Roll On: Rest, Reflection & Responsibility

After a seasonal sabbatical, ‘Roll On’ is back. And it’s time to hash out a bit of drama. After a two-month respite, Roll On returns with a discussion on ‘Moneyball-esque’ advances in sports science, the role of podcasting in the culture wars, the importance of taking a professional pause, how my sleep habits ended up as ‘news’, and so much more. As always, my magnanimous sidecar hype-beast and co-host Adam Skolnick joins me at the round table. Adam is an activist and veteran journalist known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. He writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently using the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. More specifically, topics discussed in today’s episode include: how the RRP community raised almost $500K for charity: water Adam’s recent NYT article on Norwegian triathlon dominance; the Joe Rogan and Spotify controversy and what it teaches us; lessons learned from Rich’s month-long sabbatical; the Alan Watts collection on the Waking Up app; why Station Eleven is the best show on TV; and media reactions to Rich’s ‘tent story’ on the Tim Ferriss show. As always, we close things out by taking a few listener questions. Today we answer: How do you optimize zone two training in non-impact workouts? Who do you draw inspiration from when feeling down? What do you do when your motivation for working out runs dry? Thank you to Rebecca from Santa Maria, Sam from Baton Rouge, and April from Santa Monica 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. To read more click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy the show! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  All right, we're back. For those new or newer to the show, Roll On is our inconsistently bi-weekly news/entertainment/AskMeAnything mashup, where we loosen the metaphorical ties a bit, discuss matters ranging from important to frivolous, we answer listener questions, we have a few laughs, hopefully a little bit of fun. Adam, it has been eight weeks since our last Roll On. And actually, I think this is the longest that I've gone without recording a podcast in the history of the podcast itself, and certainly the longest gap since we began our little thing here.

• 1:57Rich Roll?

  First, because of special holiday programming, like our annual best ofs, and then because I've spent the last month, the entirety of January, on sabbatical, which we're going to talk a little bit about today. But the point is, today, we make a glorious return. There's so much to cover and catch up on. But first, how goes it, my long-lost friend, Mr. Adam Skolnick?

• 2:20Adam Skolnick?

  Rich, I don't want to bore you with the many inconveniences of modern life. But are you familiar with the idea that things shrink in cold water?

• 2:31Rich Roll?

  I have heard that rumor.

• 2:33Adam Skolnick?

  You have, you've heard it. I lost my wedding band in my last swim.

• 2:40Rich Roll?

  You did.

• 2:40Adam Skolnick?

  In the Pacific Ocean, or two swims ago, yeah.

• 2:42Rich Roll?

  You're not a real swimmer, and certainly not a real open water or ocean swimmer if you haven't lost your wedding band.

• 2:48Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 2:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in the vastness of our open seas.

• 2:52Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? It's funny. I was talking to Goggins like later that day, I think it was, and he said that almost all Navy SEALs who were married lost their wedding band in the ocean. And then, and then the ones, when they get the new one, they, they put it on to their watch because it's, it's guaranteed to go.

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. That's interesting.

• 3:10Adam Skolnick?

  But I didn't know, because I've, I've swum in cold water so many times, and it's never been a problem, but it, you know, it's been really cold here. And, and I felt it, it was like one of those things, I felt it slip off, and then, like, it registered a half second later, and I popped up. I'm like, and it was, you know.

• 3:28Rich Roll?

  That was it. Did you dive down and try to find it?

• 3:31Adam Skolnick?

  Of course I did. About 85 times, but it was, you know.

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. I told a story about that in Finding Ultra, when I was on my first honeymoon with my short-lived, I don't know what you call it, and lost my wedding band. And I had a very symbolic

• 3:50Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you know what?

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  nature to it. But since then, I did, like, people may know, like, I don't wear a wedding band, and that's because I've lost like three that I've had with Julie. And so at some point, I was just like, forget it.

• 4:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right. So it's no longer a symbol. This one, to be perfectly transparent, was, I've been married twice, and it was a wedding band I already had, because we, we decided, April and I decided to get married on like a Saturday, and we got married on a Thursday. And it was just like, you either go and get something off the thing, or we, you.

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  So you used your wedding band from your former marriage?

• 4:27Adam Skolnick?

  I didn't come here for your judgment.

• 4:30Adam Skolnick?

  So my wife didn't mind. Like, I came back, I felt really bad. And my wife's like, my wife didn't mind. And she's already conveniently made an appointment to purchase new wedding bands.

• 4:43Rich Roll?

  Good.

• 4:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, great.

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  I think, I think you should have one that's just between the two of you guys.

• 4:48Adam Skolnick?

  Until I lose that one.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  But no, yeah, don't, maybe not, maybe don't overspend because you're probably gonna lose it again if you go out into the ocean.

• 4:56Adam Skolnick?

  I think it's, I can't wear it.

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  Because things do shrink in cold water.

• 4:59Adam Skolnick?

  Things shrink. And I was aware of some things shrinking, obviously, but I didn't know knuckles shrank, but that's what I learned.

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  Well, it's good to be with you again. I feel a little nervous today. I'm out of practice. Like, this literally is the longest I've gone without doing a podcast in as long as I can remember. So.

• 5:16Adam Skolnick?

  It's crazy.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm like, I have butterflies. I got home last night at like 1 o'clock in the morning and just came right in here to do this today. So right back in it, but I'm feeling good, excited to share with you today.

• 5:27Adam Skolnick?

  I'm excited to be the guy that's here on this, on this breaking back in. I think the roll-on format is a good one.

• 5:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Adam Skolnick?

  To get you, to get the juices flowing.

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because, let's face it, the stakes are really low.

• 5:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right?

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm just not that challenging. I don't have to win you over.

• 5:47Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 5:48Rich Roll?

  You know, you can be sycophantic.

• 5:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:50Rich Roll?

  If my eyes get glassy from being tired, I know that you can take the reins and run with it a little bit.

• 5:55Adam Skolnick?

  If your eyes get glassy, you know what I'll say?

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  What?

• 5:58Adam Skolnick?

  Your eyes look wonderful.

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  See? That's why you have the job.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  In this echo chamber that we've created here, where you just say nice things to me and we continue to do this. But I will say, over the break, lots of people out there itching and aching for some Skolneck.

• 6:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 6:19Rich Roll?

  Especially, we started this new thing called Rollback where on YouTube, when we don't have a midweek roll-on episode or any other kind of episode, we've started sharing audio-only episodes from way back in the archive that have never been on YouTube before.

• 6:36Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  And we've done that twice. We had one with Gabor Maté and.

• 6:42Rich Roll?

  What was the one that we just put up the other? Oh, Josh LaJohnnie? And in the comments section, people are like, this is great rollback, but like, what happened to roll on? There's a lot of speculation and conspiracy theorizing.

• 6:54Adam Skolnick?

  There was a conspiracy theory.

• 6:55Rich Roll?

  That our relationship has disintegrated, that maybe we got into a fight or something like that. How come there's not? I just, I took a break.

• 7:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, there was one theory that Brogan murdered me, or at least kidnapped me.

• 7:09Rich Roll?

  Is there like some Reddit thread?

• 7:10Adam Skolnick?

  There was, there's a, if you go to deep Reddit, it's not Reddit, it's like the deep Reddit.

• 7:14Rich Roll?

  Some kind of 4chan situation?

• 7:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like Reddit's 4chan.

• 7:20Adam Skolnick?

  There's a thing.

• 7:21Rich Roll?

  A lot of speculation, screenshots, pictures of people seen in the wild.

• 7:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Prove he's not dead. That's what they said. Prove he's not dead.

• 7:30Rich Roll?

  That's a metaphor for, you know, kind of the way the world is spinning at the moment.

• 7:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, um, it's a minefield out there, Rich.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  It is.

• 7:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  I heard there's a culture war afoot.

• 7:42Adam Skolnick?

  There is a, I wouldn't know about it because I'm in an echo chamber within an echo chamber.

• 7:46Rich Roll?

  Well, during my sabbatical, I opted out of paying attention to anything, but I did hear a little bit about a few things, which we're going to talk about today. But before we get into all of that, a couple of announcements that I want to make, especially since I've been gone for an extended period of time. We did create a couple of new social media accounts for the podcast, at Rich Roll Podcast on Instagram and Twitter. When I was gone, it just made it easier for the team here who did a great job in my absence. Clearly, I'm not fundamental to this operation because these guys did a great job when I was gone.

• 8:19Adam Skolnick?

  You're a figurehead.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  Where, uh, under those accounts, there'll be posts about the latest episodes. So, um, the onus isn't always on me to constantly be sharing on social media about the latest episodes. So check those out, subscribe, it frees me up. Cause this, you know, turns out this social media stuff is kind of a full-time gig. If you don't check yourself a little bit.

• 8:41Adam Skolnick?

  Do you feel like you're going to be pulling back from your Instagram account in some ways? I mean, do you feel like?

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  No, it just releases a little bit of the pressure, you know? I, it's like, I'm reluctant, a lot of people. You don't have other people manage their social media accounts. I just don't feel comfortable with that. But then it means that like, oh shit, today there's a new episode up. I gotta think of something to say and get download these photos and put them up and stuff takes time. So anyway, it just makes my life a little bit easier. So subscribe to those things. Second announcement, you heard me talk about Taco Vega a couple times on the podcast. It's my friend Jared Simons restaurant here in Los Angeles, all plant-based, Mexican. He's an incredible chef. He's also an amazing endurance athlete,

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  has done tons of Ironmans and ultra runs, just a good dude. And I was heartbroken last week when he announced that they were going to be closing their doors. They just couldn't couldn't make it work. But there was this outpouring of support on social media and so many people kind of showed up on the final days before closing the restaurant that he was able to kind of keep the doors open and he's doing it on a day-to-day basis right now. So we're recording this on Monday. This goes up on Thursday. I don't know whether he'll still be serving up food. Hopefully he is. And in the event that he is and you

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  find yourself in Los Angeles, make a point of stopping by Taco Vega in it's on Fairfax, New York Cantor. It's pretty easy to find. You can Google it. And you can find Taco Vega on Instagram and Jared Simons as well. Give him some love, support. I shared a little bit on my stories about that. And hopefully we can keep it open. And if not, I'm sure he'll find some new thing soon. But we gotta support our plant-based restaurants.

• 10:35Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. I tried to order, but out of delivery range.

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  Well, drive into town.

• 10:42Adam Skolnick?

  I'm going to. I'm gonna drive into town.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  Make sure you do it.

• 10:45Adam Skolnick?

  I will.

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  Another announcement I wanted to make has to do with Charity Water. Some of you might remember. Back in, I think it was in 2017. Well, I've had Scott Harrison on, the founder of Charity Water, a couple of times on the podcast. Incredible guy who's just reimagined philanthropy, you know, pillar to post, has created this amazing philanthropic effort with Charity Water to solve the global water crisis, particularly in the developing world. And I raised money for Charity Water for my birthday in 2017. And I think we raised 80 grand through that campaign, which was fantastic. Then Charity Water started this thing called The Spring,

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  where you can donate monthly some amount that gets just kind of auto debited from your account. And I created a page to do that for us here at the podcast. We donate monthly. And back in, at that time, I was sort of sharing that with everybody. But I kind of forgot about it because it's sort of a set it and forget it kind of thing. And I decided to check back in and see kind of where we were at in terms of how much money we've raised. And I was shocked to discover that collectively, this Rich Roll Podcast tribe has, has raised $471,000 for Charity Water, which is unbelievable. I had no idea.

• 12:13Rich Roll?

  Apparently, we're the fourth highest donor in this kind of spring ecosystem under Charity Water. We funded 13 water projects. 15,244 people have been aided as a result of all of your collective efforts. So I'm just blown away by that. And I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who has contributed, who heard about it through the podcast. It's just an incredible testament to the power of community and the good nature of so many people. And all of that occurred without me saying as much as boo for like four or five years, because I literally haven't talked about this, which means that actually,

• 12:55Rich Roll?

  we could seriously grow this impact. So please, if you're so inclined, if you want to learn more, or you want to get involved. Uh, contributor, contribute whatever monthly amount you can. Uh, do that by going to charitywater.org/richroll.

• 13:12Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable. And that 15,244 people you've aided is not a temporary thing. I mean, that's, you're aiding them for...

• 13:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:19Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, that's, that's a generational...

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  Generations to come. So 13 water projects, which means basically wells in 13 villages where those communities are getting served permanently, which is unbelievable.

• 13:31Adam Skolnick?

  Is that Africa, India type?

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  I think it's mostly Africa. I don't, I think on the website you could find out exactly where all of those 13 are. Uh, but anyway, shout out to Scott as well. It's just, it's super cool. Um, meal planner update. There's been a significant increase in both new signups and retention, which is awesome. We get so many emails and testimonials from people whose lives have been improved, benefited in a positive way, um, by the meal planner. So thank you for that. And I just want to let everybody know who's considering, uh, signing up for it, or who is already on board, that we're going to be adding even more recipes, including some special ones that feature Shremu, Julie's plant-based cheese, uh, for

• 14:15Rich Roll?

  Valentine's Day and for the Super Bowl, including a discount on Shremu. So keep a lookout for that. Um, we're also going to be offering more fleshed out holiday and seasonal content, uh, in the upcoming year. And the service just keeps getting better and better and better. I'm really proud of, uh, the team that has built this and who manages it. It's really a great product. It's super affordable and, um, just great. So for more on that or to sign up, visit meals.richroll.com.

• 14:45Adam Skolnick?

  Rich Roll, did you just say Super Bowl?

• 14:48Rich Roll?

  I did.

• 14:48Adam Skolnick?

  Super Bowl is not your...

• 14:49Rich Roll?

  Who's playing?

• 14:49Adam Skolnick?

  You're not in the Super Bowl.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  Who's playing in the Super Bowl this year?

• 14:52Adam Skolnick?

  The Rams, buddy.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Adam Skolnick?

  The Rams and some other team.

• 14:56Rich Roll?

  I do know that.

• 14:56Adam Skolnick?

  The Rams against the other guys.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  I flew over when I was flying home last night, we flew over SoFi Stadium. And you know how when you fly over the top, there's like video playing on the top. It like illuminates from the sky.

• 15:09Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, I did not know that.

• 15:10Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool.

• 15:11Adam Skolnick?

  I've never been into SoFi.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  I have not either.

• 15:13Adam Skolnick?

  It was a great finish to the game. It was quite something.

• 15:16Rich Roll?

  It was all going down when I was on an airplane, but.

• 15:18Adam Skolnick?

  Shout out Cooper Cup. Shout out Aaron Donald.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  It's quite a year.

• 15:22Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 15:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But that's about all I have to say about football.

• 15:27Adam Skolnick?

  That you have a Super Bowl, you have a Super Bowl menu.

• 15:29Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about triathlon, Adam. That's something I know a little bit about.

• 15:32Adam Skolnick?

  Let's get into a sport that matters.

• 15:34Rich Roll?

  You know a little bit about because you wrote this New York Times article.

• 15:37Adam Skolnick?

  I did.

• 15:38Rich Roll?

  On the Norwegians, why do they swim bike run so fast? That article did really well. I mean, it had beautiful placement in the printed New York Times. So congrats on that.

• 15:48Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, man. It was great to do. It's further evidence of the ritual podcast effect on the New York Times sports coverage. Because I got the idea based on our very last roll on where you kind of had seeded it. And Christian Blumenfeld, who I'd interviewed for a previous story on Ironman, kind of how they were moving, you know, through you. I got connected to Christian and, and then he, he basically blew the record out of the water of the fastest known Ironman time by six plus minutes. Yeah. Breaking Jan Frodeno's record.

• 16:22Rich Roll?

  Time like 721 or something like that?

• 16:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, 724.

• 16:26Rich Roll?

  724.

• 16:26Adam Skolnick?

  No, you know, it was like, it's in the story.

• 16:29Rich Roll?

  Is that wrong?

• 16:30Adam Skolnick?

  No, 721, I think. You're right. Yeah.

• 16:32Rich Roll?

  I think it was 721.

• 16:34Adam Skolnick?

  And he, um, anyway, so I, I called Talbot Cox to kind of find out what's the story behind all this and how do they do it? Originally, my, my pitch was kind of more like, I'd heard they did some data stuff. I heard, and I was just going to profile Christian. And the more I got into the story, I realized that it was basically this, this money ball comes to multi-sport idea.

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  Right. Cause it's not, I mean, Christian is the tip of the spear, but there's Gustav Eden, Iden. I don't know how you say that was the last name. And then there's another guy.

• 17:04Adam Skolnick?

  Casper.

• 17:05Rich Roll?

  You're right. So there's a whole thing going on in Norway.

• 17:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, so and Casper's won, has beaten both those guys in different events. And Gustav is, was an Olympian and is the world champion at the half Ironman distance. And then you got Christian, who's the Olympic champion in the Olympic distance. And now has the fastest known time. They don't call it a record because of the cosmical course is complicated and is not certified. And so it's originally it was called the world record, but they pulled back, a professional triathlete organization pulled back. But that was the first time he's ever even done the distance. He'd never done the distance ever before. He'd never done an Ironman before. His first time out. Ever. And he's in, so anyway, the story is about how is that possible? How did that happen?

• 17:54Adam Skolnick?

  It's a really interesting, cool story about these three young guys from Bergen. We've known each other like their whole lives. Since they were kids, you know, Christian, you know, they both, they all went to a sports kind of focused high school, kind of like we've had the famed high schools here, that thing. In Europe, there's sports schools that are kind of like that, aimed towards Olympic type sports. He was a swimmer that couldn't win swimming races. He was, he was competitive, but he wasn't winning the races. And so his swim coach basically said, he saw him run one day and ran so well and said, you should try triathlon. He went to a triathlon, local sprint triathlon and won the thing as a high school student. He was 15. And he got a call basically saying, hey, we're starting a, some parent had a kid who

• 18:38Adam Skolnick?

  wanted to get into triathlons and the parent, the father didn't know much about the sport, but he just decided to form a local team. And Christian was one of the guys and these other two guys also were from Bergen and they showed up in this team. So just crazy local talent. But the story itself is really about how the data works and what they do differently. And, and you know, long story short, a serial entrepreneur from the kind of the tech world named Olav Alexander-Bouw, basically decided to shadow the Norwegian team to Rio in 2016 to see if, hey, maybe I can help with this sport. Maybe I could, I know the Norwegians have some good young athletes. Maybe I can help them in some way.

• 19:21Adam Skolnick?

  And basically realized that aside from Dan LaRong, who was a great coach in his own right, and is the coach of Jan Friedino and Lucy Charles Barkley, two of the greats. Aside from him and what he's done with data, no one's even looking at data properly. Even the, even the coaches that are looking at VO2 or looking at lactate, they're not looking at them together and they're not looking at it properly or properly understanding it. So he saw this, this huge gap in the knowledge of what's happening to these athletes. And these athletes, they're constantly on a clock. They're constantly being monitored by their own, their own gadgets. They're constantly eating. There's so much data just there that no one's harvesting.

• 20:01Adam Skolnick?

  So he kind of, it's, it's about Christian's greatness and about Olav and, and Christian working together to harvest as much data as possible and, and all the funny quirks.

• 20:12Rich Roll?

  Right. So there's the inevitable kind of Moneyball analogy of like crunching these numbers and coming up with better strategies for training and racing. I mean, one of the kind of practical takeaways was that Christian was riding too hard, right? So it was, he was suffering on the run. And so they were figured, they figured out exactly how to dial back his bike leg to a very precise degree such that his run would benefit tremendously as a result. Like that would be a specific example.

• 20:41Adam Skolnick?

  A hundred percent. So they were using, they use core heating sensors in a way that no one has, and they, and they use specific sensors where they have a proprietary interest because Olav got with different companies that are working on this stuff and said, hey, let us be your resource. So you can beta test anything you want through us. And so in that, part of that deal is this stuff's proprietary. So they have core heating sensors because this, the skin heat, that's not your real core heat. And but if you got the core heat, you can really find out how close you are to redlining. And so if you pull back just enough, you can maintain that, that proper temperature.

• 21:20Adam Skolnick?

  Because basically the idea is only, even the best cyclists, only about 20 to 25% of the calories they take in goes to work. You know, it goes towards, towards work itself. The rest of it just gets burned off as excess heat. So if you're too hot, if your core temperature is too hot, a lot of the calories you're taking in, all that just goes to heat, it just gets burned away.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  In, in order to cool, it's going towards cooling yourself.

• 21:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, it gets burns, it gets burned off as he, it heats you up, actually. Yeah, so it doesn't go towards cooling yourself, it doesn't do anything productive at all. It just is more, you're feeding a fire that is burning too hot.

• 21:59Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, the core temperature thing is such a big deal. And it's a big reason why so many elite Ironman athletes have had trouble when it comes to Kona. Because they can dominate in these other races and then they get to Kona and the heat and the wind and all this sort of stuff. And they start running into stomach issues and overheating issues that, that they haven't had to contend with. And they don't have appropriate fueling strategies for those because it's so different than these other places. And so even among the best athletes, the most elite out there, they've had struggles. I mean, Chris McCormick went through this, it took him years to like figure out how to solve that equation so that he could win that race. And he's just one of many examples of that.

• 22:44Rich Roll?

  So I think that's super interesting. In addition to that, I know that Christian also wears a CGM, a constant glucose monitor. Or is that what it's, is that what it stands for? Yeah. Super sapiens, so they have, they, they add that like blood glucose detection into that mix as well. And then there's this kind of clickbaity thing about the $2,000 water.

• 23:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 23:07Rich Roll?

  What is that about?

• 23:08Adam Skolnick?

  So it's, it's $2,000 water that's infused with particular isotopes so that when he pees, they can put it into a mass spectrometer and find out how well he's metabolizing oxygen.

• 23:22Adam Skolnick?

  And then he, they also burn fecal samples to find out how well he's metabolizing his, his carbohydrates.

• 23:30Rich Roll?

  What's funny, it was very cheeky, like Christian sometime last week, or when, when did the article come, it came out like 10 days ago or something like that?

• 23:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, something like that, two weeks ago.

• 23:40Rich Roll?

  When it came out, he shared on Instagram stories him drinking the $2,000 water.

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  Which I thought was very funny.

• 23:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Rich Roll?

  But I think it's important to note, like, all of this is really interesting. This is at the very cutting edge of science and sport performance. And we're talking about the most elite athletes in the sport.

• 24:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 24:03Rich Roll?

  And I think it's important to contextualize that against the rest of us, who are the huffer duffers and the average people. Lindsey Krauss, former podcast guest, New York Times writer. Did you see the piece that she just wrote?

• 24:16Adam Skolnick?

  I did not read it, but I did, I did see that.

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  About ditching her data.

• 24:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  Like, basically, the other, that's the other end of the spectrum. Like, I'm done with my, I'm done with my watch. Like, I just want to go out and enjoy running in kind of a more purist way. So both of these have their logic. Like, what is your goal?

• 24:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right, yeah, I agree with you. And, and just real quick, if you want to take a layman's view, if you are interested in getting faster or, or in a, in a, in a scientific way, essentially, basically what people were doing was, the American side of the sport was looking at VO2 max, which is kind of your max potential. And you could hit your max performance, but maybe only hold it for 30 minutes or an hour or something like that. Lactate meters, from what Dan LaRong told me, was more a European thing. They were checking out the lactate tolerance in the blood. And that enabled you to go long, but it wasn't really focused on max performance. It was more focused on maximum endurance. And so what Dan did was mix those two understandings together

• 25:17Adam Skolnick?

  to try to expand your max fitness and hold it for a longer period of time. And, and what Olav Alexander-Buu is doing is basically taking that and jumping, you know, five steps ahead, using more monitors to better understand it. And Dan says, if there's ever a sensor I can't use, he's happy. So Dan is, and he's coached, you know, the, arguably the great, certainly the greatest of his generation, three-time Ironman champion, Jan Frodeno. Who's been able to win races deep into his 30s. I think he's in 40 now or something. And so that, so he cares about data and Dan and, and Olav are friends. And they talk about this stuff a lot. So I don't know. I mean, if you're looking at it from a, from a

• 26:02Adam Skolnick?

  kind of a layman's perspective, there's definitely something there in terms of trying to maximize your best performance rate and then expand that ability to stay there for a long time. Cause we have VO2 max here, but that doesn't really dictate how fast.

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  I've never paid attention to that.

• 26:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:17Rich Roll?

  Ever.

• 26:17Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it's not a real one anyway.

• 26:19Rich Roll?

  But, but setting my zones based on lactate levels has always been super important to me. You know, I talk endlessly about zone two, but understanding what your zone two is, which is where you develop your aerobic base and your aerobic capacity. You have to be properly lactate tested to establish those zones. And the more aerobically fit you are, the flatter that curve is in terms of like the lactate increase as you escalate your, your effort and your intensity. And the quicker you kind of go back to baseline. And in endurance sports like VO2 max, I've always thought of it as being not that important

• 27:01Rich Roll?

  because you're not, what your threshold is, isn't really crucial. It's how vast your aerobic capacity is, like your ability to maintain a, like a sub threshold effort for the longest period of time possible and recover quickly. So that when you, you know, ramp it up into a tempo effort, you can then go quickly back down to baseline.

• 27:26Adam Skolnick?

  And so what they're trying to do is basically make that.

• 27:29Rich Roll?

  Work both sides of that.

• 27:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Adam Skolnick?

  And, and, and make that max something they can hold for a period of time. But anyway, back to your thing, just to wrap it up, Christian won in Tokyo where the heat was, obviously it's very well documented how hot the Olympics were in July in Tokyo. And he won passing runners that were supposed to be faster than him because he had dialed it back just enough on the bike. And then he just, they were wilting and he won the race by 11 seconds.

• 27:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:57Adam Skolnick?

  And the thing that's not in this story that he told me is he called his shot when he was a teenager. When he was 17, he was interviewed by a local paper in Bergen and he guaranteed an Olympic win. Guaranteed it.

• 28:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 28:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And then he did it.

• 28:10Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 28:11Adam Skolnick?

  With this data as part of it. So.

• 28:13Rich Roll?

  But he's not like a boisterous, like he's a very soft spoken, like sweet guy.

• 28:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. But they are, they're hardcore man, these guys, you know, like they, they want to win bad and, and, um, and so it'll be interesting to see what happens, uh, in, in St. George. I'm hoping to be there. And, uh, the funniest part about that story was when I talked to Olaf, he's so smart. Like the first time I talked to him for like two hours, I left the phone. I'm like, I don't even know what, like he's, I shouldn't do this story. I'm not smart enough.

• 28:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:44Adam Skolnick?

  You know, and then I talked to him for like four hours over three different times over a period of time before I fully kind of wrapped my head around, how do I make this simple? How do I make it engaging? Um, uh, because it's all so engaging. How do you kind of pare it down?

• 28:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:58Adam Skolnick?

  And, uh, so that's what it took for me and, and it's, it's, it's pretty funny like how much you have to, cause usually I, I, I just drop into a world and I'm able to figure it out enough and get enough good stuff pretty quickly to turn it around. I like over researching though. So I'm always erring on that side, but with this, it was a real challenge for me to get to that point of, of confidence of writing it.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  Because it was so scientific, so in the weeds.

• 29:23Adam Skolnick?

  And it's so different from what I do, you know? It's like, I mean, my, my inner core is like Lindsey Crowe. Like I didn't have a smart watch till like, I got a dive watch that happens to happen.

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  You don't even have goggles.

• 29:37Adam Skolnick?

  You have smart goggles.

• 29:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do.

• 29:40Adam Skolnick?

  You have smart goggles.

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I don't have dumb goggles.

• 29:45Rich Roll?

  That's cool. No. So everyone check it out. We'll link it up in the show notes along with a couple of other articles about these Norwegians. Did, did you, did you talk before we close this out? Did you talk at all about this sub seven project?

• 29:59Adam Skolnick?

  I, I did. I talked to them about it. We, we didn't include it because that's something for next summer. And so the idea behind the sub seven project, I think we've talked about it on here before.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  I think we have, yeah.

• 30:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Just that there are, it's, it's, um, Christian against, why am I spacing on the other guy's name? It's basically.

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Gustav?

• 30:16Adam Skolnick?

  No, it's not Gustav. It's, it's, um, an English athlete.

• 30:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, one of the Brownlys?

• 30:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Brownlee. Alistair Brownlee. They're going head up against each other and they're trying to do it. It's like the Kipchoge two-hour rattle. And so they're allowed to use a certain number of support crew. I think they're allowed to have a peloton on the bike. It's going to be a very flat course. It's all going to be.

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  They haven't announced the, the course yet or the dates.

• 30:41Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  So we don't know where this is going to happen.

• 30:42Adam Skolnick?

  So the goal is.

• 30:43Rich Roll?

  Did they tell you and you can't say?

• 30:44Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. Nothing's been, nothing's been announced yet. And, um, but, uh, yeah, I think it was 7:21 and change was his time. So he has, he has to find 20 more minutes. But, you know, if you read the story, you'll see Christian was suffering from stomach problems that whole week before Cozumel.

• 31:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:02Adam Skolnick?

  And.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  He had a virus or something.

• 31:04Adam Skolnick?

  But you know, I talked to the guy who owns the Cozumel Ironman and he owns the company that puts it on. And he said that everyone was raving about Christian, how, how mellow he was. He showed up there at like midnight at the airport by himself, no entourage, no nothing, not, not fussy at all. And just he was like embraced and beloved by the, the, the people who put on the race. So that's cool.

• 31:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool.

• 31:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  Um, good. Well, keep us posted.

• 31:32Adam Skolnick?

  I will.

• 31:32Rich Roll?

  All right, uh, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with thoughts on the whole Joe Rogan Spotify situation, uh, some thoughts on my sabbatical, what I took away from that. Uh, a couple of other cool things, some listener questions and more.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  So Adam, I don't know if you know this, but the culture war is afoot. It is alive and well. Are we really going to step into this?

• 32:07Adam Skolnick?

  Very, very gingerly.

• 32:08Rich Roll?

  There's no winners.

• 32:09Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody wins in this space.

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  By talking about this.

• 32:11Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, nobody wins in this space.

• 32:13Rich Roll?

  But it is what's happening right now. And I guess I feel like it's on a lot of people's minds. And I know that people have reached out to me. They'd like me to offer some thoughts about this, which I have some trepidation around because I'm not one for advice. If there's one thing that I've learned, and I learned this in recovery early and often, I'm reluctant to give advice. I'm somebody who likes to share. From a perspective of experience. So I try to steer clear of treading in waters where I'm not an expert. So we're going to talk about this, perhaps briefly, and as kind

• 32:55Rich Roll?

  of gently as we can. But I think as many people know, there's this controversy that's occurred over the last several days where Joe Rogan is sort of in the midst of a crossfire over particularly recent podcast episodes with McCullough and Malone, these, I don't know how you would characterize them, doctors with non-mainstream opinions about vaccination. And the results of these conversations have caused certain artists out there to decide

• 33:38Rich Roll?

  to pull their music from Spotify, which has put Spotify in this position of needing to or feeling like they have to respond to this. And Spotify, as of yesterday, had published a blog post by Daniel Ek, their CEO, wherein he kind of disclosed publicly for the first time these content guidelines and how they're going to, I guess, label certain conversations from time to time that are potentially in that misinformation space. And so, of course, this has caused quite the outbreak of opinionated puppet masters out there. What is your take on this?

• 34:21Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I mean, not just opinions, but Spotify's stock went down 6% at one point.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think they lost $4 billion in market share. And there's other factors. I don't think you can just point to the Joe Rogan controversy and say this is all because of that.

• 34:38Adam Skolnick?

  No, I think it was Barry Manilow getting involved. Yeah, because first it was Neil Young, then Barry Manilow.

• 34:43Rich Roll?

  But then Barry Manilow tweeted the other day, like, I don't know what people are talking about. I haven't said anything about this.

• 34:48Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 34:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sorry, that was some misinformation on my part.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  There's some misinformation right there.

• 34:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  Barry Manilow, missing.

• 34:54Adam Skolnick?

  Do you remember when he was, he was brought into this somehow?

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. You have to take all of this with a little bit of a grain of salt.

• 35:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, my theory on all of this stuff is.

• 35:06Adam Skolnick?

  First of all, there's only one kind of free speech. And so you're either in favor of free speech, whether that's free speech moderated by companies or free speech moderated by governments, or you're not. And you have a problem, you want to control speech in some way. And I'm in favor of free speech and may the best ideas win. And secondly, I don't think Joe Rogan traffics intentionally in misinformation. So that's the other thing. He might, he might have opinions that differ from people. He might be a libertarian. Remember, he was pro Bernie Sanders also at one point. So he's got very interesting viewpoints, but he's not, he's not, we're not comparing

• 35:49Adam Skolnick?

  him to Fox News anchors that are intentionally muddying the waters and, and causing disinformation. I, I, I hold him in a completely different space and I don't go to him for medical advice. So those are my ultimate opinions on that. And I think that in this culture war, we are trapped between the righteous and the ignorant. Those are the two loud viewpoints that we have. We have the righteous, the self-righteous, and we have the, the malevolent, what am I, malevolent, malevolent, the malevolence of ignorance on the other. And it's not that fun to be in that space, you know, because it's loud and it's disorienting and most of us are not there. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. We can handle differing opinions.

• 36:33Adam Skolnick?

  We can figure out what to believe. And, and the funny part about being between those two poles is that on social media, we all toggle between them. We can all be righteous and we can all be a little bit ignorant. And so, you know, when we do that, when we, when we make the people who have dissenting opinions, we try to, when we try to snuff them out, we make them heroes. We make them the anti-establishment. We make them the punk rockers. We turn people like Matt Gaetz, who's the most punchable face in America, into a hero for all sorts of young people out there that are looking at the mainstream culture and thinking, no.

• 37:15Adam Skolnick?

  And that's dangerous. That's why, you know, the Balinese have this culture, cultural idea of you can't crush the darkness. There's light and there's darkness and you can't try to obliterate it. That's the point of free speech. You can't try to knock it out entirely. It's impossible. That's why you have to cherish speech and let everybody talk because then that only helps you figure out the best way to go forward. I know it's a challenging time, but that's really the only way because when you ridicule people like Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving and these people who have these, like you said, non-mainstream opinions about vaccines, you make them heroes. You actually elevate them. And that's the problem.

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  The Streisand effect.

• 37:57Adam Skolnick?

  The Streisand effect.

• 37:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How do you feel about Spotify's declarations around, you know, content moderation and labeling and the like? I mean, they're sort of, you know, taking a page out of the Facebook playbook. Like, are you, are you just a distribution platform or are you a publisher? And that's a very difficult situation to be in. It's almost an impossible situation for Spotify. I don't see them, you know, like kicking Rogan off the platform. I don't think that's going to happen, nor do I think that they should do that. So they kind of issued this somewhat, you know, toothless response about, you know, well, we're going

• 38:43Rich Roll?

  to do a better job of putting labels on things from time to time or pulling things that clearly violate our relatively vague policy.

• 38:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, and I like the label because then I could just say, oh, he's going to talk about COVID-19. I won't tune in. I feel like I'm getting enough COVID information. I don't need to actively seek out more. That's what's so weird is it's like, there's a lot of people making a living off of screaming and yelling about COVID.

• 39:07Rich Roll?

  Well, sure. And the incentives are set up such that particularly on Twitter, there's no incentive to be nuanced and balanced about anything. You're rewarded for outrage on both sides of, of, you know, this spectrum. So with the exception of the occasional Super long thread, you know, like it's the hot take, you know, that that basically travels. Right. And that's what we're trafficking in. But I think it is important to point out, as you astutely noted a moment ago, that most people are not in this space. Like, we're kind of in the middle. We're trying to figure out what's true and what's not. And give us a little bit of credit when it comes to discernment. Right. Right?

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  Over the course of my sabbatical, I did spend a fair amount of time trying to make sense for myself of this world that feels, you know, at times like it's, you know, losing its grip on reality, depending upon what your information bubble looks like.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  So, you know, on the on the subject of the sort of polar extremes, on the one hand, are, you know, we could hold the perspective, are people and institutions flawed and sometimes mistaken? Does science make mistakes? Or does science, from time to time, change their mind when new information comes in? Does the scientific, does the consensus scientific community screw up? And at times air egregiously when it comes to messaging the populace? Are the incentives of the media misaligned? Do we have serious problems in government, tech, media, and at times, science? Like, I would agree. Yes. All of those things are true. Yes.

• 40:58Rich Roll?

  Or is there a secret psyops event of untold proportions afoot? Where this cabal of organized evil is organizing to to control our minds and our bodies? Yes. I mean, no, wait, that's not true.

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  Maybe part of that is true. I don't know. Probably not. But this idea, you know, that that either like we should just.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  You know, give Anthony Fauci a crown and, you know, name all our pets Fauci and just, you know, put him on our t-shirts and lay down at his feet, or, you know, there's a crazy conspiracy afoot of mind control.

• 41:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Are people naming their dogs Fauci? Because that is a good dog name.

• 41:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a thing, for sure. A lot of people are doing that.

• 41:50Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. I didn't realize he was worshiped.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  So, listen, you know, I, I, you know, I live in the gray and I live in the nuance, and, you know, I defer to that former idea, which, which is that, you know, there are scientists who are working hard to solve a very difficult problem, and they're doing it anonymously and imperfectly, and the messaging isn't always great, and there's been lots of flubs, and there's reason to distrust the media. And I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. I don't want to go down some crazy vaccine rabbit hole. I really don't want to dwell on this very long. I am, like I said at the outset, reluctant to even bring it up because it is so unbelievably divisive and because whatever I say is unlikely to change anyone's

• 42:33Rich Roll?

  mind. But I do feel that it is important to say that although there have been mistakes and there's been overreach, you know, I'm not in favor of mandates. And I think that, you know, there's been a lot of errors made in terms of kids in schools and, you know, what's going on there. And I understand the problems of Big Pharma and the misaligned incentives there. But I do, like I said, believe that there are good people, good scientists, who are trying to solve difficult problems imperfectly. And as for the Rogan kind of Spotify situation specifically, I'm not into deplatforming. I don't think that's a solution. I don't think that he should be punted off Spotify. And I think this goes back to this

• 43:16Rich Roll?

  issue of incentives. There are incentives to, to host heterodox thinkers, and there are incentives to be heterodox in your thinking. And I think heterodoxy is very appealing to many right now, especially with this degraded trust in media and institutions, and even more so when that heterodox thinking entails a conspiracy. There's something about our neurochemistry that lights up. Suddenly, the world makes sense. And when you combine that with this media distrust, it creates an interesting and at times problematic scenario. But the truth is, just because... You are heterodox does not mean that you are correct.

• 43:59Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 44:00Rich Roll?

  Maybe you were correct about one thing, but perhaps you were wrong about a thousand other things. And I think generally, the heterodox idea is not correct. You know, consensus scientists are not out doing podcasts. And many of these heterodox, secular guru types, if you look at them, if you kind of canvass these people and try to identify similarities or common themes amongst them, a lot of them seem to have a past where they have been dismissed, or ignored, or maligned by institutions, particularly academic institutions.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  And as such, their anti-establishment perspectives then become fueled by resentment, and jealousy, and pettiness. So it's this misunderstood genius problem, right? Like, I figured this out, nobody is seeing me, and there's like, an irritation there that is driving this need to be seen, and to be heard, and to become like this secular guru on the internet.

• 45:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And then, and then you take that, that's a great, that's a great backstory for, you know, like, misunderstood genius X, which is like, is so true. And then you take that, and then what you get is people who are skeptical, but they're only skeptical in one way, right? I'm skeptical of mainstream media, or I'm skeptical of Big Pharma. Then they hear someone like that, but they don't bring that same skepticism for this random person that they never heard of until they were on a certain podcast.

• 45:37Rich Roll?

  The skepticism is very specifically directed.

• 45:40Adam Skolnick?

  And you know, my theory on that is?

• 45:42Rich Roll?

  As long, as long as that, as long as that misunderstood genius aligns with that worldview, then suddenly, there's a myopia when it comes to that skepticism being applied to that person.

• 45:54Adam Skolnick?

  If COVID-19 has revealed anything specifically to the United States of America, it's that we are intensely self-interested, and I would say, only self-interested. And these culture wars do the same thing. They focus every, we, through this lens, I'm going to tell myself a story. And- You know, I had very good friends that had their four-month-old in the hospital for a week in the last, you know, right before all this kind of talk broke out. And it was very touch and go, COVID, COVID positive, also got RSV. So fighting two of these crazy viruses at four months old. On oxygen for three days in intensive care. Baby's fine now, it's all gonna be good. But, you know, I know the stakes. You know, I have a 17-month-old at home.

• 46:38Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I'm very careful. I don't live, we don't live normal life still, even though a lot of people are getting comfortable with the way things are. I'm still, I'm still very careful. We're still very careful. And so I know the stakes. And, and so, but the thing is, is like the people in my position with children under five and can't be vaccinated are, you know, we, we see things and, and we think people should act in a way that would suit our particular situation. People in, in your position that have older kids that are dealing with kids that have to be in masks at school, or, or maybe my sister's kids are a little bit older than mine. They're seeing the same kind of thing. They're like, well, how can I make this work that's not going to impact my child's early

• 47:23Adam Skolnick?

  education, my child's language acquisition, which is some of the problems with masks at schools. And so we all see these things through, we have to remind ourselves, we're seeing it through our lens, you know, and nobody else is seeing it through our lens. You know, like, and, and you have your little subgroup, but that doesn't make your subgroup correct that other people should be acting a certain way, but we lose track of that, right? And that, and we, you can put any issue on the table, I guarantee it's not that different. You know, it's like, we're so self-interested, we're so obsessed with what's affecting us that, that, you know, a mask is a big problem, or this is a big problem. And then you, you look at other countries that 95% are, are in line with whatever the public health information they're getting tells them, and that tells me that they care

• 48:08Adam Skolnick?

  more about the public a little bit more, because maybe they don't agree with all of that, but they're willing to do it, because that's what they are told the community needs. And so I'm not making any judgments on anybody. I'm just kind of reminding us all that we are all just self-interested. A-holes at heart.

• 48:25Rich Roll?

  Well, there's something very, very American about that. And this idea of rugged individualism, and it's all about liberty. But liberty has to be calibrated against responsibility.

• 48:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 48:36Rich Roll?

  Those liberties require a certain level of responsibility. And what is our responsibility to the collective whole? Right? And so sometimes we've got to do things that we don't want to do.

• 48:47Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:47Rich Roll?

  For the betterment of everyone. But I think that breaks down with this loss of trust in the media. When we feel like we're not getting the full truth, or the whole truth, or we're being misguided. And I think that that distrust has eroded to the point where it's perhaps irreparable for certain people. And it creates this receptivity to other ideas, or a sense of transparency and honesty from other people, where the message is coming to them in an unfiltered way. And there's a lack of skepticism is one word, but also just critical thinking around, you know, the information that we're receiving.

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  And so I think it, again, like, I'm not into deplatforming anyone. And like, I think, you know, that gets, that's a little too close to banning books, which is also the other thing that's going on right now.

• 49:43Adam Skolnick?

  It's happened, right.

• 49:44Rich Roll?

  It's going, this is happening in tandem. And the people that, you know, it's interesting that the people that want to ban these certain books from schools are probably by and large like pro Joe Rogan.

• 49:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  And the people that want to deplatform Rogan are railing against the banning of the books. These things, you can't have these things both ways.

• 50:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And in one book in particular that was more recent was Mouse, which is a seminal graphic novel about what Jews went through and.

• 50:15Adam Skolnick?

  During the Holocaust, and it's amazing book, and I highly recommend it. And it just displays in a couple of ways, because you, I don't, I don't think the people that are banning Mouse in Tennessee in that one school district actually listen to Joe Rogan. They're just a bunch of, like, there obviously is a white nationalist problem in that county. You can't, there's no other way to interpret that. And they're not the only people who are saying, comparing what's happening now to the Holocaust. So that's happening at the same time. So, right wing people are banning the Mouse, and at the same time, people on the right are comparing the, what unvaccinated people in this country are going through to the Jews and the Holocaust.

• 50:57Adam Skolnick?

  And it's extremely irresponsible and very offensive for me personally to hear that. And it's absolutely absurd, but I would never ban them from being able to say that. You know what I mean? Like, I'm, I'm like the ACLU, old ACLU.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  Old, yeah, not the current ACLU, which just seems to have lost its, like, sort of, like, footing with all of this.

• 51:19Adam Skolnick?

  I'm the old ACLU that says, "Let the idiot Nazis speak, because they're such morons, no one will ever..."

• 51:25Rich Roll?

  The Ira Glass, wasn't that the guy's name, he used to run that, yeah.

• 51:28Adam Skolnick?

  Ira Glass?

• 51:29Rich Roll?

  I think that's his name, yeah.

• 51:30Adam Skolnick?

  Is it really? The other Ira Glass.

• 51:32Rich Roll?

  The other Ira Glass.

• 51:34Adam Skolnick?

  Anyway, but you, you, you hit the nail on the head, like, the Mouse book is being, is being banned, and everyone's like, "That's impossible," but they, you're right. Plenty of people on the left are looking at Joe Rogan and saying, "Well, he should be held responsible." And it's like, you can't have it both ways. There's only one way.

• 51:51Rich Roll?

  But you can also make the argument, can you not, that Neil Young saying, "I don't want my music on Spotify," is his exercise of speech. There's a subtext to that, because it's coupled with his, you know, sort of, demand either take Rogan off the pod, off of Spotify, or I'll do this. So it's speech coupled with that interest. So there is a deplatforming energy behind that.

• 52:17Adam Skolnick?

  Definitely.

• 52:18Rich Roll?

  Which makes it a little bit more than just speech, but it is an exercise of speech, nonetheless.

• 52:22Adam Skolnick?

  It is, I mean, he's allowed to do that, obviously, he's... Come on, everyone loves Neil Young. I have so much respect for Neil Young and his music's incredible and he's always been very political and I support anyone's, they can try to do it, but then you don't tell me in the very next day when you release a second statement that you're always pro free speech because you're actually not. You are not. You're pro, you're pro a certain political point of view, which is you're right and that's fine. And you're using your incredibly powerful music to get a point across and it's had a huge impact. So, but I don't believe that that is a objectively old ACLU free speech take. I don't think he probably is in that camp, you know, and so.

• 53:06Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, Brene Brown announced that she would not, who has an exclusive deal with Spotify, I think she has two podcasts there, is not going to be releasing any new episodes, which is, that's a bold move on her part.

• 53:18Adam Skolnick?

  Very bold, you know, like it's very interesting to see it happen and I'm so like, I've become, you know, I was very political in the early and mid 90s. Like I was an activist during a time when everyone was making a ton of money and nobody really cared about these thorny issues. And I was dedicating my life to it, making no money. And, and so it's funny to be in this position now where everyone is intensely political. It makes me want to not be, it makes me want to be completely apolitical. That's how I think about these intensely political people right now. I'm actually getting a view of what I sounded like.

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  Like being the Nirvana fan from day one and then, and then deciding you're no longer a Nirvana fan when they left Sub Pop or what, you know?

• 54:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, something like that. Right, exactly. I'm like, I'm looking at it now, I'm like, God, did I sound like that to people for five years? Because that's, you know, you're surrounded by people from different sides and most people are uninformed. You know, that's, that's the bottom line.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So again, I, I just think, again, like, you know, deplatforming is not the answer here. Censorship is not the answer here. It's taking responsibility for having a more robust information diet and, you know, shouldering the responsibility to be a critical thinker with respect to everything that's coming in, not just the stuff you disagree with, but the stuff that, you know, tends to light you up inside anyway, like rings those dopamine bells. And so I thought.

• 54:48Rich Roll?

  It would be helpful, especially for those that might feel the tug or the pull or the seduction of some of these secular gurus who are spinning heterodox thought out there, to offer a couple

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  content pieces that might expand your silo. And one that I found very helpful and enjoyable at the same time entertaining is a podcast called Decoding the Gurus. These guys are great. It's these two guys, Chris Kavanaugh and Matt Brown. Chris is from Belfast and Matt, I think he lives in Melbourne, he's Australian, an anthropologist and a psychologist who basically deconstruct podcast episodes with some of these secular gurus, particularly the well-known members of the IDW.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  And they really do a great job of separating the wheat from the chaff and helping you to understand how to separate or kind of discern what's factual, what's baseless, how to tell the difference.

• 56:05Adam Skolnick?

  IDW, meaning Internet Dark

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  Intellectual Dark Web.

• 56:08Adam Skolnick?

  Intellectual Dark Web.

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  And kind of distinguishing between good and bad science. And they do it in a very entertaining way. They have a great dynamic. I mean, nothing like you and me.

• 56:18Adam Skolnick?

  No, I mean, come on.

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  I mean, they're pretenders of the crown when it comes to that.

• 56:21Adam Skolnick?

  If you want some good talking head content, come to us.

• 56:23Rich Roll?

  The accents are great and they have a lot of fun doing it. And I found it to be enjoyable to listen to these guys. And in terms of like, I hate this word, but like sense-making, right? Like, how do we make sense? Like, what is true and what isn't? And we all need a little bit of help and we need to step outside of our comfort zones and hear from other people. We can't just take what we hear for granted. Let's also entertain some critical thought around those ideas. Another

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  Suggestion would be Rebel Wisdom. Scott David Fuller, who's a former BBC journalist, who I would deem basically somebody who's doing responsible heterodoxy, who kind of looks at the heterodox space, tries to understand what's good heterodox thought and what isn't. And he's got a YouTube channel, makes lots of videos about this subject matter, and I find him to be fairly reliable and smart and informative. And then the third would be, and this is specific to kind of the vaccine space, Peter Attia's The Drive Podcast, where he's had a couple, what I would characterize as very balanced, responsible discussions on

• 57:38Rich Roll?

  COVID and vaccines.

• 57:41Adam Skolnick?

  Early on, he was, early on, he was very much saying, no, this is real. COVID's very scary.

• 57:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, he's very, he's very pro-vaccine, but also not afraid to be critical where public health policy seems to disconnect from logic. Like, for example, if, if young children are in school, they're all vaccinated, the teachers are vaccinated, like, why are they all wearing masks? Like, does this make sense? Like, having kind of a grounded conversation around the science. And he's done some, I think, you know, pretty responsible advocacy around this in terms of what is true, what isn't true, when it comes to vaccines and vax safety. A couple of recent podcasts where he had Z-Dog on

• 58:31Rich Roll?

  there, Zubin, I forget his last name.

• 58:33Adam Skolnick?

  Z-Dog?

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Z-Dog.

• 58:35Adam Skolnick?

  That sounds like, Peter likes to, Peter, Peter's proud of his physique, too, I've noticed.

• 58:40Rich Roll?

  He's, he's, well, Peter's an interesting guy.

• 58:44Adam Skolnick?

  He's very strong.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  He is an ultra endurance swimmer.

• 58:48Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  He, I think, I'm pretty sure he's tight with Steve Munatones.

• 58:51Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 58:52Rich Roll?

  Well, Peter had, I think he did a double Lanai to Maui crossing.

• 58:56Adam Skolnick?

  Peter did that?

• 58:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like a long time, a long time ago.

• 58:58Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 58:59Rich Roll?

  And he's done some pretty interesting cycling stuff.

• 59:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  He's very fit.

• 59:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  I mean, he's a, he's a good athlete.

• 59:05Adam Skolnick?

  Good Instagram follower.

• 59:06Rich Roll?

  And pretty smart and just, you know, grounded in his approach to all of this. So maybe check that out as well. As for Spotify, again, you know, they're in a tough spot. It'll be interesting to see how this story kind of unfolds over the coming weeks because I think we're definitely not done with this.

• 59:25Adam Skolnick?

  No, but we are.

• 59:27Rich Roll?

  No, maybe we're done talking about it. I mean, this story is still unfolding is what I'm saying.

• 59:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  And by the time this podcast comes out on Thursday, who knows where all of this will be.

• 59:36Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you know, one final note on the book banning. By the way, the author of The Sympathizer, which is a great novel, kind of a Vietnam War novel from a Vietnam, Vietnamese person's perspective. He's an American of Vietnamese heritage. His name is Viet Thanh Nguyen. He wrote a great piece about books and book banning and all of that in The New York Times as an opinion piece. He's a professor at USC, great novelist. His novel won the National Book Award, I'm pretty sure. And anyway, he had a great piece about and very much against any sort of, you know, deplatforming and book banning type thing.

• 1:00:18Adam Skolnick?

  And one of the points he makes is anytime you ban a book, you know, look what happens. And Mouse, which was banned in this one county in one school district in Tennessee, is, was number four on Amazon when I went to buy it.

• 1:00:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Adam Skolnick?

  Like, because I'd given my copy away years ago.

• 1:00:33Rich Roll?

  I noticed that as well.

• 1:00:33Adam Skolnick?

  And so it's like. That's the point we're trying to make, right? Like, the deplatforming thing? If you really care, it doesn't actually help. Like, if your problem is too many people are hearing this, deplatforming won't solve that problem.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  Well, particularly in Rogan's case.

• 1:00:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  I mean, biggest podcast in the world. He could go anywhere and take his entire audience with him.

• 1:00:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:53Rich Roll?

  It's a non-issue.

• 1:00:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:55Rich Roll?

  You know, maybe he would be even better off or happier if Podcast or if Spotify found a way to release him from that contract or let him go.

• 1:01:04Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe, who knows?

• 1:01:05Rich Roll?

  So, it's not even really...

• 1:01:07Adam Skolnick?

  His podcast would still be huge, is the point.

• 1:01:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe even bigger.

• 1:01:10Rich Roll?

  It wouldn't suffer in the least. It might even grow larger.

• 1:01:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:01:14Rich Roll?

  All right, uh, let's move on. Um, I want to talk about things I learned, uh, on my month off, but before that, we have another little thing that I want to cover.

• 1:01:26Adam Skolnick?

  Another meta? Another piece of the metaverse?

• 1:01:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. This also relates to, like, media and news and, you know, and fake news and misinformation, I suppose.

• 1:01:38Adam Skolnick?

  You got served by the metaverse.

• 1:01:40Rich Roll?

  A little bit. The meta... yeah, the metaverse?

• 1:01:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, isn't it? Well...

• 1:01:43Rich Roll?

  The internet.

• 1:01:44Adam Skolnick?

  The internet, like, basically, something about you is picked up and examined by, like, individuals on the internet. And so, like, it was like an internet thing that was examined by the internet in a hundred different ways.

• 1:01:56Rich Roll?

  Right. So, what happened was, um, a couple of weeks ago, I was a guest on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And that was a big deal for me. I mean, he's, you know, got this incredible, uh, podcast and unbelievable audience. It was quite an honor for me to be a guest on that show. And, uh, and I was, you know, in all honesty, in transparency, like, I was nervous.

• 1:02:19Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:02:19Rich Roll?

  And then even after we recorded it, I was all up in my head about it. I was like, I don't think I... I don't feel like I did a good job. And I was like, oh, no one's gonna like this.

• 1:02:27Adam Skolnick?

  Really? You get that way?

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was totally up in my head about it.

• 1:02:29Adam Skolnick?

  Because that's how your guests feel when they leave here.

• 1:02:31Rich Roll?

  And now I have a lot more sympathy, because, yeah, there... that has been a thing, you know, recently with a couple of guests. Um, and I'm always assuring them, like, that they were great. And I literally, for like, two weeks or whatever, was like, I blew that. It was a great opportunity to, like... But anyway, people seem to enjoy it. I think it's

• 1:02:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  doing well or did well. And I got a lot of nice feedback and comments from a lot of people. And it was really, again, like an honor to share parts of my story with this audience. In that conversation, though, I told the tent story, which I've told many times here. I don't need to rehash it. I sleep in a tent. I have slept in a tent for a couple of years. There's many reasons for that. I explained the basics of that to Tim. And that story ended up getting picked up by the media while I was away. Insider, which I think is a subsidiary of Business Insider that covers kind of the creator economy.

• 1:03:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:28Rich Roll?

  The internet.

• 1:03:31Rich Roll?

  Published an article called "A Man Who Sleeps in a Tent in His Yard While His Wife Sleeps in Their Bed."

• 1:03:38Adam Skolnick?

  While his wife is confined to the bed.

• 1:03:40Rich Roll?

  Listen, it could have been worse, but it was kind of a snarky, clickbaity, you know, non-story of an article. But apparently, a lot of people read that because it was like trending on their site for a day or two. And

• 1:03:56Adam Skolnick?

  Didn't they use like a piece of content that you'd put up on your Instagram?

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  I had made a video like five years ago or something like that. Why I sleep in a tent. It was a video I made forever ago.

• 1:04:07Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  And that was like And that resurfaced as a result of this. And now it's gotten tons of views over the last like week and a half or whatever as a result of this. But it was being picked up as if this was had just happened. Like, nobody said like, oh, here's a video I made five years ago. It was like, oh, I just made this video yesterday.

• 1:04:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  But it's because I had been on Tim's show. So that kind of, you know, put it into, you know, into kind of a current lens.

• 1:04:36Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  And what was funny about that article was like clearly the journalist didn't really know anything about me, didn't, you know, didn't appear to even really Google me. It was just a very, you know, kind of what you would expect from, it's sort of a hackneyed, whatever piece.

• 1:04:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  But, and so I was like, I'm just ignoring this. Like I said, it wasn't, if you read it, it's not necessarily that bad. At times it actually kind of defends me like.

• 1:05:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:05:05Rich Roll?

  But it's sort of presented as if like this guy, you know, this guy, rich Malibu guy sleeps in his backyard and like, you know, while his wife's here, claims his marriage is fine, but could that possibly be true?

• 1:05:19Adam Skolnick?

  It's like, it was like, it was like a story written by the, the clickbait journalist from White Lotus. It was that kind of a.

• 1:05:27Rich Roll?

  Exact, in fact, I thought of that. Yeah. Where Connie Britton dresses her down for her listicles.

• 1:05:33Adam Skolnick?

  Her horrible listicles.

• 1:05:34Rich Roll?

  Calling herself a journalist.

• 1:05:35Adam Skolnick?

  It was like written by a listicle specialist.

• 1:05:38Rich Roll?

  Basically, that's, that's exactly right.

• 1:05:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:05:40Rich Roll?

  So I was like, I'm ignoring this, it'll go away, this is not real. And then the news cycle just continued to move along, like it got picked up. I guess like these articles get syndicated.

• 1:05:52Adam Skolnick?

  I guess.

• 1:05:53Rich Roll?

  So then they end up on all these other websites.

• 1:05:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, the same one ended up on Yahoo.

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  They get translated, it was on Yahoo, MSN, it just wouldn't go away.

• 1:06:00Adam Skolnick?

  They're reading about you in Burkina Faso.

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  There was like, like on Twitter, there was a local radio DJ who did five minutes on it, making fun of me like in some, I don't even know where, you know? I was like, I can't believe this. And then The Young Turks, which is a big progressive news YouTube channel, they have like 5 million subscribers. Um, well, there's, there's, is it Chank, Sank? How do you say his name? Sank Younger, the main guy on The Young Turks.

• 1:06:31Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:06:32Rich Roll?

  But there's these other two pundits, Anna Kasparian and John Landarola, who do a show there, I guess.

• 1:06:39Adam Skolnick?

  I guess.

• 1:06:40Rich Roll?

  And so they did a whole thing, made a video, why is his husband sleeping alone in a tent? And did like 10 minutes on me for this standalone video on The Young Turks. That has like over 100,000 views where they're just making fun of me and riffing. About this.

• 1:06:55Adam Skolnick?

  John is kind of defending you.

• 1:06:57Rich Roll?

  A little bit.

• 1:06:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Rich Roll?

  He did a little bit.

• 1:06:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Rich Roll?

  She was taking hits at me.

• 1:07:01Adam Skolnick?

  She was.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  But neither of them, like, just if you just Googled my name, or just like, "Oh, he has a podcast," or "Oh, he wrote a book," or "Oh..."

• 1:07:07Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, he's bigger than we are.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  No, it was just rich Malibu guy, like, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it just, it wasn't like, again, I just decided to ignore this whole thing. But I think the kind of takeaway, it was weird.

• 1:07:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Rich Roll?

  And it was definitely, like, it could have gone worse. And it is this weird feeling of vulnerability. I mean, I did make that video, "Why I Sleep in a Tent," so I put it out there, and I told the story on Tim, and I've talked about it many times here, so I'm not hiding anything.

• 1:07:36Adam Skolnick?

  No, there was also that...

• 1:07:37Rich Roll?

  But there is, like, when you're at the, when you're, when you're at the prey of some journalist and their hot take, you feel a little bit powerless, like, "Oh, they're gonna spin this story," and I feel defenseless here. It is a weird feeling, and it made me realize also, like, I can't believe what you see, or what you read, or what you, you know? It's like, this is just, these people are just doing a job, they need to fill this content. Like, why are the Young Turks even talking about this at all? This is not about news, or politics, or anything like that. Was it a slow news day? It's just something that's entertaining for people. "Oh, here's something to, you know, here's some, you know, junk fast food, uh, story for you to chew on for five minutes."

• 1:08:20Adam Skolnick?

  Well, my biggest takeaway from the Young Turks thing is, it reminded me why I've never watched or listened to the Young Turks. Like, I'm not interested. But, uh, but also, there's a difference between journalism, actual journalism, and what you've described here. And the problem is, now, people look at that, and they think that's what they think journalism is. And it is, unfortunately, like, you go on CNN, and any, any, any major news network, and it's mostly a bunch of talking heads talking about stuff. It's not really reporters on the ground doing the hard work. And so then, we look at the, you know, the Young Turks talking about this story, and it's as if, as if that's a story, like, it's as if that's a news story to be discussed by people and parsed.

• 1:09:01Adam Skolnick?

  And it's, it's, um, it's very, it's very lazy and, and bad content, and, uh, and...

• 1:09:09Adam Skolnick?

  And strange to go in and take someone's like sleep habits. It's it's cool for you to talk about because it's important for to you. But it's not cool for like, I think it's just bizarre that like people take these non-stories and make them into things just to fill our ears with sound.

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so anyway, that was a it was a I think I think basically in the wake of the whole thing, I should just by the way, like I've upgraded the tent since then.

• 1:09:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  So I got back last night, like I got the glamping tent set up. It's super dope. I've got a bed. It's amazing, right? So I think I'm just gonna take some photos in the tent or in front of the tent and just say fuck you. Yeah, I fucking sleep in the tent.

• 1:09:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, here's my tent asshole.

• 1:09:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Adam Skolnick?

  Um, I also think um, that uh, you know, I think of the Willie Nelson phrase. Where he said, he told, I I once interviewed Jack Johnson and Willie Nelson told him once, you don't read your press, you weigh it. In that like in in your case, it's like, who cares what they're saying about you? They're saying something about you and that's all that matters.

• 1:10:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's just weird.

• 1:10:18Adam Skolnick?

  It is weird.

• 1:10:19Rich Roll?

  You know, anyway, um, all right, let's move on. So.

• 1:10:26Rich Roll?

  I just spent a full month in Maui. I flew there on January 1st, just got back last night. Today's the 31st. This is the third year that I've taken this sabbatical.

• 1:10:43Rich Roll?

  And so I thought it would be kind of instructive to talk a little bit about like why I do this and what I've learned. And it was just a great experience. I mean, it's the most chill and relaxed and distant that I've been from work in the three years that I've started doing this. And I just feel so refreshed and renewed from the experience. Basically, it was an opportunity to completely break ranks with work, be off the computer, be off email, uh, not have anything to do with anything professional and just exercise some self-care. So I established like a daily routine. I brought my bike, so I would ride every other day and on the days in between, I'd

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  go to the gym and swim and chill. I just feel. Better than I have in quite a long time physically and mentally. And I went to Maui. I was originally, I wanted to go to Byron Bay in Australia again, but just getting to Australia was too problematic with COVID and all of that. And Maui was the one Hawaiian island that I knew the least about. I've spent tons of time on the big island, tons of time on Kauai. I'd been to Maui before. I did Epic Five there and I'd been there on one other occasion. But I wanted to learn more about that island. And now, in retrospect, it's like my favorite island. It was so great. Oh, yeah? First of all, it has the best cycling of any island in Hawaii. Because the terrain?

• 1:12:08Rich Roll?

  First of all, the pavement is great everywhere, which is not the case on some of the other islands. But there's a lot of terrain variability, tons of coastal rides and climbs, and a lot of really interesting routes up country and inland. And then, of course, you have the Haleakala climb, which I did last Thursday. Did you? Yeah. Shout out to Jonathan Hostic and his beautiful wife Laura and their kids, Marin and Isla. So Jonathan was a guy, I was out riding one day and I was going up this climb and the guy rode down past me, but he shouted my name out. I knew he recognized me.

• 1:12:50Rich Roll?

  And he whipped around. We rode a little bit together and he just said, I'm here for a while. I live in Toronto. I'm just gonna be riding every day if you want to ride. And I'm gonna do Haleakala probably a couple of times. So if you want to do it, Laura will sag us, crew us. Oh, cool. So we have some support. And I thought that would be cool. So last Thursday, we did it. It's a 34-mile climb where you gain 10,000 feet of elevation. And this is half-assed internet research, but I think it's the second longest climb in the world. That's what Jonathan said. We should probably fact-check that. But... Incredible, like to climb to 10,000 feet and we had this epic day where usually it's

• 1:13:34Rich Roll?

  freezing up there when you get to the top, but it was like 63 degrees and totally pleasant above the cloud line, just, you know, extraordinary, but that was just one of like many epic rides. So I really kind of fell back in love with riding because I hadn't been cycling that much and because of my back, I'm really taking a break from running at the moment, but I can ride my bike without it being problematic. So it was just fantastic to be on the bike in the warm weather and, uh, and to really kind of just reset everything. And I think-

• 1:14:12Adam Skolnick?

  Did you swim in the ocean?

• 1:14:13Rich Roll?

  Swim in the ocean. There's also a great aquatic center in Kihei. I was staying in Kihei, like multiple eight lane pools and, you know, basically not that many people there are free. You can just walk in and go. So great swimming facility, ocean swimming, cycling.

• 1:14:32Adam Skolnick?

  Did you cycle to Hana?

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  Not all the way. I, I would like, I was staying in Kihei, which is not where the great cycling is. So sometimes I would drive to Paia and then ride, I rode like most of the way to Hana one day and rode back, but didn't make it all the way there. I drove up country one day and then rode the road to Hana on the other side, going the other way, which is like you descend for like an hour and a half and then you go, I was like, I better turn around, but the, the grades are like 10 to 13% going back, which is pretty steep. So, you know, all the work is on the way back, but I never made it all the way to Hana.

• 1:15:10Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. You need to have like-

• 1:15:12Rich Roll?

  Have you done that?

• 1:15:13Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. I, I've been to Hana one time when I was a kid, like a long time ago and like not since, not since I've- Really been a traveler, so.

• 1:15:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I highly recommend it. But part of it, of course, is to have this analog experience, right? And not be on the phone.

• 1:15:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:15:34Rich Roll?

  But I didn't go, I didn't go like under the idea that I would not, I would, I was, you know, not bringing my phone with me or anything like drastic like that. I was like, I am going to temper my phone use. I'm going to be a responsible iPhone.

• 1:15:48Adam Skolnick?

  Did you have like a standard that you were going for? Like, like a certain number of hours a day or something?

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  You know, this, these guys here were running the business. So I wasn't worried about having to like be involved in that.

• 1:15:59Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:15:59Rich Roll?

  But I've got a kid who's applying to a school, who's going to need help on the application. I'm talking to my family every day. We're FaceTiming. There's, you know, things that have to get dealt with. So the idea was like, look, I'll check my email like maybe once every two days. I have an autoresponder up and, you know, I'm just going to limit my phone use as much as possible. And I would say that, that in terms of like where reality met aspiration, I'd give myself like, I don't know, a B minus.

• 1:16:29Adam Skolnick?

  Is that because of Wordle?

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Maybe a C plus.

• 1:16:31Adam Skolnick?

  Would you have gotten an A without Wordle?

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  Wordle was a problem. Wordle was indulgent, though, you know?

• 1:16:37Adam Skolnick?

  Wordle's self-care, buddy.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not worried about Wordle. It's all the other stuff.

• 1:16:41Adam Skolnick?

  I've just noticed Wordle on your Twitter, that's all.

• 1:16:43Rich Roll?

  And there were times where I found it, I found myself like, why am I sitting here scrolling Twitter? Like I'm, this is my opportunity to not do that. And I have no excuse and no reason. But that allure, that pull is so strong and.

• 1:17:00Adam Skolnick?

  But then it becomes like this spiral of then you criticize yourself for doing it. And then, then you're like, beat yourself up.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  Trust, I'm an expert at that. I'm an expert at that.

• 1:17:10Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, what am I doing? I'm wasting my, my time.

• 1:17:12Rich Roll?

  It's hard, man. It's hard. And then you come up with these justifications or these rationalizations. And, and yeah, then you're just in this like mental looping spiral of like negative emotions. And then you're like, what am I doing? I'm supposed to be off of this fucking thing, you know?

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Which is interesting because I have this book here sitting on the counter, Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, who's coming in, I think, next week to talk about it. So I'm about halfway through this book, and this book is about this exact thing. And part of it is, it's not our fault. Like, these things are so powerful that we are powerless to, you know, basically rebut their wiles. And it is really difficult. And, you know, this book is great. It's kind of about Johann's own version of this experience and also, you know, the science behind how our focus is being eroded as a result of technology and kind of our modern world. And I look forward to talking to him.

• 1:18:16Rich Roll?

  I always love talking to him about it when he comes on to the show. But I was having my own, like, lived experience with this problem that I think is relatable to everybody who's ever tried to put the phone away. But when you strip away all of the excuses, like, I have no work excuse. You know, I am here for the specific purpose of, you know, kind of simplifying my life and getting clarity. And to have it creep into that, into that, like, makes me realize just how pernicious it is and how difficult it is to create healthy boundaries, you know, around the phone. So, for the most part, I did fine, but I had these, like, lapses

• 1:18:56Rich Roll?

  that made me realize, like, how powerless I can be at times when it comes to this kind of stuff. But in terms of what I learned, like, that's sort of the negative aspect of this. I mean, for me, like, it was great to not be on social media. Like, I didn't post anything about being there. I didn't really want anyone to know that I was there. I really didn't want to have any complexities. I am a true introvert, and I realized that I had no problem ostensibly being entirely alone for this entire month and barely talking to anybody. Like, I was totally fine with that. Like, I needed that to kind of, like, heal and restore my energy levels.

• 1:19:39Rich Roll?

  I also realized, and I've learned this in the past, but...

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  This idea that, you know, the way that our, our culture is set up, you go on vacation for a week or maybe two weeks. But I didn't even feel myself slowing down until I was like in the third week.

• 1:19:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, it takes two weeks.

• 1:19:58Rich Roll?

  It takes longer and I realize how privileged I am and how, you know, how special this, you know, opportunity was that I was able to take advantage of. But the idea that you're gonna go away for a couple of days and come back refreshed is, is ludicrous.

• 1:20:16Adam Skolnick?

  It takes two weeks to get into a new state of being. And then if you come home right after, you never really explore that state of being. So then you start to unwind in the third week. The unwinding doesn't start until like day 15, 16.

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's not then until then, it's not until then that you even begin to get any clarity.

• 1:20:33Adam Skolnick?

  No, right.

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  On like how you're living your life. So I want to, I have another thought on that that I want to share. Let me, let me put a pin in that. But I also, you know, I learned that, that I like routine even when I don't need it. Like even when you're in a place where it's like, you don't need routine. Like I was happier when I was like, okay, my routine is I'm gonna ride my bike every other day. And I'm gonna go to gym, gym on the other days. But also to say, I'm not here on a training camp. I don't have to be agenda driven, but to have some kind of structure. I don't know, for some reason, made me feel better about the experience than just being like, I'm just gonna like not have any schedule whatsoever.

• 1:21:15Rich Roll?

  So it's that balance of like having some kind of routine while also not scheduling, not over scheduling things.

• 1:21:24Rich Roll?

  I'd learned that the world spins in my absence, which is great for the control issues and a healthy dose of humility that I'm not that important. That was good.

• 1:21:38Rich Roll?

  I mentioned that, yes, I fell back in love with cycling. I don't think that I could ever live on an island.

• 1:21:44Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:21:45Rich Roll?

  By the time the month came up, I was ready to come back.

• 1:21:48Adam Skolnick?

  What about the island?

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  So despite all the introverted tendencies that I have, like, I really, like, missed people and it was time to reconnect. But I think to go back to that point that I put a pin in, the biggest thing that I think I took away that I've learned from this experience is, you know, when you get to that, like, when I'm in that third week and I have put enough distance between me and these, these kind of work patterns to have some level of clarity, I found myself confronting this default setting that I have to always be like achieving, producing, progressing, like even like, like, okay, I'm gonna ride my bike. Well, I should ride harder or longer than I did last time.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Or like, what am I trying to, you know, what is my angle here? Or how am I gonna make myself better through the result of this? Like, wait a minute, that's not what this experience is about. You're not on a, you're not at a training camp. You don't have to be agenda driven. Can you just be? And that's the hardest part of all.

• 1:22:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:22:52Rich Roll?

  Right? Like, can you just sit with yourself and be in the allowing of experience without it being connected to or tied to some trajectory that's moving you, you know, in a certain direction?

• 1:23:11Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, I can't.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, and it was amazing to me, like, I would notice that. And then I would, I would really begin to appreciate like how strong that impulse it was. It's like, oh, my God, like, every time I'm like, oh, I should, or even when I was like, you know what? I'm a little tired today. Like, maybe I'll just hang out here and read. No, you should drive to Hana. No, you should, there's that one, that one trail you haven't checked out yet. You better go check it out because I don't know if you're gonna have time to do. It's like, all of that, right? Like, it's all tied to how am I progressing? How am I improving myself? What am I missing? What is the thing that I'm gonna like, beat myself up for if I don't do it? And realizing how ingrained that is, I think was the biggest

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  kind of epiphany in the whole thing.

• 1:24:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty, that kind of epiphany is, isn't, yeah, I mean, that's the, that's the unwinding, right? That's the whole idea of, that's why you did it, right? That, that nugget is why you did it, right? And that's why you keep doing it, because it's, that unwinding is so critical. I remember I, April and I did a delayed, kind of extra honeymoon, because we did this very quick ceremony, and then we did, we didn't celebrate it for a while because of work commitments. And then we went on a trip to Fiji, Tonga, and Australia. And it was mostly a dive trip and to reconnect with her homeland. And then, when we were first planning it, like, she, you know, she was planning it for

• 1:24:46Adam Skolnick?

  like 10 weeks or something like that, and I scaled it back to like 6 weeks. And then about 2 weeks in, I turned to her and I'm like, "Why did I tell us to come home?" You know, like, because once you're out, it's good to stay out, you know? Like, once you're, once you're unwound, you know, it doesn't matter how long you're gone, really. Because like you said, the world's always here when you get back. I don't regret coming back early, but like, knowing that, it's something I'll never forget next time. Because it's like, it can always be, it could always be a little longer.

• 1:25:15Rich Roll?

  That's for sure. Although, I would say that I was, I was ready to come back.

• 1:25:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right, but you weren't, you were, you were alone.

• 1:25:20Rich Roll?

  I was excited to get back. I miss me some skull neck.

• 1:25:22Adam Skolnick?

  Dude.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  I miss the guys here, I miss my family.

• 1:25:25Adam Skolnick?

  We needed you here.

• 1:25:26Rich Roll?

  You know? And I'm, now I'm enthusiastic to be back.

• 1:25:29Adam Skolnick?

  These guys were a mess without you. I mean, they did their jobs.

• 1:25:32Rich Roll?

  These guys are just fine.

• 1:25:33Adam Skolnick?

  But, um, there was a lot of sobbing.

• 1:25:35Rich Roll?

  Blake's walking around with a cane, something about his back.

• 1:25:38Adam Skolnick?

  Is it a cane or a trekking pole?

• 1:25:40Rich Roll?

  It's a trekking pole masquerading as a cane.

• 1:25:42Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's, it's an emotionally confused trekking pole.

• 1:25:46Rich Roll?

  Something about a bad back, from all those ultras.

• 1:25:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  I don't know. He's chuckling back there. All right, let's move on. We're gonna share a couple pieces of content, right?

• 1:25:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, we are.

• 1:25:57Rich Roll?

  That we're enjoying.

• 1:25:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Rich Roll?

  You wanna go first?

• 1:26:00Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think, uh, well, I was, I think my, my content I have here is, is keying off of the Alan Watts stuff that you wanted to post.

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I'll start. I mean, the first thing... That I wanted to draw attention to is this catalog of talks by Alan Watts that Sam Harris has made available on his Waking Up app.

• 1:26:24Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:26:25Rich Roll?

  And I spent a lot of time with Alan Watts over the course of

• 1:26:28Adam Skolnick?

  Did you?

• 1:26:29Rich Roll?

  My sabbatical. I think I got through maybe somewhere between 30 and 40 hours of this. There's 142 hours

• 1:26:37Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  Of Alan Watts talks on the Waking Up app. For people that don't know, Alan was kind of, he's kind of perceived as the guy who, who helped introduce eastern wisdom to the west. He was an incredible speaker and writer who was influential in the counterculture of the 50s and the 60s. He wrote over 25 books.

• 1:26:58Adam Skolnick?

  Particularly Zen, particularly Zen Buddhism, right?

• 1:27:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Zen Buddhism.

• 1:27:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  Wrote a ton of books, charismatic speaker, and this catalog is like a gift. Like, I can't believe that there's this one place where you can go and you can listen to as much Alan Watts as you could ever want to. It starts to, you know, because it's a, it's sort of, it's broken into categories, but these are talks that he's given over the years, so certain stories repeat themselves and themes recur and things like that. But I found it to be just incredibly nourishing and beautiful. So that is one thing that I've definitely been enjoying.

• 1:27:38Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool. I read one of his books when I was in my early stages, trying to piece together my spiritual worldview. But I found him so academic, like, he's so smart, like, it was just very hard for me to fully engage him, but I think his talks

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  You should revisit.

• 1:27:56Adam Skolnick?

  I should, I should. I wanted to, just because I know you wanted to talk about that, I just wanted to quickly acknowledge Thich Nhat Hanh's death, a master Buddhist monk who was anti, the number one anti-war, anti-Vietnam war.

• 1:28:15Adam Skolnick?

  Peace activist from Vietnam in 1964, he started speaking out against the war and ended up having to be exiled, relocated to France. And he, over the period of time, he got Martin Luther King Jr. To pay more attention to Vietnam War and speak out against the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. Then nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Written many books. I have a book in my library, Old Path White Clouds. It's his, you know, he's basically presenting the teachings of the Gotama Buddha. It looks like you actually read that book. I actually read it. Look at that thing. Yeah. It's been beat to hell. Either I read it or I carried it around a lot and then would

• 1:28:59Adam Skolnick?

  like take it out to impress people. Uh huh. Both might be true. Just at the right moment, at the right coffee shop. Yeah. Yeah, just like that. Is that how you met April? Yeah, I just, I walked up to April and I said, have you read this book by this Buddhist master? It's pretty, it's pretty damn good. So anyway, he's, he's, he's a giant, obviously, and one of those people that we should always revisit when we're considering kind of our place in the world. I think he's a great writer. He's, he lived in 95. Beautiful man. Beautiful dude. And in that vein, I wanted to also kind of recommend this book, Rebecca Pacico, who's a yoga and meditation instructor in the Boston area. She was kind

• 1:29:44Adam Skolnick?

  of like one of the, she's been, she's a very popular instructor in Boston area. And she's written, this is her second book. She wrote the first mostly about yoga and this one is about mindfulness and meditation. And the reason I brought up Thich Nhat Hanh is that Thich Nhat Hanh's, I think his most lasting legacy is he introduced the idea of mindfulness into our culture here in the United States. So everything else that you, when you think about the idea of mindfulness, you know, the Jack Kornfield and all that, that stems from Thich Nhat Hanh. And then Rebecca Pacico is kind of making that really digestible and accessible for people. I think particularly women will enjoy this book. It's written from, with a very modern kind of.

• 1:30:24Adam Skolnick?

  Even political kind of mind, but also a very understanding, not polemical at all. And, uh, and I just think it's really well wrought and, and very accessible. So if you're interested in getting into mindfulness, you haven't, you haven't, you don't know much about it. I mean, this is a great first step and I just wanted to recognize her. So congrats to Rebecca.

• 1:30:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:30:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And that book just came out not too long ago.

• 1:30:45Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 1:30:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Rich Roll?

  Adam.

• 1:30:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:30:48Rich Roll?

  Survival is insufficient.

• 1:30:54Adam Skolnick?

  I know where you're going with this.

• 1:30:56Rich Roll?

  My next.

• 1:30:57Adam Skolnick?

  I remember damage.

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  My, yes, I, what, there's some good ones in there, right?

• 1:31:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:03Rich Roll?

  What are the other ones?

• 1:31:04Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know, it's so highlighted. I haven't been here.

• 1:31:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. You highlighted it so that I can't even read it.

• 1:31:08Adam Skolnick?

  Here, I got it.

• 1:31:09Rich Roll?

  I don't want to live the wrong life, then die.

• 1:31:13Adam Skolnick?

  To the monsters, we're the monsters.

• 1:31:15Rich Roll?

  Right. It's so good.

• 1:31:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  Of course, we're talking about Station 11 on HBO Max. This is the best thing I've seen on television in quite a long time. I under, I, I, I recognize that I said that about White Lotus.

• 1:31:31Adam Skolnick?

  You did.

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  This is better than White Lotus. I mean, it's different.

• 1:31:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's very different.

• 1:31:35Rich Roll?

  Let's just say they're different.

• 1:31:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Rich Roll?

  It's just an incredibly rapturous, beautiful, um, mini series. I guess, well, are they gonna, yeah, no, it's completed, right? Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no season two. It's a one and done.

• 1:31:50Adam Skolnick?

  I think so.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a one and done.

• 1:31:51Adam Skolnick?

  But I haven't gotten to 10 yet.

• 1:31:53Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. It's, it's done. Uh, it's based on a novel by Emily St. John Mandell, uh, that became a big deal. Uh, sold a lot of copies. And it's this, for those that haven't seen or don't know anything about it. Station 11 is kind of this post-apocalyptic pandemic story that, um, that actually they started filming before the pandemic. Did you know that?

• 1:32:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, I did. Well, the book, the book's five years old, right?

• 1:32:17Rich Roll?

  They had to take a break for like a year and a half and then they revisited it. But the inception of the story was birthed before everything that we're living through. Uh, and, and the kind of. Weathering the pandemic aspect of it is only a very tiny aspect of what the story really is, which is this narrative that follows a group of people and they're intersecting time shifting multi narratives as they strive to survive and find meaning and connection through the lens of trauma, of community, of art and Shakespeare. And it's just wonderfully wrought. The writing is extraordinary. It's elegant and it's visually stunning. It was

• 1:33:02Rich Roll?

  created by

• 1:33:03Adam Skolnick?

  Very spooky.

• 1:33:04Rich Roll?

  Adapted and created by this guy, Patrick Somerville, who is sort of a Damon Lindelof protege. He worked on Leftovers. He created that show, Maniac with Jonah Hill. And some, not all, some of the episodes are directed by Hiro Marai, who was a director on that show, Atlanta. Also Jeremy Podesua, who's like just a legend in television direction. And the cast is insane. Mackenzie Davis from Halt and Catch Fire, Himesh Patel from Yesterday, Gail Garcia Bernal, who's just wonderful, Daniel Zavado, who plays the prophet. I mean, it goes on and on and on, but like it's hard to encapsulate or explain what this

• 1:33:48Rich Roll?

  show is about. But I just found it utterly captivating.

• 1:33:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I agree with you. I've watched five episodes so far. It's arty and dreamy. And I love the fact that it's nonlinear. And it's nonlinear in so many, in a lot of ways, but specifically in time. So you're hopping back and forth from, you know, 20 years ago to 20 years forward to, you know, two years after the pandemic, all the way, all the way around, all the time. And, and just the, so the creativity involved in that storytelling, I think is really interesting and makes it original. I mean, it's, it's as original as a nonlinear type story, I think, that I've ever seen. Would you agree?

• 1:34:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of that storytelling technique is kind of a Damon Lindelof type device that, you know, first showed its, showed its, showed its hand in Lost, you know, kind of owes its legacy to that type of storytelling, I suppose, on some level.

• 1:34:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right. But this is even more jarring than that, though.

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the costumes and the way that these storylines ultimately end up intersecting with each other.

• 1:34:57Adam Skolnick?

  And score.

• 1:34:58Rich Roll?

  The way in which, you know, people are trying to make sense of their world and they're going back to these texts, whether it's that graphic novel Station Eleven, or whether it's Shakespeare and these routines, like the traveling theater company that goes in that same circle every year and never varies. And the way that they are able to cultivate community and try to find meaning through these artistic expressions. Like, it's just, I don't know, to me, it's just brimming with

• 1:35:30Rich Roll?

  beautiful creativity and this idea that we play out, like, we're all in our, we're all in our story loops, right? Like, they're traveling around Lake Michigan with this thing. Or, you know, we have this narrative that we tell ourselves about why we are the way that we are, whether that's rooted in trauma or routine. And it's a story about, like, ultimately, you know, trying to break free from those loops and, you know, expand our life experience in scary new ways. And I don't know, I mean,

• 1:36:10Rich Roll?

  there's a lot there, I think.

• 1:36:12Adam Skolnick?

  It's just also visually arresting.

• 1:36:15Rich Roll?

  It's a perceptual experience as much as anything else. A perceptual experience, like, it's just, it's like,

• 1:36:22Rich Roll?

  it's a sensory, it's a very kind of like sensory experience.

• 1:36:26Adam Skolnick?

  It puts you into a different state of mind and body. It's like a theta state. It's like, you know how like some films you're just watching and you're some, and reacting to, and you know, you know, you're on the couch watching it. This is like a state of being. It's so, it just, it just, it just puts your brain into a different state, different, a different.

• 1:36:46Rich Roll?

  And refreshing, like, it is this post-apocalyptic dystopian tale. But what you, what that genre generally, you know,

• 1:36:58Rich Roll?

  Does is show you this kind of like dark palette and everything's gloom and doom and it's horrible. But here we have nature emerging from the cracks and we have levity and we have pettiness and we have all of the complexity of human emotions that are taking place under very difficult, highly pressurized situations. And there's something like really unique about that.

• 1:37:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:37:22Rich Roll?

  Anyway.

• 1:37:23Adam Skolnick?

  Some great, great performances.

• 1:37:25Rich Roll?

  Wait till you get to the finale.

• 1:37:27Adam Skolnick?

  I'll call you.

• 1:37:27Rich Roll?

  You're gonna cry.

• 1:37:28Adam Skolnick?

  Just great performances all around. And I think you mentioned a bunch, Matilda Laller, the young Kirsten, Danielle Dedwyler, Miranda Carroll, and David Wilmot, Clark.

• 1:37:38Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:37:39Adam Skolnick?

  Clark's, he plays Clark. Just amazing. You know, the Station 11 text itself is, it just stays with me, you know, like there was some line about.

• 1:37:48Rich Roll?

  Not the novel, you mean the graphic novel?

• 1:37:50Adam Skolnick?

  The graphic novel.

• 1:37:51Rich Roll?

  The text in the, in the show.

• 1:37:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Like the idea of escape, you're never more yourself than when you're escaping, which I think is a theme in this as well. And I feel that way. I mean, you, you just had an experience of that. Like I, when, when I was mostly doing Lonely Planet jobs, I mean, I, I loved being out there, kind of on a walkabout. I definitely felt more permission to kind of be who I really am. And so I understand that, that idea. And I think it's a really cool idea because you could take that and infuse your life with it. And so there's, there's a lot in here that, that resonates with me. I think it's, it's a beautiful, beautiful work. I think it's, it's haunting as well. It's not just positive, it's haunting.

• 1:38:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:35Adam Skolnick?

  And you know, you're, you're talking to a guy who watched Contagion with his wife and like, in like, week two of the pandemic.

• 1:38:42Rich Roll?

  I did that.

• 1:38:44Adam Skolnick?

  So I'm all about this stuff.

• 1:38:46Rich Roll?

  How prescient was this movie?

• 1:38:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, I watched Contagion like the day after being at Whole Foods with, where the shelves were bare.

• 1:38:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it is trauma bonding. We're trauma bonding. The one thing that April doesn't get into, and it's a good question, is why is everyone just like, always going back to Shakespeare?

• 1:39:06Rich Roll?

  Shakespeare's had a big year.

• 1:39:08Adam Skolnick?

  Shakespeare's always, every year is a big year for Shakespeare.

• 1:39:10Rich Roll?

  This year in particular, the, the, the Cohen movie.

• 1:39:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  With Denzel Washington.

• 1:39:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right, that's true, Macbeth.

• 1:39:16Rich Roll?

  What else? Where else did Shakespeare crop up?

• 1:39:18Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, just almost everywhere all the time. Like Shakespeare is. Like, I mean, I get it.

• 1:39:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, succession is very Shakespearean. Well, I mean, Shakespeare told every story.

• 1:39:28Adam Skolnick?

  But did he? Did Shakespeare even exist?

• 1:39:31Rich Roll?

  Did they?

• 1:39:31Adam Skolnick?

  Did they? Shakespeare?

• 1:39:33Rich Roll?

  Are we gonna go down the rabbit hole of Shakespeare conspiracy authorship theories?

• 1:39:38Adam Skolnick?

  You know how I've, listeners, I've been trying to push Rich into a spinoff podcast, but we've just found it. It's the Shakespeare Committee. We're gonna get into the deep rabbit hole on the-

• 1:39:48Rich Roll?

  How heterodox of you.

• 1:39:49Adam Skolnick?

  The actual writers of Shakespeare.

• 1:39:53Rich Roll?

  All right. Enough of that. Let's, uh, let's move on. Let's do some listener questions.

• 1:39:57Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:40:05Adam Skolnick?

  Rich?

• 1:40:06Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:40:07Adam Skolnick?

  Before we get into listener questions, I've got a title for our Shakespeare podcast.

• 1:40:11Rich Roll?

  What?

• 1:40:11Adam Skolnick?

  The Shakespeareacy.

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  Someone, I guarantee you, there's a podcast called that already.

• 1:40:16Adam Skolnick?

  Shout out Jason Camiolo on that. That, that's, now that's great writing.

• 1:40:22Rich Roll?

  From the people that brought you Cowspiracy.

• 1:40:24Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, that's-

• 1:40:25Rich Roll?

  Shakespeare.

• 1:40:26Adam Skolnick?

  They probably already own that. That's, wait, you know those guys. We could get this.

• 1:40:30Rich Roll?

  I do know those guys.

• 1:40:32Adam Skolnick?

  We could get this. The Shakespeareacy. Why does everyone?

• 1:40:35Rich Roll?

  Cowspiracy, Seaspiracy, Shakespeareacy.

• 1:40:39Adam Skolnick?

  There's a reason you're watching, you're having forced to read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth in class, and it's not because they're great plays. It's because of white supremacy.

• 1:40:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah. George Soros has some role behind the scenes, I'm sure.

• 1:40:54Adam Skolnick?

  George Soros? Who do, who, who is George Soros if not a secret Shakespeare? Shakespeare?

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  Shakespeare. Shakespearecist.

• 1:41:02Adam Skolnick?

  Shakespearecist.

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:41:05Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Let's go.

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  Hi, Adam. This is Rebecca Jacobs. I am from Santa Maria, California. I am a 56-year-old woman who has just recently been getting back into weight training. I've always been active. I follow a plant strong diet, and I've always also been a runner, but recently was diagnosed with a degenerative disc disease, of which running kind of aggravates that. I'm starting physical therapy today, so, you know, maybe I'll have some exercises that they'll give me, but, so my question is twofold. One, if I cannot get back to running-

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  Can I still get zone two workout by doing non-impact type of movements? And if so, what does that look like?

• 1:42:01Rich Roll?

  Rebecca, I feel you. I'm sort of in the same place and getting back into weight training for the first time in a while. My back is acting up, so I'm unable to run at the moment without aggravating that. However, the good news is, yes, not only is it possible to get zone two work in, there is an even better way to do that, better than running, which is cycling. So I don't know if you have a bike, or you have an indoor bike, or an indoor trainer, or access to a gym where you can get on an indoor trainer. But cycling is actually perfect for zone two training because unlike running, cycling

• 1:42:43Rich Roll?

  is like this machine where you can perfectly calibrate it for a certain level of energy output so that you can specifically train your aerobic base, your zone two, and stay in that zone for a much longer period of time than you could running. Because when you're running, you're holding your body upright, you can ride your bike longer than you can run. And so it's actually a more optimal way to train your zone two than any other sport, in my opinion. Now you tell me. So my suggestion is to get into the bike in whichever way works with your schedule.

• 1:43:26Rich Roll?

  Typically, I don't know how deep into kind of the zone two training world that you're in, whether you've had lactate testing, or how you've established your zone two. But in general, the kind of thumbnail, imperfect thumbnail, is whatever your range, your heart rate range for zone two on the run is, drop it about 10 beats for the bike. So for me, my zone two running is...

• 1:43:52Rich Roll?

  In the kind of 145 area, like 135 to 145. So on the bike, my zone two is 120 to 130.

• 1:44:00Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  There are ways of dialing that in more exactly through testing. So my zone two is not your zone two, that heart rate number should be meaningless to you. Figure out what your zone two is for the bike. If you've done that work on the run, drop it 10 beats, like I said. I think the minimum effective dose is something like 45 minutes, three days a week. But if you've been running and have some experience there, you can expand on that as well. So that's what I would do if I were you, and that's what I am doing as a matter of fact. I've been spending a lot of time on the bike doing the zone two work. So for me, that's what it would look like.

• 1:44:46Rich Roll?

  But I would also suggest that with your physical trainer, that you start working on functional strength, some chiropractic, maybe some dynamic neuromuscular stabilization, DNS, which has proved helpful to kind of creating that functional strength to stabilize your back. I'm not saying that you can reverse your condition or heal it, but to the extent at which you can stabilize your spine through exercising these specific stabilizing muscles, it will put you in a better place to do these other activities without creating further damage or unnecessary pain.

• 1:45:27Adam Skolnick?

  Great stuff.

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  And I say that as not a doctor, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physical therapist, I'm not any of those people. That's just my experience and maybe some things for you to look into. But consult with the professionals that you're consulting with.

• 1:45:40Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect. Excellent. I know you didn't ask me that question, so. Why would you?

• 1:45:46Rich Roll?

  What question?

• 1:45:49Adam Skolnick?

  All right, here we go. Sam from Baton Rouge.

• 1:45:53Speaker 03

  Hey, Adam and Rich. My name is Sam Bryan from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I just listened to the episode, The Prophets Walk Among Us, where you had all of the listener call-ins to give their own stories. And you actually played mine, which is pretty cool. My question is, though, everyone who spoke kind of cited you as their inspiration, their go-to podcast to turn to in times of strife. And I think we all kind of have these pillars of inspiration that we lean on, and you are definitely that for a lot of people. And I wonder, if this question is for both of you,

• 1:46:37Speaker 03

  who's your inspiration? Who are your heroes? I guess is the simple question. Who's your go-to hero?

• 1:46:44Rich Roll?

  Sam, you're gonna be really disappointed with this answer. I don't have, I get asked this a lot, and I really don't have a good answer to this question. It's not like I can rattle off, you know, a list of people, this person, that person.

• 1:47:02Rich Roll?

  I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this kind of thing. I look at it more not like as heroes or people who inspire me, but more like, who are the people that are accessible to me? Who can provide me guidance, wisdom, goalposts on things that I'm struggling with? And those are just regular people that are in my life. I would add to that guests that I've had on the podcast. Like, I'll reflect back on a conversation that I've had with somebody, because the people that come on the show are people that I want to learn from. Perhaps I'm going through something, and I bring on this expert, and they help me kind of process in real time how to solve a certain problem or think about a certain situation.

• 1:47:48Rich Roll?

  And some of those people, you know, have become friends, so I can call upon them when I'm in need. But I would say more often than not, like, the people that inspire me are like regular people that I have in my life, like anonymous people. Like, I'm going through a particular, I'm trying to make a decision about a certain thing. So I have a friend who's really good at that kind of decision-making, and that's the person that I call, or... I'm having a relationship thing, or I'm having a professional thing, or I'm having a sobriety thing. Like, I have buckets, you know, with different people for all of those different kind of aspects of life that we all come across. So I don't think, like, I'm like, oh, that, that person that I put up on a pedestal. I mean, one thing I've learned in doing this

• 1:48:31Rich Roll?

  for so many years is people are people, man. You know, like, I've had some, you know, pretty fancy people come and sit across from me on this podcast, and that's always exciting, and I get nervous.

• 1:48:44Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

• 1:48:45Rich Roll?

  You're not one of those people, are you? Of course you are.

• 1:48:48Adam Skolnick?

  You don't have to say that.

• 1:48:50Rich Roll?

  And then you spend a couple hours with them, and you're like, oh, this is a guy, or this is a whatever. And then you're like, well, if that's just a guy, then that other person that I'm thinking about in this really spectacular way, well, they're just, they're just a, they're just a human being too, right? It really helps ground you in that realization. So that's, that's sort of cured me of a lot of hero worship. So I draw my inspiration from, you know, all, all places, you know? And, and I think, for me, the most inspiring people are kind of the, the anonymous heroes who are doing amazing things and not seeking attention for it, you know?

• 1:49:28Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 1:49:29Rich Roll?

  There you are again. You keep cropping up. You're everywhere.

• 1:49:33Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:49:34Rich Roll?

  You're like termites. You're like termites crawling out of the wood.

• 1:49:37Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not asking for this adulation, so...

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  Right. How badly do you want it, Adam? How should I deliver the adulation to you? Would you like it on a silver platter or on a gold bar?

• 1:49:46Adam Skolnick?

  I'll just eat it like a bowl of soup.

• 1:49:47Rich Roll?

  I can, I can do that for you.

• 1:49:49Adam Skolnick?

  Like a Shakespearean era stew.

• 1:49:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Back to the Shakespeare. So I don't know. Like I said, probably a very unsatisfactory answer for Sam, but that's the truth.

• 1:50:04Adam Skolnick?

  I, um, it's good, it's, that's a great answer. I think that's, that's totally real. I, um, I too do not have a one particular hero that I look to in, you know, times of strife.

• 1:50:18Adam Skolnick?

  But I do consult the Tao Te Ching on a, on a regular basis, if not a daily basis. I have, um, a yoga practice I try to do almost, I do it daily as, uh, lately it's been, it's been daily again, which is great. And then I, I used, I read a verse from the Tao Te Ching, which I've said on this podcast before. And I contemplate it could, could, I could be on one verse for 12, you know, 12 days. It could be on one verse for a day. So it just depends on, on my moment and what's happening in my life. And that kind of keeps me oriented. And then, um, but you know, another thing that I think about a lot is the Stoics. Because I'm, I get, I get the daily Stoic on my Instagram feed. And it's not like I even, I've never even read the book. That's a huge hit, by the way.

• 1:51:02Adam Skolnick?

  Ryan Holiday's book, but it is, it, the idea of Stoicism is something that I've, I completely, dovetail with and like, and the idea that you're here, you know, you're not here to have everything be easy or enjoyable. And that, that, that wisdom from another age is kind of my answer to that. So, um, you know, if it's the Tao, if it's daily Stoic or whatever it is, um, because I'm like you, I'm, I'm fortunate enough to be able to, for my job, uh, interview people who've done amazing things and are, are amazing human beings. And, and I do think about what I've learned from them as well. And it's nice to have advice from friends. Uh, and, but for me, like, that's what keeps me oriented.

• 1:51:48Rich Roll?

  If we're going to expand this response to institutions and literature, yeah, I would agree with that. Marcus Aurelius.

• 1:51:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:51:56Rich Roll?

  Epictetus, uh, Alcoholics Anonymous, the group conscience.

• 1:52:01Adam Skolnick?

  There you go. Bill Shakespeare.

• 1:52:02Rich Roll?

  Bill shit, back to Shakespeare. Um, yes. Let your, uh, let your need for inspiration and wisdom lead you where it may.

• 1:52:14Adam Skolnick?

  Bob Marley.

• 1:52:15Rich Roll?

  There you go. All right. Let's, let's do the last question and tie this thing up.

• 1:52:19Adam Skolnick?

  Let's, let's wrap a bow on it.

• 1:52:20Rich Roll?

  We're, I thought we were going to get under two hours, but I don't think so.

• 1:52:23Adam Skolnick?

  No, I'm too wordy. All right. So the last one, I'll play it on my phone for you, but then we'll download it. Someone that you may have heard of, you may have heard of her.

• 1:52:34Speaker 04

  Hey Rich, hi Adam. I'm calling just because I've been feeling like in a bit of a slump lately when it comes to running. In the last week or so, I just haven't felt motivated or even like enjoyed running. To give you some context, I have been training for the last six months, five days a week, and have run two half marathons and really enjoyed running up until like the last week. So I wanted to ask what you would recommend to help overcome it?

• 1:53:13Speaker 04

  Is it like taking some time off or is it pushing through it and just hoping I end up liking it again? I want to continue running to maintain the fitness that I've gained, but I just haven't been keen to get into it lately. Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

• 1:53:34Adam Skolnick?

  Oh yeah, that was April W. from Santa Monica.

• 1:53:37Rich Roll?

  As in April Wong, your wife.

• 1:53:39Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right.

• 1:53:40Rich Roll?

  This is your wife calling in. Were we, were we, were there no other voicemails on the service?

• 1:53:46Adam Skolnick?

  There were. There were. I gave her, she wanted in, so I gave, come on guys.

• 1:53:51Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:53:51Adam Skolnick?

  Come on listeners, you got to indulge me on this one.

• 1:53:54Rich Roll?

  Well, let me, let me make this easy for April. April, you're feeling like you're in a bit of a slump? That has to be, that has to be because of Adam. This is your fault.

• 1:54:04Adam Skolnick?

  It's clearly.

• 1:54:04Rich Roll?

  What are you doing to contribute to April's slump?

• 1:54:07Adam Skolnick?

  It's what I'm not doing, Rich.

• 1:54:09Rich Roll?

  Clearly, you're the issue here. It has nothing to do with running. Are you showing up as a husband? Let's make this about you.

• 1:54:18Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, what?

• 1:54:23Rich Roll?

  Listen, April. Thank you for your question. You've been running for six months, five days a week. Of course, you're feeling like maybe less than enthusiastic about it. These things have to have a season. Take a break, first of all, before you make any drastic decisions about your future as a runner. Every athlete needs breaks. So if you're worried about losing the fitness that you gained, let's try to do something else movement oriented for a couple of weeks and allow your body to kind of reset. I mean, going six months, five days a week of running, that's going to give any runner a sort of

• 1:55:05Rich Roll?

  malaise over it. So I think that's number one. The second thing is, you don't have to be a runner. Like, you're not a professional runner. So if it's not doing it for you anymore, you can feel free to switch it up and find something else that you enjoy doing. But before you do that, take that break and then return to running and maybe put something on the calendar. Find something within running that scares you or excites you and set yourself up for a bit of an adventure and that might inject your running experience with a little bit more excitement and enthusiasm. Because it sounds like you're just kind of doing

• 1:55:48Rich Roll?

  it to do it now. You achieve these goals of running two half marathons. Congratulations, by the way.

• 1:55:53Adam Skolnick?

  Very quickly, too.

• 1:55:54Rich Roll?

  So is there another race? Like, what's the backstory here, Adam? Like, is there another race on the calendar? Or what else is... First of all, you have a baby, too.

• 1:56:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:56:03Rich Roll?

  So there's a lot going on.

• 1:56:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he's a toddler now. She's done amazing. She's like in incredible shape.

• 1:56:11Adam Skolnick?

  She ran the Malibu half in under 150. She's just ran another sub two hour. We had the Pasadena marathon, half marathon, and then the Ventura half marathon on the calendar. But with Omicron and just being with a toddler at home, we are just not equipped to like going into the public and breathing on each other quite, quite yet. So we didn't do Pasadena and she's not sure she's going to do Ventura. But she did it the same day. She did her own course. I had, like you, had a back injury. So I had to, I had to bag out. But we were going to do, she was going to be my partner in the Utla Catalina race, but that just got postponed. So that was the plan is do this half marathon and then start getting in the water with me and, and doing trails with

• 1:56:54Adam Skolnick?

  me and doing Utla. But that just got postponed again. So, you know, that's the backstory.

• 1:56:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Okay. So, um, yeah, you know, find something, take a break, let yourself breathe, maintain your fitness in another way. Come back to it with something to put on the calendar that would get you excited, that would be fun. Doesn't have to be even a race. It could just be some kind of adventure that you create for yourself. And also maybe try to make it communal, like join a run club or meet some new people to go running with or mix it up, you know, go, go run someplace that you haven't run before. Like, you know, I would make that suggestion because you want it to be fun. But the flip side of that is like, like you were, we were talking about this earlier. You're

• 1:57:44Rich Roll?

  like, I don't run because it's fun. Like I run because it's hard and like I just do this thing, right? Doesn't have to be fun. You just do it and you push through these temporary phases and these phases shift and change. But I think the fact that April, you've been doing it for six months without a break, like you're due for a break. Take that break and do it guilt free.

• 1:58:04Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful. I love it. April is a person that is like the type that has like a favorite thing and then she could just go off it, like, which is amazing that I've stuck around, that she's allowed me to stay. Like, I hope the other

• 1:58:17Rich Roll?

  Like she's a, she's a test case in David Epstein's book range. Like, just, just like, I'm trying new things. Good. You don't have to be a lifelong runner.

• 1:58:26Adam Skolnick?

  Like she's so good at like almost everything she picks up. So that's also the other thing. Yeah. I think when people are that, have that kind of aptitude for almost anything, that probably happens, I would say.

• 1:58:35Rich Roll?

  Must be nice.

• 1:58:36Adam Skolnick?

  It must be nice.

• 1:58:39Rich Roll?

  All right. I think we did it.

• 1:58:43Adam Skolnick?

  We did it, man.

• 1:58:43Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:58:45Adam Skolnick?

  I feel good. I feel, you know, I don't really want to complain about the inconveniences of modern life, so I won't.

• 1:58:54Rich Roll?

  Please don't.

• 1:58:55Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody wants to. Nobody tunes in here.

• 1:58:57Rich Roll?

  You indulgent West sider.

• 1:58:58Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I don't want to get into what it's like for me when, you know, like my nest heater goes up too high without me knowing how to, man. Have you ever figured out, have you, do you have a nest?

• 1:59:10Rich Roll?

  Listen, Adam, suffering is suffering. No, I don't have a nest. No.

• 1:59:14Adam Skolnick?

  They're, the nest is winning. Let's say I'm in a battle and the nest is winning.

• 1:59:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Maybe you should pitch a tent in the backyard. Then you could be another just, you know, entitled, rich, West sider dude, sleeping in a tent.

• 1:59:30Adam Skolnick?

  As, as appealing.

• 1:59:32Rich Roll?

  And the young Turks can make fun of you.

• 1:59:33Adam Skolnick?

  As appealing as that, as that role sounds, I'm gonna pass on that.

• 1:59:38Rich Roll?

  No nest in the tent.

• 1:59:41Adam Skolnick?

  You know what?

• 1:59:41Rich Roll?

  It's nest-free nest.

• 1:59:43Adam Skolnick?

  You know what would be interesting is if your tent was shaped as a nest.

• 1:59:50Rich Roll?

  We can't really end this podcast on that note, can we? I think that, that was a misfire of an idea.

• 1:59:55Adam Skolnick?

  Can I say?

• 1:59:55Rich Roll?

  But I love you.

• 1:59:56Adam Skolnick?

  I love you too.

• 1:59:57Rich Roll?

  And we're done. Okay?

• 1:59:59Adam Skolnick?

  All right. I just want to say that I think it's great to have you back. It's great to be back.

• 2:00:04Rich Roll?

  Happy to be back. I feel like I'm getting my mojo back. Back in the saddle. Missed all of you guys. And again, this was the longest that I've gone without doing a podcast. And right now, I'm feeling grateful and remembering how much I miss doing it. And I still love doing it, which is the whole reason for going away, to maintain this love affair with this medium and doing this thing. So thanks for taking this journey with me.

• 2:00:28Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:00:29Rich Roll?

  Right on, buddy. Well, we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Until then, you can follow Adam on the socials, at Adam Skolnick. I'm at Rich Roll. If you want your question answered for the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 424-235-4626. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music.

• 2:01:00Rich Roll?

  Blake Curtis and Dan Drake for the video version of the podcast. Daniel Solis for graphics, A.J. Akpo Diete for TikToks, and also Dave Greenberg for portraits, Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK for advertiser relationships and theme music, as always, by Tyler Trapper and Harry. Thanks a lot, love you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another amazing episode. Until then, Adam, peace, plants.

• 2:01:32Adam Skolnick?

  To be or not to be.

• 2:01:34Rich Roll?

  Namaste.