Mishka Shubaly On Forgiveness, Authenticity & Life As a Sober Artist

If you're a long-time listener of the podcast, then you’ve treated yourself to several of my conversations with today's guest. You know this guy well as my gravelly voiced, eminently talented, always charming yet generally disheveled, periodically homeless co-host — now back for a record 6th appearance on the RRP. Mishka Shubaly doesn’t care much for formalities. But if you need a resumé, his goes something like this: A self-professed povertarian, Mishka writes true stories about drink, drugs, disasters, desire, deception, and their aftermath. He began drinking at 13 and college at 15. At 22, he received the Dean's Fellowship from the Master's Writing Program at Columbia University. Upon receiving his expensive MFA, he promptly moved into a Toyota minivan to tour the country nonstop as a singer-songwriter, sharing the stage with artists like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Decemberists. At 32, Mishka got sober and shortly thereafter began publishing a string of bestselling Kindle Singles – short non-fiction novellas — through Amazon. His writing has been praised for its grit, humor, fearlessness, and heart. The Long Run*, his mini-memoir detailing his transformation from alcoholic drug abuser to sober ultra-runner is one of the best-selling Kindle Singles in Amazon history. Mishka's third solo album, Coward’s Path — the finest set of miserable and sad songs you might ever hear– will be released on October 2, 2015. His new book, I Swear I'll Make It Up To You: A Life on the Low Road* hits bookstores March 8, 2016. If you're new to this podcast, dig the Mishka vibe and want to hear more, check out RRP episodes 27,31,65,95 & 104. That's about 9 hours of Mishka to keep you busy. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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

• 0:44Rich Roll?

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

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. What's going on? Rich Roll here, host of the Rich Roll Podcast, the podcast where I sit down with the outliers, the paradigm breakers, the big forward thinkers. And in the case of this week's guest, the reformed, what would you call yourself, Mishka?

• 1:33Mishka Shubaly?

  How about reforming?

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  Reforming, in perpetual state of reforming, what?

• 1:38Mishka Shubaly?

  Reforming idiot? Bad boy?

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  Excellence across all categories of excellence and positive culture change to mine the tools, the insights, and the principles that can help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So, we're doing an unprecedented thing here. I'm having Mishka sit here and record the podcast intro with me, something I usually do by myself. We just wrapped our interview, and I thought it would be fun to have him join for this section. How do you think the interview went?

• 2:09Mishka Shubaly?

  Uh, scary. It's always scary. We always talk about stuff in public that, uh, that I wouldn't talk about in private, but, um, you know, I'm proud of what we do. We always, we always go there.

• 2:20Rich Roll?

  I think it was pretty good.

• 2:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 2:22Rich Roll?

  We brought some new ground on a couple of issues, I think.

• 2:24Mishka Shubaly?

  Pretty wide ranging too. We, you and I, we can talk about anything.

• 2:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right. Well, for somebody who's brand new to the podcast and maybe missed the six or five or seven, or however many times you've already been on the show, uh, let's break down your background a little bit. Uh, impresario of the Kindle singles market. How many bestselling Kindle singles have you written?

• 2:46Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, let's back up, go even earlier than that. I'm an alcoholic. And I'm also a bestselling writer. I've had six bestselling Kindle singles, a musician. I have a new record coming out October 2nd called Coward's Path, which is about my years in darkness. Um, I am a sometime ultra runner. Um, I am a-

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  Which is the subject of perhaps your bestselling Kindle single, The Long Run.

• 3:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Yes.

• 3:12Rich Roll?

  Which you have adapted into a new book, which is coming out in March.

• 3:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. Uh, it's going to be called, uh, I swear I'll make it up to you on, uh, on public affairs. And yeah, that'll be out early March. And, uh, yeah, I don't know. I, I feel like my role in the Rich Roll Podcast is to be your number one fan.

• 3:32Rich Roll?

  I don't know about that. I, I would call it erstwhile co-host. And now that you're, uh, going to be spending a lot more time in California, uh, I can foresee, um, doing a lot more on the show with you. So I'm looking forward to that.

• 3:44Mishka Shubaly?

  Absolutely. Uh, you, you know, the number.

• 3:46Rich Roll?

  That's right. So we won't spoil it. Uh, this is a really, uh, fun conversation, uh, similar and also quite different than the other appearances of Mishka on the show. But, uh, if you've enjoyed those, then I think you're going to dig on this. A quick note, uh, just to make all you guys aware, there's some explicit language for those of you that are queasy. So if you've got kids in the car or you're playing it in the kitchen or whatever, maybe pop the earbuds in or listen to it later. But, uh, it's not too bad. But you know, Mishka's Mishka.

• 4:15Mishka Shubaly?

  I can't, I can't turn it down, man. I gotta be me.

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  Thank you, everybody who, uh, has supported the show. I appreciate you guys tuning in. It means a lot to me. Thanks for subscribing on iTunes and for subscribing to my weekly newsletter and for, uh-

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  Using the Amazon banner ad for all your Amazon purchases. If you click the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com, it won't cost you anything extra on your Amazon purchases, but it really puts wind in our sails. And I appreciate everybody who has made a point of doing that. That means a lot. Before we get into the interview, a quick note. If you've been listening for a while, you know that I've got a couple online courses at mindbodygreen.com. I've got the Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and also a course called The Art of Living with Purpose. And they are running a sale on both of these courses, starting on August 26 and running through August 30. So, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, which is like three and a half hours of

• 5:14Rich Roll?

  streaming video content, it's basically a great, like, sort of, piece that goes well with the Plant Power Way, our cookbook. It's usually $99. It's available for just $54. And The Art of Living with Purpose is on sale for $69. It's usually $99. So, again, that runs 8:26 through 8:30. Go to mindbodygreen.com, click on video courses, and you can check that out. And that's it. We're just gonna get into it. I appreciate you guys for all the support and the love. Keep telling your friends and keep sharing it. And without further ado, Mishka Shubali. Any last words before we get into the interview?

• 5:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Brace yourselves.

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  Fair enough.

• 6:11Rich Roll?

  Mishka Man, what's going on?

• 6:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, my God. Here we are again.

• 6:14Rich Roll?

  I can't believe it.

• 6:16Mishka Shubaly?

  Enter the octagon.

• 6:17Rich Roll?

  Is this like, number five? How many times have you been on the podcast?

• 6:21Mishka Shubaly?

  This is five or six, or something like that. It's turning into, it's like, biannual public therapy.

• 6:27Rich Roll?

  Well, the last time I saw you, I think, was the, our book party in New York City.

• 6:33Mishka Shubaly?

  Yes.

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  And that was, we attempted to do a live podcast there, but the recording was...

• 6:37Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm never gonna live that down.

• 6:38Rich Roll?

  Didn't work out. I've tried... Three times? Yeah, three times to record live events and every time it's been a it's been a misfire. I thought we had it dialed in and then when I went to listen to it, I was like, we can't air this. Could barely hear it. That's okay.

• 6:53Mishka Shubaly?

  You're you're taking it more in stride than I am because I was the one who was like, Rich, we gotta do this. It's gonna work. I'm gonna make it work. We had the backup recorder. We had the

• 7:02Rich Roll?

  I know, but I told you, I said, it hasn't worked yet. So I my expectation level was like very, very low. So when it when I listened to it and it didn't work out, I was like, yeah, well, yeah, I didn't expect it to. I it's weird because a lot of people do live podcasts and somehow they figured out how to do it. I don't know why we're having so much trouble. It's it's that weird thing where you're trying to have it go out to the speakers so the people in the audience can hear it and you're also patching into the recorder and it seems simple, but for some reason it's trickier than

• 7:32Mishka Shubaly?

  I think it takes like a Jenny Jones level of production in order to make something like that happen. And apparently that's above and beyond what I can do.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  Well, the past is the past. We're here now.

• 7:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Yes.

• 7:41Rich Roll?

  You're in you're in my little office here in Los Angeles. Lots of life changes and let's catch up, man. Like, what's happening in the life of Mishka?

• 7:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  We're flying without a net, by the way. We got no, I got no agenda here.

• 7:55Mishka Shubaly?

  No notes.

• 7:56Rich Roll?

  My page of notes is blank and we're just gonna freewheel and see where it see where it goes.

• 8:01Mishka Shubaly?

  I I just left New York, my home of 17 years, my apartment of nine years, the apartment that I bottomed out in and bounced back. And I just turned in my book, which is

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, congrats.

• 8:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Thank you. Which is, you know, I'm so excited and anxious about that.

• 8:21Rich Roll?

  Is that the final, final edit? I mean, there'll be notes and copy editing and all that, right? I mean, are you still expecting like response from the editor to come back and rework some stuff? Or is this pretty much it?

• 8:33Mishka Shubaly?

  That's it for editorial feedback. Now we go to the lawyers, which I know that will be extensive. And then also the

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, because why is it? Why are the lawyers gonna need to get involved?

• 8:45Mishka Shubaly?

  Some names must be changed in order to protect the guilty.

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  Okay. What's the what's the title?

• 8:53Mishka Shubaly?

  The title now is, I swear I'll make it up to you. Which didn't, didn't really ring my bell initially because it struck me as overtly sincere. But the more that I went through my head, it struck me as totally perfect because that's the kind of thing that an alcoholic says to you over and over and over again. And it never happens.

• 9:14Mishka Shubaly?

  But this is my attempt. This is a big, long apology to a lot of people.

• 9:18Rich Roll?

  So this is, this is your, your literary amends to the world?

• 9:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. In, in part, yeah. It's also, I mean, it's a, it's a really deep exploration of my relationship with my father and how, how,

• 9:31Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, how that influenced my decision to drink to excess over and over and over again. And, and it's about patching up that relationship, you know, the,

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  Has, has your dad read the manuscript?

• 9:43Mishka Shubaly?

  Man, my last encounter with my dad was I, I stopped off at his house for a day when I was on tour with a buddy of mine. And at the end of, you know, our visit together, I said, Dad, you know, every time I come out here to see you, I always have something I need to talk to you about. And he was like, oh, I know. And I, I said, you know, I don't really have anything to talk, any issue to go over with you now. I just want to tell you that I love you. And he said, Mishka, I read the book. I know. You know, I love you too. And then the violins came up and the sun set in the background.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  Right. So he, so he did read the, he did read it.

• 10:21Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. I, um, he was, he was there reading it with me, sort of like, you know, every step of the way. And it's, man, that, that was a real emotional tightrope to, um, to have my dad, you know, because it's written, you know, when I'm, when I'm was 19, I'm writing as if I was 19. So I'm saying that he's, you know, a coward and a scumbag and a piece of shit and how much I hate my father. And he's reading all of that. And then I'm having him fact check stuff. So it's like, okay, this argument that we had in 1997. Let's reconstruct that together, you know, and uh.

• 10:54Rich Roll?

  So you're workshopping it with him.

• 10:56Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, it was.

• 10:57Rich Roll?

  To check your, your memory against his memory, both of which I'm sure are highly unreliable.

• 11:02Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, this was the, this was.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  But distinct, right?

• 11:05Mishka Shubaly?

  There were so, there were so many gifts in the book and one was, um, I interviewed him a couple of years ago. Um, and one of the things that he said in that interview was, um, people misremember things. Even if I remember it wrong, this is how I remember it.

• 11:21Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 11:21Mishka Shubaly?

  And that became my North Star when writing this book was that.

• 11:26Rich Roll?

  To honor his version, his memory of events.

• 11:30Mishka Shubaly?

  No, to honor mine.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 11:32Mishka Shubaly?

  It's my book. If he wants to write a book, I'll help him fact check it. But that was the thing is that was more it was to free myself from an expect, the expectation of writing an objective truth. And instead to say, this is my story. It's how I remember it. My story is valid. It's gonna be, it's gonna be wrong in a lot of ways, but that's, it's how I remember it. And my, my father was incredibly supportive. He was like, well, I don't remember it that way, but this, this story, this is your, your memory. You know, so he was like, you know, print it that way. That's how you remember it.

• 12:09Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool of him. I mean, he could have gotten angry or resentful or lashed out at you. So that's an interesting kind of, you know, dynamic to be in with, with somebody that, you know, you love and raised you.

• 12:21Mishka Shubaly?

  It's, uh, it was such a bizarre experience, Rich. I, um, when, when I was, you know, drawing this, uh, this book into focus with Bird, when we were like getting ready to pitch it to, uh, to different editors, um, you know, the elevator pitch that we settled on was, uh, how long distance running helped me forgive my father.

• 12:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 12:42Mishka Shubaly?

  And I was never quite comfortable with that and I couldn't figure out why. And then I got, you know, 60% of the way through the book and I was like, oh, the reason I feel uncomfortable about it is because I haven't forgiven my father. And this is a huge problem because the only thing that I offer to people as a writer is my honesty. And I've, and I, I lied here. I haven't forgiven him. I, I let myself down. I let every single reader down. I need to give the money back and torch this project and just be done with it. But when.

• 13:20Mishka Shubaly?

  If you feel like you're in hell, the solution is not to stop and sit down, but to keep moving to to get through it. And I so I just kept writing. I kept writing. I kept talking to my father, kept trying to work it out. And then one day I woke up and I sort of like opened a cupboard in my heart, looking for the anger and resentment that I had for my dad. And it wasn't there.

• 13:46Mishka Shubaly?

  It um, it's not, I didn't make a conscious decision to uh, like, I'm going to forgive him. I just went looking for that anger one day and couldn't find it. And it's like I forgave him against my will.

• 14:00Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't anything specific that occurred or some kind of light bulb moment? It was just an evolution? Do you think it was just the process of trying to grapple with uh, your relationship with him as you're, you know, workshopping this book and trying to figure out how you're going to lay it out that got you to that place? Or, you know, what do you attribute that to?

• 14:17Mishka Shubaly?

  There's a uh, there's a great Hemingway quote, and he talks about, uh, you know, a family losing their money. And he says, uh, it happened very gradually and all at once. And that's sort of how I forgave my father. You know, part of it was, um, I discovered that my dad had been molested by his mother until he was 14 years old. And

• 14:40Rich Roll?

  That's a big one.

• 14:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, and

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  How did you discover that?

• 14:46Mishka Shubaly?

  It's a good story. Sometimes, um,

• 14:52Mishka Shubaly?

  sometimes you do a bad thing and the end result is is good. Um, I was on tour when I was living out of my van and, you know, my my drinking and substance use was, you know, pretty redlining as it was for years and years. And uh, I was staying at his house when he wasn't there. And um,

• 15:11Mishka Shubaly?

  He got, you know, he divorced my mother, or he had an annulment done by the Catholic Church, so he could remarry his second wife, Teresa, in the Catholic Church. So there was this annulment, this document, where he talks about why the marriage was void, and blah, blah, blah. And I knew that it was full of answers, and I knew that, like, that secret information that I saw, that, you know, the key that would crack this whole thing open, I knew that it was in there. And, but I knew I didn't have access to it, you know, so I was at his house, I'm drinking, you know, I'd hooked up with some friends, I had a bunch, you know, a bunch of different drugs I was taking, getting pretty loose, and, you know, I logged on to his computer,

• 15:53Mishka Shubaly?

  and right there on the desktop, it said, "Annulment." And I was like, "No, man, this is fucked up. This is the wrong thing to do. Don't do the wrong thing. Be strong. Do the right thing. Don't read it. He didn't give it to you. It's not yours to read." And it was physically exhausting for me to do the right thing. Right. It's not, not my specialty. Right, right. So I pushed myself away from the computer desk in the rolling chair, and like, leaned back and let my head fall to the left, and then I glanced over, and there was a filing cabinet right there, and the filing, one drawer was open one inch, and one tab was sticking out of the, the open drawer, and it said, "Annulment."

• 16:37Mishka Shubaly?

  And I was like, "Okay, the God that I don't believe in wants me to read this. This is a sign from..." You could, that's one interpretation. Or the universe, or whatever. And so I, so I opened it, and I read, and, you know, I, he had written something about me, you know, that like, you know, "My son is an alcoholic failure." And that was incredibly gratifying to read, because I knew that's what he thought of me. And it was, I was like, "Okay, finally, here it is, the truth." And then I also read, you know, about, about his life, you know, as a child, growing up in, you know, rural...

• 17:16Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, growing up on a farm in northern Saskatchewan, um, pretty isolated, uh, you know, very sort of deeply culturally ingrained alcoholism and domestic abuse and, you know, just the, the Gulag of his childhood. And so I read that, you know, I read all that stuff when I was 26 or 27 and then just filed it all away in my head because I had no idea how to deal with it. But then, so the process of writing this book and, you know, so that was the thing that happened sort of all at once. And then, but then there was the gradual process of just talking to my father again, asking him questions, listening to him, listening to his responses, you know, engaging with each other and, um,

• 18:00Mishka Shubaly?

  and hearing him listen to me. Um, then I finally sort of realized that my dad just isn't like capital M, capital D, my dad. Uh, he's a guy. He's a man. And before that, he was a boy. And before that, he was a child. And like, that he had all these experiences that add up to the person who I know now. And he made some mistakes. I've made some mistakes. You've made some mistakes, you know? And, uh, you know, I, I don't think he, you know, I know he didn't want me when I was a kid, but I'm not a kid anymore. I'm a man. And he loves me. I love him, you know? You get one dad in your life. It's

• 18:42Mishka Shubaly?

  what you make of it. And, uh, this is a, this is a long, exhausting year just trying to salvage that relationship and...

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  Right. But you, you, so you came into this information quite a while ago though. So it wasn't like in the process of writing this book, you had this discovery about his past. It was just more of a, um, kind of a realization or a dawning upon you that, uh, that this information that you came into while you were drinking and using, uh, perhaps, you know, could help solve this wound.

• 19:13Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. I mean, there were a couple, there were a couple of new discoveries. That was an old discovery. Um,

• 19:21Mishka Shubaly?

  But I think you'll agree with me that our brains are endlessly wily when it comes to concealing truth from ourselves. We hide it from ourselves better than anybody can hide it from us.

• 19:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. Especially when you're an alcoholic.

• 19:35Mishka Shubaly?

  And also, I didn't want-

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  There's levels of denial, you know?

• 19:38Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah, that would, you know-

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  It's a constant process of discovery and trying to grapple with being more honest with yourself, and it's painful.

• 19:48Mishka Shubaly?

  It sucked, dude. It absolutely sucked. It was, um, if I make, if I make other people cry one tenth the amount that I made myself cry when I was writing this book, I will make a million dollars. Because I was just there hurting my feet, my own feelings every single day, sitting in front of the computer, like, melting down. And, uh, you know, I'm so grateful that I did it, you know? It's worth, you know, it's worth doing the work.

• 20:17Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting because when you kind of launched into this project, I mean, it was originally sort of conceptualized as just a longer-form version of The Long Run, your Kindle single, right? You were gonna kind of extrapolate upon that and turn it into, you know, a 300-page version of what you'd already written, but then, you know, in the process of working it out, it becomes something else entirely.

• 20:38Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, writing, a piece of writing takes on a life of its own. It's like, you know, you're playing, uh, you're playing G.I. Joes or something, and you have a script or a narrative, but then at a certain point, you take your hands away and the G.I. Joes keep moving on their own. And then you just have to sort of like, record their movements, you know? And that was the thing, is that I could have fought this book, and I could have, you know, made it more, you know, just about running and the races and, you know, grinding out the miles and... But, um, this was a problem I had to solve, man. This was, um, this is why I drank.

• 21:16Mishka Shubaly?

  I finally figured it out. You know, and.

• 21:21Rich Roll?

  So in your mind, do you think that you solved and cured yourself of alcoholism?

• 21:26Mishka Shubaly?

  Dude, you do this to me every time. We need to have the, we need to have it like the setup jar. And every time you set me up for one of those, you have to put a dollar in it. That'd be like six bucks by now.

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  I'm just interested in your response.

• 21:41Mishka Shubaly?

  My response is no.

• 21:43Rich Roll?

  That's, that's a relief to hear.

• 21:44Mishka Shubaly?

  It, I'm an alcoholic. I will be an alcoholic for the rest of my life. I understand that. And the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And I know that the, you know, the instant that, you know, the instant that I think I got a beat is the, is when, that's when I start drinking again.

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that, that, that, that query of like, you know, why am I an alcoholic? What caused me to be an alcoholic? I mean, people ask me that all the time and, you know, I don't really have an answer for that. And I don't spend a lot of time trying to, you know, mine that question for an answer either. Because I, I don't, I don't know that it will avail me of any, you know, additional peace. Like I just know that I am and I know what the solution for me is and I try to do the best that I can. And I'm highly flawed and fallible in that regard, but, but I'm always trying to move forward. And, and I, so I don't have a crystal clear, you know, idea of like, this is why, you know?

• 22:44Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Rich Roll?

  You know, my background is very different from yours and, you know, I could say, well, you know, maybe it was because of this or maybe because it was that. But at the end of the day, I just, that it is what I am, you know? And I, I accept that and getting to the bottom of the whys doesn't necessarily, you know, I don't always find that to be a productive use of my time.

• 23:04Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, no, I definitely, I mean, I phrase it as. You know, I understand why I drank.

• 23:13Mishka Shubaly?

  And I don't phrase it as I cured myself. You know, it's it's sort of like, you know, you toss and turn all night long. And it's like, oh, you know, you know, do I need to quit coffee? Like, what did I eat before or whatever, you know? And then finally, in the morning, you like, you know, you lift up the mattress and there's a huge stone under your bed. And it's like, oh, man, that's what it was. You know, it's been a mystery my whole life of like, you know, what's been eating me, what's been like driving me crazy? And, you know, and I really think that that was it. You know, I mean, there obviously there's other, you know, there's other factors and stuff. You know, I mean, it runs in my family, that's one thing. But I'm it's weird, man. I'm at a point now where I'm not, it's not just that I

• 23:58Mishka Shubaly?

  that I accept that I'm an alcoholic and that I'll always be an alcoholic. But I'm like grateful for it now. God forbid. Just that, you know, I was talking to, I was talking to somebody the other day. Or, you know, somebody wrote to me about, you know, creativity and, you know, if if using substances had helped me or, you know, whatever. And I didn't answer that question. But I was able to just say that

• 24:30Mishka Shubaly?

  I I make no apologies for the life I lead now. And I'm done with making apologies for the life that I led. It brought me to this point.

• 24:41Mishka Shubaly?

  I don't, you know, I don't think that if I

• 24:45Mishka Shubaly?

  I think if I hadn't been an alcoholic, I'd be a lot less empathetic to other people with their struggles with whether it be with food or poisonous relationships or, you know, or whatever. I certainly know what it's like to be to be weak. You know, and that's an invaluable experience. Everybody should feel like that sometime. You'll you'll have much more compassion for your fellow human beings if you know what it's like to just, you know, I just want to throw myself on the floor and cry. And, you know, I think I gained a lot of.

• 25:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Experience and, you know, wisdom. I wish I had spent less time doing it, like maybe 10 years less. But at the same time, to figure it out at 32, a lot of people figure it out at 52. You know, so I just gotta be grateful for that I figured it out as early as I did.

• 25:36Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, I mean, in the parlance of recovery, they call it, I will no longer wish to shut the door, and I will no longer regret the past or wish to shut the door on it. And if you can get to that place, that's a really beautiful thing. And I would agree with you on the empathy thing. Like, I think that, you know, when you've, when you've suffered and, and kind of come out the other side, and, and you're trying to repair your life, and evaluating the wreckage of your past, and you're dealing with shame and regret, and resentment, and, you know, you're, you're, you're hard on, you're harder on yourself than anyone else is in the world. It's a, it's a, it's a lonely place, you know? And, and to crawl out of that, you know, one day at a, at a time, to get to a new

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  place where, you know, your life is repaired, and, and, and you have meaning and purpose, and you have something to offer, allows you to be more gentle with other human beings, you know? And, and, you know, it's an interesting time right now, like, I've said this before on the podcast, but, you know, we're in the Gawker culture, you know? We're in this schadenfreude-infused, you know, sort of, public shaming, sort of...

• 26:48Mishka Shubaly?

  Where people triumph in watching people take a fall.

• 26:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and, and I don't, you know, I don't like that. You know, it's like, I don't want, you know, somebody shining that mirror on me, and I don't, I don't celebrate it when it's shined on somebody else. We're all flawed human beings. We've, we've all done things, you know, that, that we're not proud of. And, and, and I think that, you know, people that, that, that celebrate that, like, need to really kind of look at their own lives a little bit more. And, and I don't judge them either, you know? I'm like, trying really hard to just be compassionate to everybody, but, you know, it's, it's, it's a weird time that, that, that is confusing, I think, for a lot of people. Like, I don't, you know, it's, it doesn't make me feel good about our culture when I see that.

• 27:35Mishka Shubaly?

  I, I agree. It's difficult to...

• 27:41Mishka Shubaly?

  It's like every time you open your computer or flip on your phone, it's like, let's get depressed. That's really what it is. And I, I find myself in a, in a curious,

• 27:53Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, something that's having a positive effect on me, you know, with this sort of internet culture is that, you know, with my sort of music career starting to spring back to life, you know, I, so I played this show last night where I'm playing my old songs about smoking crack and drinking whiskey and like, just being an idiot and an asshole and people are laughing and loving it and, you know, and then towards the end of the set, I'd say, listen, I'm sober. It's been six years, you know, you, you live as long as you can without learning, but eventually the truth will, you know, get through to you. And, um, but I find, I find that I'm walking a tight rope between,

• 28:36Mishka Shubaly?

  delivering the stuff that, that those, the music fans want, you know, um, you know, songs and stories of, you know,

• 28:44Mishka Shubaly?

  being a wastoid and, you know, chemical excess. And then also the, um, you know, my readership from the long run and Kindle singles and like doing the stuff that, you know, you and I have done together. And, um, you know, because, because of the internet, all that shit is out there together. And so there are, you know, there are people from, who have heard my music from Doug Stanhope. There's a guy who wrote to me first when, uh, when he had just gotten out of jail. Um, and he had been like singing my songs in his jail cell and now he like started listening to your podcast and stuff like that.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  That's awesome.

• 29:19Mishka Shubaly?

  And there are people who listen, who already listened to your podcast and listen to Doug's podcast. And it's, um, it's fru-, it's incredibly frustrating for me because I'm trying to figure out, you know, which one of those guys I am. And I'm both of those guys.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Why do you have to bifurcate that?

• 29:37Mishka Shubaly?

  Exactly. And, and I keep leaning towards that and, and the internet keeps pushing me to say, no, this is, I'm, I'm all of these people. You know, a great Walt Whitman line, you know, I'm, I'm large. I contain multitudes. I'm all of those people. They're all me. It's all authentic. It's, it's who I was at one time. It's who I am now. And the person who I am now encapsulates all the people I have been. And, uh, So it's, you know.

• 30:06Rich Roll?

  But in your evolution as a musician, though, don't you think it's sort of incumbent upon you now to write new songs?

• 30:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Rich Roll?

  That reflect, you know, your current state of mind and the things that concern you now?

• 30:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I um, I fly out to, uh, I fly out to London tonight and then I'm gonna be there for a week. Um, I just have three shows, so I will have like a bunch of downtime there. And, uh, the next, you know, the next, you know, the way that I'm gonna rest my brain from writing the book is to write the next record. And, uh, I, you know, I don't think it's gonna be chipper or upbeat. I don't think there's gonna be a whole lot of songs about running.

• 30:43Rich Roll?

  You're gonna write like a top forty pop song?

• 30:45Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, and like.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Or about running an ultra marathon?

• 30:48Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, apologies in advance, there will probably be no, you know, huge shout along plant power chorus.

• 30:53Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on, now I'm hurt.

• 30:56Mishka Shubaly?

  But, um,

• 30:59Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm, I'm eager to see what comes out and whatever comes out, comes out, you know? And there, and there may be more of, um,

• 31:10Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, there, there may be more stuff from my old life that I still need to process. There may be, stuff may be marginally more hopeful now. But also, uh, you don't need alcohol to feel alone, man.

• 31:25Rich Roll?

  That's the truth, man.

• 31:27Mishka Shubaly?

  You don't need anything to feel alienated or weird or, uh, man, I was talking to my friend Zach about this, like, we go to punk rock shows and people just look, you know, I'm, I'm thirty-eight, he's forty, we go to punk rock shows and people just look at us like, who the hell? Like, whose dad is this?

• 31:44Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 31:46Mishka Shubaly?

  Is this a cop? Is this like?

• 31:48Rich Roll?

  A narcist show?

• 31:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah, we're like, we, I love this band.

• 31:53Rich Roll?

  That's okay, dude, as somebody who's ten years older than you.

• 31:56Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  You know, like. I don't, you know, I don't perceive you as, as, you know, I don't know. I mean, I still look at you as a young man, so, but that could, that's more about where I'm coming from.

• 32:06Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, the other-

• 32:06Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I mean, look at John Joseph.

• 32:08Mishka Shubaly?

  I was just gonna say-

• 32:09Rich Roll?

  He's, what is he, 50?

• 32:10Mishka Shubaly?

  I was just gonna say-

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  You know, and gets up there and rocks the house, so-

• 32:12Mishka Shubaly?

  And you know what?

• 32:13Rich Roll?

  And, and there's a lot of like, straight edge, you know, punk rock fans that are, that are his age, that still go to shows all the time.

• 32:19Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, the other thing is, I would argue that JJ is hitting his prime now. You know, I mean, I always said that-

• 32:24Rich Roll?

  That's fair.

• 32:25Mishka Shubaly?

  I always said that I was gonna do the Howlin' Wolf model, where he put out his best stuff in like, his 50s and 60s, you know, and that's the thing, is that, um, you know, my, uh, my editor, you know, was like, "Mishka, you're, you're an idiot. Like, why are you starving in the back of a minivan when your writing is doing so well, and you could be doing like, all these other things? You should be publishing here and publishing there."

• 32:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that's my next, that's sort of my next line of inquiry here. It's like, your writing career is blowing up, you're on the precipice of releasing this book, and you insist on being semi-homeless and driving around in that beater van that I can't even believe is still running, and essentially, you know, living this impoverished, you know, starving artist lifestyle of going from bar to bar to bar.

• 33:09Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich, I do it. I do it because it's what I do.

• 33:13Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 33:14Mishka Shubaly?

  It's, you know, um, being on the road, this is so terrible. Being in a minivan that's, that sounds like a Harley-Davidson because it's lost its muffler, with like, no air conditioning, and you're driving through like, Arizona, and it's just incredibly hot, and the, the whole thing smells like feet, with like, you know, three other guys in the van who you all hate, because you've been around them 24 hours a day for the last two weeks, and then somebody farts, and it's the funniest thing that's ever happened, and you laugh like you've never laughed before.

• 33:51Rich Roll?

  I get that. I get that.

• 33:52Mishka Shubaly?

  It's awesome!

• 33:53Rich Roll?

  I mean, I get that, but like, I, what I don't get is the insistence on holding on to like, that van in some kind of nostalgic way. Like, you're teaching at Yale, you're, you know, you're on the move and you're, you're needing a vehicle that, that serves you, you know, that's not gonna break down. Uh, you know, you could certainly upgrade, you know, I'm not saying go out and buy a fancy car, but, but you could at least get something that's safe.

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  And on some level, I guess my question is, you know, is there some sort of deep seated thing where it's like, no, I deserve the lousy van? Like, I don't, I don't deserve to upgrade to, you know, a car that functions.

• 34:30Mishka Shubaly?

  I, I don't, there's a lot of, I'll fess up to, there's a lot of stuff in my life that, you know, that's rooted in self hatred and low self opinion. The van, it's, it's two things. One is that, um, this is my second-

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  By the way, I've been in the van, so I'm, I'm, this is firsthand testimony.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  This thing is beyond what you're imagining.

• 34:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Your Yelp review of my van. One star.

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  I'd say definitely a one star. Although I do like the padlock on the glove box.

• 35:02Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, that always gets, um, every time I get pulled over, the cops are like, okay.

• 35:10Mishka Shubaly?

  This is the thing. It's, you know, there's a two-pronged argument. One is that, um, we live in a consumer culture and it's, it's fucking bullshit. It's so much bullshit.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  I'm on that.

• 35:22Mishka Shubaly?

  This is my second Toyota Previa. I probably put 100,000 miles. No, more than that. I bought, I got, I got, my last Previa ran until I had 289,000 miles on it. I bought it when it had 165. This one, I've only put maybe 20,000 miles on. In, you know, with, so, you know, with, between those two vans, I've missed one show from the van breaking down.

• 35:48Rich Roll?

  All right. There you go. I mean, it definitely has like this Walter White, you know, mystique to it.

• 35:53Mishka Shubaly?

  It's, uh, it's good on gas. I've never, you know, I've never had an accident or, you know, the dangerous breakdown. I've gotten flat tires and stuff like that. I know it inside and out. And, and I think there's something to be said, there's something noble to- My role in my sister's house is to follow behind the kids and they eat the watermelon down, so there's like still, you know, three quarters of an inch of good pink watermelon by the rind. So my job is to pick up the rind, eat the rest of the useful watermelon. They eat the apple, so it looks like a cartoon core, you know, a core cartoon apple core, where there's still so much good. And I eat the whole thing, the rest of the thing. It's, it's good to use everything until it's used up. You know, I intend to use this van

• 36:34Mishka Shubaly?

  until it's used up. For me, it's a source of pride that like, I'm gonna get maximum utility out of this vehicle. And, um, the other, the other thing is, you know, I have my friends pull me aside and they're like, dude, you own a house and you're, you drive this van that's like a death trap, you know, it's waiting to burst into flames. And I'm like, yeah, that's why I own a house. I make smart economic decisions to cut costs on the everyday stuff. And, uh, and that's how I was able to like buy the house and stuff like that.

• 37:10Rich Roll?

  Well, that's a good answer, man. I'm satisfied.

• 37:12Mishka Shubaly?

  All right. And also, I love it. I love it. It's like, you know, it's like

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  Now, that's the real reason. Yeah. All right. So how does it feel to be completely out of New York City? I mean, New York City is sort of, you know, a character in your life, you know, formative in, in negative and positive ways. Um, you know, I think I've heard you say, you know, it's like, well, New York doesn't have anything, there's nothing left for me in New York. You know, it's time to move on. I'm like, come on. Just because you lost your lease, is that a reason to really leave this city that has infused your, you know, your life and your art with so much, you know, life and material? So what is the, what's the justification for saying, okay, now I'm out of this apartment that I lived in for a long time, instead of just finding a new place to live in New York, like I'm done?

• 37:56Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, I, man, you're, you keep hitting me with questions that I actually have good, real answers to.

• 38:03Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 38:06Mishka Shubaly?

  There have been, there have been a series of essays that people have published about leaving New York and how like, oh, it's not the city it used to be, or it let them down, or whatever. This is the thing, when, you know, when you're 19 or 20 or 21, you move to the big city, you, you, you're moving to, to New York to transform. You're moving to New York to become who you are. You know, and I moved to New York to become a, um, you know, sleazy rock and roll musician and an alcoholic writer. And it didn't unfold the way that I had imagined it was going to. Um, I got- It never does. Ah, yeah. You know, and I was, I was an arrogant son of a bitch when I moved there.

• 38:47Mishka Shubaly?

  And I just got, I just got it pounded out of me, man. I really, it tore me down. It really broke me down. You know what I mean? Just like, just crying on the street. And, um, and then I got transformed. You know, it, um, it broke me and it rebuilt me. And, um, I'm leaving New York in part because I graduated. I, um, I got the transformation that I needed. Not the transformation I wanted, but the transformation I, I, I needed. Um, it, uh, it broke me down to zero and then, you know, New York and I built me back up to being

• 39:28Mishka Shubaly?

  a human being. And, um, and I'll always be grateful to the city for that. You know, I really needed that. I needed something that, that I couldn't outsmart, that I couldn't outwit, you know? The, the city is just, will always win. The house always wins, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, but I'm not fleeing New York. I'm, I'm running to California and I'm running to California because-

• 39:57Mishka Shubaly?

  My parents aren't gonna live forever, man.

• 40:00Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:00Mishka Shubaly?

  And I spent my whole early adulthood and, you know, a lot of my childhood just trying to alienate, you know, one or both of them. And I finally realized that, you know, the only finite resource that we really have in this world is time. And, you know, I wanna have a lot, there's a lot of good times for me left to have with my old man, with my, you know, with my mom and, you know, my sister's little kids. Man, I was hanging out with Kai the other day and he was like, "Skunkle, your eyebrows are creepy. There's hairs where there's not supposed to be hairs."

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  Skunkle?

• 40:35Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Mishka Shubaly?

  I can't get that in New York.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, one of, you know, one of, um, one of my AA buddies, you know, was like, "Oh, you know, you're pulling a location."

• 40:47Rich Roll?

  A geographic.

• 40:48Mishka Shubaly?

  Yes. And, uh, and I was like, "Well..."

• 40:51Rich Roll?

  Which, just, just for the listener who might not know what that means, it basically means you, you wake up with this idea that if you, that, that where you live is the problem. And then if you just go to someplace new, you can start fresh and all your kind of demons or problems that visit you wherever it is that you live will no longer be a part of your life. But then you make that transition and you wake up and realize that you brought yourself to the new location.

• 41:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Yes.

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  And nothing changes, right? That's called a geographic. And you see that a lot, especially in, in, you know, people that are struggling to get sober but not making it. And they, instead of really addressing the drug and alcohol issue, they just think, "Well, if I move and start fresh and get new people around me, that will solve my problem."

• 41:35Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. And I, I think that's totally a valid concept. I mean, I, I agree with, you know, the idea of, you know, pulling a location. But my two problems with New York are that, um, I'm seasonally depressive. So, you know, four or five months out of the year, no matter how I battle against it, I feel like opening a vein. And I feel incredibly alienated from my family, who lives on the other side of the continent. Um, moving to California isn't running away from those problems. It's solving those problems.

• 42:03Rich Roll?

  Right. I get you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think you're making a geographic. I just wanted to hear you explain it.

• 42:07Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:08Rich Roll?

  So it's cool. And you're kind of, you're, you're living in like a trailer right now, right?

• 42:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, it's.

• 42:13Rich Roll?

  So you own this house, but your mom lives in the house and you're, it's like, it's like on the way to San Diego. Like, I'm just trying to get a visual.

• 42:19Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich, I can get anything wrong. I can like, I can just, I could screw anything up. It's hilarious. So I bought this house for my mom. And I'm thinking like, man, I'm such a good son. Finally, you know, finally like the bad kid like comes good. And, you know, so I like walked my mom through the house and I was like, you know, so what do you think? You know, like, do you love me? And she was like, Mishka, you idiot. Yes, of course I love you. And I don't love you a single bit more than I did when you were a penniless alcoholic. You're my son and I love you.

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  So I did this for nothing?

• 42:52Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, it's like, mom, you fucking ingrate. What did you ever do for me? No, and you know, she was like, you know, but this house, this isn't what I want. You know, she was like, I'm just a young woman of 66. I can't be tied down to a place like this. I have things I want to do. I want to travel. I want to see the world. I want to hang out with my friends. You know, and

• 43:17Mishka Shubaly?

  if you want to know what a woman wants, ask her.

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  That's a novel concept.

• 43:25Mishka Shubaly?

  So, um, yes, and you know, and then also my sister pulled me aside. She was like, Mishka, are you asshole? What the hell are you doing? Like, I need mom here to help me with the four kids, you know? And, um, so, you know, we made the decision to, uh, you know, the house is just rented right now and, um, we, we got a little trailer from my mom and, you know, stuck it in my sister's backyard. My mom has like, just made it so incredibly beautiful. Um, inside and out and she loves it there. And it's, um, the kids call her Bee for some reason. So that's the Beehive and, um, She's visiting Cam, uh, family right now in Canada. So, uh, so that's where I'm crashing.

• 44:05Rich Roll?

  I gotcha.

• 44:06Mishka Shubaly?

  And, uh, but yeah, you know, I mean, I've been there for whatever, a week or 10 days and then.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  And now you're just, you're kind of on the road now.

• 44:13Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, until, uh, until the middle of October. I, I leave tonight for London, there for a week, back for two days, out for six weeks, down to, uh, down to Bisbee to visit Doug. I'll be touring the whole way.

• 44:25Rich Roll?

  Are you gonna go to Doug Stanhope's compound?

• 44:27Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:29Rich Roll?

  That's frightening.

• 44:30Mishka Shubaly?

  It's gonna be awesome. I, uh, yeah, Doug is a singular person. And then, uh, hang out there with Doug for a second. Um, head back up to Seattle, fly out to New York, um, for a couple of shows, fly back and then tour down the coast of California and then die. Drive the van to the ocean.

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  When does the, uh, when's the book come out?

• 44:53Mishka Shubaly?

  Uh, the, um, well, the, the record is being re-released in October, October 2nd. So that's one of the reasons why I'm touring up to it and then after it. And then the book comes out, uh, I think March 8th on Public Affairs. Um, and then, yeah, I mean, that's the thing, you know, after all the touring's done, I'll be hanging out in California a little bit. There should be a European tour in the works. And then I have to head back to New York for the book release in March. Hopefully there's a tour after that, teaching at Yale next summer. And then, uh,

• 45:26Mishka Shubaly?

  and then, you know, hopefully around this time next year, I'll be getting a real big boy house and like an apartment or a tree house or something where I can actually live in.

• 45:35Rich Roll?

  One can always dream.

• 45:37Mishka Shubaly?

  I have, I have been looking at RVs online, like in a guilty furtive way, the way that somebody would look at like, you know, the, the filthiest pornography.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  RVs are cool, man. Uh, you know, I'm into RVs. I'm into like that idea of being, you know, that's not my life. But, uh, you know, I know, I know the appeal. Like our friend Andrew is living at our house on our property right now in an airstream and, you know, there's a certain. Liberty that comes with that. And you know, I'm also super into like micro houses. I'm always looking at little, you know, like, uh, container buildings and all that kind of stuff. Like, I think that stuff is really cool. Like, you know, if I was to do it again, I would definitely probably go that route. I think, you know, in terms of like, getting something cool and affordable, like, is, is, you know, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening right now. And some of them are like amazingly architectural and, and awesome.

• 46:29Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, another thing for me is that, you know, buying an RV, there's, you know, there's a spot on my sister's land for me to stick an RV. It's really important for me right now to be close to my sister. You know, I spent, you know, since I was a little kid, I mean, maybe like nine, I remember just like hating her and writing her off completely. And, um, she and I have had a really rocky relationship. And now we're like, BFFs. It's so bizarre. And I'm, I'm just incredibly grateful for it.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  How did you bridge that gap?

• 47:04Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, uh, when

• 47:09Mishka Shubaly?

  she threw me out of her house once, um, and I was like, all right, fuck you. You know, throw me out, I'm leaving, I'm never coming back, you know? And then, um, her husband's a marine and they got, uh, they got stationed in Okinawa. And so then I didn't see like her or her family for like six years. And then when they came back, I'd been sober for like 18 months or two years, something like that. And I went out to visit and, uh, it sucks going back to a place you've been kicked out of and sort of having to like, you know, come to the door with your hat in your hand. And as soon as I walked in the door, I was like,

• 47:48Mishka Shubaly?

  they just want to forgive me. I want to be forgiven and they want to, they want to forgive me. And That was like four years ago. She and I haven't had a harsh word for each other since then. We haven't had a single argument, you know, and you know, there have been times where she's had to say, um, you know, I, you know, I need you to wash your dishes or whatever, or like that thing you said on Facebook. I wish you hadn't have said that, you know, so she's able to give me negative feedback. Um, but, uh, she came out to visit me in New York, you know, in the like end days of my apartment and like, you know, we, uh, you know, we ran all over the city and I got, you know, I got to show her my New York and I was like, you know, that's where I blacked out. That's where, you know, here's where I took my first

• 48:32Mishka Shubaly?

  run, you know, and this, you know, I got beat up in this bar.

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  The street tour. Yeah. Your version of JJ's, uh, Lower East Side street tour, right?

• 48:39Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 48:41Rich Roll?

  New York, according to Mishka.

• 48:42Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. It's funny. She just texted me today on the way here and she was like, thank you so much for turning me on to Rich's podcast. Like I really, really enjoy it.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 48:51Mishka Shubaly?

  And their copy of, uh, The Plant Power Way is like in the kitchen, very prominently disp- you know, displayed. So it's weird, man. I, you know, I'm not used to this thing of, uh, somebody does something nice for you and then you do something nice for somebody else and then it just keeps going.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  Right. Like when is he, when's the shoe gonna drop?

• 49:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  Like when's it gonna all go bad?

• 49:14Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. That's, I'm always waiting for that and it has, you know, it hasn't happened. And, uh, no, it's great, man. It's great. I, you know, I don't know how to deal with it.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's interesting. I'm, I, I feel the same way, you know? Um, it's a weird thing, like as a result of the podcast and the books and stuff like that, you know, I get all these emails, emails from people all the time, all over the world, you know, saying super nice things like, I get so much out of the podcast and I just love it. And, you know, I get, I have critics too and, and haters and all of that, but it's pretty, you know, de minimis in comparison to, you know, the amount of support, um, that, that, that kind of comes in. And, you know, the, the emails that say, you know, you've inspired me or you're an inspiration and, and I get uncomfortable with that. Like I don't, you know, like I don't.

• 50:02Mishka Shubaly?

  Thank you for saying that.

• 50:03Rich Roll?

  I don't, you know, I, I don't, I mean, maybe part of that is rooted in, in low self-esteem, but like, I don't, I want to be very careful.

• 50:16Rich Roll?

  In making sure that people are not coming away with the impression that I'm standing up, you know, on high and delivering some message down, down low about how to live your life. Like, that's not, you know, who I am or what I'm doing, or how I try to, you know, manage this podcast or anything like that. Like,

• 50:34Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich,

• 50:35Rich Roll?

  I'm sharing my experience. I try to bring on people that inspire me that I can learn from. And I identify much more with the audience member than with the guests, in the sense that, you know, I'm trying to figure this out too. And, and, you know, I don't want to be holding myself out as some kind of, you know, person who's figured everything out. You know, I'm as flawed as the next guy. I'm still, you know, have things that I gotta work out and that I'm struggling with and all of that. And so, as much as I've gotten so much out of, of having amazing people on the show like yourself and so many others, and, and I appreciate all the positive feedback, there is that, that, that weird thing. It's like a weird, vulnerable feeling that comes with that.

• 51:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich, if I know one thing about you, that's the thing. Because every single time you and I do the podcast together, you give me another version of that speech. And it's, it's so clear that that's a, that's something to your, you know, your very core understanding of yourself, that you still see yourself as out in the trenches with everybody else who's like suffering and like, you know, searching for the light, you know. And dude, that's why we love you. You know, you're, you know, I, I know that, I always know that, um, oh man, I really want that cookie, or I would love a cigarette, you know, or, you know, I don't really don't want to run today, or like, you know, this is all bullshit.

• 52:02Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm, you know, I'm losing faith in this. I know that you have the same, you know, that you have the same doubts and the same struggles all the time, you know, and,

• 52:11Mishka Shubaly?

  That does so much good for me, man, just to know that there's, you know, that there's somebody else, you know, who's,

• 52:18Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, relentlessly trying to keep moving forward, even though there's a part of them inside that keeps trying to like suck them back, you know? I um,

• 52:28Mishka Shubaly?

  I have to share an experience that uh, that doesn't put me in a very positive light, but something that I'm incredibly grateful for. I um, I was talking to a friend, maybe a month ago. And uh, I was really stressed out with the end of writing the book and this thing of sort of managing the amount of email and Facebook messages and Twitter and stuff like that that you get from people. And I was talking to my friend and I was like, you know, I'm just, oh, I'm just so sick of it, you know?

• 53:01Mishka Shubaly?

  Either it's all these people writing to me because they want help with something, whether it's help with their writing career or help to stop drinking or whatever. Or people who just want to go on and on about like, you know, how inspirational I am, what a great guy I am. And fortunately, I was able to listen to the words coming out of my mouth and hear them sort of rattle around in my brain. And then think, you've really turned into a colossal asshole. And I need to go in and find that and like fucking destroy it because I'm so-

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  You're, you're, when you, when you're on the receiving end of, of all of that, like sort of,

• 53:43Rich Roll?

  you know, lauding kind of energy that you start, that starts to feed the ego and you start to buy into it? Is that what you're saying?

• 53:51Mishka Shubaly?

  No, I mean, I think a lot of it was sleep deprivation and stress and being, you know, freaking out about getting the book finished and having this move happen. And, you know, I moved out under, you know, fucking court order from my landlord and it was pretty, pretty tense circumstances, you know?

• 54:08Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, and then almost wound up in the hospital, you know, when I was trying to get out of there. So a lot of it was just sort of being stressed out, but then it was also losing complete perspective on my own life and where I am and how appreciative I need to be. The people are, you know, that I have even, even, you know, even the knuckleheads or who are like writing to me for promotion advice, they have, they don't, it's clear they haven't read any of my writing, but they just want to have to ape my financial success. I should still be grateful for them because they're writing to me because I've been successful, you know, and that's something to be grateful for. And the people who are

• 54:50Mishka Shubaly?

  in trouble, you know, like that they would look to me and like, you know, give me that vote of confidence. Like, yeah, I just, I need to man up and like respond and respond in good faith and not be bitter about it and not be a jerk about it and not be insensitive and not feel put upon.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  I see. So in other words, you're saying you were, you're sort of, you were sort of perceiving all these messages coming into you with kind of a level of like annoyance as opposed to like, oh my God, my life is so amazing that people want to like reach out and connect with me.

• 55:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Exactly. And it's the, you know, the second thing that you said there, that's what I need to tune in on is that, you know, I'm so lucky to have this. This is a great burden to have.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  It's amazing, you know, it's an incredible, it's an incredible gift.

• 55:43Mishka Shubaly?

  To get this book done on the timeframe that I did and to, you know, engage in it as, as heavily as I did, you know, going through this minefield with my father and then, you know, the move and the record and all these things, I knew that going into it that I would have to alienate all my friends, not return phone calls, not return emails and just be myopically focused just on the book, the book, the book, the book, you know, get that finished, the book, the move, the book, the move. I had all these things to get done. And I realize now that.

• 56:19Mishka Shubaly?

  I did have to do that and I'm glad I did it and it's done. And now it's time for me to start taking care of other people. I got a really, it's super important to me to invest, you know, invest time in my sister's kids and like have real relationships with them and be there, you know, how was your day at school? Like spend time with them every day, go to Mick's rugby games and like, you know, I have a hookup for Disneyland tickets, which is just hell beyond all imagining in my mind, but I'm gonna take the girls because they will be so happy. It will make them so happy and it's worth a day of suffering for me.

• 56:56Rich Roll?

  When are you going?

• 56:58Mishka Shubaly?

  I don't know.

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  Maybe I'll take my girls and we'll do it together.

• 57:02Mishka Shubaly?

  There, okay, there we go, done.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 57:05Mishka Shubaly?

  Done, thank you. See, that's, that's why I'm doing the podcast. To rope you into a stupid idea, dude.

• 57:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in, in terms of like, you know, the writer's life, like you have to get to that place where you, you're, you know, you're in a room with no windows and no internet access and you just have to be with your thoughts and the page. And it gets harder and harder, especially with success and all of that. Like I, you know, I'm, I'm trying to carve out time to start workshopping this next book that I want to write, but like with the podcast and the kids and the thing, it's like, it gets harder and harder to be able to do that, you know, with the pressures on your time and all of that and you have to, you know, in order to get the work done, you know, in order to get into that creative space and execute on the level that you know you're capable of, you have to make those decisions to, you know, you're really making a decision to invest in yourself

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  and it comes off as selfish, but this is your work, like this is your life and this is what you do. And in order to be there and be of service and be helpful to those that love you, you've got to take care of yourself first and part of that, you know, whether it's running or however you're eating or carving out that creative time where you're like, I'm not available. Doesn't make you a bad person because you can't respond to every single message that comes into you on Facebook or respond to every tweet or every email that comes in, you know, from somebody looking for advice, you know, as you're writing. Career and your music career, you know, continues to escalate, that becomes harder and harder. You know, like, I can't respond to every email that comes in, and I wish that I could, but I would have to spend my entire day

• 58:38Rich Roll?

  doing that. And that is a quality problem to have, and one that I'm extremely grateful for and very, very in touch with. And again, it does, like I said before, there's a level of discomfort with that, too. But, but never for a moment do I, am I not in touch with like how, you know, what a gift that is and how amazing that is. And I don't take it lightly. It's not, I'm never annoyed. I'm like, that's incredible that somebody would, I mean, what would it take for you, Mishka, to sit down and write somebody a letter about how much they've impacted your life in a positive way?

• 59:12Rich Roll?

  You know, it's a, it's a big, it's a big deal. I think it's a big deal. And so every time I get one of those, I'm like, amazed, you know, and very, very grateful, but I can't always respond to every one of them. You know, I try to respond to the ones that are about recovery, you know, those are the ones that I always like.

• 59:26Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Rich Roll?

  Okay, I gotta respond to this one. That's my first priority. But, but, you know, I've spent days where I'm, I'm responding to all of that, and then I don't get to the thing that I actually need to do for that day.

• 59:38Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Rich Roll?

  You know, and that's, sometimes that's the way it goes.

• 59:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, you know, one of the points that I made to my sister is, you know, she, um, her husband, Bill, works incredibly hard. And he's, you know, a great father, a great guy. I really love him. And, um, but he works incredibly hard, you know, and he, when he comes, you know, he has this pretty stressful job and, you know, he needs, uh, he needs to be able to lean on his wife for, you know, support. She's got four little kids, you know, so she's, um, she's really, um, the support system for her entire house, you know, and, you know, she was saying to me like, I feel so terrible taking 45 minutes away to exercise every day, you know,

• 1:00:24Mishka Shubaly?

  because I could be doing, you know, things for the kids or things for Bill, you know, or things for mom or things for you. But if I don't exercise every day, I just, I get crazy. And I told her, I was like, If you fall apart, this whole operation stops.

• 1:00:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Like, we're all relying on you. So the best, if you want to help us, take care of yourself.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Mishka Shubaly?

  Take that time to make sure you get your sleep, exercise, if it's going to put you in a better mood. Eat right, you know, take good care of, the best way to-

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  Taking care of yourself does not make you irresponsible, or a bad person, or even selfish. Like, you have to do that in order to take care of other people. And I just did a podcast a couple of days ago. Um, I haven't aired it yet, but with Jeff Castellas, who's president of Electra Records. Um, you know, ran Dangerbird, you know, founded, ran Dangerbird Records, which was a super cool indie label. Like, the guy is, you know, at the top tier of the music industry. He's an amazing dude, sober. And, uh, and he suffered something that, you know, I would wish upon, I would wish upon nobody. When he lost his six-year-old son, uh, in a protracted battle with cancer.

• 1:01:41Rich Roll?

  And in the process of his son being ill, you know, he started a blog to kind of like express his emotions of what he was going through. And that blog kind of went viral, like it affected a lot of people because he was being really raw and transparent about what it's actually like to have, you know, a child that's so sick. And, and on a daily, day-to-day basis, like what is entailed in going through that? And, you know, he's a big cyclist. And, and at the end of the podcast, I was like, you know, what are some things that you could make sure that you want people to know, like other parents out there who might be in the midst of, you know, what you went through? And he was like, you gotta take care of yourself. And it's so easy not to, because there's so much to do and so much is at stake.

• 1:02:26Rich Roll?

  And all of your emotional energy is invested in the wellbeing of your, of your sick child. But if you don't take that time, well, he's like, I had to get out and ride my bike every day. You know, I just had to, because if I didn't do that, I couldn't show up for everything else, emotionally, physically, mentally, everything else. And he's like- You know, that's the thing that parents have to remember who are going through something. And that's applicable, I think, to everybody, you know, who's living a busy life. Like, it's easy to just push that aside and say, "Well, that can come tomorrow." But, again, that goes to the, you know, you gotta, like, keep the infrastructure sound. You know? If the foundation starts to crack, the whole thing collapses.

• 1:03:05Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. When I, um, when I quit drinking and when I, you know, got better and started running and stuff like that, I, uh, you know, I did, it was a purely selfish thing. I, I had to save my own ass. But in doing that, it was a tremendous gift to my family. You know? That, um...

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  Your, your perception of it was that it was selfish. But, you know, I think what we share is that, you know, that was a way of trying, you know, that sort of, like, crucible of pain was necessary in order to grapple with, you know, where we stood in our lives and, like, what we wanted to be and do. And, and, you know, it was, it was the equivalent of the person who goes to live in an ashram in India or something like that. It's like a, it was a soul exploration process in order to, you know, resolve certain questions about, you know, identity and, and, you know, what your, what your future life might hold for you.

• 1:03:59Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  So you qualify it as, as selfish, and I understand why. And I, and I say the same thing, too, quite often. But, you know, the more distance I put between myself and, and kind of that experience, the more I realize that, that, you know, it was really, I mean, it felt selfish, it still on some level does, but, but I think it was absolutely necessary in order for me to be able to kind of come out the other side and, and, you know, be a more effective husband and father.

• 1:04:27Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. I mean, what I didn't realize when, you know, I was working so hard to get myself well is that, um... You know, I'd felt so isolated in, um, you know, in my drinking, my drug use. I just felt like I was totally alone and I didn't realize that it was, you know, that my, my sister, uh, you know, it used to be like every time I would come to visit her, when I would leave, uh, she would cry. And I was like, well, you know, why are you crying now? I'm okay. And she said, well, it used to be every time I saw you after you left, I would cry because I, I didn't know if that was gonna be the last time I was gonna see you.

• 1:05:09Mishka Shubaly?

  And now I cry because I know it's not, you know, and I know that like you're back. And, um, and that really made me realize that, you know, when I, when I was out there utterly alone, I wasn't utterly alone. My family was fucking worried sick about me. And then now that, you know, that they know that I'm better, that I got my head screwed on straight and that, um, I'm vigilant about my own self-care. They worry so much less, you know, and that, um, by, you know, that's that thing we were talking about before, you know, like by doing something good for myself, I did a great thing for my family too, you know, like their, you know, their son or their brother came back, you know?

• 1:05:50Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. And that's a beautiful thing to celebrate, man.

• 1:05:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, it feels good to be back, man, still, you know, every day I, um, you know, I was fighting with the moving company, like trying to get my shit delivered and I was just like, ah, fuckers, you know, like hanging up the phone. I looked over at my sister and she looked at me and she was like, you wanna go run? And I was like, let's go run! You know, we went running, like just, you know, cursing at each other, like, oh, these people, uh, and we came back, we were like, alright, let's get some work done. You know, so we just like, we were able to get, go out, you know, bond with each other, gripe about what was bothering us, get our heart rates up, get sweaty, and then we just came back and we were like, we're good, you know, we can, now we can face the day, we can deal with this stuff.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  But what was going on with your health, man? Like, your health started to deteriorate a little bit. Was this in the process of trying to get the book done and you weren't taking care of yourself? Or, you know, I just, you had some kind of like cryptic posts on Facebook that made it clear like something was happening that didn't sound so good.

• 1:06:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I, uh, I'll spill the beans, I don't care. I, um, yeah, when I was up in Canada, I started having, uh,

• 1:06:58Mishka Shubaly?

  This is gonna be graphic. Pain when I urinated. Mm-hmm. And at first, it was just a... This is the difference. It's funny, you know, with... Like a urinary tract infection? It gets better. The, uh, you know, in... With people coming to awareness of trans issues and that gender appears, you know, a lot of people are realizing, understanding that gender sort of manifests on a spectrum. It's not black and white. You're a man or a woman. You know, it's, um, you know, people are sort of trying to define what is a man and what is a woman. And I think the, I think the dividing line is, um, you know, a woman down there, if she feels like her vagina has bad vibes, she'll go to the doctor and

• 1:07:40Mishka Shubaly?

  like get it dealt with. And if you're a man, you're like, "Well, I'm only in excruciating pain five times a day." (laughing) "Other than that, it's mostly okay, so why don't I wait and see if this gets any worse?" Yeah. That's classic. And... Clearly, you did not go to the doctor. I took... It took me a couple of days to go to the doctor, and then it was just finally where I was like... So it's like... Almost in tears. Swords every time you're... Yeah, yeah. It was brutal. So, of course, I was like, "Um, I have, uh, I have a bladder infection. I have a UTI. I have a STD. Something's wrong." Mm-hmm. So I went and got tested for everything. Twice, three times. Nothing. No sign of infection whatsoever. They're giving me just antibiotic after antibiotic. You know,

• 1:08:25Mishka Shubaly?

  the, like, Cipro, the real, like, heavy hardcore, you know, stuff that's really incredibly bad for your gut. And, uh, nothing was working. And I was just getting more and more... You know, it's demoralizing to be in constant, you know, to be in pain like that. And finally, I went to go and see a special... You know, and this is in my final week in New York when I'm packing up the house, finishing the final stuff on the book. You know, it's just, there could not be more of a pressure cooker. And then finally, I go to a urologist, and he was like, "Yeah, all of your tests are not just normal, but good. Um, I know that you're in a lot of pain, so we know something's going on. Are you under a lot of stress?" Mm-hmm. And I was like...

• 1:09:09Mishka Shubaly?

  Dude, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, like, moving out of where you've lived for, you know, a very long period of time is considered, I mean, that, like, changing jobs, moving, getting out of a relationship, like, these are the biggest stressors that you can experience.

• 1:09:25Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Rich Roll?

  You know, suffering the loss of a, you know, a loved one or something like that.

• 1:09:29Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. And, um, and he was like, you, you need to find a way to relax. And I was like, all right, buddy. And he was like, no, because if you don't, things are gonna get worse. Like, maybe your kidneys will start to shut down. And then I recalled that, like, over the course of my life, I've had, you know, I had shingles when I was seventeen, and then I had it come back again when I was in my twenties. I've had a bunch of weird, my friend Aaron, uh, dropped dead on the street one day and was brought back to life and then died again and then brought back to life. He has a weird heart anomaly. So we were, he was in, like, ICU at Beth Israel and we were, like, doing, you know, sort of bedside vigil, waiting for him to die. And, um, you know, I was talking to one of the doctors, like, you know, what's going on with my buddy?

• 1:10:12Mishka Shubaly?

  And he was like, what's up with your hands? And I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, well, I saw you looking at your hands earlier. Those red and white, those painful red and white blotches, that's borderline anaphylactic shock. The next thing that's gonna happen is your throat's gonna close up and then we're gonna admit you. And he was like, you have to find a way to chill out, otherwise, you're gonna be in deep shit. And then that night, Aaron came out of the woods. He woke up, he was okay, no brain damage. And I fell on the floor and just wept. And then the next day, my hands were fine.

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  Wow. So you have this, like, sort of anxiety reaction that manifests itself biologically?

• 1:10:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  Not really psychosomatic, but basically, so it's weird because the blood tests showed nothing, but the urologist is like, this is being caused by your emotional state.

• 1:11:05Mishka Shubaly?

  Yep, exactly.

• 1:11:06Rich Roll?

  Even though, like, there's still something physical that's causing your, causing you the pain, though. He couldn't identify that?

• 1:11:13Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, it was inflammation, but it was inflammation that was caused by my crazy brain.

• 1:11:18Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:19Mishka Shubaly?

  And, um, and, you know, fortunately, like, an old friend of the fam, I had already, I was out of my apartment by this point, I had no place to go. I had tour dates booked in Colorado. And, um, I was, and my sister was like, no, just pull the plug, pull the plug on the dates. That's it. You know, I never miss shows. I played a show with a broken finger once. Played a show with strep throat. I canceled those shows, you know? And I went and my, you know, these old family friends, uh, put me up in their apartment. I slept 16 hours a day for three or four days. And then I started to feel better.

• 1:11:52Rich Roll?

  Wow. Well, I mean, if you needed to sleep 16 hours a day, then something was definitely wrong.

• 1:11:57Mishka Shubaly?

  I stopped taking all my medication, started drinking, you know, just drank a lot of water, ate good food. And little by little, symptoms went away. I had pink eye too, that came on at exactly the same time. Went away without medication.

• 1:12:10Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:12:11Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. And it was just, I just run myself into the ground, man. And, uh,

• 1:12:17Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, I know, um, it's a good lesson. I gotta, I gotta take, you know, all this shit that I was just saying 10 minutes ago about how you gotta take care of yourself.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Mishka Shubaly?

  I gotta, I gotta take my own advice, man.

• 1:12:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, how's the diet? You know, it's like, I know you take like sort of morose pride in your Instagram posts of, you know, the, the sad, you know, bachelor can of tuna, you know, or can of beans with a, with a fork in them.

• 1:12:42Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, no, I have.

• 1:12:43Rich Roll?

  This is the meal. Like, it's sort of like, it's, it's similar to the van, you know, like you're holding on to this like.

• 1:12:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, I finally, I have my own, uh, political stance on it now. It's, uh, povertyarian.

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  Povertyarian. I mean, come on, let, let's let go of that. All right?

• 1:12:57Mishka Shubaly?

  No, the, um, the, the can of beans, that was just something that came out of utility. You know, if you're writing all day, you have 15 minutes to like eat a meal or whatever. I was just like, all right, this is gonna be fast. And then when I posted it and everybody went crazy and I was like, all right, well, I'm just gonna keep, I'm just gonna keep annoying you guys.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  You're getting affirmed, you know, like you're getting some, you're getting like some juice, you know, from, from, from doing that. But this is not serving you.

• 1:13:22Mishka Shubaly?

  You're, you're absolutely right. And I have a, I'll go one step further and embarrass myself a little bit more. Um, from my experiments with doing plant-based, I was like, wow, I don't need to eat animal protein at every meal in order to have energy, in order to recover, in order to feel full, in order to feel well. Ergo, I can just eat gummy beer, gummy bears for breakfast.

• 1:13:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:13:51Mishka Shubaly?

  Lunch and dinner and I'll be fine.

• 1:13:55Rich Roll?

  That's how you solve that equation.

• 1:13:57Mishka Shubaly?

  That's how you almost get hospitalized.

• 1:14:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:14:01Mishka Shubaly?

  And it's rich, it's idiotic.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  It is, man.

• 1:14:04Mishka Shubaly?

  To say it, like, I feel so.

• 1:14:06Rich Roll?

  You're a grown ass man.

• 1:14:08Mishka Shubaly?

  Apparently, I'm physically anyway, like, what's wrong with you?

• 1:14:12Rich Roll?

  The sun's shining, you turned your book in, let's focus on this a little bit now, shall we?

• 1:14:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's time, it's time for me to get right and I gotta like, um, but being on my.

• 1:14:22Rich Roll?

  Especially now you're gonna be on the road, you know?

• 1:14:24Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Rich Roll?

  I mean, here's the other thing about like, like, I don't, I don't know how you do this. Like, I, I, there's no way that I could be spending so much time in like dingy bars. I mean, especially without going to tons of meetings and being completely dialed in, uh, you know, in recovery. Like, that's gotta take like an energetic toll on you, just kind of being in those environments every single night to play music. Like, how do you manage that?

• 1:14:49Mishka Shubaly?

  The.

• 1:14:49Rich Roll?

  I couldn't do it.

• 1:14:51Mishka Shubaly?

  I almost never feel temptation, almost never.

• 1:14:55Rich Roll?

  But it's not even, it's not even that, it's not, it's not necessarily like the desire to drink or not drink, but just kind of being around, like, like on some level, like, it's just, you know, it's not a high vibration, you know, when you're just around like a lot of people that are drinking and smoking all the time. It's like, you go to Las Vegas and if you're just in the casino, like I know, it's like, oh, you know, there's people, it's eight o'clock in the morning, they're, they're drinking and smoking and pulling on the slot machine. Like, I get depressed, you know? I don't, I don't wanna drink, it doesn't look good to me, but like, it, it, like, is a heaviness, you know, that like, I'm like, I gotta get out of here. And I think it's, it can be similar if you're just in tons of pubs all the time, like every single night.

• 1:15:36Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, you're absolutely right and, um, it's remarkable for somebody who spent most of their life being wasted. I have zero tolerance for drunks. You know, after like 10:00 PM, when people start telling me they love me like three times in a row, I'm like, I'm fucking out of here. I can't deal with you. It's not that I feel temptation, I'm just like, this is so boring. But this is what I'm hooked on, man, is that.

• 1:15:58Mishka Shubaly?

  Some of the smartest, funniest people in the world, philosophers are up there on stage in these shitty bars telling jokes and it's the highest high. You know, touring with J T Habersat, Jay White Cotton, I played with Tom Rhodes last night, obviously Doug Stanhope. You know, I've been running, you know, just about every day since I've been out in California and like my lungs are all sort of clearing out residual crap. I laughed so hard last night at Tom Rhodes that I had to like get up and go and spit in the alley because I was reaching parts of my lungs that I haven't been reaching

• 1:16:39Mishka Shubaly?

  from running because I was just gasping with laughter, you know, and that shit is so good for you. It's, it's good for your brain, it's good for your body, it's good for everything, you know, and I, you know, I, I love, I love my comedian friends like nothing else. I had the best day hanging out with Tom yesterday, just talking about, talking about everything from racism in America to, you know, him losing his father and me, you know, getting right with my dad and, you know, talking about jokes and, and everything in between. And, um, and there's, there is nothing better in this world than a belly laugh, you know, and.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  I'm with you on that, but, but I think, you know, not every night you're out with comedians, right? Like a lot of it, a lot of times you're just in, you're just playing bars and it's just the music, yeah? Or you, or is it comedians with you all the time?

• 1:17:28Mishka Shubaly?

  Mostly I've been touring with comedians now. Yeah, I've, I've been doing it, you know, a ton of touring with comedians and then the only other person I've tour, toured with, you know, who isn't a comic is my friend Michael Dean Damron, who is probably the most gifted songwriter I've ever met in my life. And he's also an incredibly funny motherfucker, just constantly cracks me up. And, uh, yeah, so, I mean, a lot of it is just like, you know, I'm just playing with my friends, you know, and.

• 1:17:57Mishka Shubaly?

  Your right to express concern and to not instantly grok it. I'm getting to the end of it. I'm getting to the end of sort of like what I can handle and what I can deal with. You know, this next big run, like as much as I can't wait to like hang out with JT and J Y Cotton and like Mike Weeby from Riverboat Gamblers and hear all the new jokes that those guys have and just, you know, just crack up. You know, those drives through West Texas, it takes years off your life and you know, it's damaging to your sanity.

• 1:18:34Mishka Shubaly?

  And I think that I'm probably, you know, I'll probably be homeless for like the next year and then I will be homebound.

• 1:18:43Rich Roll?

  And are you going to stay down with your sister and her kids and your mom? Are you going to get a place up in town here in LA? Or what are you going to do?

• 1:18:51Mishka Shubaly?

  My, my plan is to, to make my sisters my HQ, you know, because that's the thing is when you come off the road, you want to come all the way off the road and being there with the kids and the dogs and the citrus grove and like that's all the way off the road. I'm hoping to do a Sunday night show with my friend Brett Erickson in LA. So I'll probably be up, you know, once a week or whatever. You may find me sleeping in the garage at your place once or twice.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  I mean, I'm just thinking like, if you're in LA, you know, we could do some, we could do some live podcast stuff. We could do some shit if we could figure out how to get them recorded.

• 1:19:24Mishka Shubaly?

  But I mean, we could get like a Weekly show or something like that.

• 1:19:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we could just book some, some little, you know, small little venue or theater, you know, even if we got like 30, 40 people to show up. You know, there's a bunch of other people that do that around town. That could be a fun thing to do.

• 1:19:39Mishka Shubaly?

  We should, we should write a book. We should do like a, you know, we should host a show together. We still have a couple of big stupid races that we got to do together.

• 1:19:51Rich Roll?

  There's all kinds of stuff. Now that you're semi-local.

• 1:19:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's another thing too, is that, you know, now that the book is done, I feel I've never been so excited about running. Like I just, I knew that I was going to have to let my endurance training go in order to get the book done. So I've been, you know, and that's a big thing that I learned from Robin Arzon, huge shout out to Robin is just like, do those little three, four, five miles, you know, runs every day to have, get some, you know, consistency. It doesn't have to be like 18 miles every, you know. You know, once a week and then you don't do anything else, you know, and you're like ruined.

• 1:20:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, consistency is much more important than, you know, putting in the monster workout.

• 1:20:31Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Rich Roll?

  But it's hard, especially as an alcoholic, like you wanna like, you wanna go do, you want, you want the massive.

• 1:20:36Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  Thing. It's like, oh, well, three mile, who cares about that, you know?

• 1:20:40Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm, I'm still, and I haven't had, I haven't been able to fit this into my schedule. I'm still looking forward to the big like bender run. Where I have a free day where I'm just like.

• 1:20:49Rich Roll?

  You're gonna run all day.

• 1:20:50Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm just gonna run as far as I can and then I'm gonna turn around and come back and like, just leave it all out there on the road. Just be like, you know, crying and covered with salt and dust and limping when I come home and just like, just get it all out. Cause I've been storing up a lot of shit, man. I'm ready to go out there and have one of those big epic runs.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  The, uh, it's the ultra athlete's version of an ayahuasca trip. Yeah. You gotta burn it, you know, you gotta burn it all in the, you know, the funeral pyre.

• 1:21:23Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Rich Roll?

  Gotta burn it, burn all that, that stuff off.

• 1:21:26Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. And also, you know, it's a victory lap for me. I mean, this, you know, getting this book done is a huge accomplishment to be, to be given the opportunity to publish a book to, you know, to have a book in, you know, a physical book to hold. That's so massive. Um, I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the work that I did. I'm proud of the work that I did with my dad. I'm proud of my dad for, you know, enduring, you know, all the shit that we went through together. Um, I, you know, I, I'm, you know, I deserve to have a big stupid run like that.

• 1:21:58Rich Roll?

  You deserve a lot, man. You know, I'm glad that you're able to like embrace that and I can hear the gratitude for the book too. And I know that you, you know, you fought hard for it. Um, and you had your moments of, you know, like, I don't know if I wanna do this and you know, da, da, da, da, da. So to be on the other side of it and having it, you know, turned in and essentially completed and to have that sense of gratitude is cool, man. That's progress.

• 1:22:21Mishka Shubaly?

  The harder something is, the more, the more it's worth it.

• 1:22:27Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:22:27Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, dude, I listened to your pod with, uh, with James, the Iron Cowboy. Crying on the plane, like listening to, uh, you know, his wife talking about him like just crying uncontrollably after three days. And, uh,

• 1:22:47Mishka Shubaly?

  That guy's a maniac and he's so lucky to have the family that he has.

• 1:22:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, his, his wife's amazing.

• 1:22:53Mishka Shubaly?

  That, you know, she was like, this is my man and I've got to, I gotta take care of him. I gotta be with him. I've got to support him. And I gotta kick his ass out the door in the morning. Lace up those shoes, boy. You've got some work to do, you know? It's like, man, such, just such an awesome story, such an awesome family.

• 1:23:11Rich Roll?

  It's pretty incredible. Like, I, I think, you know, sort of having, you know, now it's been a couple of weeks since I, you know, was up there and experienced, you know, the end of that and, and was able to, you know, have that conversation with him and his, and his family and his crew guys and all of that. And, you know, the more I think about it, the more amazed I am at what he accomplished. And I, I think that, you know, most people, they just don't, I mean, there's sort of, you know, people like, oh, my God, that's amazing. But it's like, hold on a second, like, let's really like go there. Like, it's, it's a little bit more than that. Like, I,

• 1:23:45Mishka Shubaly?

  It's devastating. It's mind boggling.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it, it really is. I mean, and, and it sounds like hyperbole when I say, and I've said it before, like, I really think it's one of the most extraordinary achievements and, and, you know, the annals of voluntary human endurance, like, it really is.

• 1:24:02Mishka Shubaly?

  It's phenomenal. It's, you know, okay, let's take what James did. Let's throw it out the window for a second. Just, just put it aside. Lucy, his daughter, ran a 5K every day for 50 days.

• 1:24:19Rich Roll?

  Yep.

• 1:24:19Mishka Shubaly?

  That's fucking incredible.

• 1:24:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Just that.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:24:24Mishka Shubaly?

  I, we should do the Lucy Post Challenge where we get, we, everybody signs up and we all do 5K a day, every day for 50 days.

• 1:24:33Rich Roll?

  That would be a cool thing.

• 1:24:35Mishka Shubaly?

  Cause that alone, that's so hard.

• 1:24:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:38Mishka Shubaly?

  But, and then, okay, now let's put the camera back on what, you know, what James did and that like, I mean, I know you and I were both rooting for him so hard, but, but also, but at the beginning, I, I couldn't let myself root for him because I was like, this, this can only end in tears, you know? And, um, I just, I cannot, fuck, it blew my, it blew my fucking mind that he did it. I cannot believe it. It's just. It's historical.

• 1:25:09Rich Roll?

  I also think like, one of the things that I observed and you know, I, I had the podcast with him before he went and did it. And that was the only, my only experience, you know, he hung out at the house a little bit after that, but you know, that's as much as I knew of him, you know, was that couple hours that we spent. But I got a sense of like, who this guy is and kind of what he's about and got a sense of his energy. Um, and, and at the time I remember thinking like, this guy's a really impressive athlete, but you know, I'm just, I don't know, we'll see, right? Uh, and then kind of being there when he was finishing and kind of running that marathon with him and experiencing how he was interacting with someone, it was like,

• 1:25:47Rich Roll?

  you know, again, this sounds like hyperbole, but it reminded me of the Russell Crowe character Maximus in Gladiator, like somebody who's just so in their power. In like a really quiet, confident way, like not in an arrogant way, not in a boisterous way, but somebody who's just, you know, they're just present with who they are, they understand like, what they're commanding around them and they're doing it with like grace and gratitude and like humility. And that's what I got from him. I, I watched him, I observed him. I saw how he, you know, was touching everyone and the way that he kind of, you know, sort of gracefully navigated all the social pressures that came with that. It was impressive, man. And he was like, you were like, that guy's a powerful dude.

• 1:26:30Rich Roll?

  You know, and like he, he kind of was starting to understand the significance of what he had accomplished and how he was touching all these people. I mean, dude, 3,500 people were there in Utah, like going bananas. Like it was, I've never seen anything like that.

• 1:26:51Mishka Shubaly?

  One of the things that I learned when I was starting to run was that

• 1:26:56Mishka Shubaly?

  only being enraged would get me out the door. And that was, that was easy at that time because I was always angry. And um, but I burned through that in like three or four miles, you know, it's hard to stay angry that long. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot. It takes a lot out of you. My uh, my godmother was dying of cancer at the time. And so I tried to just think about her healthy and happy and like doing well and just carry like her smiling face in my head with me when I ran. That's how I was able to run long. It was hatred that got me going and love that kept me going. And that's what I took

• 1:27:39Mishka Shubaly?

  away from, you know, from listening to that, that pod with uh, with James is that for him, it was a great act of love. You know, that it was um, that was a huge valentine to his wife and to his family and to his world. That's what we do as runners. We adventure out into the world and it's, it's, it's an act of love to say I, I care about myself. I care about my life. I care about this world. I want to have adventures. I want to engage in my reality. I've done, I've been in my head enough. I've been on the computer enough. I've been watching TV enough. I love this world. I want to, I want to eat as much of it as I can, you know?

• 1:28:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a beautiful perspective. Um, and it, and it stands in contrast to the critics who would say, well, this was a selfish endeavor and how could he do this to his wife and his kids? You know, they risked so much and you know, all of that. And it's like, it's a weird thing because, you know, you have to do something insane to get on people's radar and to get attention. But then when you do that, you're like, yeah, but that was irresponsible. It's like, we want to celebrate these amazing achievements, but then we want to criticize them for actually taking the risk or, or the leap of faith that's necessary in order to, to do that. In the same way, like, look, I just posted my podcast interview with Conrad Anker. Like that guy goes out and you know, does these

• 1:28:59Rich Roll?

  You know, unbelievable, high altitude climbs where the risk is literally life and death. And, and we celebrate that as, as someone who is an extraordinary adventurer. And, you know, he has his critics who are like, how could you, how could you, you know, take that kind of risk when you're married and you have these kids, you know, and the kids are, are the survivors of their dad who, who was lost in an avalanche. So it's a very heightened thing, you know, and so he's got to like, sit with that, right?

• 1:29:27Mishka Shubaly?

  Let's, let's look at this another way. Let's look at what, you know, typical, uh, typical dads are doing in America. Working 60 hours a week, eating crap food, being 40 pounds overweight, working long hours at the office to buy a boat, to buy a jet ski. That's fucking irresponsible. You're, you are, you're not, um, taking your, yourself out of your kid's life for two, three, four months in the summertime like, like James did. Uh, you're absenting yourself from their lives a little bit every day. Two hours here, three hours here, four hours there. And then by not taking care of yourself, when you have that heart attack, when you're

• 1:30:10Mishka Shubaly?

  49, you're, you're, you're putting yourself at much more, much greater risk by doing that than by doing an insane climb or an ultra marathon or something insane by, you know, like what James did. You know, we should all be so irresponsible as to dream like that guy and, and be like, no, everybody's, you guys are all coming with me. You're my family. I love you. I need you there. Come with me. You know?

• 1:30:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the sheer audacity to dream that big, to like have a dream that's so insanely large. And then to go out and execute on it.

• 1:30:42Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. Dude, dude is an animal. I mean, I just, you know, one word, respect.

• 1:30:48Rich Roll?

  He could have kept going, man.

• 1:30:49Mishka Shubaly?

  I know.

• 1:30:51Rich Roll?

  I mean, he had like the swim on the final day. He had a rough time. Like he, there was a moment where it looked like it might fall apart. But on that run, man, he was solid and like, literally like the last kind of mile and a half before he stopped so that everyone could run the final 5K with him. He was throwing down. We were easily running seven minute pace, you know, at the, the very, very, very tail end of his 50 Ironmans and 50 states of 50 days.

• 1:31:19Mishka Shubaly?

  Phenomenal.

• 1:31:19Rich Roll?

  You know, so it's pretty cool, right?

• 1:31:22Mishka Shubaly?

  I, I have to ask you this though, man, cause I, hopefully this is a question that's on other people's minds. He didn't do six Ironmans in six days on, you know, six different Hawaiian islands. Uh, he didn't beat your record or break your record. He fucking annihilated it.

• 1:31:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Mishka Shubaly?

  And, um, my, um, my understanding of you and, and what's important, you know, to me about you is, is not the epic five, but who you are right now, day to day in our, in our conversations on or off mic. Um, but, but you, but I know you, you're my friend. I mean, you must have had feelings, you know? Did, did you feel jealous? Did you feel unhappy? Did you feel, um, that you'd been shown up or was it, was it, did you only feel positive things for him? Or, I mean, tell us, because if you felt negative things, we need to know, like everybody out there needs to know.

• 1:32:24Rich Roll?

  I, I couldn't have been more excited or more proud of what he did, you know? And, you know, like I've been very honest about in the beginning, like, you know, I didn't, I wasn't sure he was gonna make it. And so like, the, the more debased version of my character is like, ah, he's gonna have to take it rest day. We'll see how this goes.

• 1:32:40Mishka Shubaly?

  Okay, good.

• 1:32:41Rich Roll?

  You know, he doesn't know what he's in for yet. You know, I've walked a mile in the issue, blah, blah, blah. But then when it became clear, like he got through the first four or five, then I was like, then I got like really excited for him. You know, I didn't like, I did epic five. It was cool. Like I didn't do it so that it would be some record and then I could be like the only person. It's like, I don't care about that, man. You know, I know that the fact that I did epic five and he read Finding Ultra, that that played a part in inspiring him to take on what he did, even if it just on a very tiny de minimis level. Um, and so I celebrate everything that he's doing. Like, I'm like, that, this is why you do it. Like you push the boundary so that you can inspire someone else to go and say, I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna go here now. And that's

• 1:33:26Rich Roll?

  a beautiful thing. Like, why would, I'm not, I'm not jealous. I don't, you know, I'm me, he's him. We're not competing for anything. You know what I mean? Like, I wouldn't have gone to Utah and run the final marathon with him. If I was jealous, like I'm psyched for him and he deserves everything that he's getting. You know, I could not be happier for him.

• 1:33:46Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  So, you know, what I did is different from what he did. I told my story. He's got a different story. And there's, we don't live in a zero sum world.

• 1:33:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Thank you for that. Thank you for saying that.

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  All of us, you know, and I think for me to sit around and go, oh, you know, oh, well, you know, he did something more than me. So what I did doesn't mean anything like he took, he didn't just, you know, like, like you said, he annihilated what I did. He took what I did and he went 10x on it.

• 1:34:11Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  So what am I going to do? Like, oh, I'm bummed? Like, no.

• 1:34:14Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, it's, it's, you know, like-

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  He deserves nothing but like, love and respect and my admiration.

• 1:34:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Also, you know, I mean, you know, we were talking earlier about, you know, I needed to be all the people that I was in the past in order to be who I am now, you know, had to wake up, you know, having pissed my pants in order to, to not do that anymore. And also to have a little sympathy for the guy on the street who's just done the same thing. You know, and I think, you know, there's a lot of, of ultra runners out there. Um, my friend Scott Comer, you know, on, on Facebook, you know, I see he's doing, you know, races that are bigger and badder than anything I ever did, you know, but I know that he gives me props for pointing out to him that, oh, it was possible, you know, that like, oh yeah, I can do this, you know, and, um,

• 1:35:05Mishka Shubaly?

  so yeah, I mean, it's, um, you know, I definitely feel like it's, it's Scott's victory and not mine, you know, but, but I, I know that like I played a tiny little part in it. And, uh, and I just feel incredibly grateful to have been involved in any way, you know? And I think that, um, you know, I hope you give yourself a little bit of credit for that too. You know, that, um, you know, that James Redd finding ultra and he was like, this, this is possible and, and maybe more.

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  But I think even beyond that, like, it was just a really great, cool, gratifying experience for me to be able to participate in telling his story and sharing it and helping it reach more people. And I know that, you know, look, he said to me straight blank, like, basically in every state, people were showing up because they heard about it on the podcast. And then I was able to get, you know, this most recent podcast with him. I was able to get it promoted on the homepage of iTunes. And it was a really cool feeling to email him and go, hey, man, go to the homepage of iTunes checkout. And there's an epic picture of him, you know, and I'm like, this is going to help a lot of people like learn about your story. And that feels good. You know, it's like blowing wind into his sail is a cool feeling to have.

• 1:36:16Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, and to me, too, um, you know, your greatest accomplishment is not, is not the Epic Five or Finding Ultra, but it's this podcast and this space that you've created, the platform that you've given, you know, people like myself and JJ and James and Robin and, you know, so many people who I care about and who, you know, whose stories have touched me and you've created a space and a platform to like, send those narratives out in the world. So people can say like, this is possible. There is hope. You can change. Josh LaJuni.

• 1:36:46Rich Roll?

  LaJani, yeah.

• 1:36:47Mishka Shubaly?

  LaJani, yeah. I love that story.

• 1:36:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:49Mishka Shubaly?

  And, um,

• 1:36:50Rich Roll?

  And that's another, that's another example of something like, like with James, because, you know, I was able to share Josh's story. And I know that I've helped empower him, you know, on a journey that he's taking right now, where now he's public speaking and he's sharing, you know, he's like helping a lot of people. And it's, it's really like, at the end of the day, when I put my head on the pillow and I'm like, I know that I played a part in helping, you know, in helping him get out there and like sort of pushing him out into the world and go, your story has merit and has value and it's inspiring and you can help people and you need to get out in front of people and start doing that. And to see him doing that right now, and he's working on a book and, you know, it's like, that's really awesome, you know, because it's not about me and my story. Like, this

• 1:37:35Rich Roll?

  is about sharing everybody's story. And again, it goes back to the beginning of me like feeling weird about getting these emails, because it's like, it's about the stories of my guests and what they're sharing. And to the extent that I can, that I can, you know, be a cipher for that, like, that's just, that's an awesome, awesome feeling. You know, it's that, it goes back to that adage of like, like, if I can just... Like, remove my, I just want to remove my ego from this whole thing and like, allow these voices to come through and be of service to that. So that, you know, in, in hopes that that can like be a salve to somebody who's suffering out there.

• 1:38:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13Rich Roll?

  To the extent that I can get into that mindset and really honor that and serve that, like, that's a magical place to be. And that's all I want for this.

• 1:38:22Mishka Shubaly?

  It's, it's a testament too, to the power of narrative. Like, how, how we use story to make sense of the chaos in our lives and how, and how we use stories and, um, you know, the tales of other people's accomplishments or their, or their struggles, how we use that as a means of, uh, a lens through which to see our own struggles and opportunities for us to change, you know, for us to transform. You know that I'm a huge story addict, you know, any, any good story, you know, I, I just, you know, that's one of the things.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  There's nothing more powerful than a, than a, than a story well told, you know, and, and the power of a story is less in, in, uh, in the actual details of the story and more in how it's told, you know, and how it's told, right? How do you, how do you convey a message in a compelling way? And that's your job as a, as a writer and as, you know, a spoken word person up on stage at the Moth or whatever it is that you're doing or, or in, or in, you know, writing a song.

• 1:39:23Mishka Shubaly?

  When, uh, when I'm in some crappy dive bar and some, you know, some old guy says, "You're never gonna believe this story, but every word of it is true." I'm, I'm right there, man. Like, the hair goes up on the back of my neck and I'm like, "Okay, everybody shut up. I got, okay, speak." You know, and that's, that's the power of it.

• 1:39:45Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:46Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, that's my jam. That's my new drug, man, story.

• 1:39:49Rich Roll?

  All right, well, speaking of story, uh, you're now in a position where you're actually trying to convey some wisdom about story to younger minds.

• 1:39:57Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, God.

• 1:39:58Rich Roll?

  And new day, and so.

• 1:39:59Mishka Shubaly?

  I got called out on this.

• 1:40:01Rich Roll?

  The hilarious irony of Mishka, like, teaching writing at Yale University is just, I love it, it's awesome. So what was that, what was that experience like, teaching there this summer?

• 1:40:11Mishka Shubaly?

  Maybe better than finishing the book.

• 1:40:16Mishka Shubaly?

  Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a teacher. And then, you know, as I got older and made different decisions with my life, it's like, well, I guess I won't be an astronaut. I guess I won't be a surgeon. I guess I won't be a teacher, you know, because, because I was a drunk and who's going to let me, you know, teach anyone? And then Yale contacted me and, you know, and asked me to teach this, you know, intensive four day seminar. And I've never, you know, I, you know, I'm down with ultra marathons. I'm, I'm down with violence. I'm down with grueling tours, you know, I'm not a very fearful person.

• 1:40:57Mishka Shubaly?

  And I was terrified about having a blackboard and like having to teach people and stuff like that. And

• 1:41:07Mishka Shubaly?

  the,

• 1:41:09Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, and the other thing is I was the new teacher there, so nobody had really signed up for my workshop. Everybody who I'd got in my class, they were like, oh, well, I wanted to be in this other workshop, but it was full. So that's why I'm here. So the first thing that I had to say was

• 1:41:23Rich Roll?

  Awesome.

• 1:41:24Mishka Shubaly?

  I was like, you're all in the right place. I'm going to bust my ass to make sure every single person in this class gets what they need out of this class, you know? And, um, and I, you know, I'm, my goal is, is for all of us to leave here totally exhausted. And that I want this to be intense. I want you guys to remember it.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  How did you, how did you begin the process of trying to like, create a curriculum for something like this?

• 1:41:47Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, the, you know, the, the umbrella was that I was, you know, going to be teaching people how to write a nonfiction Kindle single that, you know, that was sort of how we, that was our, our entrance into it. Instead of it, a lot of it ended up just being. How to survive as a writer, how to live as a writer, how not to give up. Writing habits, how to, how to write a pitch email, how to, you know, how to deal with negative feedback online. You know, the, the first handout that I gave them was like 10 one-star reviews for the long run.

• 1:42:21Rich Roll?

  That's great.

• 1:42:22Mishka Shubaly?

  And I handed, and I, you know, stacked it in a way so that my name wasn't in, you know, wasn't on the page until the very last one. And I had to read it aloud and just read these like terrible, you know, this guy should be sterilized. So nobody with his genetic material could ever write and put another, commit another word to.

• 1:42:38Rich Roll?

  Did you get a review like that on Amazon?

• 1:42:40Mishka Shubaly?

  That's hyperbole, but there were some pretty cutting, you know? And then when they got to the last one and somebody read my name, they all looked at me like, oh my God, are you okay? And, and I said, listen, that story bought a house for my mother. So fuck them all. Not everybody's going to like what you do. And if everybody likes what you do, you're, you're doing something wrong. Then it's vanilla ice cream, you know, you're, it's mayonnaise. It's not like, it's nothing meaningful. And, um, but it was all nonfiction. So some of the stories that we dealt with were a woman who had lost her son to drug addiction the year before. A woman who, after the, the birth of her fourth child, her husband committed suicide.

• 1:43:25Mishka Shubaly?

  A, um, a woman who had a preventive double mastectomy that went terribly wrong. And she, you know, was left, you know, very scarred and is still, you know, navigating that process.

• 1:43:38Mishka Shubaly?

  Incredibly, incredibly heavy stories, you know? And I had, of course, I had the whole folder of, you know, dick jokes that I'd prepared for the class that I just sort of like, okay, just throw these away. And it, you know, I had to be very serious and very sensitive and thoughtful for four days without break. And it was exhausting, dude.

• 1:44:01Mishka Shubaly?

  As soon as I got home, I cornered my roommate and I was like, okay, I have another dick joke. I have another dick joke, you know, and I had to get that out too. But uh, but it was so awesome, man. I mean, my um, I told my class, you know, after a couple of days, I was like, listen,

• 1:44:15Mishka Shubaly?

  we know who we are. We have an identity. We're the orphans. You guys all came here. Nobody wanted to be here. You all all felt like you didn't belong. You belong, you know, this is us together and like, you know, we really, I thought we were all gonna cry at the end of the class. It was so good. Um, but yeah, it was awesome. They're gonna have me back next year for uh, for a month. I think I'm gonna be teaching a couple of different um, classes. Everybody should sign up. It's gonna be, it's gonna be intense, you know, um, you know, and the other thing too is that people are bringing in these like, some of them are like just horrifying transformative life experiences. So we have to understand that and respect it. And then look at what's wrong with the paragraph. Look at what's wrong with the sentence. Look at what's wrong with the word.

• 1:45:00Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, so you ha- they have to be able to trust you enough to go in and do, you know, basically open heart surgery while they're still awake.

• 1:45:08Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:45:09Mishka Shubaly?

  And you have to have a fine enough touch that you can show them how to change it, how to improve the thing. Without everybody bursting into tears, because it hurts.

• 1:45:18Rich Roll?

  Or discouraging them so much that they want to abandon it. Yeah, it's a fine, that's a fine line to walk and here you are, you're now you're a teacher, man. At Yale, no less. How's the, how's the uh, interaction with the rest of the faculty? With the tweed, you know, with the tweed set.

• 1:45:34Mishka Shubaly?

  It's awesome. It's so weird. It's uh, nobody knows what to do with me.

• 1:45:41Rich Roll?

  You're like the faculty lounge, like.

• 1:45:43Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm definitely the cool teacher.

• 1:45:44Rich Roll?

  Can you go to the Yale Club in New York now and hang out?

• 1:45:47Mishka Shubaly?

  No, no, no. Uh, even if I could, I wouldn't, but um.

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  I can't see you there.

• 1:45:52Mishka Shubaly?

  But it's, you know, the, and it was such a great experience for me too, to hang out with uh, with other, with other teachers, with the other faculty, with other academics and talk about, you know, this sort of forgotten lexicon that I have of writing and, you know, sort of serious study of literature. And uh, and every person, every faculty member there is smarter than I am and I have so much to learn from them. And I love being the dumbest person in the room because you learn the most.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:46:21Mishka Shubaly?

  And uh, it was just awesome. Everybody was super nice to me. They uh, you know, they love, you know. And I, they, you know, they, they treated me with respect, you know, they were like, oh, you're the, you know, alcoholic rock and roll degenerate.

• 1:46:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:35Mishka Shubaly?

  Welcome.

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  Every college needs one of those. One of those guys. He's the professor that, you know, ends up becoming the most popular, you know, sort of this.

• 1:46:43Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh dude, I gave this.

• 1:46:44Rich Roll?

  Kind of like a David Foster Wallace type character.

• 1:46:47Mishka Shubaly?

  I gave this speech and I just killed my, uh, my editor from Amazon was supposed to come in with me, but his dog was dying that day. And we were gonna do a, you know, sort of a conversation.

• 1:46:56Rich Roll?

  Is this the one you did at the, the hoity-toity stuffy club?

• 1:46:59Mishka Shubaly?

  Uh, it was, um, it, it, the National Arts Club.

• 1:47:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:02Mishka Shubaly?

  And it was, yes, it was, you know, I'd lifted some stuff from that, but it was, you know, no notes. And I just got up there and I said, uh.

• 1:47:09Rich Roll?

  And you gave this speech where?

• 1:47:11Mishka Shubaly?

  At, uh, at Yale.

• 1:47:12Rich Roll?

  At Yale.

• 1:47:12Mishka Shubaly?

  And, uh, you know, you know, a hundred people in the room. And I just said, um, I got my big break as a writer by living as a penniless alcoholic, uh, doing a ton of weird drugs and getting shipwrecked. Does anyone have any questions?

• 1:47:28Mishka Shubaly?

  And everybody just looked at me like, oh man, who is this guy? You know, I was like, all right, all right, let me give you a little more context, you know? But it was awesome. It was, they, everybody really responded. They were all fired up and like.

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:47:40Mishka Shubaly?

  It was cool.

• 1:47:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you did a similar thing at the National Arts Club, right? And you, it was like, you, I remember you posted a picture of it, like, just to like, sort of paint the picture. Like, you know, mahogany, you know, walls and like, everything you would imagine, like a really stuffy, like kind of old school club would be where you're up at the podium and there's a bunch of old people.

• 1:48:00Mishka Shubaly?

  And the inside of it, it's like Bosnia Herzegovina. It's like some, uh, you know, some Eastern European country that doesn't exist anymore. Because the last time they remodeled the place was like in the 1700s. So you're just, you, you don't.

• 1:48:13Rich Roll?

  Lots of black and white photos of parties from like 1964.

• 1:48:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, and you, you just, you go back in time when you walk in there and I was just like, I'm so unqualified to be here. And, uh, I just told, you know, I, my speech was about like, you know, Richard Pryor and, uh, you know, and pissing my pants and, uh, and I fucking ate it up.

• 1:48:33Rich Roll?

  I think you told me like some old lady come and gave you a hug afterwards.

• 1:48:37Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's where the book release party is gonna be. They really wanted, you know, to have me back.

• 1:48:44Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:48:44Mishka Shubaly?

  And I can't wait for it. I'm gonna have to rent a blazer for JJ so he can come.

• 1:48:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he might not even show up. I don't even know, even if you gave him a blazer, I don't know that he could, he could force himself to put it on.

• 1:48:56Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:57Rich Roll?

  I remember he told me, he's like, "Yeah, Mishko, he invited me to go. I can't go to that place." Like, I'm not going in there.

• 1:49:07Mishka Shubaly?

  He's one of a kind.

• 1:49:08Rich Roll?

  I know. So cool, man. Well, let's, let's, let's wrap it up. But before we close it down, maybe, I thought it would be cool if you could kind of share a few insights that, that maybe you, you picked up as a result of, of teaching these writers over the course of the summer that could respond to some of these emails or inquiries you get about, you know, how to write a great narrative, how to write a great story, how to put together a book. And, you know, what are some kind of tools or tips that you could just,

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  you know, express briefly that might be helpful to somebody out there who's considering the possibility of putting pen to paper?

• 1:49:48Mishka Shubaly?

  When you write, eliminate all judgment from your mind. Just, just let it flow. Just let it, whether, whether you're typing, whether you're, you're writing, just let it flow out of your pen onto the page. Let it flow out of your fingertips onto the keyboard. It doesn't matter. If it's garbage, if there's no punctuation, whatever, none of that matters. Just let it out. Just, just get it onto the page. That's just, and don't think about editing. Don't think about anyone else reading it. Don't think about your marketing strategy. You don't think about agents or genre or any of that stuff. Just get it out. Then,

• 1:50:27Mishka Shubaly?

  you know, write until you're exhausted. Leave it alone. Come back the next day. Then start revising. That's when then you start editing. Then deal with that. You're still not thinking about marketing or genre. You're just, I'm taking this, you know, amorphous mass that I spit onto the page, and now I'm gonna make it into something, you know, usable. But, you know, at each point in writing,

• 1:50:52Mishka Shubaly?

  You have to shut up the voice in your head that says, this is no good. I'm no good. This is hopeless. You just keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you throw a lot of stuff away and, uh, and you, you cry and you tear your hair and you rend your clothes and you curse God and you keep going.

• 1:51:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, you have to allow yourself to be bad in order to be good.

• 1:51:16Mishka Shubaly?

  Exactly. Exactly. The way, um,

• 1:51:22Mishka Shubaly?

  the only way to succeed is to fail over and over and over again and just, just get right in your head with failing. That's how you succeed.

• 1:51:32Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to shut it down.

• 1:51:33Mishka Shubaly?

  Awesome.

• 1:51:34Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. So I think I'm going to put this up tomorrow.

• 1:51:37Mishka Shubaly?

  Awesome.

• 1:51:37Rich Roll?

  So, uh, uh, for people that are listening who perhaps are in the UK.

• 1:51:43Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:43Rich Roll?

  What are these dates? I mean, is there a place where they can go online or are there a couple of things you could?

• 1:51:47Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. If, if you go to, uh, mishkashabali.com, all my tour dates are up there and, uh, yeah, I'll hook you up with a song too to tack on at the end of the podcast.

• 1:51:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, let's, uh, let's close it out with a tune. What's, what do you think?

• 1:51:59Mishka Shubaly?

  Uh, this is my new sing, uh, the new single off the, in advance of the new record and it's called, uh, New Jersey Valentine's Day Orphan Blues.

• 1:52:08Rich Roll?

  Excellent, man. Did we play that one before on the show?

• 1:52:11Mishka Shubaly?

  No, we played, uh, I Can't Remember When You Were Mine.

• 1:52:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool, man. Awesome, man. Always a, uh, always an honor and a pleasure, dude. I love you, brother.

• 1:52:19Mishka Shubaly?

  I love you too. It's great to be here.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  Let's go, uh, let's go over to the house and hang out with the kids and play some music and eat some food.

• 1:52:25Mishka Shubaly?

  Sounds awesome.

• 1:52:26Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. So if you, you're digging on Mishka, mishkashabali.com, at Mishka Shubaly on Twitter and Instagram and all that kind of cool stuff. And if you're in the UK, go check them out, uh, listen to them, play some music and, uh, give them a pat on the back.

• 1:52:40Mishka Shubaly?

  Peace.

• 1:52:41Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace. Plants.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Well, you sure got a big mouth And you know how to use it

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  For screaming and howling and swearing and sobbing and oozing

• 1:53:22Speaker 02

  But lay down your weapons, we're ready to give in to your demands The getaway car's packed with cocaine and whiskey and a battered tin can

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

  Happiness is as dull as it seems And the company loves misery You'd be happier being unhappy like me

• 1:53:56Speaker 02

  'Cause I'll be cutting my milk chocolate heart out just for you

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  The girl with the New Jersey Valentine's Day orphan blues

• 1:54:49Speaker 02

  Well, I always do the right thing when I've run out of wrong things to do

• 1:54:58Speaker 02

  But God, everybody's made a few mistakes, everybody's buried a body or two Or three You said with your hatred and my hangovers that we'd bring the world to its knees

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  I'll pull my head out of the toilet long enough to say that I disagree

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  Me with my black market heads And you with your tremors and pangs Who's gonna look after the kids?

• 1:55:41Speaker 02

  Cause I'll be cutting my milk chocolate heart out just for you

• 1:55:50Speaker 02

  The girl with the New Jersey Valentine's Day orphan blues

• 1:55:59Speaker 02

  Cause I'll be cutting my milk chocolate heart out just for you

• 1:56:08Speaker 02

  The girl with the New Jersey Valentine's Day orphan blues