The Divine Comedy of Pete Holmes: Spirituality, Creativity, & Growing Through Adversity

It’s time to grapple with the absurdity of life, the nature of reality, truth, consciousness, and the hard problems that perplex humanity. Here to add a healthy dose of humor, wit, and wisdom to this week’s inquiry is one of my favorite humans, Pete Holmes. A stand-up king with a cornucopia of comedy specials, including HBO’s Faces and Sounds, Dirty Clean, and the CBS sitcom How We Roll, Pete is best known as the creator and star of the semi-autobiographical critically acclaimed HBO show Crashing which he created alongside friend of the pod Judd Apatow. In addition, he hosts the You Made It Weird podcast and is the author of the bestselling memoir, Comedy Sex God. Pete is also working on a new comedy special worthy of your attention entitled, 'I’m Not For Everyone', which drops on Netflix October 24th. Today we talk about everything from spirituality to comedy, creativity, consciousness, fatherhood, and the many disorientations of mid-life. More specifically, we talk about how parenthood changes your perspective on life, why pain is the precursor to transformation, the nature of reality and the illusion of self, and why mercy is more powerful than forgiveness. Much has changed since Pete was first on the podcast back in 2019. This one is equal parts silly and spiritual, philosophical and funny. Prepare to have your noodle bent—and have some laughs along the way. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL Faherty: FahertyBrand.com/RICHROLL AG1: drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL Whoop: Whoop.com/RICHROLL Inside Tracker: InsideTracker.com/RICHROLL Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com 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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• 1:04Pete Holmes?

  I remember I was in Italy, I saw a ladybug, and I was like, this ladybug has no idea it's Italian. Has no idea it's Italian. How many fucking things are we carrying around? And who are you when you drop them? And which of those things are undroppable? You wouldn't believe what you believe. You wouldn't believe what you believe. And what you believe, you'll take it because the zero of nobody-ness is so uncomfortable that you'd rather be angry than happy.

• 1:36Rich Roll?

  Pete Holmes is one of my very favorite humans. And today, he returns to the podcast to share what I think is his truly unique gift, which is this great ability that he has to weave the hilarious and confusing experiences of just being alive with the big mystical and philosophical questions about what it all means. He is a veteran stand-up comedian. You might know him from his HBO show Crashing, which he created with friend of the pod Judd Apatow. You might know him from his recent CBS sitcom How We Roll, or his great podcast You Made It Weird. Maybe you read his memoir Comedy Sex God.

• 2:17Rich Roll?

  Or seen him in one of his many late-night appearances or comedy specials, the latest of which is called I'm Not for Everyone, and it drops on Netflix October 24.

• 2:27Pete Holmes?

  Today, we go kinda all over the place. We talk about consciousness, optimism, parenting, spirituality, of course. We discuss diet. We talk about the nature of reality, fatherhood, the many disorientations of midlife. It kinda sounds like a big, hot mess, but actually, it all ties together beautifully. And I think you're gonna really love it. As Pete likes to say, get into it.

• 2:58Rich Roll?

  I think the last time we did this was, that was before, you're, how old is your daughter? Five now?

• 3:03Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, five, yeah.

• 3:04Pete Holmes?

  She'll be five in September, but yeah.

• 3:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How has that changed things for you?

• 3:09Pete Holmes?

  In all the good ways, in all the best ways. Comedians run a real risk at being very self-centered. I think we all do, but comedians maybe especially. So having a daughter has made me take myself a lot, a lot less seriously in having something outside of me and also a unit, like a family unit, that I care about more than my career. I found this balance.

• 3:33Rich Roll?

  How has that influenced or affected your relationship with spirituality? Because I'm thinking, on the one hand, you have this tiny helpless being, and with that, you just become infused with awe and wonder and all the joy and, you know, experience of love that comes with that. But at the same time, it's fucking hard, right? And it doesn't, I wouldn't say it's a recipe for bringing out your best self. Like, you're tired, you're stressed, you're like, you know what I mean?

• 4:02Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, okay, so Leonard Cohen said that the cracks are how the light gets through. And I think about that all the time with Lila. And obviously, my ego, what Pete wants is to always be perfect. But sometimes when my daughter is complaining and throwing a fit, honestly, that a song that doesn't exist, doesn't exist. She'll say, "Tell Spotify to play the unicorn hot air balloon song." I'm like, "Sweetheart, that song doesn't exist." Because she doesn't know what songs are. She's just like, "Do it." And I'm like, "Well, a person writes it."

• 4:35Rich Roll?

  You tell this, this, you know, like disembodied thing to do something, and it doesn't.

• 4:40Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, why isn't it doing it?

• 4:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Pete Holmes?

  So she's screaming, she's having some other, she's, you know, she's stapling another amendment to this issue, and she's working something out emotionally. And in those moments, you know, I'm very proud to be doing better than the generations before us. There's no harsh language or anything, you know, punitive. But sometimes I'll be like, Leela, you know, that's enough. And she's so sensitive that she, like a roly poly, she'll just curl up. And you just feel terrible just for saying, sometimes calmly, "Leela, my daughter got mad at me yesterday because she was on my back and she was choking me and I went, sweetheart, you're choking me." She was mad that I told her to stop choking me, like hurt. Because she just wants me to be a playground. So there's no avoiding it.

• 5:27Pete Holmes?

  That's what I've learned. In fact, that's what they're doing is they're kind of, they want to figure out limits and figure out the relationship and all that stuff. So it's normal. I have to disappoint her. I have to. So that's humbling and that's good. But then what my wife Val has helped me understand and give language to is it's all in the repair, right? So I go, Leela, that's enough. And she kind of curls up and I feel bad. But then like, and I'm driving, I do what I always fantasized would be done to me. This is what we do in reparenting ourselves. I just put my hand on her and I just go, sweetheart, are you upset because, Dada? What is the language I use? I don't say lost my temper, but something like that.

• 6:11Pete Holmes?

  Is it because I got aggravated? And she goes, yeah. And I go, even if I'm upset, I always say the same thing. I go, you're always safe. You're loved and you're good.

• 6:24Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful.

• 6:25Pete Holmes?

  Those are the three things that we all kind of want to hear.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  It's beautiful.

• 6:28Pete Holmes?

  So I go, you're safe, you're loved, you're good. And that moment, so I didn't want the failure, but because, it's not even a failure. But I didn't want that, ah! And I used to be able to avoid those more easily because I didn't have children. But it's on the other side of that foible or vulnerability on both of our parts, that there's this beautiful, she put her hand on my hand and just started like singing and cooing. It was... It's how the world works. I'm working on a new bit about the reason why the fish walked out of the ocean. They grew legs is because the asteroid that hit the planet and killed all the dinosaurs. This is a theory, obviously, made the water so radioactive that they had to. It wasn't just curiosity. They had to.

• 7:13Pete Holmes?

  I relate to that. Leaving home when things get too toxic. You know what I mean? It gets it gets fried and they walk out. So we're born on the backs of catastrophe. You and me are the effects of catastrophe. And we walk around going like, why can't things be perfect?

• 7:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Pete Holmes?

  Which is crazy. There's a line at coffee bean. What is this bullshit? I'm like, you're here because something from space wiped out the entire planet. And and we forget that. That's how it works. I lose my temper and then there's a greater love in the the re-welding. It's better. The scar is better than having no wounds at all.

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  And it's a constant uh action or or or practice of recovering from catastrophe to this idea of reparenting. Right? Like you were parented in a certain way. You walk around with your wounds, promising to yourself that when you have a child, you're not going to make these mistakes. And you do your best. You screw up in moments of stress. You probably behave exactly the way your parents did. But you recover more quickly and you have healthier language to, you know, mend that and and hopefully not leave your leave your child scarred. But I'm curious around the the weaker moments where you see glimpses of your parents and how that affects how you relate to them. Like, are you able to be?

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  I just know as a parent, like, oh, like, I tried so hard to not do that thing. And now and I'm repeating that exact thing.

• 8:45Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  Because it's so deeply embedded. You can catch yourself, but.

• 8:49Pete Holmes?

  You know what it's done for me is it it made me appreciate sort of a hierarchy of needs thing. Right? Where I really feel like my parents were growing up in a time, very firmly, I feel like they were growing up in. I I picture it like sepia toned. Everyone's wearing Newsies caps. And there was just like more fighting for your supper at their in their lives. Not everybody's life necessarily, but with my father and my mother, they just didn't have the maybe what they would call the navel gazy time to go like, who am I?

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:17Pete Holmes?

  What kind of a? They also thought their kids kind of belonged to them. If you want a really far out thing, I don't think my daughter belongs to me. I also don't think I brought her into this world, if you really want to get super woo. But like, if my daughter wasn't here in this daughter, she'd be somewhere else. My parents, my dad is like, you know, I made you. It's like, no, you didn't climb up into my mom's womb with spackle. You know what I mean? You gave the is-ness a vessel to continue this play with itself. But like, when you don't have that ownership over your daughter, that took some of that navel gazy time to have that sort of respect for her autonomy. And maybe my parents, you know, didn't have as much of that,

• 10:01Pete Holmes?

  but it's because they were fighting for a tuna melt.

• 10:03Rich Roll?

  Right. The top of that Maslow.

• 10:06Pete Holmes?

  It's on my mind.

• 10:08Rich Roll?

  The Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like they're not pondering, you know, their broader, you know, spiritual relationship with the universe, because life is fucking hard.

• 10:17Pete Holmes?

  And you know what? I was just talking about this with my friend. I was like, the time that we used to drive to CBS to develop our film, would take film and drive it, wait in line, drop it off, drive back. A week later, drive back, wait in line, pick it up, drive home, look at your pictures. So let's say that's two hours. Now I have a phone, I just take it on my phone and the pictures are done. So what am I doing with those two hours? Well, I'm taking mushrooms and, you know, meditate or whatever it might be. So of course, but I see everything kind of co-conspiring to move human consciousness forward. That might be my optimism. I'm like, this thing, in my view, is arcing to use everything. The scars, the good, the bad, the suffering, the darkness, the light.

• 11:01Pete Holmes?

  It's all, even something as superficial as a phone is kind of saving us time, wherein you might ask yourself an important question, like, who am I?

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  But the problem with that is we can't stop scrolling in order to take advantage of that added time. We fill it, you know?

• 11:15Pete Holmes?

  I feel, I feel that. And I also see that as the bowstring being pulled back. Meaning we're in this kind of awful time where like, we're all fighting the urge to be entertained. And like, my wife goes up to, the baby cried last night. The baby, she was five, but you know, she was crying in bed and mama ran up to get her. And we were watching The Big Lebowski. And as she ran upstairs, I immediately swapped over to YouTube and just watched like,

• 11:41Pete Holmes?

  Some clip, like I just looked for something that was like short and just watched it. Yeah, so I get it. We're, we're fucking ourselves and it's, it's a problem. But I also see that in that tension and in this not workingness, you know what I mean? The things that don't work, constantly entertaining ourselves, constant overstimulating, overlearning, over everything. When it doesn't work, that's another crack that the light gets through. In fact, I think that's a deeply important spiritual lesson is shit doesn't work. Fame doesn't work. Money doesn't work. Sex doesn't work. Drugs don't work. Whatever you, take your pick. And at the end of that harrowing journey that Western culture told you would work, when it doesn't work,

• 12:25Pete Holmes?

  that brokenness is a, is a launchpad to look for what is consistent, what is sustaining me? Who, what, who am I really? Cause it's not just this gobble monster. Cause that doesn't work. So the doesn't work is how work works. This is another asteroid crashing into the planet. Content addiction doesn't work. Asteroid planet, dinosaurs, fish with foot, fish with feet is you walking out and going, this sucks. I'm not happy.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, this is the story of my life. I relate to that deeply. Every growth spurt that I've ever had has been catalyzed by being in tremendous pain or banging my head against the wall in a way that, you know, eventually I realize it's not going to work. But I also see people out in the world who are, you know, maybe not alcoholics, but drink a lot and will until they hit the grave. Because it never becomes a big enough problem. Or they can scroll on their phones and it's not disrupting their life adequately enough for them to ever take inventory of it. And I think those are the people ultimately that are robbed of the miracle and are stuck in the, in the kind of, you know, miasma because they never reach that.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  You know, they don't, they don't hit bottom or they don't, they're, they're never faced with an adequate amount of pain to,

• 13:40Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  to change their life, right? So that's why like in, in recovery, it's like, I'm grateful, you know, it's like the grateful alcoholic, the pretty. It's like all these things that happened to me created a situation in which I then became open to a new way of being and doing where I could set aside my ego. I could ask for help, receive help, entertain a new possibility, you know, how to, how to organize my life. And, and like broaden my perspective to.

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  You know, ponder spiritual principles to drive my decisions.

• 14:14Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, it's asteroid hitting the planet and it's also the story of Christ is death, death, going too far. We shouldn't have gone to Jerusalem.

• 14:25Rich Roll?

  In you, for, in your case, I mean, you had this divorce, which was really painful, but it's not like, I'm sure it was awful, but it's also a very common experience. It's not like your entire life.

• 14:36Pete Holmes?

  No, if I was at the buffet of trauma, I would pick.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  It's pretty banal.

• 14:39Pete Holmes?

  Twenty eight year old divorce with no kids.

• 14:42Rich Roll?

  But in your specific set of life circumstances, that was enough.

• 14:46Pete Holmes?

  And talk, okay, grateful alcoholic, grateful divorcee, like I, I thank whatever you got to thank, I'll thank it for that happening at that time. And this, this is what we're saying with the asteroid propelling the fish out of the lake. I mean, we need that. And what you're really teaching me is the danger of the middle. You know what I mean? I'm not saying you should like go hard with alcohol just so you can become an alcoholic and hit the bottom, but like, we need to get in the mix, you know? Like even after my marriage, I had a lot of, or several relationships, friendships and romantic relationships that were just like, oh, I'm re, I'm unconsciously reenacting trauma that I haven't processed.

• 15:31Pete Holmes?

  So I'm looking for the same toxicity pattern in these people. And through that process, and those were worse than my divorce. Some of these relationships were worse than my divorce. They're not as splashy because there's no legal, there's no paperwork. But you're getting like pushed to the point, if you watch my first Conan, I'm like 285 or something. Look, not that weight is the thing. I'm just saying for me, it was the thing. I was drinking constantly, eating constantly, because I was trying to put insulation around wounds, unprocessed trauma from my childhood, from all sorts of places. And it wasn't working. And if you watch my first Conan, I'm like 285.

• 16:16Pete Holmes?

  My second time I'm on Conan, I'm 235 and that was like a juice fast and all this stuff. It came from pain. It came from, okay, you didn't figure it out in your family. Well, here's the same dynamic written all caps in a relationship. Now. You know, now you're in the mud looking for a knife to stand up for yourself. I don't mean violence. I mean, like, now you're forced. You either let this thing break you, or you say like, you know what? Actually, I'm lovable. I'm good. I'm safe. I'm loved. And then you meet somebody like Valerie. That's my wife. Those relationships that broke, broke me and hurt me.

• 16:58Pete Holmes?

  If I hadn't had those, I wouldn't have found Valerie because I never would have been putting out

• 17:02Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 17:03Pete Holmes?

  Vibration.

• 17:04Rich Roll?

  Right. Some people are just capable of reading something or hearing something or seeing something and going, that's a good idea. I think I'm gonna do that.

• 17:13Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Rich Roll?

  No pain.

• 17:14Pete Holmes?

  I

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  I don't know who those people are. I don't know how that works.

• 17:17Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Rich Roll?

  There are, those people do walk the earth.

• 17:20Pete Holmes?

  I know. They are among us.

• 17:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Pete Holmes?

  And I don't understand them either. Dude, I, I wanted to tell you this because I've been doing something called the 5-2 diet. Have you heard of that?

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  Mm-mm.

• 17:29Pete Holmes?

  It's two days a week you fast. You, it's a fast

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, I do know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:33Pete Holmes?

  Jimmy Kimmel did it.

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:36Pete Holmes?

  And it just never made sense to me. In fact, Kimmel did my podcast. He's explaining it to me. His friend Daniel, Daniel Kalason also did it and was explaining it to me. And I was just like, what?

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:47Pete Holmes?

  You know what I mean?

• 17:47Rich Roll?

  Two days of not eating?

• 17:48Pete Holmes?

  It's two days of

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  Or intermittent fasting on two of those days.

• 17:51Pete Holmes?

  No, it's, it's not intermittent. It's on two days, you eat one-fourth of your calories. So it's for me, because I'm 3200 is my, whatever BMI. I can do 800. I try to do 500 or between 500 and 600 calories on two days a week. And most of the time you're just not eating. And I was like, that's insane. Then I go home. This is weird. I wasn't, I wanted to tell you about the fasting thing because that's kind of in your wheelhouse. And I'm a huge fan, if you want to talk about it. But what propelled it, the why of it, was because I went home. This is fucked up. I was swimming with my dad. I took my shirt off and he, he made a joke about my body.

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 18:32Pete Holmes?

  And he was joking, I, since we've had a talk about it since, I sincerely don't think he meant to hurt me. But some of us, win, lose or draw, the way I'm wired is pain. It's like shit, like fertilizer is actually way better for me. It, like a little bit of shame, little bit of fuck you. I'm not, I'm not proud of this. I'm not even selling it. I'm just telling you what happened. The day he said that to me and hurt my feelings. I think the next day I started and I fasted and there is spite and there is resentment and there is all this nasty fucking shit, but I think there's something to going like,

• 19:14Pete Holmes?

  look, I can't change, I wish I could. I can't change some of my fundamental programming, but I can lean into it. And as long as it's healthy, meaning I'm not abusing myself, if I can get motivation out of it, I will. Cause I'm not in the motivation store picking and choosing.

• 19:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you gotta take and grab willingness wherever you can find it, right? Because willingness is hard to come by and it's something you can't instill in other people and it's hard to talk yourself into it on your own. So if it comes in the form of some kind of negative, you know, trauma induced experience.

• 19:48Pete Holmes?

  What else?

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  There's still a diamond in there. And I think, you know, for someone like yourself who's undergone many changes over the course of his life, I would suspect that you're able to recognize like, oh, here's a moment.

• 20:00Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  I feel that willingness. Yeah, I'm pissed at my dad, but like, I can do something with this because last time I felt like this, I did this and I remember I changed my life by doing this and I'm going to leverage that in the same way.

• 20:12Pete Holmes?

  And I think it's doing it consciously. Meaning if you can stand calmly beside the berserk guy in your psyche who is so mad and has the knife from the mud, it's like, ah, and you go, he's not steering the car, but I can use some of his heat to do something positive. The worst thing you can do for me is tell me like, sometimes people have said like, oh, Pete, you lost some weight. I'm like, please, please don't say that because then I'll think I'm done.

• 20:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. You do look good though.

• 20:41Pete Holmes?

  I appreciate it.

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  I watched your, your new special. You've definitely lost a lot of weight.

• 20:45Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 20:45Rich Roll?

  From that. I don't know when you taped that. A while ago.

• 20:49Pete Holmes?

  Okay. Yeah, that I taped that a couple of months ago, but this, this, um, First of all, I don't know. The trick of the fasting diet. So it's a fasting mimicking diet. Cause if you're eating 500 calories, you'd be surprised. You can get a lot of protein and stuff that fills you up with that little calories. But the trick is you do it because you want to lose weight, or I did, and be healthy and give your body time to repair. But the sneak, like the sleeper cell in there is that it's slowly reprogramming. I'm like, I struggle with like food addiction. It's reprogramming how you think about food. So if two days a week, you're basically not eating, you see how good it feels to be clean?

• 21:32Pete Holmes?

  Cause you're really only eating like very basic stuff.

• 21:35Rich Roll?

  And are you like on a program for what those foods are? Is it pre-prepared?

• 21:39Pete Holmes?

  No, it's not.

• 21:40Rich Roll?

  You're on your own on that?

• 21:41Pete Holmes?

  It's pretty, it's pretty simple. It's, you know, it's like, maybe I'll do smoothies or just trying to get as many nutrients and as much protein as I can, keeping the calories low. But then the next day, so yesterday was a fast day for me. Today is a feed day. You'd think I'd get up and eat a cake, right? But this fucking thing tricks you. And you go, god damn it.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Well, you have momentum and you feel good and you don't want to, you don't want to, you know, once you have a little bit of traction.

• 22:11Pete Holmes?

  Yes.

• 22:11Rich Roll?

  You know, it's easier to keep it going.

• 22:13Pete Holmes?

  And you start retraining your brain what actually feels good. And being lean and clean, like simple feels really, really good. And the way that it works is when you're fasting, you go, I can eat it tomorrow. And that's, that's all I need. If you say like, for 30 days, we're not eating. I'm like, fuck off. Like, you're not the boss of me. That's actually the voice of my food addict. It's like, you're not the boss of me. And I'll eat a bowl of pasta just to spite it. But if this thing tricks you and goes, you can eat a whole bowl of pasta tomorrow. And then the next day you wake up and you don't feel like it. You're like, fuck you, dad. Like it's a trick.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, that's, that's the whole premise of 12 step too. It's just like, it's just for today, right? You want to drink, just drink tomorrow. It's cool. Just hit the, hit the pillow tonight sober. The problem with this, like the addict in me is like, Oh, I feel so good, like fasting.

• 23:10Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Rich Roll?

  Um, yeah, I can eat whatever I want tomorrow, but I'll just, I'll just, well, I'll just, I'll go, I'll fast three days.

• 23:16Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  You know, instead of two, and then three becomes four, and then suddenly I have like a weird disordered eating.

• 23:22Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Rich Roll?

  Kind of situation.

• 23:23Pete Holmes?

  And I have to look out for that. I, I ran into that a little when I was doing, um, what is it? Like I was eating in an eight hour window.

• 23:31Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Intermittent fasting?

• 23:32Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, and that.

• 23:33Rich Roll?

  It's so complicated these days.

• 23:35Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, it is.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  Fucking food.

• 23:36Pete Holmes?

  There's a lot.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  We need to eat it.

• 23:38Pete Holmes?

  There's, we need to eat it. That's why I like just knowing like Monday, Thursday, take it off. And you, you do lose a lot of weight.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  Are you still, you were vegan for a while. Are you still vegan or are you, have you?

• 23:50Pete Holmes?

  I've started eating some fish.

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, Pete.

• 23:52Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Rich Roll?

  You hurt me.

• 23:54Pete Holmes?

  A little bit of fish, Rick. I'm sorry. A little fish, a little fish. Yeah, it's mostly, it had something to do with having a baby. It, it doesn't, you know what sucks about being a, a former vegan is you know why you should be a vegan. It sucks.

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:09Pete Holmes?

  Like.

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  It's, every time you eat that fish.

• 24:11Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. No, it sucks.

• 24:13Rich Roll?

  My face is haunting you.

• 24:14Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. No, your face, my own face. You know, the, the sweet spot is to never do the research. You know what I mean? The ethical research, all of it.

• 24:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:25Pete Holmes?

  The way that is far, if you don't know and you just stay in that sort of blissful ignorance, that's nice. But if you, once I had a baby and she was doing formula, which, you know, had dairy, cause whatever, other things. And then next thing you know, she's eating pizza. I'm just kind of stealing a bite of her pizza. Like I just wasn't taking myself as seriously, like me as seriously. It, it's not even a, a good excuse, but it, it just kind of started to unravel.

• 24:51Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 24:52Pete Holmes?

  A little bit.

• 24:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We're gonna have to talk about that a little bit more.

• 24:56Pete Holmes?

  I'd love to know. I mean, I, I also started lifting weights and a lot of people were like, this is, I'm talking to the perfect person. They were, they were like, you know, the best protein. They were like, the way protein is better. And I was like, I have just all this dairy in there. Like there, there's no dairy in it. The lactose is taken out. Tell me, tell me.

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  It's fine. I, I, the protein thing is, is very overblown. It's, it's not that hard to build lean muscle mass on a plant-based diet. I mean, that's sort of the old trope that is easy to throw around, but.

• 25:24Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 25:24Rich Roll?

  Uh, has never been my experience and I know like vegan bodybuilders and I know people that have never eaten meat their entire lives, who look like machines in the gym. So.

• 25:34Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Rich Roll?

  It's not. And then, oh, it's so complicated, then you have to, you know, be planning all your meals. It's, it's really never been that way for me. I mean, I've been doing this for 16 years.

• 25:44Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  Um, and, and I, and I'm conscious to eat more protein. I'm like turning 57 next month. Like, the older you get, like, you have to be, you know, intaking more because you start to lose your muscle mass. So I'm a little more conscious of that and I'm in the gym more than I used to be when I was just out running all the time. But, um, it's, it's, it's not like an insurmountable problem or hurdle.

• 26:06Pete Holmes?

  I want to, I'd love to hear your response on this. I remember, because Rick Rubin was a vegan and then he stopped.

• 26:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Pete Holmes?

  And that had something to do with it.

• 26:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but.

• 26:14Pete Holmes?

  But what, what?

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 26:16Pete Holmes?

  This is what he said. I want to hear, I want to hear all of it. I'm going to stop talking. But he was like, it's the all carb diet. That was what he said. What do we got? Tell me.

• 26:24Rich Roll?

  I love Rick Rubin, um, but if you listen to him talk about what he was actually eating on a vegan diet, it's easy to understand why he gained weight. Like, I think it's very.

• 26:34Pete Holmes?

  He was a bread vegan?

• 26:35Rich Roll?

  If you eat just tons of refined carbs and it's never been easier to be a junk food vegan. You can eat a horrible diet on a vegan diet and delude yourself into believing that you're doing something healthy for yourself because it doesn't have animal products in it. But that doesn't mean that it's healthy or moving you in the right direction. Yeah, and so if you start eating animal products, which are more calorically dense and like sort of quotient to it, you'll feel full and you probably won't be eating as much junk. Whereas if you're eating a plant-based diet, you have to find like, you know, whole foods that are close to their natural state and avoid all of the processed foods that are out there and all the products that, um, they finally figured out how to make taste adequately okay.

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  You know, coconut ice cream and all these, you know, products that, um, are, are good if you're getting into it for sustainability reasons or for, you know, compassionate reasons, exactly. Um, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthy. So.

• 27:35Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  You know, uh.

• 27:36Pete Holmes?

  Well, I love this because I do deal with cognitive dissonance.

• 27:39Rich Roll?

  And listen, when you have a, when you have a, when you have a small child, like. It's harder, you know, like your life is more complicated and you're tired. And when you're tired, you're gonna reach for the thing that's less healthy.

• 27:51Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I'm in a weird place because of that, meaning it just sort of started happening. And then it just was easier and now I'm here.

• 28:01Rich Roll?

  Like anything, right?

• 28:02Pete Holmes?

  Exactly.

• 28:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Pete Holmes?

  But actually, it wasn't just sloth. It was like, simple. I was like, I'll just grill a piece of fish and have some broccoli and I'm done. It's easier than like.

• 28:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I understand.

• 28:15Pete Holmes?

  Piecing it together.

• 28:16Rich Roll?

  No, I, I, I'm not, I have no judge, I'm not.

• 28:19Pete Holmes?

  No, I know.

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  Judging you at all.

• 28:20Pete Holmes?

  You don't believe in the suffering of animals, including me.

• 28:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know you don't either. So, so I guess I would just say, knowing what you know, because you've lived this lifestyle before.

• 28:31Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Rich Roll?

  There's a dissonance, like a, like a very low grade hum, right? Where you know, like, this isn't necessarily in the highest alignment with who, the person that I'd like to be.

• 28:42Pete Holmes?

  No.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  And there's a, there's a lightness or a sense of freedom that comes when you can correct that alignment.

• 28:48Pete Holmes?

  That's true. And I might be deluding myself, but I do catch myself not judging other people, which was a thing for me. I'm not saying for you. But when I was, when you, when you're a vegan and you feel like you're opting out of the suffering, it's not really true.

• 29:03Rich Roll?

  No, of course not. And I think it's not in service to the vegan movement for vegans to be on their high horse judging other people. Like, we all, you know, just by dint of living on planet earth, we are tapping its resources and, and.

• 29:16Pete Holmes?

  This table was the house for an hour.

• 29:19Rich Roll?

  There's nothing, and, and, you know, the food that you're eating, there's a cost to all of it. Like, nobody is living on the planet without creating suffering.

• 29:26Pete Holmes?

  Right, right.

• 29:27Rich Roll?

  So, at least acknowledge that and, you know, maybe step back from all the judgmentalism that, that only alienates other people anyway.

• 29:36Pete Holmes?

  Right, right. Yeah, you're, you're, I'm not even proud of this, but I have caught myself being like, I'm just being honest. Like, this whole thing is brutal. And I'm just like, and I'm just, I'm just in it. There's sort of like a, this is what I mean. It's not as airtight as being like, how could a sentient thing and the suffering and factory farming and all this stuff. The best I can come up with, and I'm not saying I like it, is just going like, it's what's happening.

• 30:03Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 30:04Pete Holmes?

  And I, that's, I do suffer because of this. I'm telling you, knowing.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  What had to happen for this phone in my hand, to be in my hand? Like, how many people had to suffer for this to exist? Or the battery that's in my car? Or the dye that was the runoff from the T-shirt that I'm wearing? And how many fish died because of that? Like, you know, when you really telescope up and try to look at our consumer choices holistically, we're all wreaking havoc.

• 30:32Pete Holmes?

  And.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  And we can tread a little bit more lightly.

• 30:35Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Rich Roll?

  And we can all do better. But I think when you refrain from judging other people on their decisions, you create an opening or a sense of welcomeness in which we can have a productive dialogue about how we can all do better.

• 30:50Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Rich Roll?

  Not by pointing fingers at other people and judging them, but by acknowledging our own fallibility and, you know, imperfections.

• 31:00Pete Holmes?

  I think that's well said. I do hate it. People used to come, when I was a vegan, they'd be like, well, you know, when they're farming the almonds, they suck up rodents or whatever it is.

• 31:08Rich Roll?

  Well, there's, I mean, it's just, there's always a what about-ism.

• 31:12Pete Holmes?

  Well, you know what it is? There just is a heartbreak to this reality that you were just touching on. And I think what's annoying, for lack of a better word, is there's no way to opt out of it entirely. And I think that leads to a certain defeatism that people go like, well, you can't win, so you might as well eat some chicken.

• 31:34Rich Roll?

  Truth, true, but like, every, every, every change in the world starts with people changing their minds about things, right? Every big change, every social change, every revolution started with one person doing something different. Like, I think we, we actually do have a lot more agency. And for someone like yourself, who is in front of audiences and talking behind a microphone for many, many years, like, you have the power to influence a lot of people.

• 32:01Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Rich Roll?

  And I think when you're walking a certain walk and living your life in a certain way, there's a, there's a, there's a real potency to that that can change people.

• 32:10Pete Holmes?

  I think you're right. I'm telling you, I'm over here, but I'm not, I'm not like, you should come to my stuff. Do you want to feel conflicted, most males? Get over here. It's great. It's great. And people say, why? And you just go, just kind of lazy. It feels awesome. Come over here.

• 32:27Rich Roll?

  You devil.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  You watched the special.

• 32:31Pete Holmes?

  Did you watch it?

• 32:32Rich Roll?

  I did.

• 32:32Pete Holmes?

  You're one of the few people that have seen it.

• 32:34Rich Roll?

  I know. Thank you for sharing it with me. When is it coming out?

• 32:37Pete Holmes?

  End of October.

• 32:38Rich Roll?

  Okay, cool. Congrats. It's super funny.

• 32:40Pete Holmes?

  Thanks, man.

• 32:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You've come a long way, man. You've been doing this for a while.

• 32:46Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, God, it's been like 22 years or something. And now I'm working on my new hour. I mean, I feel like-

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  So you're, this hour isn't even out yet, this special, and you're already cracking the next one?

• 32:59Pete Holmes?

  I have the next one. I was just talking to Neil Brennan. I was like, I have the time. You wouldn't call it an hour until it's really polished and sort of interwoven and tight and sort of thematically clumped and stuff. I have the time and it's starting to get woven together. The, you know, the callbacks and the interrelatedness of the bits are, it's starting to present itself. But this is the, I just did Denver Comedy Works like two weeks ago and I did this new hour. Not the one that's going to air at the end of October, but there is a new hour. And I'm like, what I was gonna say is I think you can relate to this as one of the great secrets to joy

• 33:42Pete Holmes?

  on the human plane, not in like any spiritual or super meaning of life way, but just in like the bread and butter, day to day, how to be a happy human. Having some infinitely playable game. For you, I think it's ultra marathon, you know, like the athletic. There is something, if you'll allow, athletic about doing a new hour. You're trying it. You're testing it. You're risking, you might be risking injury. I'm risking like psychological injury, humiliation, and that really motivates you. Like you, if you have, sorry to force this, but like if you have a race coming up, you train because you know you have this race. When I have a weekend coming up, I write

• 34:25Pete Holmes?

  because I know I have, and I, and I have a show tonight because I have a show this weekend and you gotta work it out. So when people like struggle with writing their novel or whatever, I'm like, yeah, no shit. There's no pit of spikes and flames beneath you. Like I'll suffer pain.

• 34:43Pete Holmes?

  Tonight, if I don't do my homework.

• 34:46Rich Roll?

  Right. If you had to get up and read a chapter from your novel.

• 34:49Pete Holmes?

  And it's already done.

• 34:50Rich Roll?

  Once a week or whatever.

• 34:51Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah, that would help. That would help. Like, put it, and David Sedaris and other people like that do that. But like, if you're just wondering why you're sitting around tinkering on a screenplay, I'm like, because there's no risk.

• 35:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Pete Holmes?

  Like, stand-up is like a treadmill. If you stop, you fall off. You know what I mean? It's not, it's not running in the woods where you can just start walking and no one knows you didn't hit your goal.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  Walk me through your creative process from how you're finding ideas, how you're remembering these ideas, working on them. How does that, how does that work for you?

• 35:30Pete Holmes?

  Well, it's, it's very different 23 years in. At the beginning, you're like trying to write jokes, like what will make people laugh. And now that I'm in my 40s and I've been doing it a long time, a bit presents itself when you, when something comes up and you have a very strong feeling. Like, there should be some word in Greek for it or something. Like, there's this feeling that you know, I really have strong thoughts and perspectives about this, and I feel sure-footed in my thoughts, even if it's something as stupid as Q-tips. I, I have a very strong feeling about Q-tips. Not, I know I can make that funny necessarily, but you look for the, the passion feeling first.

• 36:15Pete Holmes?

  And then you go on stage and you kind of play with it. You, you know, I don't write it out.

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  So when that occurs to you, though, do you like open up your phone and write it in a note? Or do you do a voice memo? Like, what is the practical?

• 36:26Pete Holmes?

  I text myself a lot. Cause there's something about being in the car that takes over your, your, you know, your body. So your brain is kind of free to wander. So I'm texting, I'm sending myself a lot of crazy texts. Saying, text Pete Holmes. What do you want to say to Pete Holmes? Q-tips is acting like they don't know we're putting these things in our ears. And it goes, your text to Pete Holmes says, Q-tips act like they don't edit, you're just like a crazy person. And then you have sort of the outline. So nowhere is it written down necessarily like what you're actually gonna say. But like, then I go on stage with an idea like that. And I tried the Q-tip joke. It's very funny to talk about a silly joke seriously, but I was on stage a couple nights ago.

• 37:09Pete Holmes?

  And it just came out. I was like, something like, when are the people at Q-tips gonna stop gaslighting us? Like, they don't know we're putting these shits in our ears.

• 37:17Rich Roll?

  Right, cuz it says, like, don't put it in your ear, right?

• 37:20Pete Holmes?

  It does. But it also on the back, it has the balls to say it's for first aid. I'm like, who the, and this is just coming out, cuz I care. I go, who is the lunatic putting Neosporin on a Q-tip and then putting it on their, no one. No one is doing that. And then the second one is, uh, makeup. And then I'm like, surely the third one will be cram it in your ear. The third one is, clean your keyboard. And I was like, what fucking nonsense is this? They know we're rotating, touching the brain. Get in that ear G-spot. And it's just coming out because I care. And it's like, then, then, you know, the comic in you looks for, that's like, you want like, that's like Coca-Cola being like,

• 38:02Pete Holmes?

  this is a product to dissolve teeth in. You guys are drinking it? Like, but, but even the word, gaslighting, now we're laughing about family dynamics, like the way that this is just a human thing. We're gonna ignore reality. There's a corporation just ignoring reality.

• 38:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Pete Holmes?

  They have meetings. I was like, do they draw the blinds and put the Q-tips in there? Like, ah, like secretly, like, that's an area where I feel like there's a joke. Whereas when I was starting, I was like, what's the employee discount at the dollar store? That's a good joke. But like, now I'm looking for those things that I'm like, I can't stop talking about how Q-tips is fucking lying.

• 38:43Rich Roll?

  Right, but then you have the theme emerging from that, which is like, the, the mass delusion

• 38:48Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  of humanity, right? And so you can use that to tie different bits together and create something coherent out of the whole thing.

• 38:55Pete Holmes?

  Well, here's the other thing that I, I, I thought you might think is interesting. When you've been doing it 23 years, you start stealing from yourself. So I'm putting together a new hour and you're like, let's say I have a joke about Q-tips. And then you're like, I wish I had a joke here. And then you remember you do. You've never done it. You never recorded it. And maybe you wrote it in your first three years of stand-up when you were bad. But the thought had a kernel in there that was good. Now you're doing what I call old new. It's new to them and you might rework it, but you're stealing. It's a great feeling.

• 39:29Rich Roll?

  Do you have stacks of journals, though, that you've been keeping for years that you go back and find those things? Or you just remember, oh, I thought about that many years ago?

• 39:37Pete Holmes?

  A lot of it just kicks around in the brain. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not. I do have journals from my early years, but like, most of it just kind of goes like, oh, yeah. Or somebody says something and I go, who has a joke about that? And I'm like, I do. It's a wonderful feeling. You start to become like a, I don't know, like there's someone else working in there.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  How often are you going up?

• 40:00Pete Holmes?

  Okay. Well, I'm glad you asked because at this point in my life, and this is something I'm very passionate about. When you're starting comedy, you go up like every night, right? Or you want to and then you do. And sometimes you go up multiple times a night. And then you go out every weekend and you're just constantly working. And that's like 20 years or 10 years, maybe. Like the first six, maybe you're not working because nobody wants you to work. Then there's a middle portion, this 10 years of hitting it really hard. And now I'm in the second part or third part. And not a lot of comics are talking about this. And I'd really like to go on the record that there's a third phase, which is like a balance phase where you're trying to get the levels just right.

• 40:44Pete Holmes?

  And instead of mimicking other people's processes, you start honoring and valuing your own. So I do a monthly show at Largo where I do an hour. That's the bulk of my stand-up in a month. To get ready for that, maybe I'll go and perform at the Comedy Store once a month, maybe twice a month. And like tonight, I'm doing Dynasty Typewriter because I'm working this weekend. So I just want to reheat the hour. But like, most of the time, there's like, writing down notes and jotting stuff up. It's taking advantage of all of this work that I've put in to be, have a comic mind and trust that when I'm on stage, it will come out appropriately.

• 41:26Pete Holmes?

  And then most of my life, the greatest compliment my wife gave me, people say, what's it like being married to a comedian? And she's like, I barely notice that I'm married to a comedian. Don't get me wrong, we laugh and we're silly, but like, it's not this, what everyone assumes it is, is that like, oh, you must be traveling all the time. People are like, how's life on the road? People say to me, I'm like, I go out one weekend a month. That's it. That's three weekends not out. And you know what? Most people work all day, every day. So one weekend a month condensing all of my work into three days? Pretty fucking good. And nobody's really, comedians are in this great position. A lot of creative people are in this great position.

• 42:09Pete Holmes?

  A lot of business people are in this position, like entrepreneurs and stuff, to get those levels just right. But I don't see a lot of people trying to kind of Tim Ferriss it, trying to, my friend James Bishar is one of these guys. It's like, yeah, I just, I only answer emails on Tuesdays between 10 and noon or whatever. And I'm like, comedians should be doing this. Let's get those levels right. Let's not just be pirates, you know, going out and drinking rum and swimming from ropes all the fucking time.

• 42:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that is the stereotype. Tortured person who's spending all their time in, in the comedy clubs. And also in their, in their kind of pedestrian life, everything's a bit, they're never just relaxed and living their life.

• 42:50Pete Holmes?

  Well, we moved up, kind of, it's funny, driving here, I was like, I'm driving home because we live in Ojai. That was-

• 42:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's right, I forgot.

• 42:57Pete Holmes?

  This, right, yeah.

• 42:58Rich Roll?

  I felt like-

• 42:59Pete Holmes?

  Everyone's moving to Ojai. Are they?

• 43:00Rich Roll?

  Are you like Rob Bell's next door neighbor now?

• 43:02Pete Holmes?

  Well, Rob does live right up the street from me. And it's fucking incredible. And I really credit Valerie for that choice. Like, she's this great counterbalance. I'm very fiery and she's very, I don't know if she's watery, but she balances it out, you know? And she was like, we love it when we go there. I think we should move there. And we did. And it was hard for me to do.

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  Cause you can't just pop down and do a set.

• 43:26Pete Holmes?

  Well, I was scared. I was scared I'd vanish. Yeah. I, I, I thought it would be too far to do shows. And then I'd stop doing shows and then I'd lose my identity. And now what am I just in a rocking chair? Like, what do I do? It's not been that way at all. And for the first time in my life, like, I, I'm not putting down my comedian friends, but Neil Brennan, who is one of my comedian friends, he's like, there are no friends in show business. He's like, we're all just in a bar fight. And sometimes you're punching in the same direction as the random guy next to you. And it gives the illusion that you're on the same team. But it's really just a bar fight. That may or may not be true. But I will say now I just have like, for the first time in my life, I feel like Bigfoot, like friend?

• 44:10Pete Holmes?

  Like, I'm learning what it's like to have a coffee shop that I go to. And if I'm not there, and sometimes I'm not, the next time I'm there, people are like, hey, where were you? And I was like, well, I was here and they wanna know. They're not, you know, not that all my friends are doing this, but they're not gaming me. They're not, we're not talking about projects and casting or any of that shit. We're just human beings hanging out. And I've never been happier. This time in my life is the happiest time in my life.

• 44:37Rich Roll?

  That's great.

• 44:37Pete Holmes?

  And it's because I'm starting to.

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  Enjoy your life.

• 44:41Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Pete Holmes?

  Well, it's funny that you say that. That was our slogan, my own personal slogan. That was like, good life when? Good life when? And you don't have to be a fancy show business jerk like me to do this. There's a, a lot of our friends, regular work, you know what I mean? But they figured out, we can do this, we can make it work here, we can do this. And it's not just Ojai. When people say like, should I move to Ojai? I'm like, well, first just, you gotta get your life fucking right. You know what I mean? I'm fulfilled. I know what I need to hum. And that's a certain amount of sets in a month. And that's a certain amount of writing. And that's a certain amount of performing and creating. And I, I, and I go, okay, how much of my life is that? Okay, maybe that's 18%.

• 45:24Pete Holmes?

  And then like, having a good marriage, our marriage is fucking great. Having a daughter, our family is fucking great. Okay, now we can rally this up and move it somewhere. But you can't just move somewhere and hope it fixes you. You go there, there might be a lot of quiet up there for you to figure out. You're doing some, some things not correct.

• 45:43Rich Roll?

  Right, right. I mean, it's a big lifestyle change. For people that don't know, for you, you were like living in the heart of Hollywood, right?

• 45:49Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Rich Roll?

  To go to Ojai, super sleepy, beautiful place.

• 45:53Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 45:53Rich Roll?

  Um, but the cadence.

• 45:54Pete Holmes?

  Everything closes at like nine.

• 45:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the cadence of life up there. I mean, you might as well be living in, you know, Decatur, Illinois or something.

• 46:00Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. I'll tell you, just because you kind of live out here too, uh, or far from the city-ish.

• 46:07Pete Holmes?

  Um, not, it's so not a problem. I, I credit it to having a daughter. First of all, I credit it to our life just being right and everybody being communicative and honest about their needs. You know what I mean? That's huge. I didn't know how to do that in my twenties. And now I say, I need to do a set. Like, I'm going to do a set. Like, you know, uh, it doesn't even get to that place. They're just in the calendar. But, um, the drive has become sacred time for me. It's not wasted time at all. It's where I get all of my reading done. It's audiobooks. It's where I get all of my learning done. It's where I get all of my phone calls done. I'm not talking about business calls. I told you, I talked to Neil Brand today. That was on the ride down. We just talked for 30 minutes. I'm being like a, a better friend, a more available friend.

• 46:49Pete Holmes?

  And not only is it not a problem, I'll drive in, I've, I've done this before. I'll drive in from Ojai, have a meeting at like 11, drive back, I'm home at 1:30, drive back for a show, drive back, I'm home at 11. And I'm just like, when I lived in Los Feliz, it wasn't Hollywood, it was Los Feliz, and Judd's office, when we were doing Crashing, was in Santa Monica. It was two hours.

• 47:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Pete Holmes?

  No one thought that was crazy. So you see these, these delusions that we're all under, that we sort of reflect back to each other. If it's in LA, what are you talking about?

• 47:29Rich Roll?

  But that's its own delusion, because anyone who doesn't live in LA would consider that to be lunacy, which it is.

• 47:35Pete Holmes?

  It is. No, all of this is insane.

• 47:36Rich Roll?

  And all you're doing is cutting across town.

• 47:39Pete Holmes?

  Buddy, that drive was worse than the drive up to Ojai all the time. And then I, I look at it as like math. It's like when I'm in Ojai, to go to the grocery store, five minutes, five American minutes, to drop my daughter at school, 10 minutes. Actually, she just moved school so it's like closer, we could walk. Uh, if I'm going anywhere, pick anywhere, the, the beach, 15 minutes, right? In LA, each one of those would be 45, so 90. Yeah. But no, I'm not really trying to sell living in the country as much as I'm saying like, get creative about your blocks. You go like, well, that's 90 minutes in the car. That's ludicrous. It's like, yeah, but when you go to Whole Foods here on Santa Monica, there's 45 minutes shopping, 45 minutes back.

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  But the real block is, is in your mind. The, the, you know, the fear of irrelevance by opting out of being part of that, like hamster wheel, living there.

• 48:33Pete Holmes?

  I actually appreciate that. That is the fear. And there are some people I know that live up in Ojai, that you can feel them drying out and they're like, I'm, I just gotta be in the mix. I've been done trying to be in the mix for a while, but I've also been doing it in 20 years. So there's a lot of privileges to check here. And one of them is a career privilege where I'm like, I can stack my Monday. I did my pod, or it's Tuesday, but I did my podcast this morning. I'll do this with you. I'll have dinner with my friend. I'll do a show tonight. Not a lot of people can go, hey Rich, when can we do it? Let's do it on this day. Hey, hey Dynasty Typewriter, I want to do a show on this night. Can we do it? There's, there's a lot of things in line. But I also just talk to the other side. I know a lot of people that have way more access, way

• 49:15Pete Holmes?

  more money, way more power, whatever you want to call it, that aren't doing this. So, you know.

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, you've, you've consciously carved out this really unique career. I mean, congratulations for moving out and enjoying it. I think it's great. Like if we're not going to enjoy our lives now, when are we going to do it? Right? And to have that awareness is a credit to you and to the work that you've done on yourself and in just reflecting upon your career. It's super unique because on the one hand, you're a stand-up like Neil Brennan and John Mulaney and all those guys that I know you're friends with. You also have this television career. Like you're, now you're like turning into a sitcom guy. Like you went from crashing and you did that bowling show and, and.

• 50:01Pete Holmes?

  Forever to be known as that bowling.

• 50:02Rich Roll?

  And like Night Court? Like what is going on with all? You're doing all these shows.

• 50:07Pete Holmes?

  That's a whole conversation.

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  I know, but hold on, put a pin in that for now. So you have that side of your career, then you have the podcast, which you've been doing. When did you, I mean, you started before me, like.

• 50:18Pete Holmes?

  It's been over 10 years.

• 50:19Rich Roll?

  I mean, everybody's got a podcast now, but it's rare that I meet someone who's been doing it longer than I have.

• 50:24Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 50:24Rich Roll?

  And I think 2011 or something like that, when did you start?

• 50:27Pete Holmes?

  That sounds right. It's been, it's been 12, 13 years, something like that. It's crazy.

• 50:32Rich Roll?

  When you invited me to do yours, it was like upstairs. It was at that comic book store.

• 50:38Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 50:39Rich Roll?

  Is that there? That's not there anymore, is it?

• 50:41Pete Holmes?

  No.

• 50:41Rich Roll?

  I think it's gone, right?

• 50:42Pete Holmes?

  No, it is.

• 50:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Pete Holmes?

  That was at, we didn't know, but there was a golden time.

• 50:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Pete Holmes?

  I was being, you know, I wouldn't say I was being taken advantage of, but like I was with a network that was taking. The, we, nobody had figured out how to turn it into a job quite yet.

• 50:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:57Pete Holmes?

  I certainly hadn't. It was just.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  I did it forever before.

• 51:00Pete Holmes?

  Me too. We did it for years and years and years and making no money.

• 51:04Rich Roll?

  None.

• 51:05Pete Holmes?

  If I got a little check, I'd be like, oh my God. And now I look back and I'm like, what, what the fuck was that? Like, that's ridiculous. But anyway, now we're sort of in this opposite time. You know, everyone knows this, but like, we're now competing with Conan and, and I think all five talk show hosts are doing.

• 51:23Rich Roll?

  They're doing a mega podcast thing right now.

• 51:27Pete Holmes?

  When does it end, guys? Like, what, like, how, you have to, there's this great New Yorker cartoon that I love by Leo Cullum, the late Leo Cullum, and it's dogs in a boardroom and they're wearing suits. And there's a chart of growth and the dog is saying, it's not enough that dogs win, cats must also lose. And I just think about this like insatiability, where it's like, if there's money to be made, fucking go, everybody go. And I know I'm over here. Piddling out my thing and I've enjoyed my coziness and now I'm like, you type in comedy podcasts, it's hard. Like, one of the reasons I keep doing it, one, I love it, I absolutely love it. But I'm also like, I can't throw away a following.

• 52:11Pete Holmes?

  Cause now if you start a podcast, it's really hard to get.

• 52:14Rich Roll?

  Oh, it would be so difficult to start now.

• 52:16Pete Holmes?

  Impossible.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  And, and you can't underestimate the impact of podcasting on comedy in general. Like, every comedian now has domain and control over their work and connecting with an audience in a way that they never did previously. And it's launched careers, it's been very good to you and to a lot of people. And comedians were the first movers.

• 52:37Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Rich Roll?

  In the early, early days, even before you started.

• 52:40Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, Marin.

• 52:41Rich Roll?

  It was, yeah, it was Marin, it was Kevin Smith is actually the OG, right? Like, Corolla, those guys, yeah, like all the, Doug, Doug Loves Movies, remember that show? Is he still doing that? I mean, those, it's the comedians who were first.

• 52:57Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. And you're absolutely right that the tastes change, just like changing the diet of an ecosystem, right? Like, once the comedians started getting more comfortable sharing all of their feelings and thoughts and, and kind of getting more personal, which was a big part of the phenomenon, then the audience that came to see me, for example, would know all this stuff.

• 53:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they already, they know you and they know what they're getting involved in. They're there because they wanna see you, not, oh, it's a comedian, let's see what he's got.

• 53:26Pete Holmes?

  And they wanna know the real you. So, sort of off the table, I remember, I don't know what he ended up doing, but there was a comedian who came out, I, we don't need to say who it was, but he was like, a little bit older than me and he was like, but when I'm on stage, I'm still gonna talk about having a girlfriend and kind of be like, you know what I mean? And I was like, oh, I don't think that flies anymore.

• 53:46Rich Roll?

  No.

• 53:46Pete Holmes?

  Like, and that's wonderful for someone like me. Like, I wanna share and be known, and now when I go out to audiences, the whole.

• 53:56Pete Holmes?

  Thing is like, if you knew me, we could get deeper, faster, funnier. And if you already listen to the podcast, it's like, you already know my perspective. Let's just, let's dive in and get into it fast.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that, that idea was born out of the alternative comedy movement, wasn't it? The storytelling.

• 54:15Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  Um, vulnerability led.

• 54:17Pete Holmes?

  But I wasn't doing that.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  Thing. I mean, Maren, that's what Maren does also in a different way.

• 54:22Pete Holmes?

  Maren doesn't on stage and on his podcast, but I learned how to be vulnerable. Um, sort of by doing a podcast. The first time I was like, you know, giving grief to my family or talking about my divorce. Like I had no bits about being divorced. So like doing the podcast, the first time I talked about it, you really, this is gonna sound, it's like Chicken Little, you think the sky's gonna fall. You're like, and my wife left me, she actually had an affair. Like you just put a little toe in the water. And when that episode would drop, I'd have anxiety. I'm like, well, I don't even know what the fantasy was, but let's say she's gonna hear it. Or somebody in my family is gonna hear, someone in her family is gonna hear. None of these things happen.

• 55:05Pete Holmes?

  And then the next week you go like, it was a small Italian man named Bracco. Or whatever it is, I used to make that joke all the time. And next thing you know, you're just in the water, up, uh, uh, over your head of like sharing and sharing. And that informs your art. And then look what happened. I did a TV show that hinges on me being honest about my divorce. But it was podcasting that taught me how to be soft enough and open enough to, to get to that place artistically. If I had just been doing standup, it would still be what's the employee discount at the dollar store?

• 55:37Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:38Pete Holmes?

  Podcasting was like yeast in the dough.

• 55:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't, you can't extract the two from each other and how they've informed each other.

• 55:46Pete Holmes?

  And that's why I won't walk away.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  But what, what do you think about the whole world of podcasting now? Because it is so different than when you started.

• 55:54Pete Holmes?

  Well, I don't wanna be a, a grump, but I do think celebrity doesn't necessarily mean better.

• 56:04Rich Roll?

  Well, we learned that with all the Spotify missteps.

• 56:07Pete Holmes?

  That's right.

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  Overspending. Just because you're a name doesn't mean that you're gonna wanna host a podcast that's gonna work.

• 56:14Pete Holmes?

  That's right.

• 56:15Rich Roll?

  And also, I think a lot of people realize how much work it is and

• 56:18Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, it's no joke.

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  Get knee deep into it and realize, and if they're not getting huge audience share right out of the gate, they'll just pull the plug because they have many other things that they could do.

• 56:26Pete Holmes?

  But that's, I feel that way, it probably sounded like I meant me, but I also just mean the guests as well. Like, so many of my favorite episodes are people that you haven't heard of. And the True Weirdos, it's called You Made It Weird, so we call the fans weirdos, the True Weirdos listen to all of them and they report the same. It's like, I always talk about, like Pete Davidson did the podcast when he was just a club comic that I thought was incredible. So like, don't skip. Malik Elsal just did it today, and I'm like, I know there's a lot of people that won't listen to the Malik Elsal episode. And I'm like, you fucking idiot. See you in five years when he's huge. But like, he's funny and interesting

• 57:09Pete Holmes?

  today. You know what I mean? So like, let's be more interesting than Instagram. Let's be more interesting than the tabloids.

• 57:17Rich Roll?

  It's also more gratifying as the host when you can find some, like, gem in the rough and like, host them, have an incredible experience, and then go like this to the world.

• 57:27Pete Holmes?

  Well, that is what I miss from those days in the comic book shop. Before you get ads involved, and I'm grateful for that, through the pandemic, through both the strikes that are happening right now, podcasting is our livelihood. It's like, most of it.

• 57:41Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 57:41Pete Holmes?

  And touring. But it's like, so I'm grateful for the ads. So I'm not saying this with any malice, but once you're promising a number to an advertiser, it gets less cute if I just wanna have the author of some book I really enjoyed on. You know what I mean? So that does compromise it a little bit. And going back to the meat thing, you're just sort of like, it's just what it is. It's not great, but I can't really have everybody on necessarily that I want.

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  That's a shame. You should be able to do that. You need like an iron-

• 58:13Pete Holmes?

  We find ways to do it.

• 58:14Rich Roll?

  You need an iron curtain between the advertising and the editorial. Like, you can't let advertising inform which guests you're gonna have on the show.

• 58:21Pete Holmes?

  Remember, Malik did the show today, so we're still having the people on, but I can't like- I couldn't have him on again next week. Like, there's a limit.

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  But people who are listening to you are listening, they're listening for the guests, but they're listening because they love you and they trust you, and you're a curator of taste. So if you say, "This is a person worthy of your attention," your audience is gonna follow you, whether it's-

• 58:45Pete Holmes?

  I know that's true of the day.

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  You know, maybe you have, you know, John Mulaney on, you know it's gonna get more people are probably gonna listen to that, but the drop isn't as precipitous as you might think, I would suspect, like, when you have an unknown on, because they know that you've thought through this.

• 59:00Pete Holmes?

  I like you.

• 59:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Pete Holmes?

  I like you. Chris Evans did it, Captain America, which was-

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did?

• 59:06Pete Holmes?

  Which was dope, yeah.

• 59:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 59:08Pete Holmes?

  He hasn't done a lot of pods. I wonder if he'd do yours. I mean, cause he's like a fit fella. Not that you only talk to fit fellows.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  I'd love to have him on.

• 59:14Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  It's fun to have fancy people on, but sometimes they're a lot harder to interview because they're so media savvy. They do so many interviews and you have to find a different way in.

• 59:25Pete Holmes?

  In my experience, that's the old Meron trick. I learned it from Meron. You have to tell them a story of shitting your pants.

• 59:30Rich Roll?

  You have to lead with vulnerability.

• 59:31Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 59:31Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 59:32Pete Holmes?

  You have to be like, "Oh, I remember I just shed blood 20 minutes ago." And then they're like, "Oh, and then..."

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  Wait, what? Who are you?

• 59:38Pete Holmes?

  Exactly. You have to. It's the oldest podcast. I don't wanna say it's a trick. It's a trick in the sense that it's a trick towards deep, rich, in this moment, fuck the show, just two human beings connecting.

• 59:51Rich Roll?

  You can't, I mean, you can't expect somebody to be honest and open if you're not willing to do that yourself.

• 59:55Pete Holmes?

  I agree.

• 59:55Rich Roll?

  So it's not a trick. It's just, we're setting the stage. This is where I'm coming from.

• 59:59Pete Holmes?

  When people do it to me, I love it.

• 1:00:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Pete Holmes?

  If you're trick- I've said this before, but like, podcasts are just an excuse like this. For you and me to sit on a porch and have a Sarsaparilla. You know what I mean? And like, so the more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems like, oh, this is so fancy and we're in a black void. But-

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  Timeless black void.

• 1:00:22Pete Holmes?

  Oh, timeless black void. But we're really just doing what people have always done. We're on a wagon ride across the Dakotas and we finally get to talk.

• 1:00:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Pete Holmes?

  And there used to be more time for that, but it's a human need.

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  If I were to drive up to Ojai-

• 1:00:36Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Rich Roll?

  This is the conversation that I would have with you. But because our lives are the way that they are, that's an unlikely occurrence. So I have to create all this artifice-

• 1:00:46Pete Holmes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  -in order to have this going on.

• 1:00:48Pete Holmes?

  But honestly, dude, if you came to Ojai, I wouldn't be talking in this pitch.

• 1:00:52Rich Roll?

  No, of course not.

• 1:00:55Pete Holmes?

  And if you did, even though this is-

• 1:00:58Rich Roll?

  You know what we should do? We should actually do that and just imagine that there's microphones on and have a very animated, heightened version of the conversation that we would have.

• 1:01:07Pete Holmes?

  My wife and I are very, very happy. It's just a wonderful gift of a relationship. And every Friday, we do a bonus episode called We Made It Weird. It's on the same feed. But the We Made It Weird episodes are Valentine. And if that's not a relationship hack, meaning-

• 1:01:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's the joke that I have with my wife all the time.

• 1:01:29Pete Holmes?

  What's that?

• 1:01:30Rich Roll?

  That, because she comes on not with that level of regularity, but pretty frequently. And it's like, oh, okay, we're gonna talk now.

• 1:01:38Pete Holmes?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:01:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Pete Holmes?

  My, even when Leela was a newborn, we always took at least an hour, sometimes two hours, to have like, the, talk about the treadmill and the fiery pit of stand-up, like the stakes. Let's put some stakes in it. Let's, let's get best Pete, not bad date, fucking dumbass Pete. Let's get like, people are gonna hear this. And it's sort of like my father making fun of my boy, even though that's not what he meant, motivating me to start fasting or whatever it is. Let's put a little pressure on this, saying people are gonna hear it. Not, not just for the show, but for the conversation itself, for what it gives us. And this is true. Every single We Made It Weird-

• 1:02:23Pete Holmes?

  Well, without exception, starts in a certain way, and I'm usually having some sort of problem that we're unpacking. By the end, I always feel better, always feel better. And it's like, we could do this, but we don't. So let's hack the system. Let's turn it into part of our job and force ourselves to talk. And it's always the episodes that we didn't want to do. I was like, maybe we can skip this week, whatever. We forced ourselves to do it. Those are always these incredible, we didn't even know what we were going to talk about, and we find something like real, because we got out of our own way.

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I'm sitting here wondering whether this is, this is something that, that anybody could do, right? Whether or not they publish it, but to create that kind of formality with your partner to sit down and structure a conversation where this is going to be, we may not share it publicly, but it will be recorded and we will have this for posterity.

• 1:03:19Pete Holmes?

  Well, this might be dark, but I think about like me in a nursing home. It's like, fire up the We Made It Weirds. I want to listen to me and, I'd like to listen to me and Val three years ago, during the pandemic. You know what I mean? When Lila was a newborn, like, these are treasures. So, yeah. You know, when you have a sleepover, there's a tape recorder, you hit record and you just kind of fuck around. Those are treasures. Like, it's a wonderful thing to be able to do. So I think if I were a relationship therapist, I would say, once we do a pretend podcast, don't even release it, just record it.

• 1:03:52Rich Roll?

  In this age of ultimate distraction, endless scrolling, you have this stand-up life, you're a writer, you wrote On Crashing, co-created that show with Judd, you're in these sitcoms now, you're doing all kinds of, you wrote, you wrote, you wrote your book that came out, and now you've got another special coming out. But all of that aside, and this is back to my original question around the kind of uniqueness of your career path, you're also in this nebulous kind of new, interesting world of Comedian, writer slash like thought leader, sort of in this spiritual space. Like, I think of Rainn Wilson like this with his new book, Soul Boom.

• 1:04:36Pete Holmes?

  I love Rainn. He just came back on the show. Great.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  Or, and, and, and our mutual friend, Rob Bell, or, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert. You do these shows at Largo. I think the last time I saw you, actually, was at Largo. That was like that Annika Harris consciousness.

• 1:04:52Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Rich Roll?

  Night.

• 1:04:53Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  So you do like all these, these things that, that don't really fit into the typical kind of stand-up.

• 1:04:59Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Rich Roll?

  Persona.

• 1:05:00Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Rich Roll?

  That are truly unique to you.

• 1:05:03Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. And those are, that's the most rewarding, interesting, fertile part of my life.

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you did, you've done like, like these little, these videos that you, I don't know how long, the Big Think videos. And I was like, you're like a TED fellow, you know, like you get, you get on camera and you're just like imparting wisdom.

• 1:05:23Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. Well, a lot of that, thank you for, first of all, I'm, I'm just so touched, honestly, that you just know everything. It's so cool. Well researched in everything you are and that you care. It's cool.

• 1:05:36Rich Roll?

  I do care.

• 1:05:37Pete Holmes?

  It's really cool. But yeah, it took like some getting, I was just thinking about this. I had a joke where I, I just wanted to say, I love Jesus. It's just his fans that I'm not crazy about or whatever, right? And I remember I'm in Union Hall in Brooklyn, probably like 26, probably still married, first time. And, you know, it's a hip show, Eugene Mirman, probably Hannibal Buress. And I, I tried to say, I like couldn't even look at the crowd. I was like, I love Jesus. I couldn't say, I love Jesus to these hipsters. Even though, looking back, who fucking cares? You know what I mean? Like, but I'm thinking, again, that the sky is gonna fall if I start telling these people that I'm spiritually

• 1:06:21Pete Holmes?

  curious. When now my perspective as a 44-year-old is I'm like, Pete, 99% of that room was raised in some tradition and would love to not only hear you talk about it, but would also probably privately love to hear you save some part of it for them.

• 1:06:36Rich Roll?

  Right? Cause they're all walking around Brooklyn, sphincters, you know, tight.

• 1:06:40Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:06:41Rich Roll?

  Feeling like they can't be honest about what they're conflicted about or the way they were brought up.

• 1:06:47Pete Holmes?

  Saving baby Jesus from the bath.

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  And you can bring voice to that.

• 1:06:49Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, exactly. But. So again, just like with the podcasting, it started slowly. It's just like, can I talk about this? Is this okay? And finding people that were more far out, like Ram Dass, who comes from more of a Hindu tradition. That was sort of my way back in the mix. Okay, we have a different avatar. It's Hanuman, you know? And very similar to Jesus. And then slowly, finding Richard Rohr, the Franciscan, who's like my spiritual father, started kind of making me com- and Rob, of course, Rob Bell, making me more comfortable using Christian language again. Just purely for a psychological benefit.

• 1:07:29Pete Holmes?

  It's so nice to go back into the marred woods that you escaped and go like, was there anything? Was there anything in here? I want to look at it fresh now for me. No one's telling me. Is there anything here? And finding and carving that way out had a lot to do with being friends with Rob. Seeing somebody who could, we did a tour together where we spoke together on stage and-

• 1:07:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, his new book just came out.

• 1:07:58Pete Holmes?

  Where'd you park your spaceship? Yeah, it's great.

• 1:08:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you guys did like a Largo thing recently?

• 1:08:03Pete Holmes?

  We did, yeah. So, you know, Rob is one of those people that modeling is just so important. He modeled to me, moving to Ohio had something to do with him too. Not, we moved and then he moved, but like, he used to live in Laguna, Laguna Beach. And I went down there and I was like, what?

• 1:08:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that doesn't make sense.

• 1:08:21Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, but I was also just kind of like, there's that, but it's also like beautiful. And I was like, I didn't know you could even try to live in a beautiful place, you know? And he did. And I didn't know you could talk about God in an honest way, where you're kind of like, yeah, I don't, I don't know what's going on, but like, what about this? What, does this resonate? Does this resonate? Or, I don't have a masters of divinity, but I'm welcome to the conversation because I'm stuck in the same predicament you are. You know? Those green lights, you start having them modeled to you, and then the more you learn- Like, it comes out in my stand-up as well, bits about the meaning of life, and I don't know why more comedians are stepping away from the exclusively jaded, like,

• 1:09:05Pete Holmes?

  "get real" like stance, and getting a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more curious about it, because it's the most interesting topic.

• 1:09:14Rich Roll?

  Because cynicism and irony works, and it has worked for a long time, so it's reliable.

• 1:09:20Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Rich Roll?

  It's riskier

• 1:09:22Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Rich Roll?

  to step outside.

• 1:09:24Pete Holmes?

  The God bit in the special, did you get that for?

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Pete Holmes?

  I'm just, to write a joke about God in the special that, that people enjoy, that I felt comfortable doing at the Irvine Improv, or the fucking wherever, those, those are always the moments for me where my, my hair kind of stands up on the back of my neck, and I'm, I'm dropped into the present, and we're actually connecting about, like, what's going on here, instead of just kind of being like, taking life as a foregone conclusion.

• 1:09:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Back to that idea of the absurdity of it all. The afterlife versus the miracle of life now, and realizing that, you know, it's all fucking insane, right?

• 1:10:13Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  I think is really, like, at the very heart of, like, what's best about what you have to offer, like, reminding us

• 1:10:22Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Rich Roll?

  of the lunacy, that we're spinning, spinning on this rock, you know, out in vast darkness.

• 1:10:29Pete Holmes?

  The core of it is, most of the time, when I'm talking about this stuff, is I'm trying to get us all in the same boat. You know, I, I don't care if you call it God or nothing, we're talking about a mystery, or something erupted into the universe. And, you know, I want you to stress less.

• 1:10:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Pete Holmes?

  And, and just notice what's going on, and, and sort of surrender to the unknowing. Like, the, the big think thing that I did, I think it's Pema Chodron said, "You're the sky, the rest is just weather." And that's not just like a cute little magnet for your fridge. That's when you're overwhelmed, and like, shaking with anger, or crippled in grief. Like, that's the type of thought that you can step back, allow what's happening to happen.

• 1:11:20Pete Holmes?

  But it's not just a thought experiment. It's like trying to get in touch with the part of you that's witnessing it. You know, and that, that to me is what spirituality is. Everything that I am keeps changing, but spirituality is interested in what doesn't change. What, what, what is constant?

• 1:11:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's also this permission that you give or this encouragement for us to nurture that, that part of us that, that needs to and wants to engage with awe and wonder. Right? You also said in one of the big thing pieces, you were talking about Joseph Campbell, and you were talking about religious literalism. And you said that like, something like literal, literal truth is the lowest form of truth. Right? And I think that's, yeah, it's such a beautiful statement. Yeah. But talk a little bit more about what you meant by that.

• 1:12:14Pete Holmes?

  Well, it's funny, I tell my daughter stories. I haven't said this before, but I've been telling her stories and, and my daughter always wants to know if they're real. Like I told her a story about going in the ocean and a, you know, iridescent fish gave me a necklace with a shell on it so I could breathe underwater, so I could find the treasure. And I was with my brother and then I hurt myself, so we had to drop the treasure so he could take me to the shore. And then the fish came back and gave my brother the treasure, even though we had lost it. So it's a pretty basic morality tale.

• 1:12:45Pete Holmes?

  Or, you know, you could look at it a lot of different ways. But at the end, the next day, she's like,

• 1:12:49Rich Roll?

  Disney hired this man.

• 1:12:51Pete Holmes?

  She goes, I want one of those necklaces. And boy, if she's not disappointed when I'm like, that's made, that was a story. And she's mad. So we've started already trying to prime her to this idea that there are some truths so big, they can only be told with lies. That, that's a cute way of saying metaphor is the only language we have to speak of God. And I say this in the special, it's Richard Rohr as well. Metaphor means always true, sometimes really happened. Cause what's interesting about the Bible, one of the weird things about that text is that it's metaphor overlaying with history. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:32Pete Holmes?

  It's like metaphorized history and we don't know where the line is. You know, opinions vary. But when you're trying to, and if you've taken psychedelics, and that was a huge part of my appreciation of metaphor, but when you're trying to talk about the ineffable. Metaphor isn't just as close as you can get. It's the only way to do it. It stirs you and moves you in a way that it's... The truth of it is it's true in the way that energy moves in the world. It's true in the way the patterns of the universe are reflected in the story. Because you can tell a story and it's bullshit, like you know. But the metaphors and the myths that stick with us, they'll rock you.

• 1:14:16Pete Holmes?

  I just listened to one called "The Toe Bone and the Tooth." It's about this guy, they're all about a guy. Under, like, sort of underprivileged guy in a village. Goes into the woods, falls in love with a goddess. His father doesn't want them to get married. He has to go through these, it's very Genesis. He has to go through these trials. Then he has to bring her back to the village. He forgets that she's in the woods. She dies, she decomposes. Then he has to go back and all he can find of her is a toe bone and a tooth. That is not, if you're interested in that story, you should look it up. But like, we know that. We go like, oh my God, we know the beloved is the eternal. And we tried our best to remember. But we left her in the woods and all we have are these remnants. And you hear it and you, your skin's lit on fire.

• 1:14:59Pete Holmes?

  And we're fucking stuck with numbers and measurements and recipes. Like, get the fuck out of here. None of that shit helps you when your heart is broken. None of them, none of that helps when your grandfather is dying. Or when a baby is born. Like, poetry is similar. We don't, we'll get that shit out of here. Until your wife leaves you. Then William Blake gets a lot more important. But we've become interested in, or fascinated or obsessed with the quantifiable and the reproducible and the material. And it's like, okay, but, you know, we're leaving a lot.

• 1:15:40Pete Holmes?

  In our rearview, that's essential.

• 1:15:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you know, it's so emasculated in our culture.

• 1:15:47Pete Holmes?

  Well, because you can't have sex with it and you can't sell it, really. You know what I mean? So like, what are you doing? I'll tell you what you're doing is you're feeling more at home in the universe. This is my whole thing. The fact that it's like cowardly to go to therapy, like, like the people where I'm from. If you say you're in therapy, they're, it's like, huh. I'm like, is there anything more cowardly than not facing your demons? Like, who's the coward? I might just be sitting on a couch, but I'm going into the cave where the Vader mask cuts open and it's my face. Like, that's the hero. And, and it's easy to do the same with spirituality, be like, it's a bunch of lies. Yeah, Santa Claus isn't real.

• 1:16:32Pete Holmes?

  Great, but what is the story of Santa Claus? Well, what is the point? What is done a secret is rewarded, or whatever it might be. I don't know, man. Literalism is a fucking terrible body to snuggle up to in your bed at night. And, and the warm bosom of myth has kept human beings alive. And by the way, don't get me started, every video game, every movie, it's all right there.

• 1:17:01Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:17:01Pete Holmes?

  Every Avenger. Get the fuck out of here.

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  And, and Joseph Campbell is like the gateway drug.

• 1:17:08Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  For a lot of people, especially in this town.

• 1:17:10Pete Holmes?

  That's right. Well, he changed my life. He said, God is, is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought, including being and non-being. So that I could get on board with. That's a God, I, I feel like that's a God anyone could agree on. It's a metaphor, meaning God is not an old man in the sky. An old man in the sky is a metaphor for a metaphor. God itself is a metaphor, and a metaphor for that metaphor is an old man in the sky. Old, he's older than you, he's been around. In the sky has a higher perspective than you. On a throne, he's powerful. Sure, these are just ways of understanding a force, right? But that's a metaphor for God, which is itself a metaphor for a mystery. Something unknown is doing something we know not what, right?

• 1:17:51Pete Holmes?

  That we, so this is also in my special, Barry Taylor, the road manager for ACDC says, "God is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it a shape." God is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it a shape. And I say, shouldn't we have learned this in church? Why am I learning this from the road manager for ACDC?

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  And it's not about solving the mystery.

• 1:18:11Pete Holmes?

  No!

• 1:18:12Rich Roll?

  It's about appreciating the fact that it is a mystery.

• 1:18:14Pete Holmes?

  And we want to talk about it. And more than that, we want to commune with it. And to know that, we have to give it some sort of symbol. Carl Jung says, "We're not transformed by ideas. We're transformed by symbols." This is why the crucified Christ is still a hot thing.

• 1:18:28Rich Roll?

  And stories.

• 1:18:29Pete Holmes?

  Yes! We know this. This is why I'm telling my daughter about the treasure in the iridescent fish.

• 1:18:35Rich Roll?

  So when somebody says to you, as I'm sure they probably do often, like, "Pete, explain to me your notion of spirituality." Or, "How do you define your relationship with the divine?" Like, how do you answer that question?

• 1:18:49Pete Holmes?

  Well, in this context, I would say mystical, whatever. Mystical Christianity, mystical spirituality. Mystical is just a fancy way of saying experiential. So, a lot of these things had to do with psychedelics. That really opened the box for me. But I'm happy to say that there's spirituality beyond psychedelics. That's still part of my life. But there are a lot of non-chemically induced moments of transcendence that come from quiet, that come from solitude, that come from contemplation, whatever. For me, as a heady person, comes from reading, or listening to talks, or whatever. It can drop anchor into the moment. Listening to Eckhart Tolle. If anyone listening, if you don't want any religious language,

• 1:19:34Pete Holmes?

  but you want to know what I'm talking about. The Power of Now, read by Eckhart Tolle, the book. Just listen to that. I listen to it two, three times a year. It's incredible. And when you're listening to it, you'll feel your skin. You'll feel the air resting on your skin. You'll feel reality. Rupert Spira is another one. Go on YouTube and type in Rupert Spira. It's all free. That dude will make you feel like you're on mushrooms and you don't have to go to the park and meet a guy named Skies.

• 1:20:00Rich Roll?

  Except you did, right? Which is curious, because you're already so spiritually inclined, so spiritually curious. So what was it about doing psychedelics that unlocked something? Or opened up, you know, a new portal for you?

• 1:20:14Pete Holmes?

  Well, I wasn't. The time that I took mushrooms at Bonnaroo,

• 1:20:21Pete Holmes?

  somebody told, it's in my book, but Reggie Watts and Amy Schumer and these comics were like, we had a day off. And they were like, you should Kurt Braunohler. They were like, let's, we should buy some mushrooms and do them because we're at Bonnaroo. And I think it was Amy said like, it's like weed. It's like a strong weed. And I was like, I took it. I was like, this is not, this is not a strong weed. But I'm so glad that she said that, didn't over explain it, didn't oversell it. But at that time in my life, I think I was pretty much just not thinking about it, about spirituality, too much. I, all my friends were atheists. I saw how beautiful that could be. They had morality. They, they felt at home in the world.

• 1:21:04Pete Holmes?

  They weren't like debaucherous, evil people. They were beautiful people. So I was like, okay, maybe I'm an atheist. I took mushrooms, a pretty mild dose. I split a dose with my girlfriend at the time. But what it was, was the ineffability. I couldn't talk about it. So I remember very profoundly, I didn't have like a Jesus experience or a God experience. I felt very happy, very alive and, and, and things were very visual. And, you know, you have that like at oneness feeling with the universe, which is so silly to say that like, it's no big deal. That's like the biggest deal in the world. You feel like at one with everything and everything's breathing and you're that thing and it's incredible. But the point is, when I was sort of peaking,

• 1:21:47Pete Holmes?

  what was left of Pete went, I'm gonna have to talk about this and ruin it. Like, I'm gonna come back and my girlfriend's gonna say, how was that? And I'm gonna say what I just said, breathing at one, all this fucking not, like, what is that? It's not the experience. And then I was like, oh my God, that's the whole thing. The experience of God, however you come about it, or the story of Christ, or the story of Buddha, or the story of Muhammad, whatever it is, the words aren't it, but there is a thing, and everyone said this a million times, they're the finger pointing to the moon. That's as good as you can do. And that's, those were my words trying to talk about.

• 1:22:31Pete Holmes?

  So I came back like a chimp being like,

• 1:22:35Pete Holmes?

  and that wasn't it? And it's laughable. But that made me go, that made me get curious about. What metaphor is? If we can't talk about it literally, how can we talk about it? And then you get things like Joseph Campbell. I watched The Power of Myth on PBS, like everybody about the DVDs, tore through it, and I was like, oh, you know. Remember, an analogy is the man ran like a deer. A metaphor is the man was a deer. So it's not just, a metaphor isn't just like a comparison. It's, it's, it's, it's big. It's written in big graffiti markers and it, and it has the power to kind of transport you,

• 1:23:19Pete Holmes?

  not kind of, to transport you to that place. And that one experience was enough? Well, that was a pretty mild experience. Since then, I've, I, I wouldn't say I'm a huge psychedelic person. For my taste, I've seen some people overdo it. That's just my personal judgment. Just flat out, that's just a judgment. I'm over here going like, take it easy. Cause they are fun, but they're not escapist experiences. They're the opposite of escapism. They're confrontist experiences. But I've done a lot of different things. And I'm very glad that I've done a lot of different. I've done, I did five MEO, DMT, which is. Oh, wow.

• 1:24:03Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, which is the big one. Yeah. But. And short, short acting too, right? It's about 15 minutes, but I mean, what is 15 minutes when time vanishes? You know, the first thing I said when I came back, I think was how long, how long was I gone? Cause you don't go, Pete doesn't go. I, I'm the, I'm sort of unqualified to talk about it. But I had this very profound death. And it's what I wanted. Everybody in my group got what their intention was. It was very freaky. You did it in a structured group setting? Very intentional and spiritual with a guide who I absolutely love and stayed in touch with.

• 1:24:46Pete Holmes?

  But like mine was, I want to hang out with myself, capital S self. Like I want to just be my pure being, not Pete, not my story. I don't want to talk about my family. I don't want to talk about anything. I just want to be reduced into being, into is-ness. And that's exactly what happened. And it was. Absolutely incredible. The best I can do to describe it. It's not visual, but like, but it also sort of is. It's, it doesn't make any sense. It felt like, and this is good news that I can share with you, even if you never do it. You don't go anywhere.

• 1:25:28Pete Holmes?

  You, when you, and I'll even be so bold as to say, when you die, you don't go anywhere. In fact, you can't go anywhere. The whole thing is here. So instead of shooting off into space, it's actually more like, everything that isn't just you goes away and you're left at home, would be how I put it. In the most familiar and safe place and everything else falls away. And you go, heaven is a decent metaphor. What is heaven? The clouds and all your family is there. I'm sure everything is there and nothing is there.

• 1:26:12Pete Holmes?

  But explain that to a child. You die, you go to a place where, you know, there's grandma and grandpa. Sure. Also, everything alive is there. Everything that died is there. Everything that will be alive is there. And you just go, I'm home. I, I felt like a lobster and, and the meat was taken out in one piece. And it left behind the shell. And since that day, like lobsters, I've never gotten a tattoo, but if I did, I'd get a lobster right here because it was this profound, like, this is not, I am not a body. I am free. I am still as God created me, sort of thing.

• 1:26:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:26:49Pete Holmes?

  And it was fucking dope, but it was experiential. Cause if you said this to me, I'd be like, cute.

• 1:26:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you're pointing at the moon right now. Because I've never had any of these experiences.

• 1:26:59Pete Holmes?

  And by the way, I don't recommend them. This is, I'm not saying this for legal reasons.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  And I'm not saying I'm going to either. Like I have lots of reasons why, you know, I'm, I probably shouldn't, or maybe I should. I don't know. Like I reserve judgment on that, but.

• 1:27:12Pete Holmes?

  I will say.

• 1:27:12Rich Roll?

  I'm truly not recommending it. Please understand, I'm, you know, I'm not advising anybody to do this. But the point I'm trying to make is the point that you're making earlier, which is the only way. Like, as somebody who hasn't had these experiences, hearing you try to describe it, and me trying to understand what you're saying, is barely, I assume, scratching the surface of what you're actually trying to communicate with me, because words are not an adequate vehicle for doing that.

• 1:27:42Pete Holmes?

  And you could say, like, a very rational...

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  And that's where metaphor and myth and all of that

• 1:27:46Pete Holmes?

  Well, that's what the lobster is.

• 1:27:47Rich Roll?

  Become better ways of trying to get somebody to understand what you're trying to say, right?

• 1:27:52Pete Holmes?

  The lobster thing came like, four days after the experience.

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  So are you the shell, or you're the lobster taken out of the shell?

• 1:27:58Pete Holmes?

  I'm the meat, leaving the shell behind.

• 1:28:00Rich Roll?

  So the tattoo should actually be the meat. I don't know what the lobster looks like when you take the shell away.

• 1:28:06Pete Holmes?

  My favorite...

• 1:28:06Rich Roll?

  That would be a unique tattoo to get.

• 1:28:08Pete Holmes?

  If you ever want to get me a gift, get me a little lobster, because I love remembering it.

• 1:28:11Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:28:12Pete Holmes?

  Again, look, this stuff seems to be part, and I'm an addict too, I don't drink anymore, and so I'm a, I can't say, no two addicts are the same. This fits in with me, the one that I did most recently, that was the most lucid. Because as I'm explaining this to you, from a very rational place, if I can't remember it, or describe it, really, what's the point, right? So you're sort of left with this, like, blah, ah, you know?

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:47Pete Holmes?

  And I'm trying to hold on to it. So, from a very rational point of view, then why do it? Then I did ketamine, again, in a spiritual setting with a guide, and it was incredibly lucid. I found that to be much more hold-on-to-able. So, you don't leave the planet, you're in your body, but you have this very visceral... Whenever I do a psychedelic or anything spiritual happens to me, I always think of my mother, and I love my mom very much, and I go, I want to give this to my, I gotta show my mom this. But the beautiful thing was, the ketamine was like, or the experience was...

• 1:29:29Pete Holmes?

  There's so much less to do than you think. And that was the good news that I had. Meaning, I don't even have to tell you to do it, or even infect you with the idea. Meaning like, it's all, not only will it be okay, it's already okay. Because the it that is okay is outside of this timeline. And that's actually, if this makes any sense, where we are right now.

• 1:29:54Rich Roll?

  And in a quantum sense, there is no past or future.

• 1:29:57Pete Holmes?

  That's kind of what I'm saying.

• 1:29:58Rich Roll?

  Like, it's our relationship with time that causes our suffering.

• 1:30:02Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, and when you're done with it, you can drop it. And that thing, I just, I remember tears were streaming down my face. And this is very non-dual, but, you know, hopefully people enjoy it. I was like, I gotta tell my mom about this. And it was like, you're doing this, like, it's all one thing, and you're doing it for everyone. Like, there is no Pete that did it, and my mom who didn't. It's one thing arcing towards knowing itself. And when it knows itself, the whole thing wakes up. It's, it's, it's a booby trap, a loving booby trap. Conversations like this between us lead, you're all synchronicity's going all the way. And when you, when, when you're ready,

• 1:30:47Pete Holmes?

  it wakes up, the whole thing wakes up. Not the Buddha wakes up, the Christ wakes up. This whole thing wakes up. Just like you woke up from your dream and everybody was gone. And it's okay, none of them mind. It's okay. That's the end of the world.

• 1:31:00Rich Roll?

  I'm operating at like 10% of understanding what you just said.

• 1:31:04Pete Holmes?

  It's okay, just listen to it again on half-speed. And maybe just some ketamine. I'm just kidding, don't do ketamine.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your podcast is called You Made It Weird. I think you're making it weird.

• 1:31:16Pete Holmes?

  I am making it weird.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  In a good way.

• 1:31:18Pete Holmes?

  No, I know, this is, this is, dude, I'm hearing myself too. And I'm like, it is laughable. But if I told you a story... Like my brother dropping the treasure and the fish bringing the treasure. What is the point of that story? It's like, in the end, it's okay. It's like, it's the prodigal son. All you need, in my opinion, is the Garden of Eden for our beginning and then the prodigal son. And the story of the prodigal son, everyone knows, but it's, it's worth repeating. You're the son. You got your inheritance, life. This is our inheritance. We did the beautiful thing. It's very similar to the Garden of Eden. We left. We ate the apple. We left. And that's okay.

• 1:32:02Pete Holmes?

  Remember, the father's not mad that the son left. All that guilt and fear and shame and God, oh, get off my lawn. Fucking bullshit. Ego bullshit. You left, you were free to leave. You went into the world. It does say, I believe you squandered your inheritance, which is what we're doing. We're just squandering. We're eating nachos and whatever the fuck we're doing. It's okay. We ran out of money. We ended up working with the pigs as good Jewish boys in the story. Terrible. It's like the lowest of the low. And then we remembered. That's key. We remembered, wait, my father is a king. I can go home. It wasn't bad boy runs away. It was boy runs away to play, to dance, to spend his inheritance.

• 1:32:47Pete Holmes?

  It's his inheritance. Go do it. Then when things got rough, I remember, maybe my father will make me a servant in his, in his kingdom. Goes home. God's not mad. Dad's not mad. Slaughters the fat and calf, gives him new sandals, anoints him in oil, gives him new robes, celebrates that he came home. That's the whole fucking thing.

• 1:33:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:06Pete Holmes?

  And that was Jesus's closer. You know what I mean? That was his big finish to the Sermon on the Ma- it's the big one. That's all you need. I, I, I'm very firm on that. Fuck my ketamine story and my five M E O story. Who cares? The whole thing is.

• 1:33:24Pete Holmes?

  Your father loves you, you can go home.

• 1:33:27Rich Roll?

  And that remembrance is often triggered by those painful episodes in our life, right? That is the conduit to find your way back home.

• 1:33:37Pete Holmes?

  Full circle. You don't go home until you're with the pigs. Eckhart Tolle woke up when he said, "I can't live with myself any longer." He was gonna kill himself. And he went, "There's an I in a self? What is this? I can't live with myself any longer? Who's who?" And he dropped the ego and he got into his self, capital S self. That's all you really need. The other one that I love, Alma, the hugging saint, told this story when I saw her in New York. She's incredible. There was a doctor.

• 1:34:06Rich Roll?

  I've been hugged by her.

• 1:34:07Pete Holmes?

  Isn't that great?

• 1:34:08Rich Roll?

  We named our dog Alma.

• 1:34:10Pete Holmes?

  Beautiful. I really had like a...

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  She's so huggable.

• 1:34:12Pete Holmes?

  I had a real moment when I hugged her. It was great. Maybe she told the story when you saw her.

• 1:34:17Rich Roll?

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:34:18Pete Holmes?

  There was a doctor and he was dealing with terminally ill people. And he brought his dog to work. And of course, he couldn't bring the dog into the exam room. So he closed the door and he was administering, you know, help to this dying person. And the dying person was like worried about dying. And all the while, the dog is scratching on the door. And she said, "Can you comfort me? Because I'm dying." He said, "Well, I think it's a little bit like my dog. I've never brought my dog to work. My dog doesn't know what's in this room. It's all unknown. It's all frightening and strange. But she still wants to come in because she knows her master's in here." And I was like, "That's it. We don't know what the fuck is going on here, but whether or not you trust it is key.

• 1:35:01Pete Holmes?

  Whether or not you see it as your father going home, whether or not you see yourself as God's child, these are the comforts of story. That in the midst of this madness and this unknowingness, if you can have a core of like... Richard Rohr said, "The point of life is to accept that you are accepted." It's written on my mirror in chalk marker, "Accept that you are accepted." And there's another line from A Course in Miracles on my mirror that says, "Who could be disappointed who asks for what he has already?" It's fucking great. It's fucking great.

• 1:35:32Rich Roll?

  Beautiful. But how do you, like, I'm thinking of the person who's listening to this, who hasn't had their reckoning yet, they haven't hit their pain moment, and they're trying to wrap their heads around what you mean by this notion of remembering or returning home. Like, how do you communicate to that person? Or how do you get somebody to, you know, connect with that possibility in their own life?

• 1:35:58Pete Holmes?

  That's why I'm not putting that question off to Eckhart Tolle, but when people email me, you know, on social or something, and they're like, "I can't, it's nails on a chalkboard." You say, "I'm God's child, it's nails on a chalkboard," or "Jesus," or "Buddha," or any-

• 1:36:13Rich Roll?

  Because of the baggage of that people are carrying around from whatever experiences they had, yeah.

• 1:36:19Pete Holmes?

  I relate to that. I had that. And people like, first of all, Joseph Campbell, who's just gonna say, "It's a story, and that's great." But then Eckhart Tolle, who's all just the sacrament of the present moment. And when you start getting naked, I was just talking about this today on my own podcast. I was like, "Why are Adam and Eve naked?" It's because they're, they're not clothed in the ego and the story, just pure. And when you drop, through practices, through reading that book, whatever it might be, and you start getting familiar with, "Who are you?" Like, you're, you're wearing a space suit, you know what I mean?

• 1:36:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:57Pete Holmes?

  And we start thinking, "We're the suit." This is Ram Dass. Ram Dass would say, "I go, 'Hello, Rich,' and you go, 'Hello, Pete, you're a comedian.'" I go, "Yes, and we are Americans." I remember I was in Italy, I saw a ladybug, and I was like, "This ladybug has no idea it's Italian."

• 1:37:13Pete Holmes?

  Has no idea it's Italian.

• 1:37:14Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:15Pete Holmes?

  How many fucking things are we carrying around? And who are you when you drop them? And which of those things are undroppable?

• 1:37:24Pete Holmes?

  I don't, I don't think there are any that are undroppable. And Ramana Maharshi has this great thing where he goes, when you're soaking the fire of your own awareness, the last thing, you get the fire going, the last thing you throw in is the stick you were soaking the fire with. You can even drop your practice. All of it can go. Cause you're zero, you're, you're smallest, most irreducible, undivisible you. That's, that's the part that knows this. Whether or not you vibe with this language, but there's a part of you. And I would also recommend Rupert Spira. If you, if you read Being Aware of Being Aware, which is a very short book and every chapter says the same thing. You can just read the first chapter.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  I know Richard Rohr, but I haven't, I haven't read that book.

• 1:38:07Pete Holmes?

  Rupert is a beautiful nondual teacher, but he will just go like, what is it that's aware of your experience? And he's like, that's, nobody's asking that. He, he says, we're like the screen of a movie. And everybody gets so caught up in the content of the movie, just like we do when we watch a movie, that you forget you're looking at a screen. But you're the screen. It's not colored or changed in any meaningful way by the light that's on it. Right now, I'm so, oh, I'm on a podcast and I'm a screen. What is the screen? What, what? Distance is an illusion. Like this sound is farther than this. It's all happening on the screen of my awareness.

• 1:38:50Rich Roll?

  And the, the, the additional delusion to that is that it's all happening in our head.

• 1:38:55Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  But that is also just an appearance in consciousness.

• 1:38:59Pete Holmes?

  That's what I, so science, I, I'm a pro-science person. Obviously, I, I hope I don't have to say that, but science will say, I saw a TED Talk where they're like, reality is a, a greed upon a group hallucination. And that's really right on with a lot of mystical traditions. This is Maya, or this is play, or whatever you want to say. But they'll say, it originates in the brain. So that's like you and I are having a dream. And I hold up a ring box and I go, this dream is coming from this box. Like, why would a part of the dream be a reliable source of the dream? What the fuck do we know about the mind? You know what I'm saying? So, we're going, "It originates in the amygdala of the blah, blah, blah."

• 1:39:43Pete Holmes?

  That's also, you can't remove the observer. It's influencing and part of and drenched in the observed. You are the observed.

• 1:39:52Rich Roll?

  Right. The idea that there is a self.

• 1:39:54Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  That is observing.

• 1:39:56Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:39:56Rich Roll?

  Is a further illusion.

• 1:39:58Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:39:59Rich Roll?

  And that that self resides somewhere inside your head.

• 1:40:02Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:40:03Rich Roll?

  And that's hard. Like, it takes practice to disabuse yourself because it's so entrenched in our deep-rooted attachment to what is real.

• 1:40:14Pete Holmes?

  And just in the way that you learned it, I watched my daughter learn it. Pinching, "I feel that, I don't feel that." You know what I mean?

• 1:40:23Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:23Pete Holmes?

  I watched her learn it.

• 1:40:24Rich Roll?

  Right. And this idea that you're sitting over there and I'm over here.

• 1:40:28Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29Rich Roll?

  These things are just appearances in consciousness.

• 1:40:33Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. That's right. So, I don't mean to put the question off, but when people say, "I don't know where to start," The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, especially him reading it, is a really great place to start because everybody, without any practice, can listen to someone talking about the quality of the present moment and you start to, what happens? You start to disappear. So, the things that are in the way. "I am a person, I am an American, I am a man, I am a comedian," all these stuff. When that goes away and you get really quiet and yet you're still there, that beingness is a pointer to God. I always say that, you know, when Moses met God in the Old Testament, he said, "I am

• 1:41:15Pete Holmes?

  that I am," or "I am I am." And I always thought God was being kind of cheeky. Like, he's like, "I am, forget about it, you don't need to know who I am." He's saying, "I am," when you consider this is 5,000 years ago, "I am am-ness. I am being-ness." And that's not something you need to take from me. You can drop, spelunk into yourself, close your eyes, follow your breath, and try to experience.

• 1:41:44Pete Holmes?

  What it feels like to just be a, like a little, be the screen.

• 1:41:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Pete Holmes?

  And then when you see that, okay, so here's another one. Mooji, M-O-O-J-I. He has a meditation called The Invitation to Freedom. It's on iTunes. I believe there's two versions. Just get the cheaper one because they're the same. This dumb dumb bought both.

• 1:42:06Pete Holmes?

  But he goes, uh, he leads you through this meditation where he goes, come in this room. He's like, but before you come in, leave your shoes outside. I'm not going to do it justice. And he goes, also, leave your mind outside. Leave your past. Leave any fears of your future. Leave your identity. Just come in as zero. And then when you do that, and you know, there's music and there's breathing. It takes you through it. He goes like, let's, let's look at this. Let's look at what you as zero is. And he goes, is there a boundary that you can find? Is there a point where you hit where on the other side of it, it is not? And you just do it. Like, don't take my word for it. Just go like, okay, where does this end?

• 1:42:48Pete Holmes?

  This, this infinite spaciousness that I experience so much. It's a what the hell is water moment. I experienced the eternal and the infinite so much that I don't even recognize it anymore. So get curious, look for it.

• 1:43:02Rich Roll?

  What does that practice look like for you on a daily basis? Like, how do you stay so connected to that?

• 1:43:10Pete Holmes?

  Honestly, I love talking about it with you. I told you when I came in, I was having all these emails and losing my mind, getting stressed. So there's always a fresh humbling.

• 1:43:20Pete Holmes?

  It's like veganism. It's like you know this stuff and then you lose it. That's, that's extra annoying. You're like, it was easier when I didn't even know it. So there's always going to be moments where you forget. But I take comfort in the fact that there are people like Eckhart, like Mooji, like Rupert, like Christ, like whoever, take your pick, that. In the same way that my daughter learned I am separate, these people by rote, verily, verily, the word of God, finally reversed the flow of the river. And now they're like, I don't think that way anymore. And then when they are stressed or they're angry, it might happen, but they don't identify with it. Whereas I do.

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  Right. But what you're saying is you have like a mindfulness practice where you're bringing this into your, you're trying to like bring it into your everyday experience and reminding yourself throughout the day when you

• 1:44:15Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:16Rich Roll?

  Lose yourself in emails or whatever, because life is the way that it is.

• 1:44:20Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:44:21Rich Roll?

  It's like this, this reflex to.

• 1:44:24Pete Holmes?

  It's, the pain becomes the reminder, like, like sobriety. It's like, I lose myself, I'm shaking with anger or whatever it might be. That just happened. My dad upset me. It was over that thing that I told you about that he made me feel bad about my body. So we were talking about that. I got mad. But, you know, a very practical one is rain, recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. Have you heard that?

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  Probably at some point.

• 1:44:52Pete Holmes?

  It's the way this goes.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Pete Holmes?

  But when I'm really stuck in myself, you don't judge it. There's no, nothing gained in going like, I thought I was a spiritual person and I just called that guy a piece of shit or whatever.

• 1:45:06Rich Roll?

  I'm meditating.

• 1:45:07Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Recognize, oh, I'm very angry, except if I feel this way the rest of my life, it's okay. That's, your brain has no idea what to do with that. Your pain has no idea. I used to, a big practice, a mantra of mine is yes, thank you. Something goes terrible, the flight is canceled, whatever, yes. Yes, thank you. It has no idea what to do with that. It just.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  When you remove the resistance.

• 1:45:36Pete Holmes?

  Short circuits it.

• 1:45:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because it's the resistance and the attachment that creates the suffering.

• 1:45:41Pete Holmes?

  That's right. And then, you know, I'm going off what I was about to say, but this is more important. Byron Katie is a huge teacher of mine and the work. And if you read Loving What Is, that's a, that's a life-changing book. And you can do something called the work. So you're suffering because your flight is delayed. Let's, let's look at the beliefs.

• 1:46:01Pete Holmes?

  Uh, this airline doesn't care about me. Or airlines, or I'm not safe unless this airline loves me. You know, you can unpack it. Flight should never be delayed. Is that true? No. But people don't stop. Is that true? My dad should not say things that unintentionally hurt my feelings. He does. He did. So why am I pushing up against reality?

• 1:46:27Rich Roll?

  Well, it's also the idea that we know what's in our best interest, or we know the difference between what is good and bad for us.

• 1:46:33Pete Holmes?

  Let's do it. So my dad doesn't understand me. Is that true? Do you know another person's interior reality? Do you know what their intention are or what they feel? Do you even know what you feel? Like, it's so much more amorphous, but we walk around going like, I have been slighted, I've been attacked. So the work is huge. I've been doing it every morning since I had that little dust up.

• 1:46:56Rich Roll?

  And what is, so it's, you just walk through that process? Like, what does that look like?

• 1:47:01Pete Holmes?

  My father doesn't understand me. Let's take that one.

• 1:47:06Pete Holmes?

  Is it true is the first one? And let's say you're really angry. You go, yeah, it's true. He doesn't understand me. The second one is, can you be absolutely certain that that's true? I love it. It just makes me smile. Can you be absolutely certain that your dad doesn't understand you? And you're like, no, no. You have to find a real no. And maybe even say yes. You get to keep going either way. But usually, I've been doing it long enough that when I get the thought out, and the way you get to those thoughts, journal like you're five years old.

• 1:47:39Pete Holmes?

  Dad's gonna kill me. Dad's gonna eat me. Uh, I'm not safe if my parents aren't happy, was one that I just did. The next one is, um, how do you feel when you believe it? My dad doesn't understand why I feel alone, I feel isolated, I feel sad, I feel depressed, I feel angry, I feel cold, I feel ashamed. Take your, all of those are true.

• 1:48:03Rich Roll?

  But you feel justified in that, in that emotion.

• 1:48:07Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, and I, and I feel self-righteous.

• 1:48:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:48:09Pete Holmes?

  Self-righteous, that's good. I don't normally do the positive ones, but yeah, feel self-righteous.

• 1:48:13Rich Roll?

  Like it is doing something for you.

• 1:48:15Pete Holmes?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's scapegoating as well. And then the next one is, how would you feel if you didn't believe the thought? And you go, if I didn't believe that my dad doesn't understand me, I'd go, I'd feel spacious, I'd feel free, I'd feel happy, I'd be light, I'd be clear, I'd be whatever. All those words pretty much mean the same.

• 1:48:38Rich Roll?

  And also maybe uncomfortable because you no longer have a handy antagonist.

• 1:48:45Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, humble.

• 1:48:46Rich Roll?

  To channel your weird emotions.

• 1:48:48Pete Holmes?

  That's right. Yes. Then the next step is you do the turnaround. My dad does understand me. And you come up with three examples of how that's true. And you go, this guy raised me. He's been watching me closely. You know, you go, he knows this, this, and this, and this, and this. You start getting, you list those things and then you go, I don't understand my father. How is that true? Oh, you know, I'm not really making that much effort to understand him. I'm really just kind of painting him how I see fit, how I get angry or whatever. And then, so you do the turnaround. And I think that's the last step. It's really, really powerful. When you start writing down your suffering thoughts, that's, the first step is actually

• 1:49:33Pete Holmes?

  the most powerful. When I, when I told you I did the work on, I am not safe unless my parents are happy. Or my father cannot connect and engage. You start getting real and going like, my father cannot connect and engage in a way that I understand connecting and engaging. He's never going to talk like you and I are talking.

• 1:49:53Rich Roll?

  Or in the way that you would, you would prefer.

• 1:49:55Pete Holmes?

  Okay, so then my father needs to connect and engage with me in a way that I prefer for me to be safe. Get the fuck out of here. There's a holy laughter in going like, where did I get that? Well, when you were a child, these people literally kept you alive and you're still holding on to that. And you go, how is it not true? Well, I've been safe all this time. That's a pretty big evidence.

• 1:50:20Rich Roll?

  You're still alive.

• 1:50:21Pete Holmes?

  I'm still alive. I'm fine. There's two people in Boston in their 80s farting into a sofa. And I think they're as if I could know their emotional state. And I think that emotional state hinges on my physical safety. You wouldn't believe what you believe. You wouldn't believe what you believe. And what you believe, you'll take it because the zero of nobodiness is so uncomfortable that you'd rather be angry than happy.

• 1:50:49Rich Roll?

  The zero of nobody, wait, explain that.

• 1:50:52Pete Holmes?

  I just mean if I drop my anger and I'm just saying and loving what is, loving and accepting what is, I start to get a little shaky. I don't think I exist. So you ever catch yourself loving that you're late to the airport? Cause you're fucking real. God damn it. I have a show tonight in St. Louis. What the fuck? You're so alive. You're the center of the universe. And if you're like a little hermit and you go, flights are delayed, you know? You start to vanish and the ego gets shaky and it would rather you pick a fight.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Or it's going to grab on to something that asserts that it exists in the world. And those tend to be those trusty opinions that we assemble to construct what we believe is our identity.

• 1:51:40Pete Holmes?

  Because you don't remember that your father is the king. And I know that sounded so Christian it made my deck go inside my body. But it's like, you don't remember that being is safe. It's trustworthy. That this idea that something made you to judge you, to then torture you.

• 1:52:02Pete Holmes?

  Is, is, that's the ego's thought system. That, that's, that's this weird, separate, scared, kill or be killed thing that we've found ourselves in. That's not ultimate reality. And the more you taste that, the more you trust it, the more you go, okay, the flight's delayed.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  What trips you up the most these days?

• 1:52:23Pete Holmes?

  My parents.

• 1:52:24Rich Roll?

  It's still.

• 1:52:25Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26Rich Roll?

  Isn't that fucked up?

• 1:52:27Pete Holmes?

  When does it end?

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  I know, like, you moved out. How old were you?

• 1:52:31Pete Holmes?

  I was 22, 21.

• 1:52:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:34Pete Holmes?

  I mean, I wasn't living at home, but I mean, I left Boston when I was 22. So that was another. Parents, and then they're sort of made gelatinous by Boston.

• 1:52:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:45Pete Holmes?

  Like, there's more power there.

• 1:52:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:48Pete Holmes?

  So.

• 1:52:50Rich Roll?

  I get that. Yeah, it's crazy. Fucking 57.

• 1:52:55Pete Holmes?

  Yeah. I'm a little sad to hear that you're still.

• 1:52:58Rich Roll?

  You know, I've come a long way, Pete.

• 1:53:00Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:01Rich Roll?

  There's still work there that needs to get done. You know what I mean?

• 1:53:05Pete Holmes?

  And, buddy, in this conversation, in this womb-like abyss, I, I feel safe being like, and that's okay. But when I'm mad at my folks, it's, it's, it takes over completely.

• 1:53:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:21Pete Holmes?

  You know, I'm doing a joke about it. That's how I process it. I go, every time I've wanted my father to apologize to me for hurting my feelings, I end up apologizing to him for having hurt feelings. That's how it's, it's, I've never gotten like a, oh, really? Oh, I'm sorry. Jeez.

• 1:53:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you know, and you never will, right? And you're the one who suffers.

• 1:53:41Pete Holmes?

  And I suffer.

• 1:53:42Rich Roll?

  And the path to freedom is forgiveness, and forgiveness comes in the form of that type of contrary action.

• 1:53:49Pete Holmes?

  But, okay, so the, I have a lot to say about forgiveness, but like. So A Course in Miracles, it's a little advanced. I wouldn't ask anybody to start on A Course in Miracles, but if you've been on the spiritual path a long time, you might want to check it out. But there's a great line, it's like, "A jailer is not free. He's bound with his prisoner." That image is just so powerful to me. I'm keeping my parents in jail, like being righteously mad at them, but I'm the fucking idiot jailkeeper that has to live in the prison with them. Like, I'm suffering. So forgiveness, intellectual forgiveness, sort of isn't really great. Mercy, divine mercy, comes from not an intellectual, "Oh, they did the best they could and consider where they were coming from, and I can let that go. It all worked out."

• 1:54:33Pete Holmes?

  All that shit is nothing. Father Greg Boyle, who's another huge teacher of mine, he's a beautiful man. He said forgiveness is overrated. Mercy is where it's at. And mercy comes from me recognizing that you and I are actually the same thing. And when you can experience that really deep down, then you can actually forgive because you recognize it's kind of, it's really just our dream. And you're just kind of here so I can learn who I am. And if I want to know that God loves me, I have to practice by loving you. It's not just to be a good person. I give you the forgiveness that I want. I want salvation, so I give it to you. That's kind of the whole thing.

• 1:55:18Rich Roll?

  And draw that distinction between that action and this notion of mercy? Like mercy being a disabusing oneself of the duality, right?

• 1:55:30Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:31Rich Roll?

  Is that, that's the differentiation?

• 1:55:33Pete Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:34Rich Roll?

  And the practice of that, when you feel impulso by your father to carry on the example?

• 1:55:40Pete Holmes?

  Well, I can't do it in real time. I have to do it slowly. But that stickiness, that static of trying to unpack it and work with it, is the difficult wrestle to get me to a place where I'm like, "Oh, I forgot again. I forgot again."

• 1:55:55Rich Roll?

  And the forgiveness comes, is more of the intellectual exercise?

• 1:56:00Pete Holmes?

  And that can be useful, too.

• 1:56:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:02Pete Holmes?

  In fact, with my parents, I don't know if mercy can be hard to come by. It can take three, three, four, five, six, seven, eight weeks to get to mercy. Forgiveness, here's a great tip. Tip. This is what I do when I'm trying to forgive somebody, even if it's-

• 1:56:15Rich Roll?

  It's your mercy hack?

• 1:56:16Pete Holmes?

  This is my forgiveness hack. I don't know if it's quite mercy. But I go, if I were them, I'd be them. And that sounds like the most basic thing in the world. But if, so my dad, or let's pick somebody on the highway. Somebody cuts me off and their bumper sticker is covered in all sorts of politics I don't agree with. And I'm mad at them. And that works in real time. You go, if I were them, I'd be them.

• 1:56:41Rich Roll?

  Meaning if you had grown up the way they grew up, had all of the life experiences that they had, were raised by the parents that that person had, et cetera.

• 1:56:49Pete Holmes?

  And had the mourning they were having-

• 1:56:51Rich Roll?

  You would make every decision exactly the way that they have.

• 1:56:55Pete Holmes?

  We are so much less fixed than we think we are. Meaning if I moved to, I never want to say a specific state because I don't want to say it's backwards or something, but if I moved to like a rural southern place, would I shift? Like, would I start to kind of, maybe I'd buy a shotgun because there's bears or something? Yeah, probably. Something like that, maybe. I don't know. Just in the same way that a lot of people that are from certain rural areas moved to Manhattan, they get a little, they get a lot more gay friendly. They tend to be. When there's 150,000 gay people and some of them are your friends, your politics start to change. So who are we? What's going on? Let's go easy on yourself. Like, you're changing all the time.

• 1:57:36Rich Roll?

  Right. The ego hates that, though. The ego wants to believe everything is static and is very attached to this identity-

• 1:57:44Pete Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:45Rich Roll?

  -that it has crafted-

• 1:57:47Pete Holmes?

  Right.

• 1:57:47Rich Roll?

  And doesn't want you understanding the illusory nature of that.

• 1:57:51Pete Holmes?

  That's right.

• 1:57:51Rich Roll?

  It's very threatened by that.

• 1:57:53Pete Holmes?

  And even things like, I'm not a murderer. And then you put me in a post-apocalyptic situation where a guy's coming at me with a baseball bat with knives in it. Suddenly, I'm a murderer. You know what I mean? Like, what is it? What's going on? Like, you can take yourself less seriously. But going back to the, if I were them, I'd be them, that does help in real time. I wish my mom would understand this issue of this. Well, if I was- Born in that family in Lithuania and left when I was seven fleeing World War II and went to school in South Boston, all that stuff. If I were them, I'd be them and you don't even have to know them. Fucking Trump, oh God, what an idiot. If I was him, I'd be him. You know how I know? Cause he's him. He's him.

• 1:58:37Pete Holmes?

  And if I were in that, I'd be doing the exact same thing.

• 1:58:43Pete Holmes?

  Cause I'd be him. Yeah. All the, all the good ones are so obvious that they, it's like carrying a wet stone from the ocean, it dries up by the time you get to the beach. But it's frustrating. It's annoying that that's the way that it is. I know. You want to go behind the velvet rope. Yeah. And just go, I get it. It's that, that's the answer again. It's the same answer. Yeah. Well, believe me, man, I, you go on these psychedelic things, meditation things, and you always end up at the same thing, like the prodigal son, the punchline of the prodigal son, the father says, you're always with me and everything I have is yours. That's the punchline. And that's always the punchline. And yet our shame gets kicked in, the fact that we poop three times a day or whatever

• 1:59:26Pete Holmes?

  it is, the fact that we were horny and we're mad and we go, there's no way dad's going to accept me back, over and over and over and over. And that's, that's just how it goes. It's a, it's a wave. It's up and down and up and down. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to land the plane. It's up and down and it's up and down. Down, baby. Beautiful, man. Wow. That was amazing. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it was really cool. Isn't it funny? You came in at the beginning and you're all like, email. And you're, you know, I was like, is this going to be okay? And then you, you warmed up to it. I shouldn't have read emails. I hate emails. No, it's funny, conversations like this are, it's all an excuse to hang out is another sort of mantra of mine.

• 2:00:11Pete Holmes?

  I'm like, I'm so glad that we could do it. Isn't it funny that I'm just like, check out my special on Netflix. I know. God is everything.

• 2:00:18Rich Roll?

  And if you're, if you're like freaking out because Pete was coming in hot with the heaviness, don't worry, there's like handjob jokes and all kinds of insanity. So it's a good time, man. Yeah. It's on, that's on Netflix? Oh, on the Netflix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, the, the special isn't really like this. It's, it's Pete Holmes is not for everyone. It's called I Am Not For Everyone. Yeah, cool, man. Well, I'd like to continue the conversation, not necessarily in a podcast, man. That was super fun. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. Thank you. We'll link everything up in the show notes. Check out the special. Check out You Made It Weird. You've been at it for a long time. I love your show, man. Thanks. It's good. Keep doing it. Peace. Right on.

• 2:01:02Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting

• 2:01:47Rich Roll?

  the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com.

• 2:02:11Rich Roll?

  Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Salis. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

• 2:03:10Rich Roll?

  The