would, because you've had some back issues. Is that the swimming, does swimming help with that?

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  It helps.

• 14:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  And it doesn't aggravate it.

• 14:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Rich Roll?

  You know, it's, it's such a gentle way of working out in terms of your joints and, you know, all of that. So.

• 14:16Adam Skolnick?

  It was, it was swimming pool warm in the ocean. This, I mean, at the surface, it was like

• 14:21Rich Roll?

  What's the temp right now?

• 14:21Adam Skolnick?

  It was 68 degrees at Westward. Like I was getting 68 on my watch after some dives. It was about 63 at the bottom. Maybe it like

• 14:30Rich Roll?

  That's not bad at all.

• 14:30Adam Skolnick?

  From 20 foot on, it was probably like 63, 62.

• 14:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Adam Skolnick?

  68 at the surface. So if you're just swimming, I mean, it's like, it's, it's gorgeous. I, I was lucky enough, April basically carved out some beach time for us and hooked up a nice brunch on Sunday. So shout out to the lovely wife.

• 14:52Rich Roll?

  Cool, man.

• 14:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  Well.

• 14:53Adam Skolnick?

  Had a good time.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  Let's, uh, let's dive into the big story.

• 14:56Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  That we're gonna focus on today. The recap of the Iron Cowboy Conquer 101.

• 15:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  So as many of you guys know by now, especially if you, if you follow the show or you follow me on Instagram, on June 8th, James Lawrence, AKA The Iron Cowboy, achieved something I personally, honestly, did not think possible.

• 15:17Adam Skolnick?

  No way.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  By completing 100 consecutive iron distance triathlons. For people who are listening or watching who don't know what that is, it's a 2.4 mile swim followed by 112 miles on the bike, celebrated with a marathon, 26.2 miles, all in one day. He did 100 of these in a row.

• 15:36Adam Skolnick?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:36Rich Roll?

  Walking out the front door of his house. Making a short jaunt down the street in his neighborhood in Linden, Utah to a local pool that he essentially rented. Beautiful Linden, Utah. Yes. We're gonna talk about Linden. It's like Calabasas set against the Rocky Mountains. Uh, I don't know about that. No? It's a little bit different. It's a unique place. Yes. Um, but he kind of did this all in his general area. It's a flat terrain, as long as you don't go up in the mountains. And essentially went out his front door and did this every single day. Not missing, this is the important part, did not miss a single day. No. There's no days off. No days off. And then he celebrated this insane accomplishment by waking up the next day after doing 100 and doing it again. Yes.

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  So the Conquer 100 is actually the Conquer 101. The 101. So I want to talk about our reflections on all of this, as well as our impressions of actually being present and bearing witness to this. You went a couple times. We each were there. Yeah, it's been a while since we've done a roll-on. So I showed up on day 91. And just backtracking a little bit, when James did his 50 iron distance triathlons in 50 states in 50 days, I showed up on the final day, ran the final marathon with him. It was such an amazing experience. I did a podcast with him before, uh, he set off on that experience. I did one afterwards. I made a vlog about being there on that final day.

• 17:04Rich Roll?

  And, um, I wasn't gonna let this experience eclipse my attention. I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to make it on the final day, because Jaya's birthday was the day after that, and there was a bunch of stuff going on at home. So I had this window of opportunity to show up for day 91. I wanted to jump on it in the event that I would not make it there for the final day. So I was there on day 91. I walked, it's kind of like a power walk, like he was walking these marathons for a large chunk of them. Yes. But walking doesn't really tell the tale, because he's moving pretty quickly. Like you, it's easy to fall off the back. Yes. If you're just walking, like you have to. You have to jog to catch up, if you do. Yeah, you would have to jog to catch up. Like, he's really figured out how to move it, you know, pretty quickly while walking.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  Um, and got to spend a little bit of time with him. And one of the cool things about doing a day, other than the final day, is that there's less people, you get some face time. I surprised him. I was able to have some cool conversations with him, take his temperature on how he was feeling, um, spend a little bit of time, uh, talking to. His friends, his wingmen, some of the people that have flown in from all over to get a little piece of this for themselves, which we're going to talk about, and you know, spend some time with his kids, Lucy in particular. And it was amazing. I loved it. And then, you know, I was able to figure it out to go back there for the final day. And we were both present for that experience.

• 18:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, man, that was, that was incredible. I mean, I'm so glad that you were there for that. I mean, for me, I got interested in this. I didn't even know until it had started, when you started to bring it up on roll-ons. I didn't know who James was. I hadn't heard of his first record, The 50. And, and then got interested. And so I went out there for the New York Times Sports in that capacity, which was the first, my first on the ground field assignment since COVID. You know, my first flight and my first, and my first flight was delayed three and a half hours. So that was pretty fun.

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  And it took you a while to get there, right?

• 19:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. But, but then I checked into a nice little hotel on the side of the 15 next to a guns and ammo superstore.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's, there's no shortage of gun shops and, and shooting ranges in this part of the world.

• 19:27Adam Skolnick?

  It was the glamour of the road hit me right away. But it was, I got there just in time to get to the finish of day 98. I literally drove in 45 minutes before they finished in the park. And, and it's in, Linden is kind of like a new build town that used to probably be kind of a hay farm area. And, and where they ride is to the existing hay farms now. And it's kind of between Provo and Salt Lake, which is, Salt Lake being a budding tech center now. It's like, it's, it's coming, you know, it's on the come up. And they're right in that corridor. And there's a lot of cyclists, a lot of athletes in that area because of, because of altitude and just, it's a nice place to live. There's a lot of sunshine. And so that was cool. I love Utah. I mean, Utah is one, one of

• 20:11Adam Skolnick?

  the most beautiful states we have. And I've always loved it. So it was fun to go there. Day 99. Woke up at five to get to the, to the swim and my plan was to swim with him, which I did do. And so I, but I didn't expect the pool to be so packed. Like when I'd originally organized to go out there and I was talking with Lucy. I said, would I be able to swim? She said, yes, any day, but the, the last day. And I said, because the last day is already fully booked out. I thought, okay, so they're keeping track of who's swimming. When I got there, the, the pool was like five to a lane.

• 20:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:43Adam Skolnick?

  And so, but I got in anyway and I did most of the, the two point four, but it was like a Forrest Gump experience. Like he swims a hundred and he wants to swim on, he starts the next hundred on the two minutes.

• 20:55Rich Roll?

  Right. He does forty, he did, basically does forty one hundreds on the two minutes.

• 20:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Rich Roll?

  Every day.

• 20:59Adam Skolnick?

  And, and he would stop and take a sip. So whenever he stops though, the entire pool goes dormant. Maybe a couple stragglers in the, the farines.

• 21:08Rich Roll?

  Piper.

• 21:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's total Forrest Gump. Like he stops, they stop. He goes, they go. And.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  Hold on a second though. Please tell me you didn't wear your snorkeling mask situation for this swim.

• 21:20Adam Skolnick?

  Rich Roll, you know me better than that.

• 21:24Adam Skolnick?

  What do you, what do you think I wore in that pool?

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Did you not look around and notice that everybody else was likely wearing typical swimming goggles?

• 21:34Adam Skolnick?

  There's only one.

• 21:35Rich Roll?

  There's a reason for that.

• 21:36Adam Skolnick?

  There's only one mask guy in every pool.

• 21:39Rich Roll?

  Yes. They're like, who's this, who's this guy from Los Angeles, from the New York Times, wearing a snorkeling mask?

• 21:46Adam Skolnick?

  In his camo, in his camo, uh, what's it called? The, the, the swim, not speedos, but the longer.

• 21:52Rich Roll?

  Trunks.

• 21:52Adam Skolnick?

  The little, no, they were.

• 21:53Rich Roll?

  You have the jammers.

• 21:55Adam Skolnick?

  My camo jammers with my, uh, my thing, but it was, you know, the sun, like the, there was still a, like a sliver of moon over the Rockies. The sun hadn't come up yet. It was quite beautiful. And then afterwards, like someone's making great vegan pancakes on the griddle. He, he eats his breakfast in the shower.

• 22:12Rich Roll?

  James is definitely not vegan.

• 22:13Adam Skolnick?

  No. As, as, as we, as I learned over the course of.

• 22:17Rich Roll?

  You sent me a photo of him eating a pancake in the shower.

• 22:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. He's, he was eating his blueberry pancakes in the shower as he got ready. Um. So then, then they took off on the bike and, and I kind of followed them around a little bit, just at the beginning and then at the, and then at the halfway point I met them. They would all descend, the cyclists would descend on this mini mart in the middle of Pace in Utah. And it was pretty fun to watch that. And then I followed them around the hay fields for a while. And then I did some time on the marathon, like you, I, I walked a chunk of it that evening. And that was my day 99. And you know, what was cool is, was the community that kind of rallied around them and the camaraderie

• 22:58Adam Skolnick?

  and all these individuals that had, and on day 99 and day 100, I really focused a lot on talking to some people that, that had done some really amazing personal firsts, like a neighbor that they have who's, he's not a really tall guy, so he was 60 pounds overweight when this thing started. And he started to show up, he'd never done, swam a lap in his life. And he comes in and James insists he gets in the pool, he gets in the pool, starts to cobble together pieces of the swim, piece of the ride, piece of the run. He loses 35 pounds by day nine, and on day 98, he finishes the entire full distance. Finishing it after everyone else. And then he still had six miles to walk.

• 23:41Rich Roll?

  Right. Is he the Hispanic guy?

• 23:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 23:43Rich Roll?

  I talked to him.

• 23:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  That's an incredible story.

• 23:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's from, uh, his, his family's from Mexico, um, but he has a Japanese name, I'll get it for you, I have it queued up here. But, uh, so that was one story. His name was, uh, Takashi Inzunza. And that's one story. Another story, Haley Ingram Jones, she gave birth to her first child in January. Her husband was really into this and he joined kind of the caravan, did a couple of full distance triathlons, several marathons. He was one of the- You know, the guys in the yellow shirts that were kind of keeping a bubble?

• 24:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Adam Skolnick?

  He was one of those guys. He, she had never ridden a road bike before. She'd never swam laps in her life. But she just felt, felt left out, felt bad. She felt like, it sounded to me, she, she, they were surprised by the pregnancy and she wasn't like fully mentally prepared for her whole life to change. And I talked to her several times and, and, um, and she was just feeling, she was in that funk. And she just ended up like taking two weeks to kind of feel it out. Did one 33 mile ride on her dad's bike that she borrowed. Worked out, looked at YouTube for a workable swim stroke. And then she just said, the heck with it. Two weeks later, she has the whole damn thing.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  It's so crazy. And this really is the story here.

• 25:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Rich Roll?

  It's about the power of community and the example that James set. And the vibe of inclusivity and this sense of heightened possibility where these people, I mean, that's a woman who would never even conceive or consider doing a full distance Ironman. That person's not signing up for an official Ironman.

• 25:29Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 25:30Rich Roll?

  But seeing those, those people out there every single day, suddenly it seems like, hey, maybe I can do this. And you chip away at it and then a week later, you're like doing the whole thing.

• 25:38Adam Skolnick?

  The whole thing.

• 25:39Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 25:40Adam Skolnick?

  Two brothers, 18 and 14, their mother was a triathlete. She died after a long bout with breast cancer. They heard about, that was last August. They heard about this after it had already started, maybe in May, I forget. And, um, the younger brother did several marathons. The older brother did two full distance and several marathons with his brother. I mean, this is like, and it's the same thing. Every time it's almost with minimal training. We met a PhD student from Mumbai who lives in Dallas that moved there to do the marathon.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  He's getting his PhD in like AI.

• 26:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  And he had promised himself that he would one day run a marathon, but just couldn't get himself off the couch to get going on it. And was following what James was doing on Instagram and just basically said, screw it. Flew from Dallas to Utah, got a hotel room and just started showing up.

• 26:30Adam Skolnick?

  He moved in with his buddy who lives in Draper, Utah.

• 26:33Rich Roll?

  Is that what it is?

• 26:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  He sort of set up shop here, though.

• 26:35Adam Skolnick?

  He did.

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  He relocated, essentially.

• 26:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he did.

• 26:38Rich Roll?

  So that he could come and join in the marathon, which he did a little bit here and there.

• 26:43Adam Skolnick?

  This is Said, Sayed is his name.

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Sayed. And then he, and then he started just doing the whole marathon. I think he did six of them or seven of them or something like that. Would do his schoolwork during the day because it's all virtual.

• 26:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  And then show up at, you know, they'd start the marathon around, you know, between like 1:30 and 3:00 every day.

• 27:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Rich Roll?

  And bang it out.

• 27:03Adam Skolnick?

  And the mother is Haley Ingram Jones and, and the, the boys are the Lindberghs, Jacob and Sam. Jacob's the eldest.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  The point is there's unlimited stories like this. Like when I was there on day 91, I met so many people who had some version of that same story. They'd lost a ton of weight or they changed their life.

• 27:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:21Rich Roll?

  And they just wanted to come out, support James and also have this experience for themselves. I mean, again and again and again.

• 27:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, that, that's the, I think the unexpected, uh, galvanizing force of this whole thing was the fact that by doing 100 in a row, he made a full distance Iron Cowboy triathlon feel doable.

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Adam Skolnick?

  Like personally, someone who's done a sprint triathlon, has done this, you know, the smaller swim runs and loves to get out there. I, it's been a long time since I've ridden bikes regularly, but I used to do that a lot.

• 27:57Adam Skolnick?

  I never thought it was doable for me. I never even considered that it would be doable for me personally to ever do it.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  Well, it's been presented and marketed as the, you know, most difficult thing anybody could ever do.

• 28:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 28:08Rich Roll?

  Like the ultimate endurance challenge.

• 28:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 28:11Rich Roll?

  And he normalized it in such a way.

• 28:13Adam Skolnick?

  He normalized it and, and now like-

• 28:14Rich Roll?

  Which is perhaps why the Iron Man brand is not so crazy.

• 28:18Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe not, but in a way it's actually good for them.

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  It is ultimately.

• 28:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Rich Roll?

  Because more people are going to say, oh, I could do that. I'm going to sign up for one.

• 28:26Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that's the thing. I was there and I remember telling you, I'm like, for the first time, I feel like I could actually do this. Like, but it's weird because- First of all, let's keep it real. James Lawrence is an elite athlete. This is not, we're talking about-

• 28:39Rich Roll?

  Well, he's off the charts.

• 28:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he's off it. Like, when he was before, so, he's also crazy, competitive, and gets his mind, like, when, before all this, when he was just, like, a guy attending bar and golfing in Canada, he, like, heard about some contest on the Ferris wheel in his town, and he had to stay on the Ferris wheel for 10 days, like, from 8 a.m. to the park close at 10 p.m., and the last guy standing was gonna win, I forget, 25 grand or something like that. And he does that. Like, he wins that.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he demonstrates his mental fortitude early.

• 29:10Adam Skolnick?

  Early on.

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  And that sets the stage. It's almost cinematic, like, it's foreshadowing-

• 29:14Adam Skolnick?

  The Ferris wheel, the Ferris wheel scene.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he told that story the first time he came on the podcast. It's wild.

• 29:20Adam Skolnick?

  But that's a great story.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  It is a great story. And, you know, that being said, that's one of the many reasons why I mentioned earlier on the podcast, and I said this to James on day 91 when I was with him. I said, "You're so physically strong." Like, he's not built like a runner or a triathlete. Like, he's a brick. This guy's ripped. But that strength is eclipsed by his mental strength. And my fear was that, because this is a guy who's just never gonna quit, like, there's no way this guy's gonna pull out. Like, he is not gonna fall prey to some kind of mental defect-

• 29:55Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  That's gonna, you know, get him to pull the ripcord. He will literally break his body before he says, "Stop." And I said that to him. I go, "That's, you know, what I said on the podcast. That's my perspective on this. So I worry about the long-term physical implications of what you're doing." And he proceeded to tell me some pretty crazy stories about what he's endured and weathered that aren't really part of what's been shared on Instagram. Basically, we all saw him after, I don't know, it must have been like, five or eight of these things, when his ankles were all swollen up. He was having unbelievable shin pain, could barely walk, and it looked like the whole thing was gonna crater or teeter. And then he threw-

• 30:38Rich Roll?

  A friend of a friend got hooked up with an orthopedic surgeon who knew somebody who was working on this sort of device that was a bit of a, what do you call it, like a brace?

• 30:51Adam Skolnick?

  He said it was a carbon fiber insole that with the brace secured it. So it allowed it some sort of cushioning.

• 30:57Rich Roll?

  They customized it though. There was a clinical application for it and they customized it to make it work for him and his particular dilemma. And he ended up wearing that for quite a long time and that allowed his shin to heal. But he said, short of that, he felt like he might just snap his leg in half.

• 31:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he told me that.

• 31:18Rich Roll?

  That's how much pain he was in.

• 31:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  And he was willing to do that. Like this is, he will snap his leg.

• 31:22Adam Skolnick?

  He will.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  Before he quits. But his, the brace allowed that to heal, but then it created an imbalance that started to cause problems in his hip on the other side.

• 31:32Adam Skolnick?

  Radiated to his hip. And then he got in a bike wreck that would have taken somebody out, most people out. You know, they wouldn't even have finished and he didn't even miss a day.

• 31:41Rich Roll?

  The woman riding in front of him got something caught in her spokes, I believe, and toppled over. He got lucky there because that could have been a lot worse. And that's why those guys in the yellow shirts are so important and Casey and Aaron, his wingman. They're out there protecting him, policing the peloton and making sure that people get a little bit of juice from James from time to time, but also making sure that there's a little bit of a barrier to protect him. When there's so many people out there participating, they all want to have a little bit of a moment with James, right?

• 32:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 32:15Rich Roll?

  And that could be very destabilizing or distracting for this guy who's trying to do something very hard. So in addition to just physically, you know, barricading him, they also have to be politicians. Like they're both very gregarious characters.

• 32:29Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, great guys.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  They're amazing.

• 32:31Adam Skolnick?

  Aaron is a very gifted cyclist. Casey, I mean, obviously can do the riding, but Casey is more of a runner.

• 32:38Rich Roll?

  And he, you know, he's talking to everybody, tell me your name. Like if he saw somebody getting too close or hogging, you know, the time, he would have to go in there and nicely try to distract people away from him. I mean, that's a skill in its own right.

• 32:53Adam Skolnick?

  It is. And on day 99, though, he seemed relaxed. Like on day 99, it felt like, you know, He didn't, he wasn't worried about, you know, they knew, they knew they needed to make a bubble for day 100, but Casey was so chill on the, on the marathon. I started calling it the marathon, not the run, because that's what it was. And it's not really a walk, like you said, it's more of like a march.

• 33:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:14Adam Skolnick?

  So on the marathon, he was like super relaxed on day nine and I was able to talk with him for a while. But then day 100, we're there and it, he decides and the, you know, he goes, so the average speed on the bike for most of it has been, the pool was the same, two minutes, 100 on the two minutes, like you said, 40 of those. And then the ride, he was mostly keeping it like at 19 miles per hour, kind of as the average pace. And, and Aaron was monitoring his pulse rate and keep making sure it was around 120, which is crazy. I mean, like it altitude. And then, but the next day, they fired up that pace to about 25 miles an hour. I think it was just under 25 miles an hour.

• 33:55Adam Skolnick?

  So they were hauling and then for the first time since day five, he was going to run the whole marathon and they go. And, you know, we caught them at one point and ran with them for a little bit. I, I stopped and interviewed some people, but they were, what was the pace, like 10 minutes, a little under?

• 34:12Rich Roll?

  When we were running on day 100? Yeah, it wasn't fast, but he was running for the first time in a very long time. And it was a very hot day.

• 34:18Adam Skolnick?

  It was very hot day. So we run with it.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  And what's the altitude, like 6,000?

• 34:22Adam Skolnick?

  No, I think it's just under 5,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And around 5, 5,500 maybe.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  So he was probably running 9:30, 10 minute pace.

• 34:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And so then you and I break out and we're thinking, because we're not running the whole thing with them. And we figure we want to get to the high school for the finish. And so we do that. We go to the high school for the finish and all of a sudden I'm talking to Lucy, who paused to recognize Lucy Lawrence, who

• 34:49Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 34:50Adam Skolnick?

  While her, while her dad's doing this and she's managing the entire social media and the PR, and she's 18, and she graduated high school within that period of time, just, just before like he finished, with not just her, her diploma, but with an AA degree, like the equivalent of a two years of college.

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she's amazing. And

• 35:11Rich Roll?

  For those who enjoyed this whole experience on James's Instagram, that's all Lucy. Like, she produced this entire virtual event. She was running social for James.

• 35:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, coordinating relationships with sponsors and also all the merchandise stuff that they were doing. We were out running on day 91 and she's like, "You gotta do a sponsored spot for this company." And she's like, "Here's what you need to say." And she's literally like, I was like, "You should go to Hollywood and produce movies." Like, she was so on it. She's like, "No, you're not doing it right. You gotta do it like this and we need this now."

• 35:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  Bossing him around.

• 35:48Adam Skolnick?

  Oh yeah, she's good.

• 35:48Rich Roll?

  She, if you're a brand out there who needs somebody to run social, she is who you're looking for.

• 35:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable how committed she was to this and what an incredible job that she did.

• 36:01Adam Skolnick?

  And so anyway, I'm kind of like checking with her to see how he's doing and she gets a message. And we realize that James is actually having trouble. So from mile 19, his legs would stop working, just all of a sudden.

• 36:18Rich Roll?

  Well, just to back up for a second here. When I ran the first six miles with him on that day and he had told me on day 91 that he was gonna bust a move on day 100 and lay it out. He shows up with, you know, the fancy running shoes. He's good to go on day 100. Starts out with a jog. We're running lightly. I could tell he didn't really want to interact with anybody, but I did get a couple, you know, quick moments with him. And I said, "Are you still planning on dropping the hammer today?" And he said, "At mile 20, I'm gonna drop the hammer." Like, that was the plan. He was gonna lay it out. And I said, "How do you feel?" He says, "I feel fantastic." It's like, "All right, good to go." So yes, after six miles, I pulled out. You and I went to lunch. Then we go to the high school and we're helping them set up.

• 37:03Rich Roll?

  There's gonna be this big to-do when it comes into this. That high school was enormous, by the way. Gigantic with this huge football field and stadium and we helped set up like a finish line and all that kind of stuff. And then, sorry to interrupt.

• 37:15Adam Skolnick?

  No. And so then we were just kind of hanging out and then I get wind of what's happening and I'm like, I gotta get there. And so I start kind of jogging up to where they're gonna come down off that kind of city bike trail. Cause they would do out and back, two different out and backs normally, but this time they were coming off that trail that they do these out and backs on. And then you call me, you lost track of me and I'm like, and, and all of a sudden you cut to you and I, I running up to meet the marathon.

• 37:43Rich Roll?

  Right, so Lucy sent you a little video clip.

• 37:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:46Rich Roll?

  He was literally stumbling.

• 37:47Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I was standing next to her when she first got it and then I'm like, I gotta get there. So we went up and we get up there, maybe a mile from the finish or something?

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  Something like that, a mile and a half.

• 37:56Adam Skolnick?

  A mile and a half and he starts, and we, like this minute we see him, um, he has another one of those episodes and we saw it like three or four times where his wingman were actually catching him. Or he would have fallen on his face.

• 38:07Rich Roll?

  He was passing out and stumbling over his feet.

• 38:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:10Rich Roll?

  Like losing consciousness.

• 38:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. He claims he wasn't, but I think he might have been.

• 38:14Rich Roll?

  Well, you know, I don't know that he's the best narrator. He's an unreliable narrator of his own experience in that moment because he was so out of it.

• 38:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Rich Roll?

  Um, so the idea of like dropping the hammer, cause in the, in the 50 50 50, he was drilling it like the last marathon and he was finishing with like six, six 30 miles for the last 10K or something like that. I think he wanted to repeat that performance. It was a really hot day. One of the things we had talked about was why did he start this thing when it was literally snowing and sleeting and so cold?

• 38:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 38:46Rich Roll?

  When you're built like that, you're not gonna do well in heat. Like he, he doesn't have, you know, the thin body composition that allows his core temperature to cool down quickly. Um, heat affects him disproportionately, I think in part because of his bulk. And he knew that the heat was gonna be a problem for him and that's why he started it as, you know, in the winter months in the way that he did. And he was sort of reaping that on that final day where the heat, I think was really catching up to him.

• 39:14Adam Skolnick?

  But yet, yet, he never stopped running. He didn't walk. He, he kept running.

• 39:19Rich Roll?

  And he would pull it together and start running.

• 39:21Adam Skolnick?

  And then he gets in and he does four laps around the oval. And you were right, right there in the first couple of those. And I, I broke off and just tried to chase him down.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  They let like everybody run one lap and then it was only friends and supporters or something like that. And I was gonna pull out, but Lucy and Sonny were like, no, you should go. So I, I was able to kind of run behind the wingman and take a little bit of video of that that I shared. And then the last lap, he did by himself.

• 39:51Adam Skolnick?

  He, but he did the last two laps, apparently, according to his watch, he did sub seven minute pace. So he did get a little taste.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:58Adam Skolnick?

  And this is after like almost collapsing, you know, half a dozen times at least.

• 40:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. Unbelievable performance. I, I call that like, that's one of the great athletic performances you'll ever see. And the crowd's roaring. There's over a thousand people. They thought there would be 2,000. It might've been close to that by the end. It was definitely over a thousand people.

• 40:16Rich Roll?

  He was finishing a little bit earlier. They were expecting about 2,000 people. I would say there's probably maybe a thousand or something like that. I'm not a very good judge of it.

• 40:22Adam Skolnick?

  But that whole grandstand was packed and...

• 40:24Rich Roll?

  It was crazy. It was crazy. And it was so exhilarating, exhilarating and amazing to see him conclude, you know, this chapter in his life. And then he gets up moments later and gives a speech and he's regaling people and, you know, like he came back to life.

• 40:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he did.

• 40:42Rich Roll?

  You would've thought, this guy's getting carried out on a stretcher. He's going to the hospital.

• 40:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's what I thought. He goes, he gives a 10 minute speech and then spends the next two hours signing autographs and taking pictures of people on his feet.

• 40:52Rich Roll?

  Right. I know.

• 40:54Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 40:57Adam Skolnick?

  But he also had told me, you know, they had told me that there's gonna be a day 101. And I was flying out that. You flew out.

• 41:04Rich Roll?

  He, he told me that too. So that was planned. You know, he wanted to spring it on people. But obviously, you know, he already had a kit made up. So, you know, he knew he was gonna do that.

• 41:13Adam Skolnick?

  The merch was strong. The merch game was strong.

• 41:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, a new kit every day? Are you kidding me? I can't imagine what their house looks like with just boxes and I wouldn't want to be responsible for shipping all that stuff out.

• 41:24Adam Skolnick?

  Great designs. The wingman, the wingman bike kit is fabulous.

• 41:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So, so doesn't tell anybody except, you know, obviously his supporters and his family that he's gonna do this. And wakes up the next day and just blows people's minds by doing another one, just with... Just basically went to the pool by himself and then his wingman and a couple of friends joined him for the last day to just put the nail in the coffin to any doubters and to really emphasize and underscore the point that when you achieve, even when you achieve such an outlandish goal, you can actually still do more.

• 42:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I actually was able to swim with him in that morning, a couple of lanes over. He did the first section of the swim by himself and then I was able, they allowed me to get in there and I swam maybe 1500 or something with him.

• 42:15Rich Roll?

  Did he have any words for you about your goggle equipment?

• 42:19Adam Skolnick?

  No, you might be surprised. He was focused on the task at hand.

• 42:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:24Adam Skolnick?

  He had something else on his mind.

• 42:27Rich Roll?

  One thing I did, I did want to ask you about though.

• 42:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 42:30Rich Roll?

  You got a lot of love out there on the course.

• 42:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's true.

• 42:33Rich Roll?

  A lot of people were like, I know that laugh. Wait, is that Adam?

• 42:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, that's true.

• 42:38Rich Roll?

  So in addition to this being your first field assignment since before COVID, we're here on the one year anniversary. It's really the first time that you've ventured out into the world outside of Los Angeles. So you got a little bit of taste, a little taste of audience love.

• 42:53Adam Skolnick?

  I got some of that.

• 42:54Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of podcast fans out there.

• 42:55Adam Skolnick?

  I had some, some Rich Roll shine on me.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  So it was good. I love that. That was the coolest thing for me, having you get recognized for doing this thing here on the mic was like really, really awesome.

• 43:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was cool. The first time that's really happened. I mean, it was disorienting at times, but in a good way. And, and I, you know, I appreciate the audience and this, this position I'm in right now. So the seat.

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 43:21Adam Skolnick?

  And, and it was, you know, that is like the, you know, for you too. I mean, that is like the exact place you've been. You know, what's cool about it is you've been promoting what James had been doing from day one. And, and so it's not surprising that there was such an intersection there because like, part of the reason Said Syed was there was because you told him about James Lawrence.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  Right. Cause I was doing podcasts with him a long time ago.

• 43:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  I've been talking about him forever. I still feel like. Media is dropping the ball in terms of giving this guy some love.

• 43:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Rich Roll?

  You know, I think this sort of eclipsed any kind of mainstream attention. I'm delighted that the New York Times greenlit you going out there and doing a story. And I look forward to that story coming out.

• 44:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Rich Roll?

  But on the whole, aside from a couple like sort of local news stories, there hasn't been that much attention. Sports Illustrated wrote an article. I was really glad to see that they acknowledged what he had, what he had done. But when we were on the final day.

• 44:23Adam Skolnick?

  But they weren't there.

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  When we were, yeah, they weren't there. Nobody else had showed up except for you.

• 44:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:28Rich Roll?

  But on, when we were, when we were there on the final day and we're at the high school on the, on the football field, I got wind that this Washington Post article had come out about James that I want to pull up right now.

• 44:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Rich Roll?

  Which we both kind of read together, standing on the football field.

• 44:47Adam Skolnick?

  Well, yeah, Sunny, Sunny, who's James's wife,

• 44:53Adam Skolnick?

  comes up to me and says, you know, don't do what the Washington Post did. I'm like, wait, what?

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Adam Skolnick?

  And so then we read this thing.

• 45:00Rich Roll?

  So we read this article.

• 45:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Rich Roll?

  It's titled Through Pain and Controversy, The Iron Cowboy Chases 100 Triathlons in 100 Days. The first, uh, how does this open?

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  The second paragraph, did they, oh yeah. So, so when it's describing James, the paragraph introducing him basically says, billing himself as the quote unquote, "Iron Cowboy," Lawrence aims to conquer 100 full-distance triathlons in 100 days. And this art, which is kind of like a little bit of a backhanded, not so nice way of introducing him. This article proceeds to chronicle what he's attempting to do, but it does it in a, a very kind of condescending way and chooses to focus on things that I think are not the point. There's no mention of the community and all these people that have come out.

• 46:00Rich Roll?

  This, this journalist didn't show up on the day, you know, for any aspect of this to be boots on the ground, to experience what was happening. And focused on things like, oh, he takes an IV. At night, which is basically

• 46:12Adam Skolnick?

  Couple of times a week.

• 46:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, to to help himself recover, which James has been extremely transparent about. He basically tells you what he's doing and shows you and says what's in the IV. And it's essentially the same thing that you would get if you completed an Ironman and went into the tent afterwards, and which is what a lot of people do at those races.

• 46:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 46:31Rich Roll?

  And then a bunch of other stuff that just really is a distraction from what he's what he was attempting to do without a lot of recognition around just how extraordinarily difficult this is, the the kind of groundbreaking, you know, legendary aspect of doing something that nobody had ever done before.

• 46:58Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  And I just thought it was lazy and uncool. I was like, why are you

• 47:05Adam Skolnick?

  You thought it was a hit piece.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like a hit piece.

• 47:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 47:08Rich Roll?

  Why even write this article? I didn't understand it.

• 47:12Adam Skolnick?

  The I can't speak for that reporter, but most likely he would have loved to come out and he probably just didn't get approved to come out. And that's just a guess from from me, a guy sitting in a room. I have no idea. I have no connection to this reporter or to the Washington Post, but.

• 47:26Rich Roll?

  It focuses on on criticism and controversy with respect to his charity of choice and also some grumblings within the triathlon community. There was a bit of a controversy when he did the 50 50 50 because of weather conditions and logistics, he was forced to do, I don't know how, like a marathon or two on an elliptical, which was not his preference, which made people think, well, he didn't really do this thing.

• 47:52Adam Skolnick?

  It was, I think there were a couple of things. One was like he did everything indoors on a bad weather day. And then the other thing, he had an injury and he said, and I think he did the marathon in the elliptical because as long as he's indoors, might not do that, which or something like that. That's in his book.

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  It gave people a reason to take him down a notch.

• 48:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:09Rich Roll?

  And there's a snarkiness to all of this. And I think one of the reasons why

• 48:12Adam Skolnick?

  And it talks about Wada, right?

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  Like, yeah, like, what does Wada think of him doing these IVs? And does this really count as a record? Is this really a record at all? The fact That the discussion is around whether or not this is a record, like who cares? I don't care if it's a record.

• 48:25Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 48:25Rich Roll?

  Who cares if it ends up in the Guinness Book of World?

• 48:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's like, that's not the point.

• 48:28Rich Roll?

  The point is, this guy went out and did something unbelievably hard. He did it with his friends. He did it with whatever support that he could muster. And he impacted thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people around the world, who are now rethinking their own perception of personal capability.

• 48:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 48:46Rich Roll?

  And the fact that this article didn't acknowledge any aspect of that, I think, is irresponsible. And it bummed me out that this article even existed. To me, it's really a story that should be all about, um, basically what the thing is called. Conquering, you know, the impossible. Doing this impossible thing and the impact that it's had on other people.

• 49:09Adam Skolnick?

  And you see other athletes, you know, the, it's very telling in who's flocked to kind of be a part of this thing. And people from all backgrounds, all over the country. He's getting messages from all over the world. Other athletes are super impressed.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  That was the big thing. Well, like Tommy Rives came out, you know, who's recovering from cancer. Still in his struggle and got through six miles with James, which was huge. But the other thing is that, uh, because there was this controversy with the 50 50 50, with the elliptical and whatnot, um, he really wanted to, you know, quiet all of that and put it to bed. So that's one reason, I think, that he decided to do 100 and then do 101.

• 49:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 49:56Rich Roll?

  And along the way, if you go to places like SlowTwitch, which is notorious for, you know, a cantankerous, you know, forum section where people like to take people down a peg. He basically turned the tide there and now has essentially unanimous support from.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  The endurance and multisport community at large.

• 50:17Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it's funny is that one thing he said that was disappointing and the whole team was saying is that the local triathlon community did not turn out for him. And, and they never really understood why during the 50, he was getting a lot of support until this, that elliptical thing happened and then I don't know what happened, it fell apart, but in the 100, they weren't showing up. They weren't showing up to the swims, they weren't showing up to the bikes, they weren't showing up to the runs. The, the people that really showed up were the cyclists in Linden and around there.

• 50:47Rich Roll?

  A lot of cyclists.

• 50:48Adam Skolnick?

  A lot of cyclists would turn up.

• 50:49Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of cyclists in that area.

• 50:50Adam Skolnick?

  Because they were doing something of a criterion in the middle of Payson, like a 14 mile loop, they would do it like three or four times, they'd ride there and then they would do the, they'd do the loop and then they'd ride back. And so some, they would have like, the leaders, they would, they would be in the peloton, kind of like you said, in the cut, you know, like, and this arrowhead of riders would take turns and they'd switch off and they'd go hard and lead the pack and, and break wind. And so the cyclists really were heroes and then the everyday people who turned up were heroes, so.

• 51:21Rich Roll?

  It is weird that the triathletes couldn't show up for him.

• 51:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he, they thought it was weird, but you know.

• 51:27Rich Roll?

  It's a weird cultural thing.

• 51:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right, and it's weird and, and I understand like, you know, look, for, for whatever it is, we, we, when you see a story that's duplicitous or has several aspects to it, there's something about that that's good, but at the same time, yes, you could, there's this version of the story where a lot of people told the story without getting into the controversy, they just wanted to tell the story of this guy doing this hard thing. And, and you know, some editors like the, the, the multi-pronged approach because it's a more nuanced story and it's a little bit more, something to chew on. Personally, I was just glad to be there and witness it, that last day, that finish was, was remarkable, to get up every day with him and, and even for me, just to get up every

• 52:13Adam Skolnick?

  day, go to the pool was hard, I mean, at 5 a.m. and he's getting five hours of sleep and he was like, the stuff that didn't get into my stories, his sleep was not like, you'd expect him just to collapse and like sleep hard like a rock for five hours. He said he was having night terrors.

• 52:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Adam Skolnick?

  Waking up screaming.

• 52:30Rich Roll?

  He told me about that.

• 52:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Rich Roll?

  Night terrors, sweating profusely, like his sleep score, he had this bio tracker thing and he was getting terrible sleep scores. So he would go home at the end of the day, get on the massage table. Get worked on, fall asleep on the massage table, move to the couch, get the Norma Tech boots on and essentially fall asleep. But he never slept deeply. He would have crazy dreams. He was sleepwalking somewhat, night terrors. I never had night terrors. No. Wacky. Crazy. And then on top of the whole thing, I want to get into kind of where he's at now physically and emotionally. He was telling me on day 91 that he could, that for a long time, he hasn't been

• 53:13Rich Roll?

  able to feel anything in his, two of his toes on his left foot, not the big toe, but the two next to the big toe. Yeah. And he said, I'm probably gonna have to, you know, it's a nerve thing. It probably has to do with his back and his hip or something like that. But he has no feeling in them and they might have to get removed and he was okay with that. It's his idea, I think. He's like, let's just get rid of them. They've caused me nothing but trouble with these toes. The lengths to which this guy has gone. Yeah. The extent to, please do not be confused. Like this guy has taken his body to the brink. And if you've been following him in the days that have elapsed since he's completed this,

• 53:54Rich Roll?

  you see somebody who's struggling right now. He immediately came down to LA and went to UCLA to have all these tests done. They put him on the stationary bike. He breaks the record. Yeah, crazy. I don't know what the record is in the hospital or whatever, but whatever it was, he broke it. 6% body fat, but brain fog, he's having trouble with his thinking and his speaking. Yeah. I think he's struggling a little bit, you know, kind of emotionally. I would imagine. Existentially. He was on this great. He was saying like he gets up in the morning and he just wanders around. He doesn't know what to do. Right. You know, it's like his body is so traumatized and was in this survival mode for so long. And it's reckoning now with like, what comes next?

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  And we'll see, we'll see how that plays out.

• 54:41Adam Skolnick?

  We'll see.

• 54:42Rich Roll?

  Of course, I want to get him back on the show, but you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not like, you know, when he's ready, you know, he knows he has an open invitation here and he knows how much I love him and how much this audience loves and appreciates him. So he knows he's welcome. And when he's ready to come on, we'll get him back on the show.

• 55:02Adam Skolnick?

  He, uh, he told me that he can't even unpack it yet. So the longer you wait actually might be better in terms of unpacking some of the details.

• 55:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He is incredibly gifted also at, at basically dropping these wise speeches at the end of every day. Like he's done this whole thing and then he'll give this inspirational five to 10 minute speech at the end of every day. Like he has a command on the power of what he's doing and how it impacts other people. And he's developing a greater and greater facility or capacity to communicate that in a way that's impactful to people as well.

• 55:38Adam Skolnick?

  Boom.

• 55:38Rich Roll?

  So we love you, James. We wish you well. We were proud and happy to be able to be there, um, to bear witness and to, and to support you as you completed this crazy thing. So any final thoughts on that?

• 55:53Adam Skolnick?

  I just want my story to come out.

• 55:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is this? I mean, you turned it in. What's going on?

• 55:58Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, technically I'm gonna.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  How does this newspaper function?

• 56:01Adam Skolnick?

  Apparently there's other stories out there. Um, you know, I get sometimes antsy when stories get held, especially when you, when you are, you like them and you want them out there. Um, and I'm sure the Lawrence family wants it too. Uh, but the good thing about the New York Times is the reach is great and their skill at storytelling is great. So, um, it tends to land well whenever it comes out. I remember the Maya Gobert story, which is one of the best performing stories I've, I've done probably ever.

• 56:34Adam Skolnick?

  You know, they held that for like two, three weeks or something and I was really antsy about that one.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  Do they tell you what the traffic is? Do they give you analytics on how well your story does or how many people have read it?

• 56:43Adam Skolnick?

  No, I get general kind of feeling from it though. You know, like it's, that's proprietary stuff and I'm not on staff there. So I don't really ask for specific numbers and they wouldn't be obligated or it wouldn't be wise for them to tell me anyway. So, but I have a good relationship with my editors there and they let me know when things are going well, when it's pinging all over the world and what's doing well. So typically these things do do well. They do better than the typical sports stories that they, that they run.

• 57:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, we need a good follow-up to the woman who fell two miles to earth. And this might just be the thing.

• 57:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, maybe. I, I hope so. I hope people like it. And I think it's an interesting read. I get into what he consumed on day 99 in this, in the story.

• 57:27Rich Roll?

  His food intake.

• 57:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, which is worth, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna spoil that. That's a good one.

• 57:32Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, we're recording this on Monday, June 21st.

• 57:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 57:36Rich Roll?

  It will publish on June 24th, perhaps in the intervening days.

• 57:39Adam Skolnick?

  Should be.

• 57:40Rich Roll?

  The story will come out.

• 57:41Adam Skolnick?

  Should, should.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  If it has or it hasn't, if it has, of course, we'll link it up in the show notes and in the description on YouTube. But if it hasn't come out by that point, we'll be sure to let everybody know and direct attention to that.

• 57:53Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect.

• 57:53Rich Roll?

  Cool. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with wins of the week and my conversation with Jacob Fry.

• 58:10Rich Roll?

  And we're back. Adam, let's do some wins of the week.

• 58:12Adam Skolnick?

  Let's go. What you got?

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  First up, we have the Great Lakes jumper.

• 58:18Adam Skolnick?

  I love the Great Lakes jumper.

• 58:19Rich Roll?

  Another New York Times story. This is the story of a man who jumped into Lake Michigan every day for nearly a year. That's literally the headline of the article. I'm gonna pull it up right here. I love this piece.

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  You love it too, right?

• 58:34Adam Skolnick?

  I do love it. I love it. I love it for a couple of reasons.

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  So this is a guy who basically lives in Chicago and at the start of the pandemic, was struggling like a lot of people. And I don't know what came over him, but he decided that he was gonna jump into Lake Michigan. And that day turned into a second day, turned into a streak that he has stuck with for over a year at this point.

• 59:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  Literally jumping in year round into Lake Michigan. He makes, I guess he makes like hand stencil t-shirts for bands and travels around to festivals. And when all that went away, he didn't know what to do with himself. But he has these

• 59:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  relationships with musicians and he would have musicians come out and play live at like 10:30 in the morning. Well, he would jump into the lake and he was sharing this on Instagram and everybody just kind of fell in love with this guy.

• 59:30Adam Skolnick?

  53 year old guy. What's his name? Dan O'Connor?

• 59:34Rich Roll?

  O'Connor.

• 59:35Adam Skolnick?

  And Julie Bossman did the story. I think it's a great story because it's like, what I love about it, and Julie gets into this in the story. One of the reasons I love it is, is that we've been taking ourselves way too seriously. That's a good shirt.

• 59:49Rich Roll?

  He just got tired of politics. He got tired of the bullshit.

• 59:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:52Rich Roll?

  And he just needed something pure. Here's a little, let me play this like Instagram clip of him jumping in.

• 59:59Adam Skolnick?

  Because this is what he would do. He would literally jump in. He would do cannonballs and all sorts of things, right?

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  I don't know if we can get the sound on this. Probably not.

• 1:00:06Adam Skolnick?

  This is his cannonball?

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  Here he is, yeah.

• 1:00:09Adam Skolnick?

  Good job.

• 1:00:10Rich Roll?

  41 degree air, 44 degree water. Good for him. There's another one of him jumping in in the ice. There he is doing a

• 1:00:19Adam Skolnick?

  A flip.

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  flip with the musician. And where's the one of him in the ice?

• 1:00:26Adam Skolnick?

  That's crazy. Yeah, he had to chip away. He had to chip away.

• 1:00:29Rich Roll?

  22 degrees out.

• 1:00:32Adam Skolnick?

  And he had to chip away at ice. And it's not Wim Hofian. There's nothing optimizing about this.

• 1:00:38Rich Roll?

  No, it's just joy.

• 1:00:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's just pure joy and like. I love this because like this is what we need. We don't need this unnecessary, counterproductive like jabbering at each other. We just need some dude willing to jump, flop into the into the water.

• 1:00:55Rich Roll?

  Into a frozen lake every day to remind us that we're all human.

• 1:00:58Adam Skolnick?

  Life is not, sometimes this is what you have to do. I had a period in time in my life, I think it was 2005, where like things I didn't, I felt like I didn't know where I was in my life. And that's what I started to do was like February or something. And I started to do every day for 40 days because I was like big into Kunalini yoga at the time. And you know, as Guru Singh says, sometimes every after 40 days, the cell were, the cells in your blood have fully recycled. So like you've kind of recharged. That's why they do 40 day meditations in Kunalini yoga. And so it was kind of like that. I would walk down from my apartment to the beach and jump in the ocean and just swim past the waves and bob around a little bit and come back. I did every day. It turned out to be like 60 days by the time I was done.

• 1:01:44Adam Skolnick?

  It did help, you know, like, and I wasn't open water swimmer at the time. I wasn't doing a lot of that. And so I was certainly wasn't in love with the cold water yet. And so there's something about the power of surrendering to the like that ritual. Sometimes you need a ritual like that to like get your mind right.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, what's not to love about this guy? Look at him.

• 1:02:04Adam Skolnick?

  But I love it.

• 1:02:05Rich Roll?

  Just floating in the, in the lake, man.

• 1:02:06Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes that's, you know, that's what life's about.

• 1:02:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Adam Skolnick?

  Not, not this, not what we have going on here.

• 1:02:13Rich Roll?

  That. There's a couple of things I wanted to mention about this though, because there's, there's, there's a few

• 1:02:20Rich Roll?

  analogies here that I wanted to draw attention to, one of which is it's reminiscent of what the Happy Pair guys have been doing for a couple of years at this point. People who listen to the podcast are familiar with David and Stephen Flynn. They live in Greystones, Ireland, which is about an hour south of Dublin. They run a veg shop. They're Prolific on social media, sharing this message of healthy, vibrant, living, super fit, identical twins. And a couple of years ago, they just started jumping into the Irish Sea every morning at dawn, like, and that became their routine. And they would share it on Instagram and Instagram stories. And slowly but surely, people started showing up to do this with them. And now there are days where hundreds of people show up to do

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  this. And they do it year round. It doesn't matter how cold it is. And then they all congregate on the beach and share a bowl of porridge and have breakfast and tell stories. And sometimes there's a campfire. And they've really created this amazing movement and community around just getting into cold water every single day.

• 1:03:24Adam Skolnick?

  Greystones, Ireland?

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  Greystones, yeah. It's a little village about an hour. It's, it's sort of a suburb, but it's its own thing, about an hour south of Dublin. So those guys have been doing their version of this for quite a while. I was there for an early incarnation of it. And that water is cold, man, I gotta tell you.

• 1:03:43Adam Skolnick?

  So you did do it?

• 1:03:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've done it with them.

• 1:03:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool.

• 1:03:46Rich Roll?

  Secondly, there's something about this idea of streaks, like the idea that you're gonna do it every single day, no matter what. Like the Happy Pair guys, like this guy in Chicago, which leads me to think about a guest that's coming on this week, Hellicite Bay, who is on this extraordinary run day streak. He's run over 1,400 days consecutively without missing a single day, including being the first black guy to run across the United States, which he completed a couple of weeks ago. So he's coming on the show this week. I'm not sure when we're gonna air that, but I'm sitting down with him.

• 1:04:22Adam Skolnick?

  That's exciting. I love him.

• 1:04:24Rich Roll?

  And I think this idea of streaks, it's like, no matter what, this guy's gonna run. And no matter what, that dude's gonna jump into Lake Michigan, and the Happy Pair guys are gonna get into the Irish Sea. And when you prioritize it and create momentum around that consistency, look what can happen. It's kind of an amazing, powerful, mystical thing.

• 1:04:45Adam Skolnick?

  It is. It is mystical, because it's not, it's not about trying to get ahead or get anywhere other than just do that one thing. And that's the power of it, you know?

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  Right. It's surprising with the guy in Chicago that there aren't people showing up to do it with him.

• 1:05:00Adam Skolnick?

  There were.

• 1:05:01Rich Roll?

  Not like huge crowds.

• 1:05:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:05:02Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:05:03Adam Skolnick?

  Just towards the end, I think he had like a cookout. Yeah. He had a couple of bands. But I like that Hella is coming on. He's also, I saw him commenting supportive message on Iron Cowboys Instagram.

• 1:05:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I did too.

• 1:05:17Adam Skolnick?

  Which was cool to see that. I mean, even Iron Cowboy, 100 days in a row, same idea.

• 1:05:22Rich Roll?

  Right. Consistency, streaks, momentum.

• 1:05:26Adam Skolnick?

  I've changed a diaper like-

• 1:05:28Rich Roll?

  I see a theme.

• 1:05:30Adam Skolnick?

  How many days in a row is that now?

• 1:05:31Rich Roll?

  You've been breathing consistently for many days in a row.

• 1:05:36Adam Skolnick?

  I have.

• 1:05:37Rich Roll?

  We all do things consistently without thinking about it.

• 1:05:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:05:40Rich Roll?

  What can we add on? And when you look at it, when you just make it the priority and you orient your life around that, these things that seem daunting suddenly become rote. And when you take them in bite sized chunks, just, I don't have to worry about tomorrow, just today. How am I going to get my run in today?

• 1:05:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Rich Roll?

  How am I going to jump in Lake Michigan today?

• 1:05:59Adam Skolnick?

  That's all it is.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  That's it, man. Couple more wins of the week.

• 1:06:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  I wanted to shout out Jason Caldwell and this Great Pacific Race that's happening right now. It's a 2,400 nautical mile event of rowing that started on May 31st, where Jason and his team of four, along with a couple of other teams, are attempting to row from San Francisco to Hawaii, to Honolulu. I guess only 22 teams and 60 people have ever completed this race. You did some research on this.

• 1:06:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Rich Roll?

  It looks like it launched in 2014.

• 1:06:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's held every two years, launched in 2014. The record was set of 39 days, is that what we said? Yeah, 39 days in 2016.

• 1:06:50Adam Skolnick?

  The pandemic delayed last year's race, so now they're on to odd years. You can put in your application for 2023 right now, Rich.

• 1:06:58Rich Roll?

  That's something I won't be doing.

• 1:07:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  But I've got mad respect for Jason and his teammates.

• 1:07:04Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:05Rich Roll?

  For tackling this thing.

• 1:07:06Adam Skolnick?

  The first half of the race apparently saw some big conditions out there in the seas. It's been glassier lately.

• 1:07:13Rich Roll?

  They're on day 22, I think.

• 1:07:15Adam Skolnick?

  Day 22. Was it 21 or 22?

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  The world record is 39 days.

• 1:07:20Adam Skolnick?

  39 days.

• 1:07:21Rich Roll?

  So they're well into it at this point.

• 1:07:22Adam Skolnick?

  They're on day 22, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:07:25Rich Roll?

  What's interesting about this event is you would think if you just got the four best rowers in the world, you would crush it. But that's not really how this works. You certainly need people who are very good at rowing. But what's more important is finding people who are experienced in adversity and adventure sports. Like, how are you going to deal with being wet all the time and having your sleep disrupted and vomiting because of the way, like, all the conditions that get thrown at you and the variables, et cetera. So, one of the things, Jason is an extraordinarily accomplished adventure athlete. This guy's crossed the Nibbitt Desert. He's rowed the Atlantic twice. The first time, he broke the American record

• 1:08:07Rich Roll?

  despite two of his crew being airlifted for medical reasons. Then he came back with a new team and broke the world record. He's done all kinds of things in different terrains and environments. And he's got these other teammates, Angus Collins, Gus Barton, and Duncan Roy.

• 1:08:24Adam Skolnick?

  Same guys are back?

• 1:08:25Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I should do a little bit more research on this. But these guys are not all collegiate, accomplished rowers. Jason's got, obviously, a background in rowing. But I think there's a diversity of experience and background that these guys all bring.

• 1:08:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Rich Roll?

  That allow this to function optimally as a team sort of experience.

• 1:08:46Adam Skolnick?

  The video on his Atlantic race is really telling. I don't think it's the same three guys from the Atlantic race, but one of the guys from the Atlantic race, who was the best rower, was actually not used to rowing in open ocean. And so he had really bad seasickness the first 24 something hours. And it looked like it was going to be another airlift situation, but they were able to stabilize him and get him some rest. And then he became a real valuable asset, just crushing it down the stretch. They're in these kayaks, similar to how Colin O'Brady and his team.

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's the same kind of boat. Kayak is the wrong word. I mean, these are large boats. So two people, I think two people are rowing at a time and the other two are sleeping. They do these shifts. So they're literally going around the clock.

• 1:09:29Adam Skolnick?

  Two, two at a time. It's four. Most teams have four people. The other two teams in the water, we should note, are all female teams.

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:38Adam Skolnick?

  There's the Ocean Shiro's, which are hot on the tail of the guys. I don't know how far, they're probably a good ways back. But if you look at the tracker, they look like they're hot on their tails. But they're doing great. I mean, they're right there. And then the girls who dare are having a little bit more trouble. They're going south. It looks like they're going south to catch a western current. So, so they're still in it, though. They're still going. They're, they're, they're in Baja area. I mean, both these, they've gone a long way. They're already very south and west. And they're well on their way to breaking a record here. And the Ocean Shiro's might actually get that 39 day record, too. They're, they're, they're cruising. And they're a great follow also on Instagram, too.

• 1:10:19Rich Roll?

  Right. So I just wanted to put this on people's radar as this story rapidly unfolds. You can follow it. Best place to follow it is on Instagram, at LAT35racing, LAT, the number 35 racing, where there's a bunch of updates here and you can kind of pay attention and keep tabs on these guys.

• 1:10:38Adam Skolnick?

  And the Great Pacific Race will have a link to click if you want to see their tracker. And then you can see how the, how the three teams are doing.

• 1:10:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:46Adam Skolnick?

  But so basically, there are three teams, four men and seven women attempting to do this. I just sometimes, I think that's really cool that like, there's that many badass women out there going for it, too.

• 1:11:00Rich Roll?

  It's very cool. So if they make it safely, we'll see if we can get Jason on the podcast to tell us all about it.

• 1:11:07Adam Skolnick?

  Dope.

• 1:11:08Rich Roll?

  So this is the point where we were gonna pivot to Jacob Frye, but there's one more thing that that we discussed this morning that you wanted to talk about.

• 1:11:15Adam Skolnick?

  Should we? Or should we?

• 1:11:16Rich Roll?

  No, let's do it.

• 1:11:17Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:11:17Rich Roll?

  Why not?

• 1:11:18Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:11:19Rich Roll?

  So go for it.

• 1:11:21Adam Skolnick?

  Well, um, we, you know, this Supreme Court case just got a verdict just got ruled on a Supreme Court case about amateurism in American sport. And basically, it was about the NCAA, which rules all college athletics, and they were trying to preserve things, the status quo, which is you have to be an amateur to play college sports. So that means even though these athletes, in cases of football and baseball, who make millions and hundreds of millions of dollars for universities and for the NCAA, they don't get paid anything. So then, when they do take a benefit, maybe under the table, they're they're somehow painted

• 1:12:03Adam Skolnick?

  as corrupt and they've done and they're suspended and the burden of that is on them. And often, they might come from families that don't have a lot of money and don't have a lot of opportunity outside sport, especially when you're talking about football and basketball, and largely black. And so the burden always falls on them. And the funny thing about amateurism is, it's always been used as a cudgel against people that didn't have money or didn't have, you know, didn't have options. Even the Olympics, they, you know, used to be thought of as if you're an amateur athletic, there's some amateur athlete, somehow that's more pure.

• 1:12:37Adam Skolnick?

  And so we should hold that up. But that often kept Olympians impoverished, or even all the way back to Duke and Jim Thorpe, which we talked about in the last roll on, those guys both came from backgrounds where they didn't have a lot of money and didn't have a lot of opportunity. And Duke was able to be taken care of by people in Hawaii that allowed him to keep his amateurism. Otherwise, he would have been disgraced and have his had his medal stripped, just like Jim Thorpe, who was arguably the best athlete of his era. And so that's been hanging over the NCAA, and slowly but surely, people have been trying to get rid of it. And the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that that amateurism cloak is gone. You can't pay athletes whatever, you know, it's not open market, like free agency in professional sports, but.

• 1:13:22Adam Skolnick?

  You are going to be able to give more benefits. There's going to be less limits on that. There'll be stipends that will be allowed. There'll be all sorts of things that will give all athletes in every sport, basically, opportunities that they didn't have before.

• 1:13:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the way I look at this is that it's just a crack. You know, the door is starting to open.

• 1:13:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  Because this is a very narrow ruling. It's not busting open the floodgates so that these NC2A athletes can start profiting off their likenesses.

• 1:13:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:13:53Rich Roll?

  Their social media and get paid like professionals. It's a very narrow application of a particular law that allows them to get compensation for education-related stuff, right?

• 1:14:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:14:05Rich Roll?

  It's complicated, but the point being that this is a small piece in a much larger puzzle, and I'm glad that this is happening. I wish that it was going further and faster because I think it's preposterous that these college athletes are not being compensated while the NC2A is enriching itself to, you know, an extreme extent. And so much of how these colleges operate functions on taking advantage of these athletes to sort of, you know, like sort of gird their coffers. And I just find it in 2021 to be exploitive and extremely distasteful. And I think more importantly, when you look at this more broadly from the perspective

• 1:14:48Rich Roll?

  of what are colleges doing in general and where have we lost our way? I think there is an argument to be made for shining a light on the kind of scammy nature to which the university system and colleges in general are exploiting not just athletes, but students in general. This is something that Scott Galloway, who's a professor of business at NYU. And also kind of a YouTube and podcast star has been ranting about for a while, but he makes some really good points, which is basically that higher education has been squeezing students for 30 years. Tuition has exploded. It's up 1,400% since 1978, which is 15,

• 1:15:31Rich Roll?

  it's a 15x increase in the last 40 years. And the tuition to salary ratio used to be 25%, meaning you pay this certain tuition, but you can expect to earn this much when you get out into the workplace. But that 25% 25 times. 25x, I mean, is now dwindled to 1.4x. Crazy. So these numbers are out of whack. Meanwhile, housing costs have escalated from 2.8x one's average starting salary to 10x one's salary. So you can't make, you can't make it work. No. And these colleges, you know, to coin Scott's phraseology, are essentially luxury

• 1:16:11Rich Roll?

  brands that are driven by artificial scarcity to create irrational margins. And the colleges are drunk on this scarcity because they can create such massive demand for entrance. Meanwhile, they have these billion dollar endowments. And, you know, when universities used to, you know, once aspired to be public servants, they're now just these, these brands. And it doesn't make sense when you have these massive endowments. Tuition costs are insane. And even when you look at someone like Scott or any typical university professor, and you compare how it breaks down in terms of what a student has to pay to attend a certain class versus what that college professor is being paid to teach that class, it's also

• 1:16:56Rich Roll?

  completely out of whack. It's something like a 90% commission on professors. So the point being that the exploitation is extreme with the athletes, but it's also exploitation across the board with students. And I think COVID presented an opportunity for us all to reimagine what this system could look like because driving this artificial scarcity really doesn't make sense anymore. Like, If Yale has an entering class of, I don't even know what it is, 2,000, 3,000 people, why can't that be 50,000 people at a much reduced tuition price where you're in this hybrid, virtual, you know, learn from home situation? Like, if you really want to be a public servant and if your priority is to provide

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  higher education at a, at a cost-effective point to the most number of people, we're capable of doing that. But these universities want to protect the fact that they are luxury brands and that, that's established by making it rare, in the sense that a diamond is rare.

• 1:17:58Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's great, all great points. I think Gladwell did it in one of his first seasons of religious history.

• 1:18:03Rich Roll?

  He goes off on this stuff.

• 1:18:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He did something and I think he profiled like Vassar or Smith, one of the, one of those two, the only like high-end college that actually uses its endowment for the students, like to actually get poor students to come in and pays their entire way out of their endowment, which is what you're basically advocating. And, and, and it's not just exploiting students because it's exploiting all families. Because who's paying for, you know, sometimes it's, it's the student getting into debt. Sometimes it's the family themselves, but, you know, having to save and scrape together money over the course of an entire working life and then put it into the hands of these, you know, white tie, white shoe.

• 1:18:42Rich Roll?

  The idea that young people are going out in the workplace straddled with extraordinary debt in an era where we're bailing out airlines and car companies and bankers to the extent that we're doing, it just, it just becomes really unpalatable.

• 1:18:58Adam Skolnick?

  It does. And that's what has driven this incredible distrust, which is a great way to pivot to kind of the guy, you're sitting in one of the toughest positions in politics. You know, his job is probably the hardest job in politics, other than maybe, you know, the president during a pandemic.

• 1:19:17Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:19:18Adam Skolnick?

  And because, because of all these things that are true, because of all these flaws in systems that we've always kind of... Figured ran the world and then the exposure of that and then the backlash against that and the outrage kind of spiral that happens, there's such low trust in institutions and partly because of what you're saying because they, you know, there's an exploitative nation.

• 1:19:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and they've betrayed their mission statements and the people that rely on them.

• 1:19:50Adam Skolnick?

  So then what if you are a mayor cut from the same cloth as like a liberal, kind of like a, you know, not to compare him to Obama, but someone who like is running a hope and change type campaign and wants to then take the mantle of an institution that is derided at this, this time, what a, what a difficult.

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  You're in an impossible situation because Jacob Frye really is of that political ilk. He is a hope and change progressive who, you know, comes into this situation looking to, you know, like sort of build bridges in a bipartisan way. And he finds himself in a situation in which his city is literally at war with itself and on the precipice of total implosion. And no matter what he does, he will be derided and criticized. He's either not progressive enough or he's way out of bounds progressive.

• 1:20:51Rich Roll?

  Every measure and every move that he takes is under the microscope of, of the world because all attention is focused on Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd and the trial and everything going on there. So the pressure could not be more enormous on that individual. And what interests, interested me about him and the reason to, to speak to him was not to have an in-depth conversation about policy and his politics, but more to understand.

• 1:21:21Rich Roll?

  The human being who's weathering these kinds of hits, the kind of guy who has gotten into Twitter beefs with Donald Trump. And I feel, you know, if I give him a charitable interpretation, he's really trying to do the right thing, and you may disagree or agree with how he's trying to do that. But maintaining peace in a city poised to explode is a tall order. You have to set matters to rights, you've got to acknowledge the wrongs, you've got to make the appropriate changes, and you have to do all of this under the spotlight, as I mentioned, of the world where half the people think he's doing not enough and the other half think that he's bowing too much. So the conversation that I wanted to have with him was really about that, not politics,

• 1:22:05Rich Roll?

  but how one manages the stress and pressure that he has had to shoulder and what it feels like to have to make really important, difficult, and at times no-win decisions while the world watches. And also, the fact that this guy is, not for nothing, probably the most accomplished runner in elected office in America.

• 1:22:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right, that's right. That was another big piece of this, right?

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  What an unbelievable runner this guy is. This is a guy who, in addition to being mayor of Minneapolis, is a former professional runner. He trained with Des Linden back in the day. He was repped by Saucony. He got fourth in the marathon at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio where he ran 216 for the marathon. And then in 2008, he outright won the Austin Marathon. Like, he didn't win the amateur, like, he won the whole thing.

• 1:23:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:23:02Rich Roll?

  This is the mayor of Minneapolis. He's a young guy, he's got a baby. It's kind of an extraordinary situation. So of course, when the opportunity presented itself to talk to this guy while I was in Minneapolis...

• 1:23:18Rich Roll?

  Of course, I'm gonna take that opportunity to try to-

• 1:23:20Adam Skolnick?

  Did Brogan hook this up?

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because Brogan's friends with him-

• 1:23:23Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:23:24Rich Roll?

  And set that whole thing in motion. And I think it's important to note that, that, I, you know, look, Jacob came to the interview in good faith, like, and, and I really appreciate him taking the time to, to talk to me, but for all the reasons we just mentioned, the guy's in a pickle, like, it's not in his interest-

• 1:23:43Adam Skolnick?

  Still, right? It hasn't gotten-

• 1:23:44Rich Roll?

  To have, like, an emotional, you know, vulnerable conversation with me about his life, like, he's trying to hold everything together.

• 1:23:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's still, it's still-

• 1:23:52Rich Roll?

  It still is, so-

• 1:23:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right, what's the latest there?

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  Well, here we are, um, in June, but on June 3rd, they just, uh, they dismantled George Floyd Square. There's an article about this in the New York Times that I can pull up. And they did it, uh, two things about this, first of all, they did, they didn't announce it ahead of time, just one dawn, on, on the 3rd, at dawn, at dawn on the 3rd, they started dismantling the, the barriers-

• 1:24:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Rich Roll?

  Um, and they, secondly, they did it in, in partnership or cooperation with the Agape Movement-

• 1:24:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:24:29Rich Roll?

  Which is a community organization that I was able to encounter, like, I met with some of these people when I visited George Floyd Square, got to know a couple of them-

• 1:24:40Adam Skolnick?

  What does your podcast do?

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, the guy from the Agape Movement is the dude who said, "What does your podcast do?"

• 1:24:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's the guy.

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  He was the Agape, one of the Agape dudes. And so, the Agape Movement has taken some hits for cooperating with this from, from, uh, liberal-minded folk who did not want these barriers taken down, so it's, it's controversial. The Agape Movement is funded by the city, I think they got a couple hundred thousand dollars. So, that, of course, you know, caused some criticism, and if you're Jacob, like, there's this balance between recognizing and acknowledging and memorializing the importance of everything that has transpired in Minneapolis, but there's also a countervailing force- And quite a few people who want the road back open and the businesses that are

• 1:25:31Rich Roll?

  inside that square who want to reopen as well. How do you make the right call? How do you do what's right? Is there a right answer to how to resolve this? And that's just one of, you know, probably several types of issues that, you know, Mayor Fry has to deal with every single day.

• 1:25:49Adam Skolnick?

  Crazy. I've always said whoever was in office in 2020, as an administrator, mayor, governor, president, I would like to see how many keep their jobs. It's not going to be many.

• 1:26:01Rich Roll?

  It's so rough.

• 1:26:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  The mayor job is an interesting one, though, because you actually have a lot of power. You have more power as a mayor to actually do stuff and get stuff done than most elected officials.

• 1:26:13Adam Skolnick?

  Didn't Garcetti just take an ambassador post?

• 1:26:15Rich Roll?

  To get out?

• 1:26:17Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think he was expecting a win.

• 1:26:20Rich Roll?

  Well, we got a lot more to come, so why don't we cut it there and pivot now to my conversation with Mayor Jacob Fry.

• 1:26:38Rich Roll?

  Well, super nice to meet you, Matt. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy life to sit down, and I'm excited to talk to you, Matt.

• 1:26:45Adam Skolnick?

  I am, too.

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm glad that I'm not walking in your shoes. Right now, I can't imagine the level of stress and strain that your life delivers to you on a daily basis. It's got to be a lot to just shoulder everything that this city throws at you. So how do you, like, what is your routine to just maintain your equanimity throughout everything?

• 1:27:13Adam Skolnick?

  It is heavy. There's no doubt about it. And it's both not about me, which I fully recognize. I mean, this...

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Hundred year in the making reckoning around racial justice is not about me specifically as mayor, but obviously I'm very involved as the mayor of Minneapolis and you know, you feel that weight every single day.

• 1:27:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  I have a little bit of a mantra that I tell myself every morning when I wake up. First thing I tell myself is find a way. That's always been my mantra, you know, find a way for whatever it is that you're trying to figure out, whatever problem you're trying to solve, whatever form of justice or equity you're trying to accomplish, it's find a way. But then there's a few simple principles that I live by beyond that. And sometimes when you're going through the most strenuous difficulty, that's all you can do. It's first tell the truth, you know, be honest no matter what. Second, you try to do what's right. And obviously what is right is oftentimes up for debate.

• 1:28:19Speaker 02

  And then the last thing is you just try your hardest and you keep putting one foot in front of the other and that's all you can do.

• 1:28:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  So it's that mantra. And then of course it's running. I mean, running has always been some form of release for me and has become more of a release since I stopped doing it seriously.

• 1:28:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I want to talk about the running. Let's just, let's just get into that now. I can't imagine there is anybody in elected office in the U.S. who's a more accomplished runner than yourself. I think you have that crown, don't you? 216 marathoner? I mean, it's unbelievable.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's possible. I feel like lately anyway, runners have been getting more and more involved in different causes, social justice, politics, et cetera. Who knows? That was certainly my previous life.

• 1:29:10Rich Roll?

  Right. Pro runner and was competing as a pro, right? All the way through law school or part of law school?

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, well, I graduated college. I very soon thereafter moved out to join the Hanson's Olympic Development Program with Brooks.

• 1:29:28Rich Roll?

  Which is Desland, Desland's program.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  Which was Desi, yeah, she was Desi Devila at the time and then she, she married our buddy Ryan. And. And yeah, it was a wonderful experience out in the Hanson's. They've got this amazing program where, you know, you just get up and you start running with a big group of people that are doing exactly the same thing. And it becomes a whole lot easier to run very high mileage because you have that kind of camaraderie associated with it. So I did that for a year and a half or so, and then went back and probably had my very best running years of my entire career while I was in law school.

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  Right. So the Pan Am Games, was that while you were in law school?

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  It was.

• 1:30:10Rich Roll?

  That's crazy balancing those two things at that time.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, for me, it was almost a sense of relief because once I was in law school, there was another outlet for energy. There was another way of thinking. I mean, you know, when I was out in Michigan, I was running, I was eating, I was sleeping, and that was pretty much it. And to have another concentration was actually kind of nice for me because I wasn't entirely dependent on a successful race to get a paycheck, you know? And I think that in many respects was helpful and freeing in a way that actually led to some of my best running. But it was also monotonous because, and lonely. I'm an extrovert. I love people. I love talking to people. I'm so honored to talk to, you know, the great

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  philosopher, Rich Roll, right now, who happens to be in our city, which is incredible. But you spend hours and hours in the books and studying for a law school exam, and then you spend hours and hours out doing 15 and 7 double days, which is boring.

• 1:31:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And were you doing that on your own? Or were you running with a group, like a crew, when you were in law school?

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  The vast majority of it was on my own. I had a slew of buddies that I'd get out for runs with. There was a Kenyon team that was training a bit there, too, that I would run occasionally with Villanova. They had a great team. Well, so occasionally I'd run with a guy or two from there. But no, by and large, it was on my own.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  Right. And went to William & Mary on a running scholarship?

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  I had a, I think it was a half scholarship for most of the time. But yes, went to William & Mary and

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  Ran through college. I was probably, probably took it far too seriously almost at the time, but it was a wonderful spot as well.

• 1:31:59Rich Roll?

  And grew up in DC.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  Grew up in Northern Virginia.

• 1:32:02Rich Roll?

  I grew up in, I grew up in Bethesda.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  There you go, just across the Potomac River.

• 1:32:06Rich Roll?

  What high school did you go to?

• 1:32:07Speaker 02

  Went to Oakton High School. Yeah, we had a hell of a team at the time.

• 1:32:11Rich Roll?

  Reston area?

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, very nearby Reston. Yeah, so actually in Reston was, was Alan Webb, who was just, you know, a year and a half or so younger than I was. And so he was a training partner through the most successful period of my running career, which was around 2007. And Alan was busy setting the American record in the mile and he was the fastest person ever. And I was training for the marathon, which was my top year back in 2007 as well. And so different events and he was obviously far more accomplished than I, but a good buddy anyway.

• 1:32:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you, so you go to the, you make the Team USA Pan American team 2007. That's where you run your PR, right? To 216? And then you won the Austin Marathon like the year following?

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Yep. Maybe six or seven months later. I mean, the thing that I am most proud of, of my, in my running career is that, well, let me take a step back. My, my whole goal since I was like a 10 year old was to run for Team USA. You know, there is a tingle that you get when you put on the USA jersey that you just don't get when you're wearing Saucony or Brooks or some other brand. And my goal was not just to represent Team USA, but also run my absolute best. And so I represented Team USA twice at the Pan Am Games where I, I set my personal record. And then at the Austin Marathon that I won. And after

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  that I was, that was it. You know, I kind of got, I got done what I wanted to do and I had the USA jersey, which I now brag about constantly and I hang in my office at City Hall. And now that life is certainly a past history, but I love talking about it still.

• 1:34:01Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, of course. Well, running, but running still, you know, maintains a huge place in your life.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  You're pretty trim, so you're getting out there a little bit at least.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  I think I'd be trim no matter what. It's just kind of the physique or my biology. But I mean, there's something so simplistic and beautiful about running that I that I still really love. And it's this direct correlation between hard work and success. That's why I originally fell in love with the sport. Now, if you work harder and the guy that's standing next to you on the starting line, you're probably going to win.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  And that's also kind of what incentivized me to get into politics was was there is a lack of that direct correlation in society. You know, if if if I work hard, there perhaps might be more of a direct correlation with success than somebody else, depending on where they grew up or who their parents were, the socioeconomic background, race, all those things obviously contribute to the likelihood of whether you see that direct correlation or not. And that's that's part of why.

• 1:35:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Running is, I mean, certainly there's plenty of variables that go into success, but it's relatively binary in terms of that with the work in kind of result out aspect of it. And I'm interested in exploring like how that spills into how you think about policymaking and leading a city. But at the same time, you're contending with, you know, a multitude of variables, most of which you have no control over. So the kind of work in result out thing starts to break down a little bit.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  It does, yeah.

• 1:35:36Rich Roll?

  In terms of, you know, how how you, you know, how you kind of make hay with your job.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  It does, but there are also external factors associated with running as well. I mean, people get busted up and hurt. You know, performance is not necessarily dependent entirely on your desire to succeed, but your physical condition at the time. Sometimes you just have an off day, you know? But, I mean, what I

• 1:36:03Speaker 02

  Continue to hold pride and I often look back on is, you know, those, those moments when things were clicking beautifully and running. And I mean, those are some of the best days of my entire life. I mean, I am so lucky in that the best run that I had, race, maintenance run, workout, the best run in my entire life happened to be my most important one, which was at the Pan Am Games. I mean, it was one of those days where I was wearing USA and so I was on, I was on top of the world. I felt so good. And I remember being about halfway into the race and I was way back, but where I was certainly

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  predicted to be. I was one of perhaps the last individuals that got in the entrant. And then you start to pass one after another, after another. And then, you know, the oxygen just starts falling into your lungs. Your muscles are itching to run faster. And, and I remember thinking to myself like, you know, this couldn't get any better. I've never felt so good in my entire life. And then it felt, then it started raining, which was a huge advantage for me, I thought. One, because I love running in the rain, but two, I sweat like none other when I'm running. And, and so my shoes get really heavy. So I figured this was the great evener, because everybody else's shoes would be heavy too. And I thought, you know, this is, this is just, everything was coming together at that moment.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, those rare moments where everything just kind of comes together.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:37:32Rich Roll?

  In a perfect storm.

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Rich Roll?

  So yeah, you did the thing, man.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  Did the thing, called it a day, moved on to the next thing.

• 1:37:39Rich Roll?

  What's interesting, I think even more broadly about the relationship between kind of running and, and what you do now is that fundamentally, you're an endurance athlete and Minneapolis is in an endurance event right now. And what you've learned as an endurance athlete is it's just, it's about like the consistency, the persistence, the just showing up no matter what. It's like day in, day out, just keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. Sometimes on a wing and a prayer, but you always know that if you're doing that, you're taking out the best insurance policy to get the outcome that you're seeking to get, right? And so you're kind of, you know, mind, body and spirit trained for that type of rigor.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Rich Roll?

  Does that like resonate with how you think about it?

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely, it does. I mean, the way I think about it is, Especially right now, you know, this last year has been like an ongoing high mileage phase. When you creep up- Hundred mile weeks every week. Hundred, hundred fifty mile weeks every week. You're creeping into that high mileage phase and you're exhausted. Your body is sometimes depressed emotionally sometimes. It's hard as well.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  And the whole concept is that you put your body through hell. You adapt to that hell. Then you drop the mileage and suddenly you feel like a million bucks.

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  And so, no, it's been- No taper in sight for you at the moment. And that's been, that's been one of the harder parts is, you know, nobody can operate in crisis mode for months on end. And our city enterprise has done that for about a year now.

• 1:39:27Speaker 02

  You know, you think, I remember, I remember the beginning of COVID-19.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  I had, and this is kind of a crazy story.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  Everything kind of fell apart very quickly. It became clear how horrible the pandemic was going to be. It became clear that there, it was going to lead to a pretty significant economic downturn. It was, became clear that people were gonna get sick and tragically, people were gonna die. And so, we very quickly had to sign an emergency declaration. And so, I had to sign this declaration, which would give me unilateral authority around issues to act quickly in the interest of the health and safety of our community.

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  Now, at that moment, when I was signing the emergency declaration with one hand, in the other hand, I was FaceTiming with the ultrasound of my future daughter.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  And to have, you know, the most, what I thought would be probably the most important thing in my professional life, in one hand, this emergency declaration is pen. And on the other hand, the most important thing in my entire life, in the other, it was surreal. And I thought that that was the big test. And then

• 1:40:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  George Floyd was killed. And this global reckoning around racial justice and everything else, the economic downturn, budget shortfalls, everything else that our city has experienced.

• 1:41:01Rich Roll?

  Right. And then you get kind of foisted into the national spotlight and conversation. And suddenly there's a white hot light beaming down on you and every move that you make. And, you know, my sense is that no matter what you do, it's met with, you know, all kinds of, you know, applause and derision, but no matter what it is.

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  Mainly derision.

• 1:41:23Rich Roll?

  There's going to be a lot of people who are unhappy with it, right?

• 1:41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:26Rich Roll?

  So you're dealing with COVID, you're dealing with George Floyd, racial, you know, all the racial issues that have, you know, monopolized the conversation around Minneapolis. You've got a baby who's still now not even a year old, right?

• 1:41:40Speaker 02

  Seven months.

• 1:41:41Rich Roll?

  All of these things going on, like, I mean, my head would explode. And now you're gonna, you're sure you want to run for reelection? You want to do this again?

• 1:41:49Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny. The topic of reelection was a much longer one, certainly with my wife than it normally is. Normally, when you decide that you want to be a candidate for office,

• 1:42:07Speaker 02

  it's this exciting and momentous occasion. It's, all right, what's the big vision? And what's the coalition we're going to build? And how are we going to get there? And it's kind of egotistical in some ways. In this time, it was far more reflective.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  It was far more personal in some ways because, you know, there have been times when this has not been fun, to put it lightly. It's been tough. It's been hard on my family. It's been hard on my wife. Frida has no idea. Frida's my daughter. She has no idea what's going on. She's thrilled all the time. But, you know, it's, it takes on a new level of

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  Of difficulty at some times. So, but you know what it came back to, I just feel this very deep seated responsibility, you know, to get the city through this, to set an example through which the rest of the country, the rest of the world even can follow in terms of what we are willing and able to do around, around racial justice, what we're willing and able to do around housing and police reform and deep structural change there. And it's, it's hard, it's difficult. All these topics are controversial and you know, there's no easy answers to any of this stuff.

• 1:43:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's a, it's a platform. I mean, you campaigned on affordable housing, you campaigned on police community relations, on environmental reform, environmental justice, all of these things. And then suddenly these do become so, what's the right word? You know, prominent or in your face in a way that you could have never imagined, right? It's like, okay, well, these are the issues you want to, you want to grapple with, like, here you go.

• 1:43:52Speaker 02

  That's, that's very real. And you know, we, we spent two years worth of work seeing some unprecedented progress. I mean, we invested more money on a per capita basis than almost any city in the entire country in affordable housing. We, we got rid of single family exclusive zoning, which was to say the least, very controversial. And we were the first city in the country to do that. We, there was a number of, of changes that we instituted that yeah, we're really proud of. And this last year has been a year of unprecedented difficulty, unprecedented trauma and crisis. And I mean, I feel like too many people have used the word unprecedented in this last year. So it's almost a little bit cliche, but that's just the truth.

• 1:44:36Rich Roll?

  During these difficult times.

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Every, every day I say stuff like that. And it's both, it feels cliche at times, but my goodness, it is also true.

• 1:44:44Rich Roll?

  What do you see? Like how, what is the vision that you hold? Like how, what is the path forward from your perspective to get to the other side of this and create the level of parity that people would like to see and, and you know, hopefully, you know, reckon with, with the racial issues in a manner that, you know, sets, these things aren't going to be solved, obviously anytime soon, but sets the city in a trajectory like that, that is moving in the, in the right positive direction.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  You first always need a level of acknowledgement that hasn't been there before. And I think we are actually making some substantial progress there. You know, acknowledging that this was not just about the nine plus minutes of horror that we saw in the form of the video of George Floyd's killing. Now, this is about 400 years worth of very intentional mistreatment. This is about intentional segregation, restrictive covenants that run with the land, Jim Crow, all of the other horrible and very intentional policies that have been inflicted at times. And I think the goal right now, beyond acknowledgement, is to make sure that the

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  precision of our solutions match the precision of the harm that was initially inflicted. And that's always where the rubber meets the road, right? I mean, because that's where people start to push back because you're talking about, all right, well, here's specifically what we're gonna do.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  But, you know, these are tough conversations that are definitely worth having, and I'm thankful that we are.

• 1:46:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, the wound is deep, and you can't expedite that healing. Like, the wound has to be exposed to oxygen, right?

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:46:31Rich Roll?

  And that feels like the phase that the city is in right now, and the nation, frankly. I mean, it is weird to be here, and then you flip on CNN or whatever, and it's like Minneapolis all day long, like wherever you go.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's, you know, that's one of the frustrating parts, in a sense, because, you know, the narrative that you always hear, you've heard over the last year, is that, you know, Minneapolis is a city on edge. Minneapolis is a city on edge. I hear that all the time. And I won't disagree with that. There is truth there. But we're also so much beyond that. Long after that red light of the cable media is gone, long after folks decide that they're gonna not be focusing on Minneapolis anymore for whatever reason, I mean, we're still gonna be here in the city that we really love. And it's an extraordinary place, you know? And...

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  You know, we are this trial. We are all of these shortcomings and, and issues that certainly we need to correct. And we are also so much more than that at the same time.

• 1:47:45Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  And it's that nuance that always doesn't get caught, you know?

• 1:47:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  We're flawed, yes. And I think the truth is that, you know, that flawed nature is certainly not unique to Minneapolis. We are there, but we are confronting it hopefully very directly.

• 1:48:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, truth lives in nuance and unfortunately, you know, media narratives are driven by kind of dualistic perspectives on these things. And I was reminded of my own blind spots with all of this. We went to, I said this on a podcast the other day, but we went to visit George Floyd Square.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Rich Roll?

  And after seeing it on television a thousand times, I thought I had an idea of what it would be and what to expect. And it was very different in every material way than everything I imagined it to be.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:39Rich Roll?

  From the neighborhood to the setting, to the vibe, to the people, everything about it was nothing like I had imagined it. And I'd seen it a million times on television. And the reminder being that, you know, just when you think you have a grip on something, you really don't, you know, until you experience it boots on the ground. And as being the leader of this city and your responsibility to kind of, you know, shepherd a real narrative about the actuality of the events that have transpired and will transpire. What do you think, like, where is the blind spot that the average person living wherever doesn't see or doesn't get about the truth of the experience of living here?

• 1:49:28Speaker 02

  The truth, as you mentioned, is always nuanced. I mean, you mentioned George Floyd Square. George Floyd Square is and has been both this beautiful place of racial justice and healing, a critical point where communities can gather and reflect. And it's also true that there are times that that square and that area have not been safe. To ignore either one of those realities would be to miss the honest truth. And it is true that, you know, communities around there, much of them, black and brown communities, have suffered in some form due to some upticks in violence. There's never unanimity of opinion.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  There certainly is not now. But I think, in that case, I mean, it's almost, George Floyd Square is emblematic of so many other things that are happening right now, in that you have these dualities, both of which are true. You know? Wonderful place for racial justice and reckoning, and instances when it's not safe due to other outside factors. Policing. We need deep structural change to how our police department operates. We need safety beyond policing because not every 911 call needs a response from an officer with a gun.

• 1:50:55Speaker 02

  And we need police. There are horrible situations that we make officers respond to that nobody else wants to, nor can they. And both of those things are true.

• 1:51:09Rich Roll?

  I think the police reform conversation is the best kind of example to explore how truth lives in nuance, because it's very easy to lapse into this notion that, with respect to Minneapolis at least, it's either defund the police, which means a million different things to a million different people, but is often characterized as complete Abolition of the police, or you're pro militarization of the police. It's an either or situation. And the longer that I'm here, and the more people that I talk to, and the deeper I kind of educate myself about this issue, it doesn't seem like there's that much difference between most of the voices who have a say in policymaking.

• 1:51:54Rich Roll?

  It seems that everyone agrees that the police need deep reform. Now, there's quibbling over what that might look like, or how that gets implemented. But aside from an extreme, extreme fringe, there's nobody who's really saying, we need to abolish the police department completely, at least as far as I'm aware. I don't know, you're shaking your head. Maybe you can tell me more about that. And it's really a conversation about how to best accomplish this goal that there seems to be somewhat of a consensus on. Is that wrong?

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  No, I think for the most part, you're right. Following some of those most tumultuous times after George Floyd was killed, there were definitely people that were calling for getting rid of the police.

• 1:52:47Rich Roll?

  Sure, sure. Can we talk about the video?

• 1:52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's talk about the video, yeah. Yeah, I don't know if I'm ever gonna live that one down.

• 1:52:56Rich Roll?

  I mean, a lot of people probably, who are listening, probably saw it. But, correct me if I'm wrong, it was in the midst of a protest. You were kind of ushered out of your house, and you joined this procession into downtown, and in front of a large number of people. A woman, I forget her name, sort of publicly asked you point blank, in yes or no fashion, if you were in favor of defunding the police. And you said that if she meant abolishing the police, that no, you did not support that, and that resulted in you being essentially kind of told to leave, and, you know, shame on you, and all that kind of stuff. And there's a video of you kind of walking through the procession of people that a lot

• 1:53:41Rich Roll?

  of people saw. And that kind of became the lightning rod moment, in terms of how people were kind of contextualizing this debate.

• 1:53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was tough. And let me tell you, I'm proud of that moment.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  I'm proud because I told the truth when it was especially hard. There was a large group, as you mentioned, of those protesting that came to my home that demanded that I come out, were asking for answers. I came out of my home and I was asked to come up nearby the stage area. And yeah, I was asked if I would be willing to commit there on the spot to defunding the police. And I said very clearly that I am for deep structural change of a system that in so many cases has been racist. I think we need safety beyond policing.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  But let me ask you, what do you mean by that, defunding the police? And she said very clearly, I mean, get rid of the police. And my answer is no, because that's the truth.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  Now, the next day, I'll note that there was a strong majority, in fact, a veto-proof majority of the city council that came back and took the same pledge that I refused to take and have since, almost every one of them, gone back on it. I'm not going to say that I'm going to do something that I'm not going to follow through on. And yeah, it was tough. I mean, it doesn't tickle to get Game of Thrones-style shamed in front of the national media. But, you know, when I talk to black and brown communities in our city, when I visit the

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  North Side, which I do all the time, there's a couple of comments that I get. The first is, "Thank you for immediately terminating those officers and calling for charges."

• 1:55:48Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, there was unanimous praise for you getting on that, like, immediately, because that has not been handled in that type of fashion in other instances in other cities.

• 1:55:59Speaker 02

  But the second thing that I hear from our black and brown communities is, "Thank you for standing with our chief and not agreeing to defund and abolish the police." And again, no community is-

• 1:56:12Rich Roll?

  And so, yeah, so what do you make of that?

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  Well, certainly no community is a monolith. But if it's based on what I hear when I'm out on the street, if it's based on what the polling clearly says, it's dead in line, you know, our, again, no community is a monolith.

• 1:56:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  But what we hear loud and clear is that they want deep structural change. Do they want defunding? No.

• 1:56:39Rich Roll?

  And there has been some pretty significant reformations in terms of the police, right? With the body cams and the ending of the kind of warrior training and a couple of other things along-

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  You do your homework. I'm impressed.

• 1:56:52Rich Roll?

  A little bit.

• 1:56:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, we've made some major changes.

• 1:56:58Speaker 02

  We added a disciplinary matrix to our body camera policy. When I came into office, there was about 55% compliance with our body camera policy. Now there's 95% compliance. So in other words, before, 55% of the time, they were turning on their body cameras.

• 1:57:13Rich Roll?

  Right, and there's like a consequence if like, if that's not-

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  If they don't turn them on when they should, there are consequences to it. Yeah, there are penalties. We were the first city in the entire country to ban warrior-style training, both on and off duty. We overhauled our use of force policy. We banned no-knock warrants for all but exigent circumstances. We've ensured that de-escalation would be added and embedded in everything that our officer is doing by requirement and by the reporting structure, how it's set up. I mean, I can go on. There's a litany of other changes that we've made. But here's the truth, you know, is that going to change the culture of our police department or any police department? No, it won't. These are policy changes.

• 1:57:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to what extent do they fundamentally alter anything? Or are they just Band-Aids on a system that needs a deeper kind of redress?

• 1:58:09Speaker 02

  I think there are important changes that will help.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  But when you talk about deeper redress, let's be specific about what we're talking about.

• 1:58:22Speaker 02

  You know, one of the things that I think would make a huge difference is arbitration reform. And then I'll get a little specific on this, so we might end up just cutting this part out. But you know, this is a big deal. And I think every mayor, every chief is hindered by these laws throughout the whole country. When Chief Arredondo or I fire a police officer, it is mandated that they go through this arbitration system that sees 50% of those termination and disciplinary decisions come right back to the city. So 50% of the time when we fire somebody, that decision is not upheld because of this mandatory arbitration. That needs to change.

• 1:59:05Speaker 02

  You know, I think especially in instances of egregious use of force or lying on a formal document, that should change. And you know, there's also a deeper issue as well, even beyond that, which is, you know, if you are an organization that is known for being something, you know, if you're a podcast that is known for attracting cool, you know, health-oriented people with a good suntan, you know,

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  and then you go out and recruit to get additional people to watch your podcast, who are you going to attract? You know, that kind of... Similarly, if you're a police department that is known for something, whether that's for being compassionate and service-oriented, or that's for being a bunch of racists and you go out and recruit, who do you think you're going to get? And so it makes it all the more important that you do this necessary work ahead of time to change both the reality and the perception so that you can get the right individuals in and then the wrong individuals out.

• 2:00:14Speaker 02

  When you're faced with having to make...

• 2:00:18Rich Roll?

  An important decision, which you're doing constantly. And you've got all these different voices and everybody's got a perspective and a point of view. And these people are donors, or they're voters, or they're coming with, you know, what they're telling you comes with a block of voters and they can move that one way or the other. What is your process for getting clarity so that you can, you know, tell the truth or vote with your conscience or make the best decision? Like, is there a method to how you do that under extreme duress?

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  Under times of extreme duress, especially when you're going through a major crisis, the truth is that you can't, you know, send out a poll to determine how every last individual is feeling. You have community partners, you have mentors and individuals within the city that you look to, that you talk to, that you get input from. Usually I try and take multiple sides in, you know, hear different arguments and play devil's advocate wherever I can. And then you gotta make a decision. And hopefully, most of the time, you get that decision right. Sometimes you don't.

• 2:01:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  And that's the nature of being mayor, you know? I mean, and that's different, by the way, than when you're in, like, Congress. I don't vote. I don't have a vote.

• 2:01:43Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  I'm tasked with making decisions in crisis-oriented situations.

• 2:01:47Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  And I mean, there's an old LBJ quote that says, you know, "When the burdens of the presidency get too heavy to carry, I just thank God I'm not a mayor."

• 2:01:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:01:55Speaker 02

  We are dealing with all of the other situations that nobody wants to handle. Mayors are. You know, I've half joked that one of the main jobs of being mayor, especially right now in Minneapolis and other cities in the country, is to jump on all of the grenades of societal shortcomings. And you still get blamed by anybody that gets hit by the shrapnel.

• 2:02:18Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, this is like the era of the mayor, right? Like, when have we been talking about city mayors as much as we've been talking about them over the last 18 months?

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 2:02:27Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. It's a unique and weird job because on some level, it really is about grassroots, local politics. But mayors do wield a lot of power to make swift, rapid, and significant changes. And that obviously provokes the ire of a lot of people when it doesn't swing in their direction.

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, they both do and they don't at the same time. I think, you know, the truth is that the things that intrigue you and excite you and you get, you get passionate about on a very deep level, you know, that's Congress. That's the federal government in many cases. That's, you know, healthcare, universal healthcare, and, you know, these broad, sweeping rights, marriage equality, things like that.

• 2:03:22Rich Roll?

  Right, that are debated ad nauseam and move at a very glacial pace, if at all.

• 2:03:26Speaker 02

  Exactly. And you can take a vote and maybe there's a chance that in a year or two, you see the impact from it. The things that really piss you off, usually, that's what mayors are dealing with. Now, in these last couple of years, mayors have been taking on more, and I think rightfully so, because there has been all of this gridlock at state and federal legislatures. And so mayors have just stepped in and said, we're gonna just do it. And we're gonna take the wrath or the credit along with it. But, you know, depending on which city you're in, in many cases, mayors have all of the responsibility, but none of the authority. And in Minneapolis, we have this kind of gray system that is not a strong mayor system.

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  We do not have the system that Chicago has or St. Paul has. We have a system that is more decentralized than that. And so, yeah, you know, you oftentimes get blamed for things that aren't deserved. You also get credit for things that aren't deserved also. And, you know, the truth is always a little bit more grayer than it's presented.

• 2:04:30Rich Roll?

  What do you think, like, people fundamentally misunderstand the most about what your job entails?

• 2:04:40Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there's often the perception that you can wave a magic wand and make something happen immediately. I think there's the perception that you have authority over things that you just don't have authority over. And there's also all of the other aspects that people don't see that happen behind the scenes. You know, there's these heartfelt conversations with community members. There are complexities that go well beyond a hashtag on Twitter, or a soundbite that you'll get in a two-minute news conference. And often, P times, people

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  don't see that. And, you know, and this is, I think, at least in part, a causal element of something that social media has caused over times. And there's certainly a lot of positives associated with it. There's definitely negatives, too.

• 2:05:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, as somebody who, who lives, you know, in the media, you're in the media constantly, I don't know that you've done any podcasts. Maybe you've done a podcast or two.

• 2:05:50Speaker 02

  I did the Daily.

• 2:05:51Rich Roll?

  You did, oh, you did the Daily, yeah. But that's still like, pretty, that's brief, right? Like, I wanted to give you the opportunity in, in kind of a, you know, a space where we can breathe, where it's like, safe, where you can kind of express your perspectives without fear of it getting chopped up and mischaracterized or taken out of context. So...

• 2:06:14Speaker 02

  That's therapeutic, and so thank you.

• 2:06:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, listen, I'm happy to do that. In that spirit, like, I'm interested in, in, it must be frustrating for you when you see your face, you pop up in some news program, and they're taking some clip, or you're, you know, participating in one of those squawk box things where everyone's shouting, and you have three seconds to express your point of view. What do you think in your message gets lost in that, that you would want people to better understand? I know it's a vague question, but...

• 2:06:55Speaker 02

  You know, there have been instances when one particular event or policy has been misconstrued. For the most part, I've actually really appreciated the way that our media has handled things.

• 2:07:09Speaker 02

  Of course, there are issues that I'll always be pissed off about. That's inevitable.

• 2:07:15Speaker 02

  What I see that is problematic, though, is

• 2:07:22Speaker 02

  the polar extremes. You know, the very far white supremacist right, the very far anarchist left, spinning narratives that just have no basis whatsoever in reality, and also seem to push to dehumanize people in a big way.

• 2:07:44Speaker 02

  You know, I am a human being. I have skills, I have flaws, I'm a human being. And every day, you get up and you try to do your very best. You try to take an honest and compassionate approach, and you know, that's...

• 2:08:02Rich Roll?

  That's all you can do, man.

• 2:08:03Speaker 02

  That's all you can do. And sometimes, all that gets lost, depending on how, you know, the... those that want to speak up, whether they like you or not.

• 2:08:14Rich Roll?

  Sure. Well, just by dint of being mayor, you become the receivership for everybody's angst and ire, or whatever's bothering them, or whatever problem that they're having. Like, you're the target for that.

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  Well, and you see, I think, you know, you see both ends of it. And I think this is probably the case for so many, probably elected officials, and I guess celebrities at times as well. You know, you're neither as good, nor are you as bad, as the media or social media makes you out to be. There was a...

• 2:08:45Speaker 02

  There was a, back in 2019, I want to say, Donald Trump came to town.

• 2:08:51Rich Roll?

  Right. And I know where you're going with this. Go ahead. Yeah.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Donald Trump came to town. He, we were forced to basically foot the bill for all of these major security expenses associated with his visit to our city.

• 2:09:09Speaker 02

  And I didn't want to pay for those security expenses. I certainly wouldn't want the taxpayer to have to foot the bill. And so we said directly to the campaign, this was not even publicly at this point. This is like, we just don't, we don't think it's right for us to do this. And then immediately, you know, the Republican Party took it up. Donald Trump started going after us on social media and we responded. All that was, was a stupid tweet.

• 2:09:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:09:33Speaker 02

  I didn't do anything heroic, you know, but you're suddenly made into

• 2:09:38Rich Roll?

  That really put you in the, in the, in the national spotlight in a big way, right? It was, the idea was, he was coming to town for a big MAGA rally. It's going to be this huge to do. And you're like, our taxpayers need not pay for this. Here's the bill. It's $530,000. And as long as you pay it, it's all good. And that just lit him on fire, right?

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  It lit him on fire. He got pissed off. His whole, you know, his supporters started attacking, you know? You know, you gotta wear a bulletproof vest as mayor for a few days because of that, because you've got all these, you know, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, whatever, agitators that want to come in and scare you. Now, but in that moment, there wasn't anything spectacular about what I did. We got tons of credit. And I don't know that it was necessarily even deserved, you know? Now, similarly, there have been instances where I've been in it, which has been the exact opposite. Instances that I'm proud of, but you just get ripped apart. And so, you know, you're neither as good nor are you as bad as things seem to be in that particular moment, whatever it is. That's the truth.

• 2:10:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Then the skirmish with, with Trump continued, right? You got into this thing in the midst of when the George Floyd protests were, were, were starting to peak, where he went after you for being weak and you defended yourself. And that's where the, the classic, when the shoot, when the looting starts, the shooting starts tweet happened that got flagged by Twitter. And that really set in motion his ultimate deplatforming. Like, that was kind of a monumental Tweet storm that went down.

• 2:11:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I

• 2:11:13Rich Roll?

  I mean, that had to been wild for you.

• 2:11:15Speaker 02

  Well, it was wild and I actually didn't, I think I was informed of those tweets while I was in

• 2:11:20Rich Roll?

  Like in a press conference, right?

• 2:11:21Speaker 02

  At the time, which was needless to say, one of the worst press conferences and performances that I gave largely because I was exhausted. At that point, I think we were three or four days in. And, you know, the things that Donald Trump spouts off, needless to say, are, I mean, not just irresponsible, I mean, my goodness, sometimes they were evil. And thankfully, he doesn't have that platform at the moment, anyway.

• 2:11:54Rich Roll?

  What is, what is the day in the life look like for you? Is every day different? Is it, is there like a, walk me through like how it all works?

• 2:12:04Speaker 02

  You know, every day is different and it depends on the time.

• 2:12:09Speaker 02

  I mean, when I first took office, we were on the verge of having the Super Bowl. Just a month after I took office, we had arguably the largest sporting event in the entire world, other than maybe the Olympics and the World Cup, right here in our city.

• 2:12:26Speaker 02

  And things looked like, you know, it was constant briefings, getting prepared for safety and security measures. It was, you know, welcoming people to town, welcoming Philadelphia Eagles fans, as much as I didn't really care for them. It was meeting celebrities times and, I mean, that was the bizarre time in and of itself. There are days where it's just policy all day long. And there are also days where you're just sprinting from one event to the next that are diametric opposites. I mean, you're going from a funeral of a firefighter who has died of cancer.

• 2:13:07Speaker 02

  And then you're wiping away tears in your eyes and heading over to do a rah rah event celebrating Minneapolis and some extraordinary new program or business that's coming to town.

• 2:13:21Speaker 02

  That's the weird part.

• 2:13:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  And that's where at times, well, it's the trying to shift gears.

• 2:13:26Rich Roll?

  Totally.

• 2:13:26Speaker 02

  Because it feels fake sometimes, you know, you're in this sad state at one event and you're in the car.

• 2:13:35Speaker 02

  Maybe sometimes with staff, sometimes you're alone and you have to like, as Brogan says, you gotta fake it.

• 2:13:43Speaker 02

  You know, you gotta like intentionally put on this smile that is.

• 2:13:47Rich Roll?

  So that's what Brogan's been doing this whole time? Sitting over there.

• 2:13:53Speaker 02

  You gotta, you gotta, you gotta just, you gotta force, oh, that wasn't fake, it was force it. You're right. Force it is far better than fake it. Yeah, I should have gone with that. But as Brogan says, you force it and you do have to force it.

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  And sometimes you start out forcing it for the first couple of minutes and then it actually becomes genuine by minute six.

• 2:14:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:15Speaker 02

  But that's kind of the reality of these days. And I mean, I, I try to get runs in, whether they're early or late. As much as possible because that grounds me. My staff know when I have not gotten in my run. My, my wife certainly is aware. And.

• 2:14:32Rich Roll?

  You have to run every day.

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  You gotta run, you gotta run.

• 2:14:34Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine, yeah, how you, like you're just, your ability to manage that level of stress day in, day out. It's improved so much from that level of self-care.

• 2:14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:44Rich Roll?

  When you run, do you have to run with a security detail or can you just go out and run?

• 2:14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had a discussion about that early on and that was like definitively rejected by me. I was like, you know what? This is no, you know, there are times when I want to run with nobody. There are times when I just want to zone out, not say, not talk and just kind of be in that moment with my breath. It's meditation in a way. I'm also a very talkative and.

• 2:15:16Speaker 02

  Extroverted person and one of the main things that I miss about my running career is not the races, certainly not the hard workouts, it's the camaraderie, it's running with the guys. So, you know, I run routinely with Brogan.

• 2:15:28Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's an extroversion explosion.

• 2:15:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, he's giving high fives to every other person that he sees.

• 2:15:36Rich Roll?

  You actually can't get anywhere because he has to stop on every street corner and strike up a conversation.

• 2:15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

• 2:15:42Rich Roll?

  So you're grooming Brogan to be the mayor who's going to follow in your footsteps.

• 2:15:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. He's already the mayor of Deepaveta, wherever the hell you're living.

• 2:15:54Rich Roll?

  Suburbia.

• 2:15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We, we, I was going for a run with, actually a New York Times reporter the other day who was in town.

• 2:16:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, John Eligan.

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I haven't met him, but I know he's, he's here covering everything.

• 2:16:13Speaker 02

  Sure. So, so I, do you know the story already?

• 2:16:15Rich Roll?

  No.

• 2:16:18Speaker 02

  And so I had just largely ditched Brogan the night before. I was like, hey, I'm good. No, I can't. I'm not going to run the next day with you. And I was going to get a run with John. And I show up to pick up John, you know, outside of his hotel. And we start on the run. Within a half a block, he turns to me and he says, "So do you know a guy named Brogan?"

• 2:16:42Rich Roll?

  Of course. Who doesn't know Brogan?

• 2:16:45Speaker 02

  Of course. Right. Unbelievable. And as it turns out, this like, you know, tall goofball dude in roller blades had come up to him maybe seven months prior.

• 2:16:57Rich Roll?

  In pink socks and a green polka dot hat.

• 2:17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Struck up a conversation.

• 2:17:02Rich Roll?

  That's pretty much Brogan. Brogan, the other day, we're walking down the street and he strikes up a conversation with somebody. They've been talking for 10 seconds and he goes, "How do you think our friendship is going? Are we getting onto the right track? Do you feel good about where this is all headed?"

• 2:17:18Speaker 02

  He said, "No."

• 2:17:19Rich Roll?

  That's like right out of the Brogan playbook, right? Anyway, um, yeah, man. I, I mean, you know, I can't imagine you being the runner that you are not. Making time to run, but also understanding that there are going to be days where that's just impossible.

• 2:17:38Speaker 02

  Sometimes it is, some days it is just impossible. And, I mean, ideal world for me is I run five times a week. Maybe four to seven, eight miles per. That's kind of like the ideal sweet spot for me. I don't need to go more than that anymore. I don't need to crank any sort of crazy fast pace out, but just getting out there and breathing and the movement. I mean, it is, I mean, it's heaven in so many respects.

• 2:18:08Rich Roll?

  So check, tell me this and be honest with me. What's, what's the casual pace these days?

• 2:18:13Speaker 02

  I think it probably varies somewhat. Well, first off, you go the pace that whoever you're running with. If somebody, the person you're running with is eight and a half minutes, you go eight and a half minutes, you know? If, if there, if the person you're running with is six and a half, you, you turn up juice and you hit it. I start pretty slow, I would say. Eight, eight and a half minutes a mile. This is if I'm on my own.

• 2:18:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:18:40Speaker 02

  And I usually finish the last couple of miles running pretty hard. Six minutes, sometimes even faster.

• 2:18:48Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good. Yeah. Just, just for people that are listening who, who maybe don't have a frame of reference, a 216 marathon is, what's that, like 512 pace? Something around that?

• 2:18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, somewhere around that. And this is without the fancy shoes.

• 2:19:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. The big, yeah.

• 2:19:05Speaker 02

  And those, I mean, so.

• 2:19:06Rich Roll?

  The vapor flies and all that.

• 2:19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just telling people my PR is 209 because.

• 2:19:10Rich Roll?

  Did you follow Des's 50K world record the other day?

• 2:19:13Speaker 02

  I did, I did. I was, I didn't watch it at the time, but I saw that she, she set the world record for the 50K, was the first woman under three hours, I believe.

• 2:19:23Rich Roll?

  Under three hours.

• 2:19:24Speaker 02

  And then started slugging beer out of her shoe.

• 2:19:26Rich Roll?

  Right. Like, like really consistent 547s pretty much across the board.

• 2:19:30Speaker 02

  Just keep going, 547. Well, I mean, she's a metronome that way and she was tough. And gosh, when I was out there running with the Hanson, she was busted up, she was injured. I think she had some sort of stress fracture. She was not any sort of like, you know.

• 2:19:44Speaker 02

  I mean, she was always talented, obviously, but like she was not crushing it at the time.

• 2:19:47Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 2:19:48Speaker 02

  But she's tough. She grinds.

• 2:19:51Rich Roll?

  The harder the circumstances.

• 2:19:52Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:19:53Rich Roll?

  The more she's able to shine, which is why she, she, like that moment at the Boston Marathon was so.

• 2:19:58Speaker 02

  It was so incredible. I mean, in my favorite moments with Dez are not running, they're partying. I mean, I remember more moments of partying with her and her now husband and, you know, Brian Sell, who was out there at the time as well, who was, you know, the blue collar runner.

• 2:20:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:20:13Speaker 02

  A champion himself.

• 2:20:14Rich Roll?

  Do you know Josh Cox then too, her manager?

• 2:20:16Speaker 02

  I've met Josh Cox. I can't say I know him really well, though.

• 2:20:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you, do you still follow running and marathoning and all that pretty closely?

• 2:20:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I do.

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's, it's, um, I definitely stay in touch with those that are still involved in the sport.

• 2:20:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's such a beautiful sport to follow. Yeah.

• 2:20:35Rich Roll?

  What else, what's, what else is part of your routine? Are you a meditator?

• 2:20:40Speaker 02

  You know, I'm not. Um, I mean, I'm, I'm not a meditator in traditional form.

• 2:20:47Speaker 02

  But I guess there are probably many forms of meditation. I mean, I'm not on the ground, you know, with my legs crossed and, and I don't, I don't, I don't do that. Um, I've tried it.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  My mind, my mind wanders too much. I know that, that those that are more experienced meditators would probably say that's okay.

• 2:21:06Speaker 02

  I would get frustrated. I, I am a, um,

• 2:21:11Speaker 02

  I use breath and mantra, which always has worked for me. You know, it's repetition of a phrase, uh, to sort of set my mind and ground myself.

• 2:21:24Speaker 02

  And I mean, my wife just calls it talking to myself. But that's what I'm doing.

• 2:21:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I would consider that meditation.

• 2:21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:30Rich Roll?

  So there you go. You can say that you're a meditator.

• 2:21:32Speaker 02

  I am a meditator. I will say that next time someone asks.

• 2:21:36Rich Roll?

  Where's this all going for you? I mean, do you imagine yourself, you know, being mayor here and like what's next? Do you, do you think about the future or what's your vision for your own career in your life?

• 2:21:48Speaker 02

  I think everybody thinks about what their future is and what it holds. I also think that, uh, my vision for my future has probably changed dramatically in the last year and a half.

• 2:22:02Speaker 02

  You know, if you had asked me.

• 2:22:05Speaker 02

  Two years ago, I think I would have been pretty enthusiastic about a longer career in politics. You know, if you ask me right now, I feel a deep-seated responsibility and I love being mayor, notwithstanding everything else, I still do love this job. Do I love it on a daily basis? No, you know, I don't. But at the end of the day, there is this, there's this feeling that you can kind of work hand in hand with community towards the betterment of people. And like, I love that.

• 2:22:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:40Speaker 02

  And so, I love mayor, I want to be mayor, but do I want to do anything beyond that? Honestly, I don't know. If, standing here today, I would say absolutely not. I have no interest in being in Congress for a number of reasons. One, doesn't, I mean, with the exception of recently, traditionally, they haven't gotten a lot done. But also, I don't want to be flying back and forth, for selfish reasons, I don't want to be flying back and forth between DC and Minnesota. I got a family, I have a wonderful wife, Sarah, we have a baby. I want to be with my family.

• 2:23:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:18Speaker 02

  Rather than flying back and forth without them.

• 2:23:20Rich Roll?

  On the campaign piece, I mean, typically, around now is where that would kind of kick into high gear, but I suspect that the pressures of the job are making that, you know, not, that kind of goes out the window, right?

• 2:23:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, campaigning has not, has barely happened at all, over these last several months, and I expect the next several months to come. It's just such a lesser priority than keeping the city safe through this time and making sure that people are okay. And so, no, I... 98% of my time is really devoted to that.

• 2:23:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:58Speaker 02

  And so.

• 2:23:59Rich Roll?

  Well, I feel like, setting aside the kind of urgency of what this city is enduring at the moment, you being the accomplished elite endurance athlete that you are, and the kind of robustness of this city with respect to its parks and its bike ways and everything that it has to offer in terms of outside activity and adventure, puts you in this position to be kind of like the wellness mayor. Like, because you live this lifestyle and you're in a city that's so conducive, you know, to these kind of participation-oriented endeavors.

• 2:24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:38Rich Roll?

  That that feels like a leadership role that suits you well. Does that resonate for you?

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  Of course, it does. Yeah.

• 2:24:46Rich Roll?

  It's like if everything was calm and there was nothing going on here, maybe you could focus on that. Now is not the moment for that, but.

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  And I used to focus on that all the time. I've got this incredible story that I gotta tell you about Abdi Bile. Have you heard of this guy?

• 2:25:02Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 2:25:03Speaker 02

  So, Abdi Bile, Somali man, won the world championships for the 1500 meters. He was the best miler in the entire world back in 89, 88, 90, in that timeframe. And he went to George Mason University, which was right down the street from where I lived. And when I was like a 10-year-old, I used to take the bus over to George Mason University to try to warm up with some of these guys that were there at the time. I mean, Abdi Bile was there, Julius H. John was there a little after that, but Abdi was like my hero. And there was this one day.

• 2:25:45Speaker 02

  Where I was running alone, like 10 years old, and I see this tall, dark, lanky figure running towards me. And as he gets closer, I realize, oh, my God, it's like, it's the world champion, Abdi Bile. And I thought to myself, I'll never forgive myself if I don't turn around to run with him. So I did, I turned around, I started running with him. And I was so excited for this moment, that I probably quickened my pace a little bit, and I was one stepping him. And remember, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said to me, Jacob, it's not important how fast you go, it is only important that you go with purpose. And at the time, I thought this was like some Somali proverb, or a

• 2:26:30Speaker 02

  famous saying that he was just repeating. But now, 30 years later, having getting to know him, this is just how the guy talks. Now, here's the crazy thing. So, in that moment, when I was running with him, I don't think I saw Abdi Bile in person for the next 25 years. Fast forward 25 years, I'm the mayor of Minneapolis, this is a couple of years ago. I get a message, on Facebook, or text, or something like that, says, this is Abdi Bile, I'm coming out to Minneapolis, and would love to get a chance to run with you. Wow. As mayor. And I was like, oh, you gotta be kidding me. This is this unbelievable full circle moment. And he came out, I don't think he remembered this interaction, by

• 2:27:15Speaker 02

  the way, from 25 years prior, I was just some schmuck kid. But, I ran with him, along the river, and as we were going past towards one of the most scenic areas of our entire city, he says to me, you know, I think I could live out here. And maybe I'd like to start a youth running program to help some of these youth that might otherwise go down the wrong route. And I was like, oh, my God, yes, we're gonna set this up. We recruited him, got him out here, and he's now running a whole program. Oh, that's cool. For largely Somali, some not, youth. Right, right. Around running. Pretty cool.

• 2:27:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's very cool.

• 2:27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:57Rich Roll?

  I was speaking to Anthony Taylor earlier, who's very much, you know, in that world of trying to provide access to outdoor spaces and outdoor activities to that community.

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:13Rich Roll?

  And it's super inspiring, like, that work. And there's so much work to be done there, but

• 2:28:20Rich Roll?

  perhaps the most, you know, kind of gratifying thing that you could do. It's cool.

• 2:28:23Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:28:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So do you go out and run with him now?

• 2:28:27Speaker 02

  Every now and again, yeah, we get in a run. We do.

• 2:28:29Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:28:30Speaker 02

  We do.

• 2:28:33Speaker 02

  He's just such a jolly, happy person.

• 2:28:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:36Speaker 02

  He's learned to cross-country ski now, which I am also.

• 2:28:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:28:40Speaker 02

  Um, I did not get out once this last winter, uh, but in general, I try to get out the door.

• 2:28:46Rich Roll?

  I've never done that, but it feels like a natural shift for anybody who's an endurance runner, right?

• 2:28:52Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 2:28:52Rich Roll?

  It's not?

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  It wasn't for me.

• 2:28:54Rich Roll?

  I know that it's really hard and it just kicks your ass.

• 2:28:57Speaker 02

  Well, I never got my...

• 2:29:01Speaker 02

  It's a rhythm that you gotta get into and it's a whole motion, especially if you're doing skate ski, which is what I think is the, that's the coolest, most beautiful motion. I mean, that's the one where you're going like this.

• 2:29:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:29:13Speaker 02

  And, um,

• 2:29:15Speaker 02

  I think for me, I'm so used to the motion of the back kick of running that the skate ski motion just, it just has taken me a while to learn, not to mention, I did not grow up skiing. I didn't grow up ice skating, any of that. And so this whole concept of you are in a relatively still position while the ground is moving under you. You know what I mean? You're sliding.

• 2:29:39Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  That's not something that I've really been comfortable with and so on.

• 2:29:44Rich Roll?

  Right, there's a, there's a fluidity to it, but your parents were both professional dancers. So I feel like you should be able to figure this out.

• 2:29:53Speaker 02

  Figure it out, who knows, maybe, yeah, yeah.

• 2:29:55Rich Roll?

  I mean, what was that like? Two professional dancers?

• 2:29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a very interesting...

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, so my, my parents met in New York City. They danced for the Lubavitch Company in New York City and then the Netherlands Dance Theater in Holland. And they were pretty big time, you know? My father was on the cover of like Dancers Magazine. And he hurt his back while he was in Belgium. And a chiropractor fixed him up. And he was kind of towards the end of his dance career anyway, so he decided to become a chiropractor, moved back to the States. And he continues to treat some of the dance companies anyway that come through, so he still has that connection. But my, no, my parents were very involved in the dance world growing up, you know, the basement was just a big mirror. Right. Where they would use to- Why did they, why DC?

• 2:30:46Speaker 02

  Um, I think they wanted to be in the vicinity of an urban area, but not necessarily in it. Uh, we grew up in Northern Virginia largely, and, um, you know, I got access to the Kennedy Center there, um, a number of different ballets come through, um, access to culture and the arts and all the things that they really valued. Um, and, you know, most of the other, my other siblings have more of an artistic, uh, talent perhaps than I do. Um, but, uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's wild, man. Yeah, they, they did that. Are they still around? They good? They're doing, they're doing well, yeah. They're doing well, they're still in, in the Washington DC area. Mm-hmm. And what does your, what does your wife do?

• 2:31:30Speaker 02

  My wife is a, my wife Sarah is a, she does governmental relations. She's a lobbyist for predominantly early childhood education, uh, organizations. Um, she helps represent low-income kids at the Capitol, uh, to make sure that they're, you know, treated fairly and justly and have the right, these organizations have the right resources. She represents the ACLU, a number of different organizations, yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Um, well, I love this city. I'd like to come back in- You have to, yeah. In the summertime. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My blood is thin these days, um, but the trails and the outdoor spaces here are really something special. Oh, it's incredible. Yeah. I mean, no, there's, there's nothing, there's nothing like Minneapolis.

• 2:32:17Speaker 02

  You know, I love it. I didn't grow up here, but it is just an extraordinary place.

• 2:32:22Rich Roll?

  Maybe the way to kind of round this out and end it is just with some thoughts on what you would like people to better understand about this city because it's so much in the news and people are forming their own ideas based on, you know, the snippets that they're seeing.

• 2:32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, like I said, there's always this duality, you know? It is a truth that we have a long way to go with respect to racial justice and reckoning. It is true that we need deep change to our police department and that we have these long-term and systemic inequities between whites and black community. It's also true that we've got this beautifully diverse city, that people really love each other here, deep down. And, I mean, whether it's, I mean, we're known to be like the

• 2:33:21Speaker 02

  healthiest city in the entire country, depending on which one of those ridiculous surveys that you read. We've got the best park system in the entire country, routinely rated number one. And it's a beautiful and extraordinary place to live.

• 2:33:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:37Speaker 02

  And, you know, so much of that gets missed, especially over this last year, but my goodness, it's true.

• 2:33:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And reckoning with some really important, big issues.

• 2:33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what I'd like to see coming out of all of this is, you know, yes, we will always be the city where George Floyd was killed. We can also be the city where we did something about it. We can be this, hopefully, example of justice and inclusion that others can follow. So...

• 2:34:11Adam Skolnick?

  Out of this really hard year, we hope to see a whole lot of progress.

• 2:34:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it's good talking to you, man.

• 2:34:17Adam Skolnick?

  It's good talking to you, Rich.

• 2:34:18Rich Roll?

  I appreciate it. Best of luck. Try to get some sleep.

• 2:34:22Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 2:34:22Rich Roll?

  Try to get out, get some runs, take care of yourself.

• 2:34:26Adam Skolnick?

  I do need the runs. I haven't gotten in one in, I don't know, better part of six days or five days or so.

• 2:34:31Rich Roll?

  Hopefully I'll come back and we can lace it up together tomorrow morning.

• 2:34:35Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:34:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:36Adam Skolnick?

  There you go.

• 2:34:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But I'll be back if Brogan has anything to say about it.

• 2:34:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:42Rich Roll?

  All right. Cool, man. Thank you.

• 2:34:44Adam Skolnick?

  Gosh, thank you, guys.

• 2:34:57Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. A different kind of roll on. Adam, how do you feel?

• 2:35:01Adam Skolnick?

  You know what I love about roll on? It's plug and play.

• 2:35:04Rich Roll?

  It is. And we can be free with the format.

• 2:35:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:07Rich Roll?

  We switched it up.

• 2:35:08Adam Skolnick?

  We did.

• 2:35:09Rich Roll?

  Do you think people liked it? Did they not like it? Leave a comment. Let us know what you think. We'll be back to listener questions.

• 2:35:14Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, they'll comment. They don't need your permission.

• 2:35:18Rich Roll?

  I don't have to give them permission to comment? Really?

• 2:35:22Adam Skolnick?

  They'll comment and we will read those comments.

• 2:35:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I don't know if I'm gonna read them.

• 2:35:27Adam Skolnick?

  You will.

• 2:35:28Rich Roll?

  All right. We'll be back in two weeks. In the meantime, give Adam a follow at Adam Skolnick. You can follow me at Rich Roll. If you want your question answered, leave us a message, 424-235-4626. Visit the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll have links up to all the articles and all the stuff that we talked about to immerse yourself in the experience that you had today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify, all the places. We got a clips channel up on YouTube, so if you dig short chunks from the show, or you want to sample a guest before fully committing, it's a big commitment to commit to a podcast episode. We're talking about two hours.

• 2:36:13Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you for committing.

• 2:36:14Rich Roll?

  So I appreciate the commitment, but if you're on the fence about that, you can check the clips by just searching Rich Roll Podcast Clips on YouTube and...

• 2:36:23Adam Skolnick?

  And then maybe see a therapist about your commitment issues.

• 2:36:27Rich Roll?

  That would be advised. Yeah. I support that. I see a professional. Dude, I love you, Adam. Oh, I love you too, Rich. And we will talk again soon, my friend. All right. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music. Blake Curtis for videoing today's show. Jessica Miranda for graphics, as well as Daniel Solis. We have Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships. We have Grayson Wilder taking portraits today. And theme music, as always, by Tyler Trapper and Harry. Appreciate all you guys. Love you. See you back here in a couple of days with another amazing episode.

• 2:37:12Rich Roll?

  Until then, take us out. Peace. Plants. Go Yate.

• 2:37:27Rich Roll?

  All right.