Roll On: The Medium Is The Magnet

Welcome to ‘Roll On’, the semi-bi-weekly version of the podcast where we ramble on matters of interest across culture, sports, art, literature, politics, self-betterment, and more. As always, my co-host is Mr. Adam Skolnick, an activist, veteran journalist, and David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me co-author. Adam writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is also the author of One Breath and still uses the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Today we celebrate episode 700 (700!) with an update on personal goings on, cover headlines from the world of endurance, share highlights from recent travels, banter on wealth inequality, answer a few listener questions, and more. Today’s episode is also viewable on YouTube Show notes:+ MORE: bit.ly/richroll700 Specific topics discussed in today’s episode include: Rich’s recent visit to London; centenarian Mike Fremont’s meal plan; headlines from the world of obscure sports: swimming, ultrarunning & freediving; thoughts on 20-somethings prioritizing experience over career; the cultural implications behind the recent attack of Salman Rushdie; wealth inequality (and the Sydney Sweeney backlash); culture war profiteering; the impact of the internet on journalism, discourse & focus; and fun In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you balance accomplishing your goals with meeting the needs of your loved ones and family? Is it unrealistic to look for a partner that aligns with all of your values? Today’s Sponsors: GoMacro:100% sustainably sourced plant-based ingredients, GoMacro bars are organic, vegan, gluten-free, and delicious. Visit gomacro.com and use the promo code RichRoll for 30% OFF plus free shipping on all orders over $50. LMNT: A science-backed electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don’t. Right now LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase—that’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. Try it out at drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL Whoop: The world’s most powerful fitness tracker is now waterproof. Get the WHOOP 4. O at WHOOP.com and use the code RICHROLL at checkout to get 15% off. Birch Living: The best, most affordable, organic, and sustainable mattresses on the market with a 100-night risk-free trial. For 400$ off ALL mattresses visit birchiving.com/richroll. Thank you to Adam from Fort Collins and Anita From New Zealand for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at(424) 235-4626. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Roll On, where after a mini globe-trotting respite meets writer deadline schedule delaying clusterfuck, the boys are finally back in the lime green chairs. Me here, and across from me over there, once again, the vertical blue to my horizontal pinstripes, the chef to my chef. Sorry, I know I told that joke last time, but I had to hit that one again. If you know, you know. If you don't, I don't know what to tell you. Mr. Adam Skolnick, to break down matters important and trivial. So today...

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  We're going to regale ourselves and probably nobody else with an update on personal goings on. We're going to recap some highlights from Leadville, the Bahamas, Rome, London, Manhattan, many global ports of call. We're going to do a bit on wealth inequality. We're going to perhaps share a few things we've been enjoying respectively. If we have time, we probably won't. We will see. Of course, answer a few listener slash viewer questions and much more. So before I toss it over to you, Adam, there were a lot of tweets and comments and DMs because we were off our bi-weekly schedule without going deep on what bi-weekly

• 2:34Rich Roll?

  means. People demanding their roll-on, wanting to know if I was scouring the earth in my travels looking for Adam, who was hiding, demanding their Skolnick fix. So happy to be across from you today. And I wanted to kick it off by bequeathing you with your first fan letter, fan mail that came here to the studio.

• 2:57Adam Skolnick?

  Fan snail mail?

• 2:58Rich Roll?

  Yes. More fan mail for Skolnick.

• 3:01Adam Skolnick?

  From the St. George's School, building fine young men.

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Adam Skolnick?

  One boy at a time.

• 3:06Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 3:07Adam Skolnick?

  Well.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  Maybe open that later.

• 3:09Adam Skolnick?

  We'll open that at a different time.

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:11Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 3:12Rich Roll?

  The reason for my pinstripe suit today is of course because this is episode 700.

• 3:17Adam Skolnick?

  You look great.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  700 episodes.

• 3:19Adam Skolnick?

  700.

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  And I'm glad that I'm doing it with you. We can celebrate together. You've been a big part of, how many have we done at this point?

• 3:28Adam Skolnick?

  How many roll-ons? I really don't know.

• 3:30Rich Roll?

  I would say probably 30 or 40.

• 3:34Adam Skolnick?

  You think?

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  That many? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe 25?

• 3:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, maybe 25 or so.

• 3:38Rich Roll?

  Somebody out there count.

• 3:39Adam Skolnick?

  We'll figure it out.

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Adam Skolnick?

  I could probably look. I have it somewhere on the wall of my cell where I live. I scratch it.

• 3:48Rich Roll?

  In shock.

• 3:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because I get out.

• 3:50Rich Roll?

  With your fingernail?

• 3:51Adam Skolnick?

  I get out for this.

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  We put you back in your cell?

• 3:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I can come out to work and then I have to go back.

• 3:54Rich Roll?

  But when you go back, you're just reading and studying and preparing for the next roll-on.

• 3:59Adam Skolnick?

  That's all I do is I focus.

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  Exclusive, yeah.

• 4:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I have, I go to sleep with one of those eye masks and the eye masks have the shape of this microphone. And that's all I see.

• 4:09Rich Roll?

  See, I would prefer like some sort of Google Glass contraption.

• 4:13Adam Skolnick?

  Would you?

• 4:14Rich Roll?

  Where you're reading all the time. Developing material for the show.

• 4:17Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 4:18Rich Roll?

  And maybe some earbuds where you're listening to conversations and podcasts. So you're just consuming as much content as possible and synthesizing it during your REM cycle.

• 4:29Adam Skolnick?

  You don't want a hype man, you want a cyborg.

• 4:31Rich Roll?

  I want a repository of wisdom and information.

• 4:35Adam Skolnick?

  But instead you got me.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you know.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  I find it funny that you were scouring the earth looking for me when I never leave now all of a sudden. All of a sudden I went from like never being in town.

• 4:45Rich Roll?

  Somebody to the joke like, are you looking for Adam? Like where is he? Is it like a Where's Waldo thing?

• 4:51Adam Skolnick?

  I'm always in the same place.

• 4:52Rich Roll?

  You're easy to track down.

• 4:54Adam Skolnick?

  I'm too easy to track down.

• 4:55Rich Roll?

  And generally available. Like if I call or text, you pretty much get back to me right away. You can't be too busy.

• 5:01Adam Skolnick?

  I, you know, I'm busy.

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  You have other things.

• 5:04Adam Skolnick?

  I got, I got.

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  At some point, hopefully we can talk about the other things that you've been working on.

• 5:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, we will, we will. I, you know, it is funny though, because it's been for so long, a lot of my work life was always out of town. And, you know, to be so, like, I feel civilized.

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  You're an adult.

• 5:22Adam Skolnick?

  I know, but I don't necessarily like it.

• 5:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Adam Skolnick?

  We're planning on next year being a travel year. Uh, next year is the travel year. We're going to do some trips. So, um, you know, we've done a few little jaunts, but we're going to do some proper trips, hopefully next year.

• 5:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you went to Mexico.

• 5:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, we did that. We did that. I mean, that's.

• 5:41Rich Roll?

  But you're a lonely planet off the beaten path, Atlas Obscura kind of guy.

• 5:46Adam Skolnick?

  You know what I'm doing now to fill that niche? I just finished watching the first season of Parts Unknown.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  Of Parts Unknown?

• 5:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  Going back.

• 5:55Adam Skolnick?

  It's the only, because it's the only season available on HBO.

• 5:58Rich Roll?

  Living vicariously.

• 5:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I want to be up to the minute on things for you. So I watch news from the 2013. That's what I like to do.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  Well, Parts Unknown, does that sate your, you know, wild hair desire to be exploring? Or does it make you feel more anxious about being at home?

• 6:17Adam Skolnick?

  So I don't feel too anxious about it because there, you know, for every time there is a season or every season, there's a time, whatever. It's the way it is, but.

• 6:24Rich Roll?

  Something about turning in there, too.

• 6:26Adam Skolnick?

  But it definitely like whets my appetite for like to get out there and you know, Zuma loves to cruise. I mean, he loves traveling. We, when we went down to North County, San Diego, just for five days, he was like happy to cruise, like anywhere we go, whether it's Marina Del Rey, La Paz, whatever, he is just always ready to like walk around and walk ahead and look around. And he's now just recently gotten more social, but for a long time, and even still has it, he has this thing that I call 50 Shades of Adios.

• 6:56Adam Skolnick?

  And that is when people come up to him.

• 6:58Rich Roll?

  This is like a new book.

• 6:59Adam Skolnick?

  He's a cute kid, right? I mean, come on. I mean, listen, I know I don't put him on social media. Just trust me. It's not me as a parent saying it's that he's, he's objectively a cute kid.

• 7:08Rich Roll?

  Of course, it's not you as a parent saying it. It's completely objective.

• 7:11Adam Skolnick?

  It's an objective thing. And so sometimes people come up to him and they want to lean down. Oh, hi, hi. And he'll say, adios. Cause he's bilingual. Adios. That's what he says. And they think a lot of times they think it's cute. They think, oh, he's so cute. Cause when a cute kid's speaking Spanish, they think it's very cute. I take him to the bakery. I say, what do you want today at the bakery? It's always croissant, by the way, a kid loves croissants. The guy comes over, yeah, what can I get you? Adios. That's what he says to the guy. And, but sometimes like you call, we talked last night. He said hola to you. And then when it was time to say goodbye, he says adios in a nice way. So sometimes adios means goodbye. Sometimes it means, take a hike, pal.

• 7:52Rich Roll?

  Like fuck off.

• 7:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, take a hike.

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  Well, what I hear in that is, yeah, on the one hand, it's sort of the, the infant's version of, I bid you good day, sir.

• 8:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  Right? Like get away from me.

• 8:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  But also there is a flexing of healthy boundaries, right? He's like, I don't need you in my space right now.

• 8:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 8:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Adam Skolnick?

  He's like.

• 8:12Rich Roll?

  Good for him.

• 8:13Adam Skolnick?

  And sometimes it's not like, it's kind of a nicer adios, like adios, and he just turns and bails. So it's not always you have to leave, but I feel like.

• 8:21Rich Roll?

  All in the inflection.

• 8:22Adam Skolnick?

  It's kind of how Camiolo, when we hear noise in the next room, you know, I've heard him do it. He goes outside. He's like, hey, pal, adios.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard him do it.

• 8:34Rich Roll?

  A little New York energy.

• 8:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. But, uh, yeah. So that's happening. Uh, went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 8:40Adam Skolnick?

  At SoFi.

• 8:41Rich Roll?

  Mmm.

• 8:41Adam Skolnick?

  In late July. He'd been gone a long, we haven't been, I haven't been able to tell you. Did you watch that untitled documentary that April?

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  I didn't. I, I've been meaning to watch it. Uh, I love the lore of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 8:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Rich Roll?

  And I've actually been thinking about them a fair amount because I spent a little bit of time with Rick Rubin recently.

• 9:00Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  And we did a podcast that will be coming out, not for a while, not until the new year. Um, and of course he's worked with them extensively, including on, on the latest album. Um, but I know you're a mega fan, right?

• 9:13Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I wasn't always. April is, but I wasn't always, but because the problem with me when I was a young snot is that if you were popular, I automatically didn't really want anything to do with you. You know, like as a band or a film or whatever. I was that kind of an obnoxious guy. But I always enjoyed the music. It's fun music, party music, but I didn't realize how much I actually probably aligned with them because I didn't pay attention too much to who like Anthony and Flea were and all that. And obviously I think of Californication as their best album. That's my personal opinion.

• 9:43Rich Roll?

  It's my favorite.

• 9:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And it's, it's, they're 37, I think, when they're recording that record and touring around with it. So it's like, in some ways, it's like they've gotten to this kind of place of greater wisdom and, and still creatively just incredible and a lot of energy. And so I know all that retroactively because I've just been enjoying the music more recently since I've been with April. But April's like obsessed with them, knows everybody. Like I didn't know the whole thing about John Fuschiante or any.

• 10:09Rich Roll?

  Fuschiante.

• 10:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Fuschiante. I didn't know about his whole ordeal and what he went through.

• 10:14Rich Roll?

  That guy's a genius though.

• 10:15Adam Skolnick?

  A genius. And like this is the fact that, so now that I'm looking back and kind of a late, like a late blooming super fan, which I, which I guess I am, April found this great YouTube documentary that was, I think, unreleased. And it's all about touring behind the Californication record. There's a documentary people may have seen called Funky Monks, which is about Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic, recording that record. And that's really good. But this other one is like another level. Like they have. Chris Rock comes in, Woody Harrelson makes a cameo, Julia Butterfly Hill, who was in the top of the tree, she's in it. They bring in like Buddhist teachers, they bring in all sorts of people and they talk to them in basically the green room backstage and they

• 10:55Adam Skolnick?

  have, I mean, it's a phenomenal piece of verite and I love it. It's so weird and quirky and you get to know who these guys are a little bit more and, uh, and so I recommend it. Well, you should put, we'll put the link up.

• 11:07Rich Roll?

  Put the link, I'll put the link in the show notes and I'll make a mental note to watch that. It's, you know, I mean, whatever you think of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, clearly they're, you know, one of Los Angeles's greatest rock bands of all time. Like they are Los Angeles.

• 11:22Adam Skolnick?

  I think they are, I think they are the greatest band in the history of LA. The Doors would be up there. So you'd have the Doors, but the Chili Peppers really personify LA in a way that the Doors do not. Yes.

• 11:33Rich Roll?

  Like it is impossible to drive down Melrose and pass Fairfax High School without thinking about those guys. Cause they all met there when they were like 14.

• 11:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 11:43Rich Roll?

  And have been together ever since.

• 11:45Adam Skolnick?

  The two guys did. And then the other, the first guitarist.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  Flea and Anthony met there.

• 11:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And they're, they're the guitarist, I think, the original guitarist.

• 11:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I met Chad, spent a little bit of time with Chad.

• 11:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and Chad.

• 11:55Rich Roll?

  We were both at a, like a, an event at the Nantucket Project a couple of years ago.

• 12:00Adam Skolnick?

  Anthony's sober, like, I think, and he's Point Doom, I'm pretty sure, or somewhere in Malibu.

• 12:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know he's, he's local, he should be here. I've never met him. I don't know him. Flea's the guy I want in the seat.

• 12:10Adam Skolnick?

  You want, he's gotta get both then.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  His, his memoir is incredible. I have it right over there.

• 12:15Adam Skolnick?

  Flea? I'm reading it right now.

• 12:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's amazing.

• 12:17Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 12:17Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful book. Yeah.

• 12:19Adam Skolnick?

  It's so strange and weird and quirky and funny.

• 12:22Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 12:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 12:23Rich Roll?

  And the Hillel thing, when Hillel passed and then John Frusciante became the guitarist and then he had his problems and was gone. And in his absence, I felt like the band never really could find its groove, you know, and having him back in the band is like a pretty cool thing. I'll share one Red Hot Chili Pepper story.

• 12:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Rich Roll?

  So they played at Stanford, it must've been 1986. I remember going to, uh, going to a concert. It was outdoors at the outdoor amphitheater there. And this was during the like freaky, styly days.

• 12:55Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 12:55Rich Roll?

  When they really were just like this party band, like starting out. And the concert was in the middle of the day and there couldn't have been more than like, Maybe 200 people there, like it wasn't a heavily attended thing. It wasn't like a must see situation. And it was in the era when they would play with the sock, you know, basically naked with the socks on.

• 13:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 13:15Rich Roll?

  You know, and they're up there doing that.

• 13:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  And I just remember Hank Wise, my friend Hank Wise, who I swam with at Stanford, who is the guy who left the voicemail.

• 13:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 13:27Rich Roll?

  We talked about it. He has the record for fastest Catalina Channel swim.

• 13:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  He's probably 52 now or something like that.

• 13:37Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  He's just a character and like a beautiful.

• 13:40Adam Skolnick?

  We gotta go swim with him.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  I love Hank. You gotta go swim with him. But Hank is an extreme extrovert and Hank just got up on stage and put the sock on and like danced and did the whole thing. Like, I'll never forget that. It was unbelievable. But I would have not have thought at that time that they would become this like super band.

• 13:58Adam Skolnick?

  That's funny. I have a story like that with Phish in 1991 in Vermont at like some gym, you know, like community college gym. I forget what it was, but yeah, and you just never guessed that they'd take the world by storm. But you know, the show was phenomenal, really great. But it wasn't cheap. And I will say, like back in the day, you could go to a concert and you just buy the ticket face value. And if you called early enough, you'd be like right in the front row for like 15, 20 bucks. And now like there are hundreds of dollars for a seat to get anywhere in that stadium. But that's I guess the economy of things. I mean, it does play into what we're going to talk about later. Like, I love to see these bands, you know, getting paid and doing their thing. Very, very expensive

• 14:41Adam Skolnick?

  now to just go to a concert. Back then, it was normal to go to concerts.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you go to concerts all the time.

• 14:46Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  It wasn't a situation that would break your bank to go see a show.

• 14:49Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So that gets into the wealth inequality stuff we're going to talk about a little bit later.

• 14:55Adam Skolnick?

  But yeah, so that was great. And SoFi is a beautiful place. However, it's kind of like Orwellian, like you know how in Dodger Stadium, no matter where you are, you know how to get to where you need to go? Because there's signs everywhere and you can figure out the system. And SoFi, no matter where you are, you have no idea where you are.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  I haven't been there yet.

• 15:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It's kind of an interesting.

• 15:14Rich Roll?

  Is that intentional?

• 15:16Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know. It's like a tech campus that like you go in. But it was a great show. You guys should see the tour. I'm hoping they come back through in the back end promoting the new album. They've just released like two albums in six months.

• 15:28Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  How's the fitness?

• 15:31Adam Skolnick?

  Fitness is good, you know. I think I ticked it up a little bit. I've been doing like 25 miles of running and three to four miles of swimming every week. And so that kind of has, I think, I've even lost a few pounds and feeling a little bit, I'm not fast, but I'm faster.

• 15:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Rich Roll?

  Good, man.

• 15:47Adam Skolnick?

  A little bit.

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  From dad bod to father figure.

• 15:51Adam Skolnick?

  That's, I thought that's your next book.

• 15:55Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good. I can't take credit for that. I saw that on social media somewhere, like somebody, like it was a t-shirt or something like that, but I thought that was pretty great.

• 16:02Adam Skolnick?

  It's okay.

• 16:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Adam Skolnick?

  Great writer.

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  Speaking of which, we gotta shout out our boy Dan Drake.

• 16:09Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:09Rich Roll?

  Creative director here at the RRP. He just celebrated his one year anniversary of working here. He moved his entire family from St. Louis to participate in the show. He's been an incredible value add to the team and over the course of the past year has lost 40 pounds.

• 16:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing.

• 16:29Rich Roll?

  Forty pounds without really even trying, by his words, like he just went plant-based because he was in this environment and the 40 pounds slowly melted away.

• 16:39Adam Skolnick?

  Isn't that amazing?

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible. So that's what happens when you embrace this thing that we're doing.

• 16:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's what happens when you come here. Dad bod cannot exist in this environment.

• 16:49Rich Roll?

  No.

• 16:50Adam Skolnick?

  It melts.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  From dad bod to father figure.

• 16:52Adam Skolnick?

  Another dad, from dad bod to father figure. Rich, let's cut the bullshit. How the hell are you?

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  Well, Adam, in honor of this week's podcast guest, Susan Cain.

• 17:03Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 17:04Rich Roll?

  The queen of quiet, the champion of introverts and all things melancholic. I am here today to channel my inner introvert into a short burst of extroversion, just for you. Yes.

• 17:19Adam Skolnick?

  Is that like a-

• 17:20Rich Roll?

  You know Susan Cain?

• 17:21Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 17:21Rich Roll?

  She's great. Yeah. So you're not up, you didn't listen to that podcast that we just dropped this morning already? Come on, man.

• 17:27Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, the one this morning, from this morning?

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 17:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  You had a couple hours to listen to it on your way over here.

• 17:35Adam Skolnick?

  I love that one.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  Anyway, um, yeah, you know, I've been spending most of my time, Adam, unsubscribing from email newsletters.

• 17:46Adam Skolnick?

  Is that a, is that a warning shot to not launch a newsletter?

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  Here's the thing, like, I realize that somewhere on the internet, you can find my email address, like, it's not that hard.

• 17:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 17:58Rich Roll?

  And so, I receive, like, 200 emails a day, 95 to 98% of which are newsletters that I did not subscribe to.

• 18:07Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:07Rich Roll?

  Somehow, I just get added to this. And so, I'm in this war of attrition with, it's not necessarily spam, because it's not like, you know, somebody trying to scam me out of my money or anything like that, just like newsletters I didn't subscribe to. So, literally, I spend, like, I'm committed now to see how many I can unsubscribe from. But I unsubscribe from, like, anywhere from 5 to 20 every single day, and it doesn't seem to make a difference, because the next day, there's a whole new

• 18:35Adam Skolnick?

  Zombie newsletters.

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  onslaught of newsletters

• 18:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Rich Roll?

  that I have to unsubscribe. But there's something weirdly satisfying about just methodically unsubscribing every single day.

• 18:45Adam Skolnick?

  The hidden battles.

• 18:45Rich Roll?

  That's my obsessive compulsive outlet.

• 18:48Adam Skolnick?

  The hidden battles we all fight.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Adam Skolnick?

  You should revoke their newsletter licenses. Can you do that?

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm always, then I feel guilty, because then, you know, like, when you unsubscribe, sometimes it says, "Why are you unsubscribing?"

• 18:58Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 18:59Rich Roll?

  And you have a choice of, like, you know, I usually just say, "I never, I never signed up for this," but you always have the option to, you know, report them.

• 19:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  And then I'm like, "Should I report them? I don't know."

• 19:09Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 19:09Rich Roll?

  Like, they're just out there getting their hustle on.

• 19:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  It's okay.

• 19:12Adam Skolnick?

  Show great concern and do nothing.

• 19:13Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna report them.

• 19:14Adam Skolnick?

  Just unsubscribe.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Adam Skolnick?

  Vote with your subscription.

• 19:17Rich Roll?

  Quietly, quietly unsubscribe. The challenge becomes when you're getting a newsletter from somebody who's a friend.

• 19:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  Who's got a product or something like, and then you're like, "Should I unsubscribe?" Like, I get it, I'm a fan, I like it, but I don't need to get an email every two or three days about this. But then, are they gonna know that I unsubscribed? Is this gonna

• 19:37Adam Skolnick?

  They'll know.

• 19:37Rich Roll?

  be

• 19:38Adam Skolnick?

  They will know.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  create a

• 19:40Adam Skolnick?

  They will know.

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  complexity in my relationship?

• 19:42Adam Skolnick?

  I once had a little thing, back when I was a single man with a woman, and it didn't work out, and I kind of

• 19:53Adam Skolnick?

  Unfollowed, you know, as you do, but this person did not unfollow. And she had a great business that I was a fan of and I got the newsletter, but I didn't like being reminded because it didn't work out in my favor in that particular time. It worked out for my favor now, but at the time I was probably a little bit hurt. And so I was like, you know, I don't want this person's email, but I thought, I didn't want her to see that. I didn't know much about email subscriptions and I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

• 20:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Adam Skolnick?

  So I unsubscribed and then the next thing you know, like I'm down like a, like the business unfollowed me.

• 20:30Adam Skolnick?

  So they know.

• 20:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You got weaponized.

• 20:34Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, subscribe to our newsletter, of course. Yes. Yes. If you want to be up to speed on all of our podcasts that we're releasing. And you know what? If it's not providing value for you, you can unsubscribe.

• 20:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  I don't check that. I won't even know.

• 20:49Adam Skolnick?

  No, you definitely won't know.

• 20:51Rich Roll?

  And I can't be unsubscribing from all these newsletters and then be mad if someone unsubscribes.

• 20:55Adam Skolnick?

  You're bigger than that. You're not perusing the subscription list.

• 20:59Rich Roll?

  Anyway, one of the reasons that we haven't done this in a bit is I was overseas. I had a speaking event in Europe, which was really cool. And then spent a little bit of time in London, which was great. Stayed at my buddy Sasha's flat right on Portobello Road, which was like amazing, like right in the thick of it. The weather was like perfect.

• 21:21Adam Skolnick?

  Over a nodding hill.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Like right, if you've seen that movie, like literally right in the middle of like where that whole thing took place.

• 21:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 21:29Rich Roll?

  30 years ago.

• 21:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 21:31Rich Roll?

  Movie came out and just got to enjoy myself, see some friends. I did a couple podcasts. I hooked up with John McAvoy for round two, which is amazing. And Tony Riddle, the barefoot ultra running.

• 21:45Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 21:46Rich Roll?

  Phenomenon known as the natural lifestyleist. That was great. Those are old school audio only podcasts, as is the one I did with, with Rick Rubin. So you have those to look forward to. Old school style, no video, no, nothing, you know, all the noise from the street and everything else that happens when you kind of, you know, do the traveling.

• 22:08Adam Skolnick?

  Bringing it, bringing the kit with you.

• 22:09Rich Roll?

  But it was great to see them and just be a tourist and enjoy London. And I just want to thank everybody who like stopped me and said, said hello, lots of. Podcast fans out there, lots of Skolnick fans.

• 22:20Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 22:21Rich Roll?

  Passing on there.

• 22:22Adam Skolnick?

  Did you hit Adalangue? Does Adalangue have enough vegan options? Did you go?

• 22:26Rich Roll?

  No, I had most of my meals at a place called Pharmacy.

• 22:29Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 22:29Rich Roll?

  Which is a really beautiful, amazing, plant-based restaurant.

• 22:33Adam Skolnick?

  Pharmacy with an F?

• 22:34Rich Roll?

  Pharmacy with an F, yes, of course. That's like farm to table. The owners, Camilla Fayad, who was out of town, I was hoping to meet her, is the owner and has like apparently her own farm where they basically grow everything that they serve in the restaurant.

• 22:49Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 22:50Rich Roll?

  All that kind of stuff. Also happens to be the half-sister of Doty Fayad.

• 22:54Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 22:55Rich Roll?

  Which is interesting. So there's a little, you know, kind of like

• 22:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 22:58Rich Roll?

  UK pedigree built into the whole thing. And they have this whole movement around healthy eating and regenerative farming and all that kind of stuff. So that was like my spot. And as I mentioned, I stayed at my buddy Sasha's flat. Longtime listeners of the podcast will remember a podcast that I did with Sasha, Sasha Zhervasi and Jamie Dornan, the movie star. We did that. That was episode 398. It was a while ago. And that conversation was around a movie that Sasha wrote and directed called My Dinner with Ervey that starred Peter Dinklage. That was on HBO. Sasha's a screenwriter and a director. And the flat that I was staying in is really like his office, not his home, but he was out of town and I was able to stay there, which was fantastic.

• 23:41Rich Roll?

  And the reason I bring that up is that I have a podcast with Sasha coming up that's going to release on the 26th of September. And it's around a documentary that Sasha made called Anvil, The Story of Anvil. Did you ever see this documentary?

• 23:57Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I saw the, I saw your Twitter thread about it.

• 24:00Rich Roll?

  So this is what's cool. So Anvil is the story of this heavy metal band that was on the precipice of breaking big and then never really made it, but influenced all of these huge bands that became wildly successful.

• 24:13Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 24:13Rich Roll?

  And yet they never gave up on their dream and Sasha kind of caught up with them in their late 40s and they were still rocking out and making albums every year, whatever.

• 24:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  But just playing pubs and working, you know, blue collar jobs to pay the bills. And he made this beautiful documentary about their pursuit and their refusal to give up on their dream. And it's an indie doc that he self-financed that ended up

• 24:38Rich Roll?

  Becoming one of, it's considered one of the great rock documentaries of all time. It's a real life Spinal Tap.

• 24:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:45Rich Roll?

  And it's really beautifully rendered and it came out 13 years ago. I did a thread about it on Twitter, which you can see if you're watching here. I'll link it up in the show notes, but it's really a thread about what it means to pursue like an audacious dream and never give up. And it's the story, it's kind of the parallel story of this band Anvil and Sasha's career as a writer and director. Like I said, he self-financed this documentary 13, he was making it like 15 years ago. He premiered it at Sundance to great, you know, reception and applause, but no buyers wanted to distribute it. And I think he might've had one deal on the table that wasn't so great.

• 25:25Rich Roll?

  And he was like, fuck it, I'm going to basically release it myself, which, you know, in film parlance means you're kind of DOA. Like if a distributor isn't going to put it in theaters. Now it's different with streaming. This is before streaming. It was considered like a lunatic move. Like you're going to pay to put it in the theaters?

• 25:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 25:44Rich Roll?

  Like, you know, if you do that, maybe you window it for like, you know, a couple screenings, but it's too expensive. And he was able to, you know, kind of bankroll a little bit of a release and the movie went on to great acclaim. Like so by taking that risk, it really established his career as a filmmaker. And the film Anvil, because it was successful, gave this band the career that they had always sought. So they kind of both succeeded as a result of this. But it was still a small movie. I mean, people, it's sort of unanimously beloved, but it kind of came and went.

• 26:17Adam Skolnick?

  Right. It wasn't like Searching for Sugar Men or anything like that.

• 26:19Rich Roll?

  Right. But it sort of prefaced all of those movies, like before Amy, you know, before Sugar Men, like there was Anvil.

• 26:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Rich Roll?

  And all, like the rock and roll community loves it. Like there's tons of bands, Sasha has a million stories of bands that just play it on loop in their tour buses and, you know, they just, they just love the movie. But the reason I'm bringing this up is that During the course of COVID, during lockdown, for some reason, somehow, Gen Z and millennials unearthed this movie and discovered it and started just passing it along to their friends.

• 26:52Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 26:52Rich Roll?

  And it became like a thing, like Anvil became a thing. It was discovered by this younger generation. And that kind of outpouring of love and support for the movie suddenly like made it relevant again. And this distributor called Utopia has stepped in and they're now re-releasing Anvil this fall in theaters across the country and overseas. Like that never, ever happens. Like, an indie movie from a decade and a half ago is getting re-released in movie theaters when barely any movies end up in the movie theater anymore. It's a really cool story.

• 27:26Adam Skolnick?

  Very cool.

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  So not only is Sasha, one of my best friends, who opened up his home to me when I was in London, I'm trying to help him celebrate the release of this movie, which is coming out September 26, I think, as I said. Yeah, the week of the 26th. And that's when this podcast with Sasha and Lips and Rob from the movie is going to release. So I have two band members, the two main guys from the band and Sasha.

• 27:52Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 27:53Rich Roll?

  And it's just a, you know, it's insanity, like these guys. So you have that to look forward to.

• 27:58Adam Skolnick?

  I can't wait to listen.

• 27:58Rich Roll?

  Anyway, and thank you Sasha for letting me stay.

• 28:00Adam Skolnick?

  Do they play? Do they play a number?

• 28:02Rich Roll?

  No, but they're oddly, particularly Lips, you know, he's now like an aging, Toronto dwelling, heavy metal, head banging rocker who still wears exactly what he wore when he was 22 years old.

• 28:16Adam Skolnick?

  Of course, of course.

• 28:17Rich Roll?

  With like his own band t-shirt and he's got the fanny pack and like the whole, and the hair and the whole thing. But he's so charming and endearing and he's sort of this, he's the self-help guru you didn't need, you knew. Like, he's got all this kind of like crazy wisdom.

• 28:34Adam Skolnick?

  Some...

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  So it's really fun.

• 28:35Adam Skolnick?

  Some identities will never perish.

• 28:37Rich Roll?

  That's right, right. So that's that. A couple of quick things. I was in a Porsche commercial.

• 28:43Adam Skolnick?

  I saw that.

• 28:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which was cool. Where's that?

• 28:47Adam Skolnick?

  Check that out.

• 28:48Rich Roll?

  I queued it up right there, like.

• 28:49Adam Skolnick?

  Listener, viewers.

• 28:50Rich Roll?

  I don't know if we can play this on YouTube without getting into trouble, but I show up like a minute into it.

• 28:54Adam Skolnick?

  Does that mean you're gonna be driving an e-Porsche?

• 28:56Rich Roll?

  I would like to be driving an e-Porsche. I am not driving an e-Porsche.

• 29:01Adam Skolnick?

  They didn't sweeten the pot with an E Porsche?

• 29:04Rich Roll?

  It's like, it shows up.

• 29:05Adam Skolnick?

  That photograph deserves an E Porsche.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  That photograph was taken by David Zammatt. Thank you, David. Anyway.

• 29:12Adam Skolnick?

  Look at you, out there with hawking and...

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man, good company.

• 29:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I don't know who that chess genius is.

• 29:20Rich Roll?

  And I wanted to thank everybody for the outpouring of love around the Mike Fremont episode. The centenarian slash

• 29:27Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  Multiple masters, world record holder in all kinds of running affairs. Like, I feel like the world fell in love with that guy. Like, it's just a beautiful thing to see so many people excited to hear from somebody who is 100 years old.

• 29:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  And like I said in the intro to that episode, like, I don't think we do a very good job in Western society of celebrating our elders and respecting the wisdom that they have to share. And I feel like that podcast did, it was like my small part in trying to rectify that. And it was just cool that people really cottoned on to him and loved what he had to share. And, you know, it's hard not to love him. You know, he's great.

• 30:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's what makes your podcast what it is, you know, like, you find these amazing people and put them on here and like, get to hear from them. And sometimes they have a following, but sometimes they're just really interesting human beings that have a lot to say and share.

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:23Adam Skolnick?

  Do you think the reason that we don't treat elders as well is because when we were like six and seven, our grandparents bored us with really boring stories of the old days that are actually not boring, but we thought they were boring?

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  But do you think that our generation was unique in that?

• 30:36Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  Historically, probably always been the case, right? But, you know, in earlier days, like, we kept our elders close. Like, we lived in a village and they were always there and they helped with raising the kids. And there was an intimacy to that relationship that is now more rare than common.

• 30:53Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying they weren't chucked into the nursing home?

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Yeah. It's fucked up what we do here.

• 30:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It seems off.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Do you wish you lived in a village?

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, when you think like, when I think back, like, some of my happiest kind of living circumstances were communal, like, being in a dorm in college, or living in a house in college with a whole bunch of friends. Like, I don't know that I would want to do that now, but there's something about, like, being part of a group, you know, in a living situation that holds a lot of appeal.

• 31:26Adam Skolnick?

  A crew.

• 31:26Rich Roll?

  And I think it's deeply embedded in our, in our DNA. And now, we define success as cloistering ourself in a, in a large home at the end of a cul-de-sac and separating ourselves from each other.

• 31:39Adam Skolnick?

  That's exactly how I define success.

• 31:41Rich Roll?

  Right? That's how you're living.

• 31:43Adam Skolnick?

  I'm a cloistered man.

• 31:45Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 31:46Adam Skolnick?

  I agree with you.

• 31:48Rich Roll?

  Well, you should tune into the Susan Cain episode.

• 31:50Adam Skolnick?

  I'm going to.

• 31:51Rich Roll?

  And learn about your introversion, Adam. I would call you an, an introvert who can be periodically extroverted.

• 31:57Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I used to be thought of as just pure extrovert, but I think I've always been an extrovert with, like, this deep vein of introversion.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe it's the converse of, of me, like, more extrovert, but you can't be a writer or be in love with writing without having a serious streak of introversion.

• 32:15Adam Skolnick?

  This career has completely warped my personality. I was a, I had a really winning, bright, happy personality before, and now I'm a cranky old fucker.

• 32:23Rich Roll?

  That happens. I share that.

• 32:26Adam Skolnick?

  Can I just ask one thing before we get to the break? Because we, this is something different. It's not even on our run of show. But I feel like we should talk about Salman Rushdie and just, just two minutes of thought.

• 32:38Rich Roll?

  Before we do that, okay, before we do that, it was on the Mike Fremont thing, because I want to close that out. There was a, a reel, a video that I put up where I believe I, like, asked him what he ate, and he kind of said, "I eat, you know, like, a whole food, plant-based diet." And there were a lot of comments, like, "Tell us what you actually eat," right? And in the longer podcast, he goes into some detail, but he only gave, like, one or two examples. So I think he had self-awareness around not fully answering that question. And he sent me an email saying, "Here's a full, like, picture of what I eat." And so I copied that email and I created a good Google Doc out of it that gives, you know, a pretty robust rundown of like

• 33:19Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 33:19Rich Roll?

  The Mike Fremont diet. So I'll link that up in the show notes. I'm not going to read it, but it's like two pages long of like various meals that he enjoys. So if you want to get on board on the Mike Fremont diet, hit that link.

• 33:31Adam Skolnick?

  Be like Mike.

• 33:32Rich Roll?

  There. Yeah. Be like Mike.

• 33:34Adam Skolnick?

  Be like Mike.

• 33:34Rich Roll?

  Right. Mikey, he likes it.

• 33:37Adam Skolnick?

  Mikey likes it.

• 33:38Rich Roll?

  All right. Salman.

• 33:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Salman Rushdie. Obviously the tragedy happened. He was attacked.

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Adam Skolnick?

  Fatah was apparently never go away. And he was attacked by a crazy person driven by, you know, I guess.

• 33:54Rich Roll?

  Extremist ideas.

• 33:55Adam Skolnick?

  Extremist, extremist, but extremist religious ideas. And he survived.

• 34:01Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. There was a moment there where it looked pretty dire, like he wasn't going to survive.

• 34:05Adam Skolnick?

  So the person who did that failed. Let's put that out there. Failed at the job, which is great. But also because he's so strong. But anyway, I just thought you, you know, being an intellectual like yourself, you might have some thoughts on Salman and.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, it's interesting. It's been 30 years of fatwa on him, right? And it took that long for this to catch up to him. But that fatwa, you know, in the minds of someone who inhabits that level of religious zealotry has never wavered, right? And so finally, it occurred and it's shocking, but also we shouldn't be surprised. Like this is the modus operandi of, you know, a certain way of seeing the world that is, you know, antithetical to our, you know, liberal democratic, you know, perspective. So it's shocking, you know, it's shocking. It's also something that I think all writers or people who are participating

• 35:05Rich Roll?

  in public discourse need to take note of, especially as the world, you know, seems at least from my perspective, to be descending into a certain level of dissonance and chaos that I don't remember, you know, in my lifetime.

• 35:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Rich Roll?

  And it's disturbing.

• 35:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. The, the zealotry that is going on.

• 35:27Adam Skolnick?

  You know, obviously, when it comes to this kind of thing, it's real life and death stuff, but then there's also the zealotry of controlling women's bodies. And then we also have this increasing zealotry of political ideology, which is not the same, but it's still there. And so liberalism is about being able to express everything, right? And so we have to check ourselves against this zealotry and the beliefs we hold so strongly. And we can't let these beliefs necessarily define our worldview, because when you do and you become more and more myopic, then you just go into this funnel that can lead to a pretty dark place. So

• 36:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, those funnels seem to be tightening.

• 36:12Adam Skolnick?

  They do.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  These days.

• 36:13Adam Skolnick?

  And there's more of them.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. But good for, you know, Salman Rushdie for, I mean, he survived it, man. What a bull. And so wish him well.

• 36:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, wishing him well. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more from Mr. Adam Skolnick and myself.

• 36:36Adam Skolnick?

  You know, we were just talking in the break, but Salman Rushdie's attack was not the first time, right? The Japanese translator of Satanic Verses was killed. The Italian translator was attacked and survived. The Norwegian publisher was attacked, shot three times, I believe, survived. I think seven, eight, nine people died in protests around Satanic Verses. So when you see all of that, you got to wonder, like, you know, obviously you can't hold the writer responsible. That's crazy. But like, you do wonder, like, how does that weigh? Like, what do you think about that? Like, writing something that leads to so much of that, it's, I can't even imagine what that feels like.

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's quite treacherous. And I feel like the threat level, like, you know, has reached a different DEFCON than in past years. Like, everything just feels very heightened and

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  You know, there is fear around, can I say this? What will happen if I say this? And it's a weird horseshoe politics thing because I think that applies on both sides of the political spectrum. Obviously, you know, the left historically being the champions of free speech and now the left, you know, being in favor of certain curtailing of free speech and the right, you know, shouting for broader free speech protections. It's just a very strange, disorienting time.

• 37:57Adam Skolnick?

  Except when it comes to what you teach kids in schools.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  Right, then, yeah, bring it all in, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, when the search warrant was executed on Mar-a-Lago, it's like, ban the FBI.

• 38:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, defund the FBI.

• 38:10Rich Roll?

  Except when it comes to trans issues, like sic the FBI on them.

• 38:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 38:15Rich Roll?

  You know, it's, it's.

• 38:15Adam Skolnick?

  I'll tell you, you know.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  It's issue specific.

• 38:18Adam Skolnick?

  When those agents showed up at Mar-a-Lago and ruined our perfect morning out on the links, it was, it was treacherous, man. I can't imagine like how they would go into such a, I mean, it was such a perfect day at Mar-a-Lago until that moment, you know?

• 38:30Rich Roll?

  Right, I know.

• 38:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  And listen, Adam.

• 38:32Adam Skolnick?

  What?

• 38:32Rich Roll?

  I know there's great temptation to go down the Mar-a-Lago Donald Trump.

• 38:37Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right.

• 38:38Rich Roll?

  Or Alex Jones trial rabbit hole. There's a lot of delicious schadenfreude to be, you know, enjoyed with all of that.

• 38:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Rich Roll?

  But let me tell you something. I heard something from a writer you might have heard of called Yuval Noah Harari.

• 38:54Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yes.

• 38:54Rich Roll?

  Yes, I heard him speak and he said something that really has stuck with me and I actually have been thinking about it every single day. He said, don't be a profiteer in the culture war.

• 39:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Rich Roll?

  In other words, like, don't be a content creator who is trying to monetize strife.

• 39:12Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  Or be a participant in, you know, this, this kind of ongoing battle for hearts and minds. I think there's a distinction here because obviously if you have a platform and you feel strongly about using that platform to speak your truth, you should do that. But that's different from knowing how to activate people or antagonize them and doing it from. You know, from a motivation place of profiting, you know?

• 39:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I agree with him and I respect that. However, it sounds like he's never brunch with Alex Jones over at Mar-a-Lago and that is a wonderful experience. Let me tell you. Talk about a brunch.

• 39:49Rich Roll?

  Do you think that that brunch would exceed the experience of sitting down for brunch with Alex Jones and enjoying however many Bloody Marys he might enjoy?

• 40:01Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I wasn't

• 40:02Rich Roll?

  We're not gonna go there.

• 40:03Adam Skolnick?

  I wasn't a guest. I just wanna say I wasn't a guest.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  This is endurance corner.

• 40:06Adam Skolnick?

  I wasn't a guest at Mar-a-Lago. I was just there to scoop ice cream. Sometimes you take out of town jobs in this business.

• 40:12Rich Roll?

  That guy opened up an ice cream place in Manhattan.

• 40:15Adam Skolnick?

  Did he?

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's called Ketchin. I forget what it's called. What's the guy's name again? He's friends with

• 40:20Adam Skolnick?

  The Scooper.

• 40:21Rich Roll?

  Joanne Molinaro, the Korean vegan. She went there for the opening. So it's nice that he took his ice cream fame on TikTok and translated it into a storefront.

• 40:31Adam Skolnick?

  Brick and mortar?

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, brick and mortar. Going reverse.

• 40:34Adam Skolnick?

  Let's get him on the pod.

• 40:35Rich Roll?

  He would be good, actually. I know he listens. Now I feel bad that I don't remember his name.

• 40:40Adam Skolnick?

  I'm with you in the, uh, don't fetch the low hanging fruit of the culture wars.

• 40:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody needs us to do that.

• 40:47Rich Roll?

  No, I, I, I really don't wanna be a muckraker in that arena.

• 40:52Adam Skolnick?

  No, but can we joke about it, though?

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. We always can. But we're here today, Adam, to talk obscure endurance sports.

• 41:02Adam Skolnick?

  That's what we live for here.

• 41:03Rich Roll?

  I know, right?

• 41:04Adam Skolnick?

  This is the sports news you didn't need.

• 41:06Rich Roll?

  I feel like, yeah, we're not participating in the culture war, but what we are doing is forcing down people's throats, a lot of people's throats, tiny sports that most people don't care about.

• 41:17Adam Skolnick?

  This is the sportscast you never wanted. Ready? Let's start. Rich, throw it over to you.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  Well, we're gonna start with one of the larger sports. We're gonna start with swimming, a sport close to my heart, Adam, because a young man from Romania called David Popovich, at all of 17 years old, broke the world record in the 100 freestyle, going 4686 at the European Championships.

• 41:41Adam Skolnick?

  Crazy.

• 41:42Rich Roll?

  He's the youngest 100 meter freestyle world record holder. There's lots of videos on the internet of, you know, this race, if you're on swimming Twitter, which I am. Of course, everybody is.

• 41:53Adam Skolnick?

  I follow that guy that you love so much.

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  You know, like his underwater form is like the, the most beautiful, unbelievable thing ever. I just pulled up a video of him like swimming. It's like, it's this perfect form, but to be 17 years old and break that world record. Cause if you're, this is the thing, and I talked about this with Malcolm Gladwell. Like if you're that young, how many years of hardcore training do you have under your belt? Not very many, right? So how is he going so much faster than anyone ever has before at such a young age?

• 42:28Adam Skolnick?

  What do you think the answer is?

• 42:28Rich Roll?

  I think it's like the advance of the human species. Like this is how world records go, right? Like obviously there's advances in training and nutrition and recovery and the like that inform all of this, but you know, it's just cool that when you think a world record will never get broken, or there's some ceiling or bar that would prevent, you know, a human from ever doing a certain thing, and then they do it, we're all kind of uplifted.

• 42:56Adam Skolnick?

  And a good looking kid too.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  Super good looking kid, obviously, you know, a huge bright new star in swimming.

• 43:03Adam Skolnick?

  And we need that.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  This kid does.

• 43:05Adam Skolnick?

  Like, cause after, I mean, we have Dressel and we have Katie.

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  Right, but Dressel's, you know, in the twilight of his swimming career.

• 43:12Adam Skolnick?

  And he just did something in a 25 meter pool at like the NCAAs or something, and he broke some hallowed record, was that the 200 or the 150?

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  I can't remember, I mean, he's broken so many records. What's really cool is they just did this thing called duel in the pool that they do. I don't know how, what the, how often they host it, but it's a duel meet between Australia and the United States, and they do all these wacky events.

• 43:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 43:33Rich Roll?

  And they fire off like flame plumes and they try to make it into like a spectacle. And they did this, like a 200 IM event, but you got to choose the order of strokes.

• 43:44Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 43:45Rich Roll?

  So like they dive in and one guy's swimming backstroke and one guy's swimming freestyle and one guy's swimming butterfly. So they separate dramatically over the course of 200 meters. And then, you know, the guy who's like finishing with breaststroke against the guy who's finishing with freestyle who's 15 meters behind him, like is he going to catch him, you know?

• 44:02Adam Skolnick?

  What would your, what would your order be?

• 44:04Rich Roll?

  I mean, that, that also goes to the Malcolm Gladwell thing of like, how do you make these more obscure sports more interesting to a mainstream audience? And I think being creative and like letting go of tradition a little bit and, you know, experimenting with some of that stuff is fun and cool.

• 44:19Adam Skolnick?

  Would you do the different order? Would you, it's usually backstroke first, right?

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  No, it's fly, back, breast free.

• 44:25Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 44:27Rich Roll?

  And they do like really short races and you know, just stuff that's like fun. We could talk about that more, but that's all. We have too many other things.

• 44:35Adam Skolnick?

  Let's keep going.

• 44:36Rich Roll?

  I mean, Popovich also set the world junior record in the 200 freestyle with the fastest textile swim in history. It was the third fastest or fourth fastest performance of all time, third fastest performer of all time. So clearly a star in the making.

• 44:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  But this concludes swimming news for Roll On, episode 700.

• 44:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, let's move over to Death Valley.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  Death Valley.

• 44:59Adam Skolnick?

  Back to you, Rich.

• 45:00Rich Roll?

  Well, we do have a little bit of an update on the Badwater situation that we talked about last time.

• 45:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  There was some controversy over the women's victor, Ashley Paulson. There were some people who were skeptical that she actually won the race or there might've been some shenanigans. If you want to hear us discuss that, go back and listen to that. But I thought it would be the responsible thing to kind of update everybody on what's transpired there. The initial post by Marathon Investigation that was really questioning the veracity of her result has done an exhaustive analysis and ended up publishing another post on this

• 45:42Rich Roll?

  that goes into extreme detail like analyzing her Garmin data and you know, comparing her performance to past other performers and you know, looking at GPX files and graphs and you know, talking to people who are on course, et cetera. And basically concluded, you know, this post goes on and on and on forever. We'll link it up in the show notes, but basically ends up saying that he can't help but conclude that her result is legit. So I just wanted to point that out.

• 46:14Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  There's another guy who on his Substack is not having it. I'll link that up as well. Some guy named Kevin Beck wrote a long post about basically saying that he doesn't believe that she did it. But, look, the Marathon Investigator guy, you know, he really spent a lot of time looking at this. And towards that end, Chris Cosman, who's the race director of Badwater, wrote a long post basically saying, "She earned this victory," and he explains why. And he also highlights a lot of other outstanding performances that sort of came out of the blue, which is part of the dispute around Ashley. And he includes two of David Goggins' performances, like the first time that he

• 46:56Rich Roll?

  did it, kind of coming out of nowhere as a bigger guy and actually, you know, really distinguishing himself, and then coming back with a huge improvement on the year before. And basically says this is, there is historical precedent for this. So, anyway. Well, if Cosman says so, I believe him. Chris Cosman, I mean, he's run that race forever and has seen it all. He's the law on Badwater. Yeah. And while we're, you know, talking about 130-mile races on tarmac, we got to talk about Oze. Oze Perlman. Back in the news again. Friend of the pod. Back in it. He came on the pod because of Adam. Adam is, you know, the contact point there, the connective tissue. Oze, not only is this unbelievable mentalist, he broke Robbie

• 47:41Rich Roll?

  Ballinger's Central Park record. We talked about that before. And then, must have been two weeks ago, I think, he did this extraordinary challenge where he ran 130-plus miles from Montauk, the very tip of Long Island, like out past the Hamptons, all the way to Manhattan, 130 miles. Times Square. On city streets to Times Square, and he did it in 21 hours. Unbelievable. Which is crazy. Crazy. Including throwing down, like, 6-minute-plus pace during the last 5 or 10 K. Yep. And running a 5, I think he ran a 556 final mile. Yes. That guy's a freak.

• 48:21Adam Skolnick?

  He's a freak. He called me, I think, mile seventy-ish or something. I talked to him during, and he had just come through a hellish period because it was hot. It was like the hottest day of the year. He also did it, you know, hottest, hottest, most humid day of the year.

• 48:36Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 48:37Adam Skolnick?

  And so he had-

• 48:37Rich Roll?

  And it's just pavement, like oppressive humidity.

• 48:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and he made it, you know. He said there were some darker moments. This was harder, obviously, than the Central Park thing, and there were dark, even, you know, there were darker moments. I mean, it was mostly because of the weather, I think. And he, you know, he definitely-

• 48:52Rich Roll?

  He dug a hole, but then he crawled out of it.

• 48:54Adam Skolnick?

  He went, he saw the darkness.

• 48:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which is unusual because it all seems like a breeze with him for some reason.

• 49:01Adam Skolnick?

  Well, because he goes hard, too. He goes quick, you know, he goes quick. But he was able to keep going and killed it once he got into Manhattan. And then I think as in true O's form, got on a plane the next day and like flew to Tampa Bay to like entertain the Tampa Bay Bucks and hang out with Tom Brady.

• 49:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's with Tom Brady the day after. I mean, after the Central Park thing, he went directly to Augusta.

• 49:21Adam Skolnick?

  The Masters, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:26Rich Roll?

  I spoke to Robbie Ballinger about it briefly, and he, you know, he loves O's. He was, you know, he's so impressed with, you know, how much faster O's ran the Central Park thing than than he did. And he pointed out aptly that O's is a guy who, although he has, you know, quite a profile as a mentalist, is sort of like not given his due in the ultra-running community, like they're not, well, when you think of the great ultra-runners, like he doesn't come to mind, but his performances are, you know, unbelievable. And so the hope with this, you know, Montauk to Manhattan thing was that that would put him on the map in a new and interesting way. And, you know, Robbie wanted to help do that. So Robbie

• 50:11Rich Roll?

  and Reese Robinson, who used to work for me as a content creator, have created this thing called the Audacious Report. Which is a YouTube channel that is making really high end documentaries or mini documentaries about athletes and races in the ultra running world. So they chronicled Oz's Montauk to Manhattan thing, and I'm sure they're editing together something amazing. They shared it. You know, you should follow Audacious Report on Instagram if you're interested in this stuff because like, their Instagram stories, like you can follow these things in real time.

• 50:43Adam Skolnick?

  That's how I followed the Oz run. Yeah, yeah. And I think they were in Leadville just recently.

• 50:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which brings us to Leadville because they went there to chronicle Hella, our boy Hella Sidibey, running, not only running Leadville for the first time. As far as I know, it's his first, even though he's run across the country, he's the first, you know, black person to do that. He had never really done a race, like any ultra, any ultra race.

• 51:08Adam Skolnick?

  So he'd done 10 Ks or marathons?

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  I'm sure he had, yeah, I'm sure he's, yeah, I think he's done a lot of that, that kind of stuff, but I don't think he's, you know, entered a formal ultra and really doesn't have much experience on trails, period. Like he lives in New Jersey and runs city streets and relatively flat terrain. But he put Leadville on the calendar. He went out early to spend time with Robbie. They like, he was like living with him, I think. And Robbie lives in a small Colorado town and they went up to Leadville for like a training camp. So he could recon the course and all of that. And he did good. Our boy did pretty good. He ran Leadville in 27:44.

• 51:49Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 51:49Rich Roll?

  He was the 146th finisher overall, the 118th male. He was 41st in the 30 to 39 age group. So it's not like, oh, he just went out and won it. But I was very interested to see how he was going to do because when you see him running, you know, on his Instagram or whatever, he has this incredibly beautiful, long stride. He looks like a gazelle, like a, you know, a track and field athlete.

• 52:15Adam Skolnick?

  That's what a runner should look like, I think, when I see that.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  But that's not how races like Leadville go. It's like, what's going to happen? Like, yes, he ran across the United States.

• 52:24Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying you don't want to lift.

• 52:25Rich Roll?

  He's clearly an unbelievable athlete.

• 52:26Adam Skolnick?

  You don't necessarily want to have the high. Stride as much, right?

• 52:29Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a lot of walking and climbing and, you know, and it's a whole different kind of thing, you know? So in my mind, it was like, he's either going to absolutely destroy and crush it, or he's going to not finish. And so I think he seems like he ran a really smart race, and I'm sure a lot of that had to do with Robbie's Sage Council.

• 52:49Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 52:49Rich Roll?

  And interestingly, he beat Harvey Lewis by like an hour. Our boy Harvey, who is, you know, unbelievably successful, elite ultra, you know, distance competitor. But I would say, look, Harvey does so many races, you know, like the guy's like doing 100 mile races like almost every weekend or every other weekend. You know, what would have happened if Harvey made Leadville his number one priority and focused on that, probably would have been a bit of a different thing. But, you know, for context, Hella being, you know, in his very first ultra and, you know, besting Harvey is like no small thing. So congrats to both of them. Love both you guys. And just also for context, the winner, Adrian McDonald, did it in 16 hours and 5 minutes,

• 53:34Rich Roll?

  which is unbelievable.

• 53:35Adam Skolnick?

  It's gotta be a record, right? Is that a Leadville record?

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  I don't think it is. I don't know. I should probably know that, but I don't think it's a record, but 16 hours.

• 53:43Adam Skolnick?

  It's a crazy time.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  You have to do this hope pass climb, I mean, going up to 12,900 feet.

• 53:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's between 10 and 12,5, right?

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  And it was like raining at one point, it's cold.

• 53:54Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 53:55Rich Roll?

  And shout out to Claire Gallagher, the women's winner, who completed it in 19 hours and 37 minutes.

• 54:02Adam Skolnick?

  Also mental.

• 54:03Rich Roll?

  Basically, yeah, like just eight hours faster than Hella.

• 54:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 54:09Adam Skolnick?

  Insane. Yeah, she's a very gifted athlete as well.

• 54:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, Adrian McDonald going 11 hours faster than Hella.

• 54:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, some of these, I mean, I would, I wonder where Adrian is based. Claire's based in Boulder, you know, and she like a lot, I would imagine a lot of the like top ultra people.

• 54:26Rich Roll?

  They live at altitude, they live in the mountains. Yeah, they don't live in a New Jersey suburb.

• 54:30Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 54:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Anyway, you can find all the results at Athlans. If you're watching on video, you can see what it looks like here. We'll link that up in the show notes if you want to check that out.

• 54:41Adam Skolnick?

  And be interesting to see if Hella.

• 54:43Rich Roll?

  And look forward to the audacious report documentary that is hopefully to come.

• 54:48Adam Skolnick?

  And I am interested to see if Hella does more of these.

• 54:52Rich Roll?

  He looked pretty stoked. He looked great at the end. Yeah, I know. Well, he does that. He does his thing. His trademark. I love it. You know, what do you call that? I don't know. Jason, do you do that at the end of one of your runs?

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  No. Jason doesn't do that. Well, we should shout out Blake, who just ran the Bulldog 50K. Did he? This past weekend. Yeah. I missed that. I know. See? Blake. All these runners, losing weight, eating plant-based. Conquering ultras. I'm not even. Get on board. I won't even be able to get a rolly nomination next year. I'm just trying to get my back sorted so I can join them. It looked like you were running recently. A little bit. Yeah, like, um, my back is relatively stable. I'm not pain free and I'm just testing it out with some really light zone one, kind of walk, jog, hike, kind of things. I started that when I was in London. I would just go out in the morning and spend three hours kind of walking a little bit, then I would jog a little bit, then I'd walk

• 55:46Rich Roll?

  and just, I just wanted to see how the back would hold up. And it didn't seem to exacerbate it. It's not like, oh, it's gone and I have a green light to just go full bore. So I'm being very gentle on myself, but for my mental health, just to get out and elevate my heart rate a little bit has been nice. That's great, man. Happy to hear that. Back to the mountains. We got UTMB, which starts today. So we're recording this on Monday, August 22. It's a whole week of races. It's not just one race. I know John McAvoy, he just texted me some images. He did one of the races, I think maybe the 40K, I'm not sure. But the big one is coming up this weekend. It's going to be an interesting

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  showdown. I think that there's a really good chance that some American women can distinguish themselves this year. I think the race to watch on the men's side is going to be Jim Walmsley, who moved to France to train with Francois Dene, who I also did a podcast with that's coming up soon. Jim has had trouble cracking this race. I think this will be his fourth attempt. He's never won it. This year, he forewent the Western States 100 to really just focus on this race, kind of the way Lance Armstrong was the first to. Really focus on the Tour de France, like he didn't do all, he like opted out of a lot of the other races, just so he could, he was like, this is the one that matters. I think

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  it's interesting that, that Jim is having that approach to UTMB.

• 57:13Adam Skolnick?

  And this is ultra trail.

• 57:14Rich Roll?

  With this goal being the first Mont Blanc.

• 57:16Adam Skolnick?

  Mont Blanc. And so is this considered?

• 57:18Rich Roll?

  It's the most prestigious, kind of celebrated ultra trail race in the world.

• 57:23Adam Skolnick?

  In the world. It's like Bob Leventhal.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  The spectators come out, it's like an insane media circus. It's like a really big deal.

• 57:29Adam Skolnick?

  It's the Boston Marathon of ultra.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  And no American has ever won it.

• 57:32Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  So that's what everyone's gonna be looking for. But he's gotta go up against Killian, and there's some other, you know, interesting competitors. So we'll see what happens.

• 57:42Adam Skolnick?

  Killian's gonna be there?

• 57:43Rich Roll?

  Um, Killian's gonna be there.

• 57:45Adam Skolnick?

  Is he a past champion?

• 57:46Rich Roll?

  Killian has won it. Yeah, I don't even know how many times. Won it a bunch, three or four times. Uh, Camille Heron is doing it, so that'll be cool. Friend of the pod. And, uh, stay tuned, we'll report back on that. But from the mountains to the sea we go.

• 58:01Adam Skolnick?

  From the mountains to the sea.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  My vertical blue friend.

• 58:04Adam Skolnick?

  There was vertical blue, for those unfamiliar. The quote unquote, I, am I quoting myself? The Wimbledon of freediving? I don't know. It now has been said by so many people in so many different publications, I can't even remember. Leah Barrett, the great photographer, I think, uh, defined it that way to me way back when. And I stole it from her and put it in print.

• 58:26Rich Roll?

  Hmm. You plagiarizing bastard.

• 58:29Adam Skolnick?

  It's not plagiarizing, it's, it's a, what's it called? It's a...

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  License.

• 58:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Rich Roll?

  It's a, an ode.

• 58:35Adam Skolnick?

  An ode. Uh, so this year, uh, the big performances, so that, just to, to open it up, there are four disciplines that people compete in. There's constant weight, which is with the monofin.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  All right, hold on one second. Let me just say.

• 58:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  Here we are, back talking about freediving again.

• 58:52Adam Skolnick?

  I know, I know.

• 58:54Rich Roll?

  I just have to call it out. As much as I try to escape this, like, strange world that no one cares about.

• 58:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  Here we are again.

• 59:00Adam Skolnick?

  I specialize in strange worlds that no one cares about.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  We should get, is there like a governing body to freediving?

• 59:06Adam Skolnick?

  There is, I'm gonna talk about that.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  They should be paying us for all this promotion.

• 59:11Adam Skolnick?

  After what I have to say, they might not want to.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 59:16Adam Skolnick?

  But let's start with the good. Basically, just to break it down, there are four disciplines. There's constant weights. Keep it brief, though. That's with a monofin. There's free immersion, where you pull yourself down a rope and back. Again, all on one breath. There's the constant no fins. That means they're just doing a breaststroke down, basically a modified breaststroke and back. And then there is constant weight bi-fins. Just like you see Orlando in this photograph right here. It's the long bi-fins you see spear fishermen wear. Really flexible. Yeah, very flexible. Individual foot, not a monofin. Exactly. And they are tethered to a line. They swim down on one breath, grab a tag and bring it up. And then, once they get to the surface, they have to prove that they're with it. And there's a surface protocol involved. And if they are, they get a white card, they get points, they get credit for if it's a record.

• 1:00:01Adam Skolnick?

  There were two men's world records at this event. One was 127-meter free immersion dive from Mateusz Molina from Poland, who I've seen dive once before and a mega performance. He had tried it twice. The first attempt, he did not make it. The second, he turned early. The second attempt, he did make it. And then, there was 120 meters from Arnaud Girard. He is a 26-year-old young stud. I think he's the most exciting young athlete on the men's side that we've seen in quite some time in this sport. So, it's pretty great because he did something that we had never seen with bi-fins. Bi-fins weren't even a category when I was kind of cataloging all this for one breath. But at that time, I don't think people even got to 100 meters in bi-fins.

• 1:00:44Adam Skolnick?

  Because, you know, scissor kicking especially, you can't even do it really that efficiently. Right. Most people who compete even with bi-fins are doing a dolphin kick. Dolphin is a way more efficient. This guy kicks scissor kicks back from depth. It's amazing. I put a video. Going down, though, does he? NPR has a video. I didn't see the first 20 meters. By the time I saw the video, he was already free-falling. And the video I saw, I sent you an NPR clip that they put it on their Instagram of Arnaud. And I spoke with him, and he is just really a delightful guy. He grew up spearfishing in France and just fell in love with going deep. And he always It was like second nature for him.

• 1:01:27Adam Skolnick?

  And so for the last five years, he's been able to have sponsors and compete and just focus as a professional athlete. And he is going to start looking at the monofin because I mean, if you're doing 120 in bifins, what's your potential with a monofin? Remember, the record is 130 meters. So that's Alexey's world record. And Alexey wasn't there. And that brings us to Ada. He was banned from Vertical Blue. It's called the Wimbledon of freediving and they took it literally.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Ada is the governing body.

• 1:01:56Adam Skolnick?

  Ada is the governor body of, there's two competing ones, but for this Ada is the governing body. And they took that Wimbledon for freediving literally and banned Russians. Wouldn't let Russians compete. As if Vladimir Putin has any idea what Vertical Blue or Ada is. And so Alexey, who has, obviously is not in favor of any of this, was banned. And it's unfortunate because then you would have had a chance to have records broken back. Speaking to Alexey, he's highly confident he could, he's going to take both records back when he's allowed to. He's hoping to get a pass from Ada to compete in the next competition coming up. He's training right now in Kosh, Turkey.

• 1:02:37Adam Skolnick?

  And he's told me that what he thinks the human limit is on these dives, people aren't even scratching yet. He says he has a lot left in him and is eager to do it. But he also was of good spirits. He's, you know, Arnaud is one of the Molchunov's athletes. Loves Arnaud and was really happy for him. And so like his, just the way he talked about it, it was amazing. So it's unfortunate, I think, for Vertical Blue and for Ada that they would ban their best athlete. It just seems, especially when they're trying to sell like pay per view to get to see the dive eye and you don't have your best athlete there. It just, it struck me as a kind of the wrong choice. On the women's side, Alenka Artnik is the deepest woman ever on Constant Weight.

• 1:03:19Adam Skolnick?

  And she had hit 120, 125 meters in training and that would be a new world record. She attempted 123 meters. I think her record's 122. She attempted 123 meters on her first dive and didn't make it. In fact, I think she blacked out. It was her first blackout in competition. She never had that before. Her second dive, she dialed it back, hit 111 meters comfortably. Good enough to win that discipline, but that was the only white card dive she did. She kind of hinted at burnout on her Instagram and has taken a step back and it just shows you that like this obsession, compulsion to keep going, to keep going, it can, it can bite back at you, which I've heard of from other athletes. So obviously I'm a huge fan and respect Alenka a lot. So I'm hoping that, uh, you know, everything's good and she's

• 1:04:03Adam Skolnick?

  back out there. Fatima Karok of Hungary won the overall for women and that's it. I want to shout out also to my pal, great freediver from Japan named Tetsu Ohara, who is more of Argen. And he, I've been, you know, he's been at every competition I've, I've been at. I think every time I've been to Vertical Blue, he's been there and he's come and dove with us at Doom a couple of times and he hit 96 meters, his personal best. So that's, that's pretty cool. And so that's that. Congrats also to Will Trubridge on another great event. You know, I really hope to get back to Long Island one day and see these guys compete. It's fun to see Orlando Bloom there. Pretty cool.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, so that's, you know, what caught my attention is Orlando Bloom's Instagram post where he, it's this gorgeous photograph of him. That's him right there with the bifins, is it not?

• 1:04:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And he got on the line. I think he did, you know, there's opener dives and they have whoever, like they kind of give that out to tribute. So like kind of the first pitch. And so I don't know if he did an opener dive. I think he did. And so I don't know how deep he went, but he got on the line and did a dive. Yeah. He was, I think he was there. Camila Jabber, I don't, it might be Habber. She's from Mexico. She did some national records and she works as stunt doubling in film business. So it seems like he was there to see her. So then maybe they've crossed paths.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  And so Alexi's world record is 130?

• 1:05:26Adam Skolnick?

  130 meters with constant weight and he had, I think it was 126 meters in free immersion and-

• 1:05:32Rich Roll?

  I mean, just imagine that. That's, and then you gotta go back, right? So double that. And now imagine basically swimming that distance in a pool without taking a breath.

• 1:05:43Rich Roll?

  Swimming 260 meters. And that, that isn't even accounting for, you know, all of the pressure and all of that kind of stuff.

• 1:05:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:05:52Adam Skolnick?

  Dynamic is what you're talking about, and I'd have to look what the world record is in dynamic, and that's going back and forth. And it, it looks like the world record for dynamic is almost 300 meters. Let me see. Uh, yeah, 300 meters. And that's Mateus as well, uh, Molina. So he has that. So that's 300 meters in a pool, back and forth, back and forth.

• 1:06:17Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:06:18Adam Skolnick?

  One breath.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:06:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they're, I mean, they're holding their breath for like four minutes, you know, swimming. And the, the, the record for, right now, talking to Alexi, he thinks like the record, like, he thinks the human limit for constant weight's like 150 meters. That's what he thinks. Something close to that. And he's brewing up a special event that I, I won't leak now, and hopefully it, it comes to fruition, but it's another big spectacle. So he's, I think he took it personally, and he's thinking of different ways of coming back to it, but at the same time, he took it lightly. So it's both at the same time. So, you know, I just think anytime, I thought, I thought the same thing with Wimbledon. I think to hold Russian athletes accountable for the decisions of very few people in government, in this case, one person who is obviously seems bent, is just silly. It doesn't make any sense to me.

• 1:07:03Rich Roll?

  That's another thing that we talked about with, uh, with Malcolm Gladwell.

• 1:07:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  Cause his whole legacy of speed thing is all about like the, the intersection of sport and activism and the role of the athlete at the Olympiad. And, you know, the conclusion, when you kind of look down through history, is that these bans are really ineffective. They might be, you know, motivated by good concerns.

• 1:07:28Adam Skolnick?

  Sure.

• 1:07:28Rich Roll?

  But they're not actually doing anything, like actually allowing the athletes who are victims in all of this to compete, and perhaps providing an opportunity for the athletes to have the ability to be activists, should they choose to, is a better route towards addressing that concern.

• 1:07:46Adam Skolnick?

  Agreed. You know, banning Medvedev, who I think was the world number one at the time from Wimbledon, and like, he's not Djokovic. We're, like, we're banning Djokovic. You know, it's, it's like, there's a lot of banning going on. It's like, to me, like, Djokovic was banned from Australia for the Australian Open, he's a banned for here. I don't agree with his take on vaccines. I don't agree with it at all. I think it's a mistake. I think he has shown. Some behavior that is questionable at times during this thing, but to me, he's the greatest. He's arguably the best ever. If you're running the tennis competition, but you can't tell me that the guy, it's not like he's the number one ranked person and he's just a new guy. He's been around for a long time. He's made a lot of these people a lot of money. He's great for the sport and you can't make a special exception for one of the greatest

• 1:08:31Adam Skolnick?

  of all time. See, I personally, I understand rule of law, but I think we can make exceptions for the greatest of us. I think, I think we can. I think we can.

• 1:08:40Rich Roll?

  You're such an elitist.

• 1:08:41Adam Skolnick?

  That's not, is that elitism? Is that elitism? I'm not, I'm not saying.

• 1:08:45Rich Roll?

  The, the greats can break the rules, Adam. That's what you're saying.

• 1:08:49Adam Skolnick?

  I'm saying.

• 1:08:50Rich Roll?

  See, now we're, now we're like tiptoeing into the culture war.

• 1:08:54Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not saying the greats can.

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  Trying to stay away from this.

• 1:08:55Adam Skolnick?

  I know. I'm not saying the greats can break the rules. I'm saying there should be.

• 1:08:59Rich Roll?

  Exactly what you're saying.

• 1:09:00Adam Skolnick?

  No, I'm saying there should be exceptions to certain rules for exceptional human beings.

• 1:09:05Rich Roll?

  Right. That's inherently by definition, an elitist statement.

• 1:09:11Adam Skolnick?

  But I'm not one of those people.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  No, I just believe this thing, but I'm not that.

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  Here we are.

• 1:09:20Adam Skolnick?

  Let's cut that out, guys.

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  Look, it's a slippery slope right back into Alex Jones and Mar-a-Lago. Here we are again, no matter what we try to do.

• 1:09:28Adam Skolnick?

  You can say that, anything you want about me going to Mar-a-Lago and hanging out with Alex Jones, but like you wouldn't take that invitation.

• 1:09:35Rich Roll?

  Well, just out of pure fascination, you would have to, right?

• 1:09:39Adam Skolnick?

  Folks, I did not go to Mar-a-Lago to dine, to brunch without, I don't even like brunch. I hate brunch. Okay. One last person to fete.

• 1:09:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, one last person. We gotta, we gotta take an ad break here in a second, so.

• 1:09:51Adam Skolnick?

  Antonio Argüés, the Stanford great.

• 1:09:54Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:09:55Adam Skolnick?

  Your fellow Stanford alum.

• 1:09:57Rich Roll?

  This guy just completed what is called the 40 Bridges. For those not in the know, who aren't following the day by day ins and outs of marathon swimming. The 40 Bridges is the double Manhattan Swim. It's basically swimming all the way around Manhattan twice. It's 91.8 kilometers, in other words, 42 miles. He just did it, and not only did he do it, he's not the first to do it. Like, the 40 Bridges is a thing, like, many people have done it. But he did it in less than 20 hours, and he's the oldest person to have ever done it. How old is he?

• 1:10:31Adam Skolnick?

  63.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  Yes, 63.

• 1:10:33Adam Skolnick?

  Wow. And he did, he's the oldest to do the Ocean Seven, which are the, you know, the seven great crossings. He's the oldest to do that, and he did that at 58 years old. I wrote about him for the New York Times there, and then later he came, approached me. I helped him write his book Forever Swim, which is, was originally published in Spanish, and now is available in English as well. And these last few years, he's been focused on doing the double triple crown. So he did double Catalina, oldest to do that. Tried to do double English last year, and was like three to five miles, maybe at the most, from, from doing it. And it just, he got caught in one of those tides, and he couldn't go, and it just got cold, and he got hypothermic, and they pulled him.

• 1:11:17Adam Skolnick?

  And he was literally a couple of miles or something, I forget what it was. But he saw, I mean, he was there, near Dover. And so that's tough, but did he let that push him back? No, he does this. He's already got a boat ready for double English again in 2024.

• 1:11:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, good for him.

• 1:11:31Adam Skolnick?

  So he's got to figure out what he's gonna do next year.

• 1:11:32Rich Roll?

  It's crazy, when you see this guy, he's like, he's a big, burly, you know, barrel-chested guy. Like, these open water, yeah, open water guys are always very robust.

• 1:11:42Adam Skolnick?

  He calls it his bioprene.

• 1:11:45Rich Roll?

  You gotta have that. You gotta put on, you know, you gotta get, like, you gotta get the whale blubber going if you're gonna go and do these things, for flotation and for maintaining core body temp.

• 1:11:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he trains in Las Estacas, a river outside Mexico City, where he trains. He also trains in the pool, lives in Mexico City. And really great, fun, amazing, intellectual type guy. And, uh, anyway.

• 1:12:16Adam Skolnick?

  Always fun, always has mariachis at the end. He had, he found some mariachis to party with at the end. So that's fun. It's on his Instagram.

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  It's such a cool accomplishment. And yet, you know, here we are talking about it. There's no press on this. I Googled it. There's not one. I mean, there's an article, like Steve Munatonis did a piece saying that he was going to do it. And it was an article about the various competitors who were going to tackle the 40 bridges. But not one article was written about the results or, you know, what he had accomplished.

• 1:12:45Adam Skolnick?

  I couldn't pitch him because, uh, I couldn't bring it to the New York Times because we covered him when he did Ocean 7, so it's unclear if they would have done it again anyway. And also because I collaborated with him on his book, it's kind of, I can't really now pitch stories on him because I know him too well. We're friends.

• 1:13:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so much, so much for me ever being in the New York Times ever again.

• 1:13:04Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, it's not going to be for me, pal. All right?

• 1:13:07Rich Roll?

  All right, let's take a break.

• 1:13:08Adam Skolnick?

  Let's make that clear.

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  Let's take a break and we'll be back with whatever we're back with.

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  All right, are we back rolling?

• 1:13:24Rich Roll?

  I feel like our energy is good. We have good flow. Is it just because we haven't done it in a while? I'm just happy to see you.

• 1:13:32Adam Skolnick?

  You know, um, I have that effect on a lot of people. I call it rapport and everywhere I go, I try to cultivate rapport.

• 1:13:37Rich Roll?

  Did you come up with that word?

• 1:13:38Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes rapport does, is not reciprocated initially, but give me time. I will build rapport, whether you like it or not.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  All right, well, let's, uh, let's continue to cultivate that, my friend. It's good, man. I like it.

• 1:13:52Adam Skolnick?

  I love sweet rapport.

• 1:13:54Rich Roll?

  Um, once again, we are resisting the impulse to partake in the culture wars. We are not going to talk about Donald Trump. We are not going to talk about Alex Jones, who we are going to talk about. Is one Rain Wilson. Dwight Schrute from The Office. Why are we talking about this, Adam?

• 1:14:13Adam Skolnick?

  Because you put a video up, a highlight reel. You're doing these cool clips now. You're doing these highlight clips on your Instagram, which I love. By the way, they also go, do you have a TikTok? Are they going on a TikTok?

• 1:14:27Rich Roll?

  They're going on TikTok too, although I don't have anything to do with TikTok. AJ manages that.

• 1:14:32Adam Skolnick?

  But tell people how this all started, because like, I think people will be interested in that. Why? Because you've just kind of launched these and obviously people are loving them. But so tell us how that started.

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  So when I had COVID for the second time, and I was lying in bed all day, bored out of my mind, I just thought, like, my relationship to Instagram has always been relatively cavalier. Like, yeah, I throw up pictures from the latest podcast. I always make announcements about, you know, who's on the show. But beyond that, like, I don't treat it like a business. It's sort of like I post when I feel like it. And I just don't want to be beholden to it or feel like it's an onerous thing. But while I was lying in bed, I was like, and so I probably was posting, I post once a week or twice a week or something like that. But I'm lying in bed and we have all this content because for every episode, we generate all these videos and we have all these assets.

• 1:15:26Rich Roll?

  And I end up sharing like a tiny fraction of what we actually have historically, going back over like, you know, hundreds of episodes. And I thought, well, I'm just here. I wonder what would happen if I just bled the feed and just like posted three times a day. Like, why not? Let's see what happens. So I started doing that, particularly video, because I know that Instagram is favoring that right now. And there's a lot of shifts in, you know, their algorithm and what they're serving up to people. And people are disgruntled about that. And you can be angry and wish that Instagram was different than it is. Or you can just be like, well, this is what's happening right now. Let's see what happens if I just get on board with that and start, you know, sharing what they're favoring. And so I did that.

• 1:16:11Rich Roll?

  And these videos ended up getting a lot of views and we added like 100,000 new followers to the Instagram account in like two weeks, like the growth was ridiculous. And the thing about it is if the algorithm doesn't like the video, then no one sees it anyway. So it's not like, why is Rich posting so many videos?

• 1:16:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:16:29Rich Roll?

  So from that experience, we sort of came back and said, well, let's really prioritize this. How can we elevate the aesthetic of the reels that we're showing? So we're distinguishing ourselves and really presenting the wisdom of the podcast guests in the most elegant way possible. And the team, specifically Dan, you know, came up with this new design, which I love and is beautiful and people seem to enjoy. And some of these videos have gone on to do millions of views, but the one video that is the real viral outlier is this clip from the podcast that I did with Rain Wilson and Reza Ozlon, where Rain goes

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  on a bit of a jaunt about how to spend your time as a 20 something, basically saying

• 1:17:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  that, you know, young people, college age people are overly concerned with their future and super stressed out and are having, you know, higher rates of depression, et cetera, because of the pressures incident to trying to figure out what to do with your life. And his message was basically like, don't sweat it. Like your twenties are for experimentation. They're for going out in the world, gathering experiences and not worrying about your career trajectory and just enjoying your life while you don't have a lot of ties or responsibilities or obligations. And so maybe we should just play the video because it's just a quick clip.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  Twenties are a waste of time. Like, don't even worry about it. Don't try and get it figured out. Like, the point of your twenties is to try 12 different things and fail at nine of them. But truthfully, in society right now, you talk to so many college kids and they're so depressed at 2021 because they don't, they haven't gotten the perfect internship over the summer and they're not pre-enrolled in the perfect grad program and they don't have their, you know, their, their job aligned. Now, I know it's hard to make a living out there, you know, it's hard to have a career and make a living. It's much harder than in the eighties and nineties when we were, you know, getting our educations. But nonetheless, if you view the twenties as a workshop stage, then it gives you some, you can relax a little bit.

• 1:18:38Rich Roll?

  So anyway, that video has, as of the moment of this recording, accumulated 20.7 million views. So it's been viewed more than any other piece of content I've ever shared on the internet. And the reason that I'm bringing it up isn't just because it was viral, it's because the comments section here was so evenly split. On the one hand, you had people saying, yes, absolutely, I agree. This is what I did during my twenties and I had such an enriching experience and it informed everything that I do today and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Matched by an equally loud number of people saying, this is the worst advice ever.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:23Rich Roll?

  Like, what a privileged, you know, white old man, you know, I, I, I just, you know, this is, this is like, you don't understand my lot in life. You, you have no idea how hard it is right now, et cetera. And I just thought that that was super interesting to see that divide. And I don't have the demographics on the divide, but I would suspect that the people who are disputing this are either young people who are having a really hard time right now, or are people who have just, you know, struggled in, you know, sort of dire circumstances to like make their way in the world.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Yep. And what's your take on it?

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  Well,

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Do you sign with Team Rain?

• 1:20:03Rich Roll?

  As a cisgendered, you know, privileged white male.

• 1:20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Rich Roll?

  You know, I mean, I share Rain's perspective. I did not.

• 1:20:11Rich Roll?

  Take that advice as a young person. I was one of those people who was very stressed out and career oriented. And now, looking back, I wish that I had spent my time in my twenties to really figure out who I wanted to be. And the only way that you can do that is by trying lots of things and failing at them and having many, many, many experiences and not worrying so much about the ladder of your career trajectory. And this is something that's been echoed by lots of wise people that I've had on the podcast, perhaps most notably by like Steven Pressfield, who had a million jobs, like was in the military and mopped floors. And I don't even know, you know, like just a whole bunch of jobs that put him, you know, in communities of people that he wouldn't have otherwise met,

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  put him in circumstances and environments that were very different from what he was used to. And I think when you do that, you become a more, you know, kind of robust individual. You understand different walks of life, different perspectives. You start to figure out what you enjoy doing and what you don't enjoy doing. It's hard to intellectualize that. Like, you have to go into the world and do things to find out, like, oh, that's not what I thought it was. It's not for me. Or, wow, this thing I never thought of before, like, has led me into this other direction, which is fantastic. And I think to put a button on that thought, you know, the person who comes to mind is David Epstein, who wrote

• 1:21:35Rich Roll?

  this wonderful book, Range, that I talk about constantly on the podcast. And his whole thesis is that when you canvas exceptional performers across all facets of expertise, from science to art and sports and business, et cetera, the people who are truly exceptional are generally people who have done the very thing that Rain is talking about, done many, many, many things over the course of their careers, that end up creating this very unique set of skills that unbeknownst to them, makes them perfectly suited to be doing the thing that they excel at later in life. And I think there's something really cool about that

• 1:22:19Rich Roll?

  and interesting. Now, when you're 20 years old and you're Going out into the world and you're trying to make a living and stand on your own two feet, it's hard to hear that, right? Because it is harder now than it used to be. And it's not 1988 when I got out of college, 1989. It's a very different world. It's much more competitive. And there is this increase in wealth inequality, this exacerbating gap between the haves and the have-nots. And there's a lot more have-nots than there are haves, and the haves are getting fewer and fewer. And the middle class has completely disappeared. So it does, I do understand why it would land as quite indulgent to say, "Go fuck off

• 1:23:02Rich Roll?

  for 10 years and travel the world." But I do think if you can find a way to do that and not worry, like, live as leanly as possible. Like, don't pay rent somewhere. Like, try to find a way to make ends meet and live a bit of a pauper's lifestyle so that you can have experiences. That is a gambit that I support.

• 1:23:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, I used to know people-

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  This is your life, too. But like, we're older white guys, so to understand-

• 1:23:31Adam Skolnick?

  I think maybe part of the blowback- I think part of the blowback is he's like, "Treat your twenties as a workshop stage." He meant it, but, you know, that shows a perspective of looking back. But when you're in your twenties, the pressures feel so real that it's hard to look at your life as a workshop stage. No one really looks at their life that way.

• 1:23:51Rich Roll?

  Like, the clock's ticking, I'm getting behind-

• 1:23:52Adam Skolnick?

  Except in retrospect. But he's not wrong. I agree with what he's saying. But in a way, all of life is a workshop stage. You know, like, the way I look at it is all of life is a workshop stage. It's about getting to know yourself and be yourself and be your best self. To me, that's what it's about.

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  Right. I think his, sorry to step on your words, but when he said, "Your twenties are a waste of time," that's like the first thing he says in the clip, and I think that's being misconstrued.

• 1:24:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:24:23Rich Roll?

  Like, he's not really saying they're a waste of time. He's just saying, "Don't sweat it. Like, don't worry about it." There's like, what you do now isn't mission critical to what you're gonna be doing in your thirties and your forties.

• 1:24:33Adam Skolnick?

  And so the only thing I push back on is, it is. But it's not, it's not linear.

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  But it's in a different, not in a way that you think-

• 1:24:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's nonlinear.

• 1:24:39Rich Roll?

  Not in a way that you can-

• 1:24:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. You can't quantify it.

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  And you do have to be, like- There's control issues that come into play, too. Like, you kind of have to be a little faith-based. Like, I know I'm like mopping a floor, you know, in some, you know, diner in Ecuador right now, but, you know, this will actually be informative later in life in a way that I don't know.

• 1:25:01Adam Skolnick?

  Or just, it's a fucking crazy experience.

• 1:25:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:04Adam Skolnick?

  Like, how am I, this guy from Santa Monica, mopping a floor in Ecuador? This is fucking wild. Like, what is going on right now? It's almost like, we talk about wokeness, what about awakeness? You know, like, what about being awake to the experiences you're having? And not necessarily looking at them as this, something that's going to accumulate and then benefit me, as if that's what we're always looking for. How is this going to benefit me? What if it's benefiting you in just the experience of it? Now, that's not to say there isn't, there aren't dark experiences that can help you, but are not that fun to celebrate while they're happening, because there are. And, you know, I've had my share, and there's a lot more that I haven't had. But I do think that this idea, what he's saying, is correct, that, what he's saying

• 1:25:48Adam Skolnick?

  is there is no such, he says twenties are a waste of time, but what he, I think what he's hinting at is, there's no such thing as wasted time. So if you go out and have a good time, and experiment, and do things you didn't think you would get into, or that don't necessarily add up in a linear way, it's to your benefit later, when it all starts to crystallize. And so I agree with him. I think the semantics is where people got, got missed. And in terms of, like, the wealth inequality and how that plays into it, I find that really interesting, because we were talking about this, and it just, we kind of came in a, in a loop, back to an article I shared with you on Defector, which, Defector is the place that a lot of the people from Deadspin migrated to.

• 1:26:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had never been to the Defector website before.

• 1:26:34Adam Skolnick?

  I believe that Drew Magory and like, and like, all these, these writers, after Deadspin went down in the wake of the whole Gawker thing, right? They created their own, kind of, reporter-owned thing called The Defector. Kelsey McKinney, one of the founders, co-founders of The Defector, wrote this great piece, "The Money is All, Is In All The Wrong Places." And it's about wealth inequality, but through the lens of Sydney Sweeney, the actress from Euphoria and White Lotus, her career, basically. She's using her career as this lens to then explore wealth inequality. And it's about Sydney's interview, I think it was in Variety or Hollywood Reporter, I forget.

• 1:27:13Rich Roll?

  Vanity Fair.

• 1:27:14Adam Skolnick?

  Was it? Okay, Vanity Fair. And it was about, she, um, kind of like comparing.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  Hollywood Reporter.

• 1:27:20Adam Skolnick?

  Hollywood Reporter. And it was an interview and it kind of compared Sidney to some of her peers who come from kind of legacy households. Sidney grew up, um, she was not wealthy from Spokane, Washington. When they moved to, they all lived in a motel in LA while she was trying to make it in Hollywood. And she does not come from money. And it's about how she's used her Instagram. If you go on her Instagram, you see she's, she's making deals. And she's always working. And part of that reason is that this era of stars is not, you know, gilded as much as this era is before them because of the way things are. And, and what Kelsey's getting at is because of the way the money has filtered up top. And even the stars aren't making what they used to.

• 1:28:03Adam Skolnick?

  And so if that's true, what, what about everybody else? What about writers? And she goes on to talk about Ernest Hemingway used to make a dollar a word in the 30s. Sometimes I make less than that today, you know, like I'm obviously no Ernest.

• 1:28:15Rich Roll?

  That would be equivalent to $21 a word.

• 1:28:18Adam Skolnick?

  $21.

• 1:28:18Rich Roll?

  In today's economy.

• 1:28:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I think I made.

• 1:28:20Rich Roll?

  And nobody makes that.

• 1:28:21Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody makes that. She's saying she's never known anyone make more than $3 a word, I think she said. Um, I've made, I think I've made three bucks a word once. You know, two bucks a word was like the top that I always wanted to get. But often now with, with all these different places to sell your, your writing, I still only go to kind of a tried and true place I've always, I've always gone to because I like those outlets. But also because I'm just used to going to editors I know. Um, those prices have come down, but there's more opportunities. So a lot of people now, it's easier in a way to get published than it ever was, but you're getting paid a lot less. You know, instead of a buck 50 or a buck, you're getting 50 cents or less. And so she talks about that and she has this great line. "The shadow of our destiny is racing towards us.

• 1:29:07Adam Skolnick?

  A promise that meritocracy was a lie and that we all live in and with the stagnant reality of that. There's a dread building, a bleakness that is already casting a shadow on the future. Maybe you feel it." I think meritocracy was always a lie, but it's an interesting question about like where this is all leading. So that's the article, anyway.

• 1:29:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, what's what's sort of interesting and compelling about this is that it's a diatribe on wealth inequality through like the parlance of the internet because it's a hot take, right? Like Sweeney is somebody who got piled on because in this Hollywood Reporter piece, she was saying like, look, I'd like to have a baby and I can't take off from work while she lives in a $3 million mansion. So she's not exactly a sympathetic candidate for a discussion around wealth inequality. And curiously, McKinney takes this perspective that like, her point is valid, which is that the artists are not being

• 1:30:05Rich Roll?

  adequately compensated for the art. And it's not that art isn't making as much money as it always had. If anything, it's generating more wealth, but that wealth is being increasingly more and more accumulated by the people who sit behind large desks and have no connection to the actual creation of the art. It's the executives, right? And it used to be, it's always been that way, right? But it used to be, and they use the example of Jennifer Aniston, like you're on a hit show and it's syndicated and then you have passive income for life and you create generational wealth. And now in the streaming era, it doesn't work that way anymore. And although Sweeney, who's one of the top performers in her age

• 1:30:50Rich Roll?

  bracket, and certainly a star on the rise who works all the time, and is being well compensated for that, feels like she has to be on her hustle game all the time and has to leverage her Instagram for ads in a way that these other people don't and is criticized for that. But she comes from humble beginnings and sort of feels like this is what I have to do in order to, you know, be who I want to be in the world, right? And the point being made by McKinney is regardless of if you're wealthy or not, or whatever your lifestyle is, like, everybody deserves to be able to take time off to have a baby. And in this modern age of Increased wealth disparity when the CEOs and the top brass are just making,

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  you know, outlandish amounts of money and the people who are actually generating the actual things that are creating that wealth are being less and less respected for that. Like, that's problematic in terms of how our society can cohere long term. And, you know, it's like, another example would be like looking at LeBron, like he makes an unbelievable amount of money. But when you look at how much money the NBA generates, like, there's certainly a very good argument that you could make that he should be paying 10 times what he's getting paid.

• 1:32:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And when those guys take commercial deals, no one really criticizing it. And, you know, when you hear George Clooney or Matt Damon on a ad, no one's criticizing them.

• 1:32:10Rich Roll?

  Right. Like when Matt Damon does the

• 1:32:12Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe they are. Maybe they are.

• 1:32:13Rich Roll?

  For crypto.com.

• 1:32:14Adam Skolnick?

  Actually, he did get

• 1:32:15Rich Roll?

  He got dragged a little bit for that, especially when crypto

• 1:32:17Adam Skolnick?

  He did. He did.

• 1:32:18Rich Roll?

  But like, yeah, you see a basketball player doing a Mountain Dew ad or a Sprite ad. It's like, yeah, that's what you do, right?

• 1:32:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right. It's part of the business.

• 1:32:25Rich Roll?

  But somehow that doesn't apply to people's Instagrams in the same way. I also think it's like how people have like acclimated to that personality. Like there's, like, the Kardashians use their Instagram to sell stuff all the time, right?

• 1:32:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  I don't do that. And occasionally I have branded deals with podcast sponsors that require a social post here and there. And when I do that, like, it doesn't go over as well.

• 1:32:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:32:51Rich Roll?

  Why is that? You know?

• 1:32:53Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I mean, I think, first of all, just to clarify a couple of things, because I feel like I kind of made a mess of introducing this article. But, listen, nobody cries for Hollywood creators, especially people who are Emmy nominated actors who seem to have it going on. No one cries for writers, nor should they, by the way. Like, we make this choice to go into the business. I don't feel like I'm entitled to anything.

• 1:33:13Rich Roll?

  But it shouldn't be like you're welcoming martyrdom.

• 1:33:16Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no.

• 1:33:17Rich Roll?

  When you look at like Ernest Hemingway, who lived in beautiful places all over the world to be the writer that he was.

• 1:33:22Adam Skolnick?

  He was the most popular novelist at the time in the 30s when he was getting that money. But, and he was selling mag, you know, I'm not defending how little we make now because that's ridiculous. Like, It is not equitable. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, it was never easy. You know, I had this conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert back, way back in the day when I was struggling. And I'm like, God, like, it used to be so much easier. Like, you think about that, it was so much easier. You got, you got a feature, you could write five features for a magazine a year and make a living. And pay a mortgage.

• 1:33:52Rich Roll?

  Like, spend three or four months on a Vanity Fair piece.

• 1:33:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right, that's what I'd always thought. And then Liz said, "It was always hard. It was never fucking easy." Like, no one asked us to do this. So, like, I'm not down with the, you know, you see it all the time on Twitter, writers complaining about their editors or complaining about how I'm being treated. However, the great Tom Stoddard photographer I worked with once and who I was a dear friend.

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  Not to be confused with Tom Stopford.

• 1:34:17Adam Skolnick?

  No. He had this desk fuckwit theory. And it was all about, like, the people in the office don't know what we go through. And then they, you know, make edits or criticize. And he called them the desk fuckwits. These are really the desk fuckwits. Not the people that are editing, but the people who are at the very, very top. Those are the real desk fuckwits. And they are making too much money. And the rich aren't being taxed enough. And because of that, we don't have six months parenting leave in this country while there, certain countries have it. You know, like, I think in Austria, both parents can take six months at least off. And so, we don't have that. And it's because of the way our society functions. So, it's a lens to look at that. And it does affect journalism, because then you get, it's basically a star factory now.

• 1:35:02Adam Skolnick?

  And so, now you have star journalists that go out, leave their publications, and then are now competing with their publications and their own business, right? You had a couple of examples. And they, what do they end up doing? Leaning into these culture war topics, because they can make money that way.

• 1:35:18Rich Roll?

  Because the incentive structure so heavily waits and favors that type of discourse. And people are wildly rewarded for engaging in that. Which makes, you know, exempting yourself from becoming a profiteer in the culture war all the much harder, right? Because the temptation lives there. And it's so interesting to look, like, just in the journalism context, you know, setting aside, okay, Here we have this article about Sweeney and she uses her Instagram for advertising. And what does that say more broadly about people who are leveraging the internet to make a living?

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  Like if you're gonna step outside the enclave of the studio movie making business or the newsrooms of print journalism to be an online personality, whether it's Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi or some of these other very prominent people who have left the protective cone of their publications to create Substacks, then it becomes a situation in which you have to garner subscribers. How do you do that? You have to attract attention to yourself. Well, how do you attract attention to yourself? Is it by writing long-form nuanced articles about how complex everything is?

• 1:36:39Rich Roll?

  No, it's about having a hot take that will be a flashpoint in the public discourse that will draw eyeballs to you and activate people into subscribing. And so whether or not these are people acting in good faith or not, and you can have a debate about that, the incentive structures are so powerful to drive people to create that type of content that it creates a different form of "journalism" altogether. And that's the kind of information landscape that we find ourselves in now. And some people are well-suited to participating in that ecosystem and adhering to their value set and staying true to their journalistic principles.

• 1:37:24Rich Roll?

  And others aren't. And for those that aren't, I'm almost sympathetic towards them because the economics of this are driving behavior in such a powerful way that it almost becomes impossible to resist. And this is something that I think a lot about as a podcaster with a platform. Like, who are the people that I want to have on the show? Like, I know if I get... You know, if I invite Jordan Peterson on the show, that would probably get a lot of views and a lot of listens, but it's not somebody I'm interested in talking to. So it's like a constant reminder of like, okay, why am I doing this? Who are the people that I value and that I want to celebrate? Who are the people that I think I can have the most interesting, compelling conversations

• 1:38:07Rich Roll?

  that are most helpful to the audience? And really trying to make sure that I'm staying true to that directive in the midst of, you know, economic temptations that exist out there that I think are pulling content creators in all kinds of directions that, you know, are leading a lot of people, you know, good people astray.

• 1:38:28Adam Skolnick?

  These are so interesting points. And when you're talking about it and thinking of it as the economics, as the big magnet that's pulling everything into these different directions, or the many magnets that are kind of pulling it all apart. I think of that as recline article that we also read. The medium really is the message, kind of goes into Marshall McLuhan and it talks about, you know, it goes back into these thinkers and philosophers who were looking at television and the way television impacted culture. And then he takes that and goes into the internet and obviously what goes unmentioned in this article is the phone. But the idea is the medium itself is actually the magnet. The medium is what's driving us to this.

• 1:39:12Adam Skolnick?

  It's what's driving Sydney Sweeney to feel like she has to make that extra money in whatever way she can. It's what's driving the writer to like, to write about it and comment on it. It's driving the wealth inequality.

• 1:39:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's driving all of it. The medium itself is doing that. The medium is what's taken, you know, a Glenn Greenwald or a Matt Taibbi and pushed them into reporting in the ways that they're reporting now. It's not a criticism of either. I never really was a fan of the way Glenn Greenwald conducted himself and wrote his stuff. I never liked his stuff, really. Matt Taibbi, love his stuff, always have. But they both have followed this kind of pattern of going from the left now kind of... So, you know, going to the other side and only questioning the left and they keep hitting that drum and beating that drum. Why? I don't know. I don't know what's happening in their business world, but you're making the question. Maybe it's because of this incentive. And it is probably, but maybe it's also the incentive comes from the medium itself.

• 1:40:11Rich Roll?

  Well, there's the incentive and then there is, you know, the response to the content and the kind of external audience validation that plays into the, you know, not just partisanship, but the true acrimony, right? And when you appeal to a certain group and then you're then championed by that group, it's, it's then, you know, sort of de facto that you're going to feel like you want to continue to please that group, right? Which is antithetical to, you know, journalistic ethics.

• 1:40:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:40:41Rich Roll?

  And it is a weird, you know, kind of undefined space in which it's unclear whether this is journalism, is this opinion piece? Does it matter? Should it matter? Like, what is this?

• 1:40:55Adam Skolnick?

  It totally matters. Like, we have way too much opinion in the news. Why do we do that? Is it because we're like, everyone wants someone talking to them at the camera? Everyone wants a certain tone? Is it...

• 1:41:06Rich Roll?

  And could we ever find ourselves moving back towards an objective news landscape? Like, I don't think so.

• 1:41:13Adam Skolnick?

  No, I mean, this, you don't put Genies back in the bottle, right? So, the only way is for you then to curate your own life. And like, I'm only going to read...

• 1:41:21Rich Roll?

  And that's problematic in its own regard.

• 1:41:22Adam Skolnick?

  It is. I mean, it's always been there, right? Do I want to tune in to this outer world and the strife that's going on, or do I not want to? And you got to find, strike that balance. But the, I think the medium being the message, if you look at it that way, the problem isn't really Matt Taibbi Glenn streaming the desk fuckwits, whatever. The problem is that we are being driven by this technology. In ways that are not necessarily good for the micro, the self, or society, the whole. And so, you know, it's used that way, but it's viewed that way. This has all been an advancement. This is great. This is great. It's not true. You know, some stuff is not great.

• 1:42:03Adam Skolnick?

  And there's a good art, a good point in the Ezra piece about, is it Jonathan Haidt? He wrote about how there's no fix for a platform that allows teenage girls who are going through puberty to post photos of themselves.

• 1:42:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:20Adam Skolnick?

  Basically, like, you know, looking for approval, essentially.

• 1:42:23Rich Roll?

  And it's like, Haidt has been really great on this subject matter. It's a subject matter that I think is incredibly important, and I know it's come up many times on this podcast, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it is a great existential threat to humanity.

• 1:42:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:42Rich Roll?

  In so many ways. And, you know, I think Jonathan Haidt's work on this is really important. Of course, Tristan Harris, who I'm hoping to get on the podcast soon, Johann Hari's recent book about his struggle with the phone, and this new book that I'm about to read called The Chaos in the Machine by Max Fisher, who's a New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist, on this very subject matter, the inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world. And he's coming on next week, so I gotta get through this book in the next week. But I'm glad that smart people are thinking about this, but I feel strongly that we should all be really thinking about this and considering it profoundly, because it is profound.

• 1:43:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And like, we don't all have to take every deal, you know? We don't have to make the most, like, that's the thing also.

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, I'm just gonna keep throwing reels up on Instagram.

• 1:43:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because that's what the market wants. But there's a point in here about-

• 1:43:37Rich Roll?

  I'm a hypocrite.

• 1:43:38Adam Skolnick?

  We're all, that's the modern world. We're all hypocrites, but in just different small ways.

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  And we're coming at you in ones and zeros on the internet. And I've made, you know, a living doing this. So it's complicated, man.

• 1:43:51Adam Skolnick?

  Me too. I was the biggest critic of Amazon until, you know, I wrote David's book, and that's the only place we can really sell it. And, you know, it's in bookstores too.

• 1:43:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Amazon has basically played a huge part in you being able to make a living.

• 1:44:04Adam Skolnick?

  That's the reason I was able to give up half my shifts at Ben & Jerry's. Um, the, uh, he said one thing about how like the medium impacts our attention. Obviously we know that, right? It's an attention, it's an attention economy. We're all, we're all like either donating our attention or whoring for attention. Excuse my, my language, but it does affect how you function. And I never read several books at once, except in college. And now I've, I've got like five books going, you know, at all time. Like some of it's work related research. Some of it's fiction that I want to read. Some of it's like nonfiction I know I should know. Um, some of it's flea. You know what I mean?

• 1:44:41Rich Roll?

  Acid for the children.

• 1:44:42Adam Skolnick?

  I actually, yes, I actually really like it. That's what's funny is actually liberating.

• 1:44:46Rich Roll?

  I don't see you juggling five books as problematic though.

• 1:44:49Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I never did before.

• 1:44:51Rich Roll?

  The issue.

• 1:44:51Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I think it shows.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  Different than it was before.

• 1:44:54Adam Skolnick?

  Am I making this about me again?

• 1:44:55Rich Roll?

  No, I, I mean, are you trying to make the argument that you're lapsing into some kind of attention deficit driven by internet culture? And that's why, yeah, I don't, I don't really see that.

• 1:45:05Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:45:05Rich Roll?

  I don't see the connective tissue between those two things. I think if you were saying, I'm struggling to sit down and read for more than 10 minutes at a time without getting antsy, that would be more in line.

• 1:45:19Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, retracted.

• 1:45:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But the fact that you're reading, you're like, yeah, it's terrible. I'm reading five books right now. Like most people have trouble getting through one book because they're so distracted.

• 1:45:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  So you do you, bro.

• 1:45:33Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry guys, that was, that was like one of those, like one of those, like you're patting yourself on the back by criticizing yourself.

• 1:45:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  A humble brag.

• 1:45:43Adam Skolnick?

  Humble brag.

• 1:45:43Rich Roll?

  It's so terrible. I'm reading five books at once right now.

• 1:45:46Adam Skolnick?

  I've read so well this week.

• 1:45:48Rich Roll?

  And holding down four shifts at the Ben and Jerry's.

• 1:45:51Adam Skolnick?

  And raising.

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  And writing books.

• 1:45:52Adam Skolnick?

  And raising a, a Spanglish speaking child.

• 1:45:55Rich Roll?

  Right. Adios. Adios, Adam, to that discussion.

• 1:46:01Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes adios is genteel. It's like, adios, I'm, I'm needed elsewhere. Sometimes it's, sometimes it's, adios, I'll see you next time. Sometimes it's, adios.

• 1:46:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:15Rich Roll?

  Clint Eastwood style.

• 1:46:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, like a snarl.

• 1:46:17Rich Roll?

  All right. What are we doing? We got to get to listener questions.

• 1:46:22Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:46:22Rich Roll?

  One thing I will point out, though.

• 1:46:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24Rich Roll?

  There was a great, long read, very long read in the New York Times. I mean, I'm talking like, I think it would take an hour and a half to read this whole article.

• 1:46:34Adam Skolnick?

  It would take most, most people wouldn't finish it, quite frankly.

• 1:46:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:38Adam Skolnick?

  But I love it.

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  It's called Willie Nelson's Long Encore. It's a beautiful article with amazing photographs about, you know, this legend, Willie Nelson, who's now approaching 90 and is still touring like crazy, is still very much, you know, in his creative juices. He put out nine albums in the past five years. And I just think, on the heels of the Mike Fremont podcast coming out and, you know, on the subject of like rethinking aging and embracing longevity and what we're truly capable of, the fact that this, you know, beautiful artist, you know, is still out on the road and like putting music out like there's no tomorrow is something cool to be celebrated. I mean, he's truly a national treasure. I didn't realize that he was that old. He's 89 now.

• 1:47:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:24Adam Skolnick?

  And he's got emphysema and still singing and playing shows. That's crazy.

• 1:47:28Rich Roll?

  I know. Shout out to Steve Tip, my boy Steve Tip, for recommending this read. And yeah, no dimming of his creative light.

• 1:47:36Adam Skolnick?

  No, that, that, that makes me feel a little better.

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  Which is very inspiring.

• 1:47:39Adam Skolnick?

  That makes me glad I took Rain's advice and, and wasted my 20s, 30s and 40s because it means I still have a lot to.

• 1:47:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, what do you think, like if Willie Nelson sat down and looked at that Rain Wilson clip, what do you think Willie Nelson would say?

• 1:47:51Adam Skolnick?

  He'd be like, I'm still doing that.

• 1:47:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's exactly what he would say.

• 1:47:55Adam Skolnick?

  No, I mean, he's been, he's been, you know, in that article, Willie Nelson didn't become a hit till he was 40 and didn't do his most critically acclaimed work till he was 45. So like, you know, he, he would say he agrees 100%.

• 1:48:07Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:48:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  So there you go. Critics.

• 1:48:10Adam Skolnick?

  Always, but the point I'm trying to make is that he says it's harder now. I'm not so sure. It's always been hard.

• 1:48:14Rich Roll?

  Well.

• 1:48:15Adam Skolnick?

  It's always been hard.

• 1:48:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but, but this time, Adam, you don't understand.

• 1:48:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Rich Roll?

  And look, it is harder. I'm very sympathetic to young people and as somebody who, I have two stepsons that are 28 and 27, like, I have a pretty good sense of what it's like out there through their shared experiences and it is harder, you know, but that I don't think is worthy enough to, you know, excuse the value of trying to figure out a way to have adventures and experiences when you're young because that is the time to do it.

• 1:48:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yep. Hundred percent.

• 1:48:48Rich Roll?

  Enough said. All right, let's go to listener questions.

• 1:48:51Adam Skolnick?

  Listener questions. Adam from Fort Collins.

• 1:48:56Rich Roll?

  From Adam to Adam.

• 1:48:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. If your name's Adam, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put you right to the top.

• 1:49:01Rich Roll?

  And we should say, like, we need more questions.

• 1:49:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, we need more questions, guys. We're, we're, we're skipping the, as they say, the, the bottom.

• 1:49:10Rich Roll?

  We need, uh, we need to refill the receptacle. So leave us a message at 42. I don't think we've called out the number enough. That's part of the problem. 424-235-4626.

• 1:49:20Adam Skolnick?

  That's 424-235-4626.

• 1:49:23Rich Roll?

  Call now.

• 1:49:24Adam Skolnick?

  Or not now because I'm about to play it and I'm on the program and then it'll come in and it'll, not now.

• 1:49:30Rich Roll?

  Operators are standing by.

• 1:49:32Adam Skolnick?

  In five minutes.

• 1:49:35Speaker 03

  Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Adam in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I just wanted to know what your guys' thoughts were when it comes to big life goals. I'm wanting to do, uh, the Never Summer 60K next year. By far and away the biggest thing I have done. And my wife thinks that I need to really step away from that goal for this 2023 projection and do some smaller things when I kind of have an accountability mirror and every year I put something bigger on it. And although it scares me, I hear my wife's worries about. Safety and just being realistic with time.

• 1:50:17Speaker 03

  And how do you balance concerns of your loved ones with family and safety? And on the other side, your dreams and your goals that are big and sometimes dangerous? And where does your intuition and kind of instinct fall into all of that? Thanks so much. I cannot wait for every Monday when I see that little blue dot on my Spotify for another podcast. And yeah, I just have had my life completely changed by the years of wonderful information and eating a vegan diet for the past year. It's been incredible. Thanks so much, you guys. Have a great day.

• 1:51:00Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Adam. Great question. Basically, this is a question about the tension between setting big goals and meeting family expectations or having to deal with perhaps not as much support as you were looking for in your home. And it's tricky, right? I think the way that I would answer this is that, first of all, like, goals are super important. Everybody should have goals. They serve as these powerful, potent lighthouses to kind of really focus and direct your actions. And I think big goals serve a further purpose, which is this beautiful way to kind of spark a deeper level of engagement in your daily life experience to get out of bed like energized

• 1:51:45Rich Roll?

  and excited about, you know, tackling something audacious or something that scares you a little bit. Like, it really enervates you.

• 1:51:53Speaker 03

  Enervates or energizes?

• 1:51:55Rich Roll?

  Isn't enervate? I'm using enervate correctly.

• 1:51:58Speaker 03

  I think enervate means you drained of energy.

• 1:52:00Rich Roll?

  You're right. I've done that before. I need to really figure that out. Yeah, energize.

• 1:52:05Speaker 03

  It's the medium's fault.

• 1:52:06Rich Roll?

  Right. Thank you for correcting me.

• 1:52:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, sorry.

• 1:52:10Rich Roll?

  What I'm trying to say is that big goals can help you feel like more alive, right?

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Rich Roll?

  But I think, you know, and Adam already realizes this, that these big goals have to be negotiated with those with whom we share responsibilities. Otherwise, they can quickly devolve into selfish pursuits that end up undermining the other important aspects of your life, including, you know, our relationship with our loved ones and our ability to live up to our responsibilities and our professional obligations and expectations. And because by definition, our time and our energy is limited, it's not unlimited, all of this becomes a tricky balance. Like, how do you strike the appropriate balance between those two things? And I think it begins by

• 1:52:57Rich Roll?

  going beyond this discussion around goals, temporal goals, and instead getting really clear on values. And this is something that came up in the podcast with James Clear. Like, you should read his book, Atomic Habits, if you haven't read that, because it talks all about this. So basically, what I'm saying is, starting with your values, identifying which values you cherish most. And there's no right or wrong answers here. Like, maybe it's your marriage, maybe it's parenting, career, finances, health, fitness, adventure. You know, it's just getting clear on the priority list of these things and then figuring out like, how are these values being most nourished daily? And then getting granular

• 1:53:39Rich Roll?

  to ask yourself if a 60K race fits into that value set or value structure, or whether it comes at the peril of these other values, right? Like, does it exceedingly threaten your marriage or your relationship? And then asking, well, if it does, is it worth it? Or is there a way to pursue this goal, nourish these values, and keep both of them intact? So, in other words, it's about asking yourself whether the goal fulfills the value. Why is this race important to you? What are you seeking to learn? And experience and getting clear on like, oh, it just seems like a cool thing or it scares

• 1:54:20Rich Roll?

  me like, okay, well, let's go beneath the surface of that. Like, why do you have to do a race to do that? Could you do something else? Or what specifically is it about this race that makes it so important that you would desire to pursue it even if your wife has reservations about you doing it? Right? So I think that's important. Yes. Would you agree with that? Yes. And then with that clarity, it becomes about communication. Yes. Like, okay, your wife is scared. Well, what is she scared about? Like, what are those fears? Is she legitimately scared that you're going to injure yourself? Or is that fear have more to do with you not being around as much? Or when you are around, being too tired to, you know, basically be present for her? Like, are her fears legitimate? Are

• 1:55:04Rich Roll?

  her concerns legitimate? Or is there something that you can talk through with her that would make her less fearful and more welcoming of you pursuing this goal? Because obviously, if you're in a healthy relationship, you want each other to be pursuing goals and you want to be, you know, mutual support systems for each other. So in this case, she doesn't seem to be on board with it. And you can be disgruntled and angry and resentful, or you can try to understand that and figure out a way to compromise so that you're both comfortable. Because you cohabitate together and you've got to be on the same page if you want your relationship to, you know, continue in a healthy way. And then with that understanding, like, holding yourself accountable to that. Like, if you can come

• 1:55:47Rich Roll?

  to some compromise where she says, okay, you could do it, but I need to make sure that, you know, you're still available for X, Y, and Z, or that we're going to do this, or that you're going to show up for me in these other ways. And then making sure that not only do you do that, but you do it with a smile on your face. And perhaps you even go the extra mile to make sure that she's feeling heard and honored in that, like, and at ease with you pursuing this goal. And I think the final thing I would say is that, you know, it's hard to know, just based on your question, but it seems like, or it feels like, you have different

• 1:56:22Rich Roll?

  Risk calculuses, right? Like she seems to be a little bit more risk averse than you. You want to pursue this thing that to me, like training for a 60K race doesn't sound that risky. I mean, maybe it's super technical and you can fall off a cliff. I don't know.

• 1:56:36Adam Skolnick?

  It's a minimum, max elevation 8500 to 119, average elevation 10. It's, it seems like in the Leadville category, but there's 100K and 60K. So it's not as long.

• 1:56:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah. So maybe some risk. I don't know what

• 1:56:50Adam Skolnick?

  Late July.

• 1:56:51Rich Roll?

  Background is and all of that kind of thing. You want to take a risk. She's more risk averse. There's no right or wrong in that. It's totally okay. But your relationship requires honoring each other. So you both feel safe, heard and respected. So does she have wiggle room? Do you have wiggle room? How can you work together to get to a place where you're both comfortable with this? Because you don't want to like, say, I'm just doing it anyway. I don't care if you're scared. That's not a good recipe for the, the sake of your relationship. But you also don't want to just say, oh, you don't want me to do it. I'm not going to do it. Cause you're just going to get resentful towards her. So, you know, you gotta work it out. It's not for me to say whether you should or shouldn't pursue this goal only, you know, only Adam knows that. But, you know, that's where I would leave it.

• 1:57:37Adam Skolnick?

  Get granular, figure out if the goal, where the

• 1:57:40Rich Roll?

  We'll get global first.

• 1:57:41Adam Skolnick?

  Get global with goals and values, then get granular, then build a deck so that you can So present it to the wife.

• 1:57:50Adam Skolnick?

  And get her to rubber stamp that thing. That's what you're saying.

• 1:57:53Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:57:54Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, no.

• 1:57:55Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:57:56Adam Skolnick?

  As someone who is raising a, a young person with a lovely lady.

• 1:58:02Rich Roll?

  And as somebody who likes adventures and you like risk. Yeah. Like this is right up your alley.

• 1:58:08Adam Skolnick?

  I've been, I've been, I've been dealing with this. So, um, but I do find that when you can communicate why it means something to you. You have a better chance of

• 1:58:17Rich Roll?

  The Y is huge.

• 1:58:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, the Y is huge. You have a better chance of winning people over, but it also means that you have to show up when it's your time and you have to like you. You've talked about it. You it's in your book. You know, you had like you were taking on some of the biggest things you already took on while having small kids. And that meant that you couldn't be tired from your 100K bike ride.

• 1:58:35Rich Roll?

  Walk in the door like completely exhausted.

• 1:58:38Adam Skolnick?

  Here you go.

• 1:58:38Rich Roll?

  Julie handed me a baby and said, see ya.

• 1:58:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:58:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:41Adam Skolnick?

  And you need you need to be available for that. So, you know, you we both know this and it sounds like Adam knows it too, because he's not just like dismissing it entirely. He seems like, you know, he wants to do this thing. He wants to, you know, sometimes it's like.

• 1:58:55Rich Roll?

  And maybe you work up to it. Maybe you compromise by doing, you know, a more modest race this year and demonstrate your good faith. Like you met that goal and you also were able to show up. So then your wife has more comfort with you tackling something else. And perhaps she's less afraid like, does this have to happen this year? Can you work up to it a little bit more gradually?

• 1:59:18Adam Skolnick?

  There are seasons to life and like maybe you used to be freer and you could do these things a little bit easier, but that doesn't mean that was better. It just means you're in a different period of your life now. And so you can't judge your current period based on who you used to be. You have to judge it on who you are now and then that period will pass and you will be able to take on some more risk at times. I mean, that's just the way things go. That's how I look at it. And so I'm not trying to like get underwater, you know, five days a week because it's unrealistic. It won't happen. If I do that, I will never work and you know, that's not good. So like I had to figure out a way to make it work. And it's constant communication to continue to make it work. And so I would just urge constant communication and and just getting to know your goals.

• 2:00:01Adam Skolnick?

  I have not done the deep dive of goals and values. That sounds really interesting.

• 2:00:06Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I try to I kind of live in more of a improvisational state. I like that.

• 2:00:13Rich Roll?

  I get that. Cool. Well, let's move on.

• 2:00:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you're very good at these, by the way.

• 2:00:17Rich Roll?

  Thank you. That was good advice, Adam.

• 2:00:19Adam Skolnick?

  Really? You think I'll make one of those reels?

• 2:00:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think so. We'll see. This is your moment. Like you gotta throw down.

• 2:00:26Adam Skolnick?

  I made one.

• 2:00:26Rich Roll?

  Throw down like the dope, the just super dope monologue and I will for sure put it up.

• 2:00:31Adam Skolnick?

  What if I like brought in my own like cool music and just hit in like a boombox down here?

• 2:00:38Rich Roll?

  It's time for my reel, Rich. Are you ready?

• 2:00:40Adam Skolnick?

  Ready for my reel? Hang on, I'm trying to find this next one. I had to go deep in the archives for this. All right, here we go. All the way to New Zealand. Anita from New Zealand.

• 2:00:50Speaker 04

  Kia ora, riti an Adam. This is Anita calling from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Three years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had chemo, surgery, and radiotherapy. As part of that journey, I completely changed my lifestyle. Now I eat plant-based, I exercise regularly, I don't drink, I go to bed early, and I have a spiritual practice. So far, so good. I feel better than ever before. I was single when I got cancer, and for the last three years, I've been fully dedicated to myself to recover and to stay cancer-free. Now I feel ready to start dating again, but I'm finding it very difficult to find people

• 2:01:34Speaker 04

  who align to my new lifestyle. So my question for you is, what would you do if you were single today and you wanted to find a new partner? Would you be as strict about finding someone who aligns 100% to your values? Or would you be more flexible? Thank you, guys. I love the podcast. I can't thank you enough for all the knowledge and inspiration you share. Bye.

• 2:02:03Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Anita. I'm sorry that you went through cancer, but it sounds like you've come out the other side, healthy, and that's great, of course. It also sounds like maybe you're from Argentina and not New Zealand.

• 2:02:17Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 2:02:18Rich Roll?

  I have not a New Zealand accent.

• 2:02:20Adam Skolnick?

  No, but she lives in New Zealand.

• 2:02:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she does.

• 2:02:23Adam Skolnick?

  Why Argentina?

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  I don't know. It's a twang of Latin in there that reminded me of a friend from that part of the world and sounded familiar. Who knows?

• 2:02:33Adam Skolnick?

  Was your friend named Che Guevara?

• 2:02:37Rich Roll?

  Are you trying to lure me back into the culture war?

• 2:02:40Adam Skolnick?

  The OG culture war?

• 2:02:42Rich Roll?

  I am resisting. I will not be a profiteer. Anita, so, thank you for the question. I'm probably not the best person to ask about dating because I've been with my wife for 22 years. But I will say this, I think it's, it's healthy and better to spend less time focusing on the qualities of the person you're looking for, like identifying in your mind, like this person that I'm looking for has to have these things in order for me to be interested. Like, to the extent that you can kind of let go of that and instead focus more on continuing to become the person you aspire to be, I feel like that's a better use of your, your energy,

• 2:03:24Rich Roll?

  time, and, and also a more powerful lever and magnet towards attracting that person that you're looking for into your life that you might not really even be able to define and identify. Because being the most developed, authentic, and self-actualized that you possibly can be is the most attractive that you can be, right? The more that you can develop those capacities, the more confident you are, the more steady you are in standing in your own two feet, right? Tall and just owning your space. And that's something that, you know, radiates when you walk into a room. You always know, like, oh, that person knows who they are.

• 2:04:08Rich Roll?

  Like, there's something innately very attractive about that. Because we all want to be with somebody who knows who they are and owns their space.

• 2:04:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, if they don't know who they are, that means they have amnesia and you should not date them.

• 2:04:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, you know what I'm saying.

• 2:04:23Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just kidding, yes.

• 2:04:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like this attractor, like you put, it's a force field or a tractor beam that, that ends up attracting the quality of person that you seek to have in your life. I've said this before, but it's like, you know, imagining yourself as a lighthouse. Like, you're, you're putting this signal out into the world for those that, you know, and those that resonate with it will become attracted to you. Like, water rises to its own level. So, level up to attract the like-minded person. And, and remembering, you know, this idea that like...

• 2:04:57Rich Roll?

  A partner doesn't and will never complete you. Like, that's not their job. Your job is to complete yourself. So it's not looking for that externality to be the missing piece in who you are. Like, do that on your own time with yourself. And when you solve that puzzle, then you're ready to be in the world and attract the person that you desire into your life. And on the, on the subject of like flexibility and trying to identify people who, who share your values, I think it's important that intimate partners share core values. The former question was kind of all about that, like finding shared core values. But beyond that, I think it's important to not be too rigorous or demanding when it

• 2:05:42Rich Roll?

  comes to how that person embodies or expresses those values. In other words, like, let go of rigorously attempting to match with someone who aligns 100% with everything you're interested in. Like, if you look at my wife and I, we're incredibly different people. We align on values, but we can also be like oil and water. Like, our marriage is not without friction. But there's something about that alchemy that's been this incredible growth experience for both of us. Like, her differences have pushed me to grow in ways that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. And hopefully, I can say the same for her. And that alchemical kind of concoction has been, you know, a really beautiful aspect

• 2:06:27Rich Roll?

  of our marriage. It's, it's hard at times. It makes it really hard, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. And had I been in a position of just trying to find the person who met my criteria and they need to be this person who does these things, I would have missed the opportunity and missed the gift, right? Because we're all constantly growing and evolving all the time. So if you're like, my partner needs to eat exactly the way that I do, and they need to, you know, do the, da, da, da, da, da, like, you're just setting yourself up for frustration. So maybe expand the aperture a little bit. And also, you're dating. You're not getting married. Like, go out and date people. Like, have fun. If it's not, it's like, it's not a fit, then it's not a fit. Like, no loss, you had an experience meeting somebody.

• 2:07:11Rich Roll?

  It's not a failure, it's just another experience. 100%.

• 2:07:16Adam Skolnick?

  I'd say be flexible. They do not have to meet 100% of your criteria. Have fun, feel it out, explore the mystery. It's like, it's like good creative projects. You never know where you're gonna land. And your life is like that, right? Even people who, like you're saying, know who they are, actually don't really, to be honest with you. Nobody knows exactly who they are or who they're gonna become. And so you don't even know where you're gonna be in 10 years. I'm not saying you're not gonna have certain values that stick with you and are important to you. What I'm saying is you don't know how that will evolve and evolve you. And so, you know, just because you meet someone, even if you're as close to 100% now, that doesn't mean that's gonna be the case in 10 years. It's about, does the communication overlap?

• 2:07:57Adam Skolnick?

  Can you grow together and allow people to grow a little bit differently? Cause hopefully that will happen. And, and that's going to take being at ease in the mystery and doing creative projects at ease in the mystery. You've survived cancer. You had to figure out how to stay at ease in the, in the hardest mystery of all. This is dating and it could be hard because you know, when you're, when I, I, we don't know, you know, this person's life or Anita where, you know, has she been married before? We don't know anything about it, but we know that as a single person, I know what it's like post divorce. It is lonely sometimes. So the mystery is not always enjoyable, but you do have to find a way to be at ease in it.

• 2:08:36Adam Skolnick?

  Cause like that ease is going to be critical in enjoying your life, let alone meeting a partner. So, um, you know, how can you find ease in the mystery?

• 2:08:49Rich Roll?

  Adam Skolnick coming through with his reel.

• 2:08:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:51Rich Roll?

  Oh shit, I forgot to hit the music. You're good at that, Dan. Fantastic. I think that's a good place to wind it down for today. Beautifully put, my friend. Always good to share space with you.

• 2:09:04Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:09:05Rich Roll?

  It was good. I feel like we got like, I feel we're connected.

• 2:09:08Adam Skolnick?

  Pulled back in?

• 2:09:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You feel all right?

• 2:09:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Are we going, are we doing this again?

• 2:09:11Rich Roll?

  Do you think anyone's still listening?

• 2:09:13Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 2:09:14Rich Roll?

  It's liberating, right? Say whatever the fuck you want.

• 2:09:17Adam Skolnick?

  That's why I'm at my best at the end.

• 2:09:19Rich Roll?

  The stakes are low.

• 2:09:20Adam Skolnick?

  Stakes are low. This doesn't matter. It's all, it's all a stage. What's he call it? A rehearsal stage?

• 2:09:26Rich Roll?

  A rehearsal.

• 2:09:27Adam Skolnick?

  The rehearsal space.

• 2:09:28Rich Roll?

  Have you been watching Nathan Fielder's rehearsal?

• 2:09:30Adam Skolnick?

  It's on my list.

• 2:09:31Rich Roll?

  We'll talk about it next time. I just finished it last night. It's unbelievable.

• 2:09:34Adam Skolnick?

  I'm too busy watching off-label, uh, you know, Red Hot Chili Peppers, like failed docs and, and Instagram.

• 2:09:41Rich Roll?

  You gotta get down with Nathan Fielder.

• 2:09:42Adam Skolnick?

  Bourdain.

• 2:09:43Rich Roll?

  The rehearsal is really quite something.

• 2:09:45Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 2:09:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:46Adam Skolnick?

  I'm in.

• 2:09:47Rich Roll?

  So next time.

• 2:09:48Adam Skolnick?

  I'm in.

• 2:09:48Rich Roll?

  All right, buddy.

• 2:09:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:50Rich Roll?

  Cool. I think we're back in two weeks. If we're not, give or take, but I'm pretty sure we are.

• 2:09:54Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 2:09:55Rich Roll?

  See everybody back here again soon. Thanks for taking this ride with us. You can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. I'm at Rich Roll everywhere except on TikTok. I think it's I am Rich Roll. Again, we need your questions. Leave us a message, 424-235-4626. If you want to check the show notes for the links to everything that we've discussed, visit the episode page for this episode, episode 700.

• 2:10:22Adam Skolnick?

  Congratulations.

• 2:10:23Rich Roll?

  At richroll.com. And hey, you know what? Why don't you subscribe to our YouTube channel? And maybe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify while you're at it? Just go full bore like you're at the buffet at a Las Vegas casino and you're just going all in.

• 2:10:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and then subscribe to the newsletter. And if not, we'll subscribe you.

• 2:10:43Rich Roll?

  And then you can unsubscribe and then subscribe again and keep unsubscribing because it is very gratifying to unsubscribe to newsletters. So I'm giving you that opportunity.

• 2:10:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's so good. It's so good. I love it.

• 2:10:54Rich Roll?

  Appreciate everybody who helps put on the show. Adam and I do not do this alone. Jason Camiello, audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music and more. Blake Curtis and Dan Drake for all the video work. Daniel Solis for graphics. A.J. Akpodiette for TikToks and more. Davey Greenberg and Grayson Wilder, although Grayson moved. He's not with us as much anymore.

• 2:11:17Adam Skolnick?

  Where'd he move?

• 2:11:17Rich Roll?

  We've got, he moved to Tennessee.

• 2:11:20Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 2:11:22Rich Roll?

  And now we have Giselle Peters, who's been fantastic. Thank you, Giselle, for portraits, although we got Dan today because neither, nobody could come.

• 2:11:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:29Rich Roll?

  Today's photos.

• 2:11:30Adam Skolnick?

  Dan Drake.

• 2:11:31Rich Roll?

  On the socials by Dan Drake. Georgia Whaley for copyrighting. DK for advertiser relationships. That's the engine behind all of this. And theme music is always by my boys Tyler and Trapper and my nephew Hari. Thanks, guys, for that theme song that just refuses to go away 10 years later. No matter how much I wish to move on and transcend it and try something new, the fans have spoken. So anyway, thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome episode. And until then, take us out, Adam. Peace. Plants. Adios.

• 2:12:08Adam Skolnick?

  Adios.