Your Life Is Now: Mike Posner On Walking America, Summiting Everest & Crafting Hit Music

The core of every hero’s journey is a desire to step into the unknown, seek adventure, and above all, embrace metamorphosis. For Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Mike Posner, that meant trading the comforts of Hollywood for a Mount Everest base camp—and ditching the tour bus to instead walk across America. Let me explain. After skyrocketing to fame following the release of his debut song Cooler Than Me, Mike built a career writing infectious pop meditations (that have accrued billions of streams) for some of music’s biggest stars—people like Justin Beiber, Pharrell, Maroon 5, Tom Morello, Snoop Dogg, Nick Jonas, and Avicii. As follows, he also built a life on womanizing, partying, money, and fame. In our last exchange back in 2019, Mike and I discussed his moment of awakening—the events that led him to give away all his possessions, buy a van, and live more simply. But much has changed for Mike since we last sat down. Over the last two-plus years, he’s walked 2000+ miles across America and followed it up this past year by summiting Mt. Everest, racking up a depth of experience-based wisdom along the way. Mike moves through the world with such a beautiful, heart-centered perspective. I appreciate the way in which he wears his heart on his sleeve, his ability to lean into vulnerability, and the manner in which he confronts struggle with curiosity. Today’s exchange is centered on his quest for meaning and authenticity. It’s about channeling pain into art, grief into gratitude, and above all, redefining yourself and self-imposed limits. Note: Mike was kind enough to perform a few songs live in our studio, so please stick around to the very end, as he takes us out with a performance you will not want to miss. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. I’m proud to help share my friend’s experience, wisdom, and infectious hope. It’s truly magical, and my hope is that you find it as moving as I did. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Everest was so dangerous, so real, like, death so close, that the looking cool ceased to be something that was pulling me upward on the mountain. It became something that was pulling me down. It was like, hey, man, if that's the reason right here, you should turn around. You know, and it was just, the only thing that had pulled me up was that commitment, man. But it's hard to do anything. You know, you walk from where I'm sitting to your sitting, I would be breathing like this. (sighs) Like, it's, I mean, I just, I can't explain the altitude, how bad it made me feel. And it hits different people differently, and that was another part of my journey.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I go in the tent one night at Cantu with John. John and I are in our tent, and I hear one of those rumbles. And it stops for a second, and then all of a sudden... Our tent starts to shake like from all angles. It feels like we're about to be picked up, blown off the mountain. A hole rips in our tent. The snow's hit me in the face, filling up my sleeping bag. I'm screaming, "John, John, John, avalanche, avalanche." I'm like, I'm sure in that moment, I'm dead at Camp Two. Avalanche is hitting our tent. And then right when I'm screaming, it just freaking stopped. And I'm like, looking at my hands. They're still shaking. And I'm like, how am I alive?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 2:41Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. My name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast. Welcome to the thing. My guest today, returning for his second appearance on the show, his first being back in March of 2019, which was, by the way, an absolute barn burner and audience favorite, is multi-platinum artist, musician, and now adventure athlete, Mike Posner. Mike is a Grammy nominated singer-songwriter known for his infectious pop meditations on grief, on loss, celebrity, art, and growth, which have accrued in total billions of streams over the course of a career that also includes writing songs

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  for and with some of music's biggest stars, including people like Justin Bieber, Pharrell, Maroon 5, Tom Morello, Snoop Dogg, Nick Jonas, and of course, Avicii. However, much has changed for Mike since we last sat down. Over the last two-plus years, Mike literally walked 2,000 miles across America, and he followed it up this past year by summoning Mount Everest, racking up a depth of wisdom along the way that he is here today to share. Mike is an old soul. He is a deep and truly beautiful human. This conversation, much like our first, is absolutely stellar for reasons too many to mention.

• 4:11Rich Roll?

  And it's all coming up. But first.

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  Okay, Mr. Mike Posner. You know, this guy, he's got such a beautiful, heart-centered perspective. And the way in which he wears his heart on his sleeve, his ability to lean into vulnerability, the way in which he confronts grief and struggle with gratitude and curiosity, and this quest that he is on for deeper meaning and authenticity, and how he takes all of this and channels all of it into his art and his life, I find it to be very personally deeply inspiring. And just a long way of saying that all of you guys are in for a treat today.

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  Mike was kind enough to perform a few songs after the podcast, so please be sure to stick around at the very end for a live performance. You're not going to want to miss. And I think that's about all I want to say. I'm just proud to help share Mike's experience, his wisdom, and his hope, and I think you'll find it moving as I did. So without further delay, this is me and Mike Posner.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Well, it's good to see you, man. I appreciate you coming in to do this. Like we said a minute ago, so much has happened in your life since the last time we sat down and chatted. I feel oddly like very connected to you, even though we don't talk. Like, it was when you came in, I was like, "Oh yeah, I just saw him last week." Or, you know, I don't know what that is. There's some intangible thing, but I think you just make people feel very comfortable and at ease.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Thank you. I feel you're strange, because I feel the exact same way about you. I feel comfortable around you. And you're right, even though it's been a few years, I've felt connected to you. So maybe we're just like reflecting back the good parts of each other.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  Or either that, or there's some past life thing going on. I don't know.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  We were brothers!

• 6:35Rich Roll?

  And the last time we did this show, I mean, the audience really loved it. I mean, you're definitely an audience favorite. So I think people are gonna be really happy to see your face again.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm happy to be here.

• 6:47Rich Roll?

  Before we get into any of this stuff, there's so much catching up we have to do. The first thing that I have to comment on is I know that you and Inky recently went and spent some time with our mutual friend Doug Evans out in the desert.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:03Rich Roll?

  That is like growing compound out there.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:05Rich Roll?

  And you left that experience like this new sprouting evangelist. Like you're making videos about sprouting. I mean, Doug has that effect on people.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Doug, Doug's one, he's, I could call him one of my best friends. I talk to that guy a lot.

• 7:18Rich Roll?

  He's an unbelievable human being.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  And so I was already sprouting a little bit.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  But it's really, I spent, spent some time with my family. I told you I have a house in Michigan and when I'm there, I spend time with all the levels of my family.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  From my, from like the babies to the elders. And we got a pretty strong late onset Alzheimer's thing going on. I've done my 23, me, I got both of those genes from both my mom and my dad. So I really wanted to start taking that serious, you know, to do whatever I can and not get that. So the growing, the sprouts at home is, it's been awesome. It's been fun. I'm eating like upwards of four ounces of sprouts a day, which is basically like an entire mason jar full. And it's great. I do a staggered system, so I have eight jars. Like when I first started doing it, I just start all eight at once. Then I had like eight jars and then.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  I did that too, and I had so many sprouts, I couldn't, there's no way I could possibly eat all of them.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  So now what I do, I start a new one each day. So always there's one that's like perfectly like ripe. It's still growing and then it like goes them. I mean, there's nothing better, you know, like you can buy sprouts from the store and they're still really good for you, but they've probably been there a day or two. These are like alive still and then they're, they're going in the body. So yeah, the sprouts is, is awesome, man. And I've really started to dial in. You know, like I always had my macros, right? I was never eating a lot of sugar or like high carbs or anything like that, but. Just, you know, dialing in, like, where's this stuff coming from? Is there, like, poisonous toxins in there or not, you know? And going to the farmer's market more and just start taking it more serious. Because, you know, I don't want to get Alzheimer's.

• 9:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, I feel you, man. I got some of that in my family as well. But you spend time with Doug and it's not going to be long before you're like 100% fully raw vegan.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  He has such an infectious energy and you just want to follow his lead because he has so much enthusiasm for these lifestyle habits. He's so passionate about it and you can't help but like, you know,

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  sort of absorb all of that energy.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 9:38Rich Roll?

  And you sat in the tubs that he's got out there and everything.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Well, he's got all these great hot springs there.

• 9:44Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Do you know, I spent, got the opportunity to spend some time with Wim Hof. I said, Doug, you gotta get some ice, you got some ice baths out here, man. So.

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  He doesn't have the ice baths going on yet?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Nah, he will.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he will, I'm sure he will. I know you spent time with Wim, we're going to talk about that. First of all, man, you look great. You look healthy.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Thank you, it's the sprouts, man. It's the sprouts.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  And then you share these recipes on like TikTok and Instagram.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do this. So the Posner sprout recipe, take some broccoli sprouts, drizzle it with hemp seed oil, pink Himalayan sea salt and nutritional yeast.

• 10:24Rich Roll?

  And that's it? You just eat it straight?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Dude, it's great, man. And I, I'm, you're right, Doug has infected me. So like anytime artists come over to work in the studio, I'm always like giving them sprouts. Right. Hesitantly like putting in their mouth and they're like, this is all, like, I could eat this all day. And I'm like buying them a sprout, kid, it's great.

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  This is the real bud.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  So funny.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:52Rich Roll?

  You're back in LA. Welcome back to town.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 10:55Rich Roll?

  I know you've been collaborating and back in the studio and making music. But when we last talked, it was right on the precipice of you beginning your walk across America. So let's like traverse that experience first.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Great. Yeah, after we spoke, I was getting ready to go and I, I actually got injured before I even started. I walked into a. I can't remember if this is right after we spoke or right before, but I, you know, I had the date set, March 1st, 2019. I was gonna start in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I posted on Instagram, people are gonna come, it's gonna be this beautiful thing, and I was outside at this like pool party. Everyone is like drinking and stuff. I'm not, I'm focused, cuz I'm getting ready to walk across America in a month. And I wa- I go inside to get a water, and I walk into the leg of a table, and I break

• 11:53Speaker 01

  my pinky toe, and I had a stress reaction on my second metatarsal. So it was like, I went to the doctor, and he's like, "Man, if you want any shot of completing this, like, you gotta let this heal." And it's like, okay, so before I even go, before I even take my first step, is a reason for me to quit.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  Right, obstacle number one.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's just like, okay, there's gonna be a lot, many more of these. And I let the thing heal, and I show up off the coast of New Jersey, Asbury Park, and I got two feet in the ocean, the saltwater waves are crashing over me, and to be honest, I'm scared, because I told everybody that I'm gonna walk across America, and it's 2,800 miles, we think, the route that we've picked. I just have no idea if I can actually do it.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  I have a belief inside me, you know, but I don't really know for sure. There's no way to like, really know, there's no way to like, fully prepare. You can't do like, half the, you know what I mean?

• 13:07Rich Roll?

  But that's true of tackling anything hard.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  You wanna know exactly how it's gonna play out, you wanna know what steps you're gonna have to take, you wanna be able to foresee every obstacle and how you're gonna meet it, and it just doesn't work that way.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  No. So with all this anxiety and uncertainty, I stand with the, in the ocean, and I take my first step. Step one is take one step, right? Step one is take one step. And I keep walking. I walk across the lush fields in New Jersey. I walk across coal country in Pennsylvania, where I share the road with Amish buggies. I see a double rainbow in Ohio. I start to develop like horrible plantar fasciitis, which I'm sure you're no stranger to. And like, I wake up in the morning and I can like barely stand up. Hmm. But I keep going anyways. I walk across Indiana, Illinois.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  I walk into Missouri during a heat wave, where you know, like the weatherman's on TV saying, stay inside. Like, screw it, I'm gonna walk 24. I'm walking usually 24 miles a day. I walk into Kansas. I walk across Kansas, where I just saw unbelievable shooting stars. And orange sherbert sunrises every morning behind me that are so beautiful that I'm turning around to walk backwards. I'm walking Colorado. And I've walked 1,797 miles at this point. Went, ah! Mm-hmm. I think, what the, like, pain shoots up my leg. And I'm like, what the heck was that?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And then I, I hear a sound I don't wanna hear.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  And I realize that poisonous rattlesnake just sunk its fangs into my, my left ankle. And at first, I'm not thinking too much of it. I'm trying to just stay calm. But I glance around and there were two fans there that showed up to walk with me. But no gas station, no barns, no houses, not even any cows. Like, this is bad. They called 911. And while they called 911,

• 15:34Speaker 01

  It was sort of like the end of Looney Tunes, if you remember that, where it goes like this. Right. The circles converge on the center of the screen and says, "That's all, folks." Well, that's exactly what started happening to me, except instead of colorful circles, it was darkness and just, you know, blacks creeping in from the corners of my awareness. And I could feel myself fading away.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Now, they let me speak to 911.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And dispatch says, "Sir, I've sent an ambulance from two different towns and a helicopter. Whatever gets there first, get in." And I asked, "Am I gonna die?"

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And the, the voice on the other line says, "I don't know, sir." So I'm sitting there, I'm like, "This, it's not a bee sting," you know? Yeah. And an hour later, I'm in the, the back of an ambulance. It, it just dawns on me that like, this could be the end of my life. This could be, hopefully not, you know, if they like, they get me there, all works out, but could not.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And I just, I made a decision, Rich, that if indeed it is gonna be the like, end of my life, I'm not gonna waste it worrying about if it's the end of my life. Like, so I literally have this moment in the back of the ambulance where I'm just

• 16:58Speaker 01

  reclining, I always feel like I was in like, some enlightened state. And right when I made that decision, I started to like, see, like, the colors became more vibrant. The light, I noticed this red paint on the back of the ambulance door and it was like, really red, it was beautiful and vibrant and alive and, um,

• 17:19Speaker 01

  there was just peace and everything made sense. Long story short, I go to the ICU for three days. I thought, you know, they have this medicine called antivenin. Right. And I thought- Just get the shot. I thought if I get that, cuz it's called antivenin, I thought it, I thought I'd be walking the next day. Mm-hmm. Doesn't work like that. The antivenin just like, makes it so you don't die, you know? But the doctor for, you know, you're gonna be here a while. We gotta watch your leg and um my leg swelled to like basically the size of an elephant trunk.

• 17:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you shared photos of that on Instagram.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:57Rich Roll?

  Was very haunting.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it got real big and real painful. And I went from twenty, walking twenty-four miles every day to like, I couldn't walk to the bathroom without help. I had a walker and like somebody, you know, holding me.

• 18:12Rich Roll?

  Relearning how to walk. I mean, were you in the hospital for five days or something?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  I was in hospital five days, ICU for three, and then um you know, due to amazing medical care at Parkview Hospital in Colorado, I started to get better. And then actually came like the hardest part of the snake bite. Wasn't actually getting bit by the snake. The hardest part of the snake bite was getting better from the snake bite. Because, you know, I went after the hospital, I wasn't ready to go. I basically had to rehab. Took three weeks.

• 18:48Rich Roll?

  Right, you went back to Michigan, right?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  Kind of heal up.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  That's right. And while I was there, everyone is like coddling me, cooking for me, wishing me well. You know, they're putting me on the news. John Mayer is DMing me on Instagram with saying speedy recovery. I'm in like this nest of cuddly sympathetic softness.

• 19:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  And.

• 19:14Rich Roll?

  The idea of putting yourself back into that difficult situation becomes all the harder.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Is horrible.

• 19:20Rich Roll?

  After the break.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  And yeah, three weeks, I just can't deny it any longer. My ankle was healed. And so I'm looking at the map and I have one thousand, you know, that's thirty-eight marathons. I have one thousand hot horrible miles left. And um I gotta decide like, just like when I walked into the table and got hurt before, like I have another reason. This is a great reason actually, because if I quit, no one will even think I'm a quitter. They're like, hey, I almost died, it wasn't meant to be, whatever. But I started to realize like.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, my reasons are just excuses, wearing fancy clothes. That's it. They're the same reason, excuse, the same thing. So I gotta decide, like, am I gonna live my life according to my excuses slash reasons? Or to my commitment? And I said, screw it, man. I'm gonna go back out there. I got like the sweltering heat. I got that horrible foot pain. I got the snake-riddled roads of Colorado 10. They're waiting for me. In fact, like, basically hell's waiting for me. And it's like, screw it, you know? I wanna meet hell too. Let's go. So I go back to the exact spot. And I was like scared, man. I was having like nightmares about snakes.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  I still don't like snakes, you know? I didn't wanna go back to that spot.

• 20:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  You know?

• 20:52Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  It was scary.

• 20:54Rich Roll?

  The PTSD of it.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  It was scary.

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  What's interesting is, to kind of create a little bit more context for this, the whole idea behind the walk, I mean, I know there's this kind of origin story. You were in Teeny's Jewelry Shop and somebody had mentioned that they had a friend who did it. And that kind of planted the seed. But the seed has germinated over the course of you completing this album and being faced with the prospect of having to do the traditional kind of promotion behind it. And realizing like, you couldn't get up for it. Like, I just can't do that.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:29Rich Roll?

  And the obstacles there being like, all of these people who are so heavily invested in the success of this music. It took a lot of gumption and courage to opt out of that and say, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do this other thing. And I'm sure there were a lot of people who weren't very happy about that at the time.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Um, I'm not sure if we covered it last time. You can, I don't know if you remember either. It was a while ago.

• 21:51Rich Roll?

  I don't remember. I didn't go back and listen to it. We probably did talk about it, but...

• 21:55Speaker 01

  But, uh, yeah, I was, um, I, I, I had the dream of doing it like five years. And, um, you're right. I, I, I felt like I was just caught under the weight of my own life. And... I had done all the research about the walk across America. Turns out there's a strategy to it. Best to start east to west because of where the mountain ranges line up. And best to start in spring, early spring, in an effort to be done before winter. Mm hmm. So each time spring rolled around, it was something in the way. Right. It's an album I gotta finish. There's a tour I gotta do to support the last album. It's never gonna be convenient. There's a wedding I gotta go to and

• 22:39Speaker 01

  I just, I just didn't do it. Five years, I was letting my dream die and I, I I felt it, man. It's like I started to have this like low level depression kind of creep into my life and I was talking to another guy, I think we, we haven't come, Elliot Biss now. Mm hmm. Sure. Elliot and I went to the same high school. Is that right? Yeah. How about that? So I was talking to Elliot. Julie talks to Elliot all the time. Amazing. Yeah, he's another like guy who just exudes superhuman enthusiasm. So I, I said, let me talk to him because I feel utterly uninspired. And maybe his positivity will like through our conversations seep into me, you know?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  And so I told him, yeah, I was like, dude, I just can't do this anymore. This whole like Mike Posner show going on the road, doing the shows, yeah, put your hands up. I can't do it. He goes, well, what do you want to do?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I said, what I really want to do is walk across America, but I told my manager that they all think it's crazy. He goes, that's great news.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  And I'm like, what do you mean? That they think it's crazy. It's great news.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  So I'm confused. I'm like, what, what are you talking about? He goes, you gotta understand, not all crazy ideas are great, but all great ideas are crazy.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  And I think you walking across America is a great idea.

• 24:13Rich Roll?

  That was it.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  He told me that.

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  And you gotta live your life, man.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  I felt it like.

• 24:16Rich Roll?

  The dream deferred.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  I could feel the truth underneath what he was saying. And it was just like, there's never gonna be a right time. No one's gonna roll out a red carpet for me. People are always gonna have a reason why I shouldn't do this. You're gonna hurt your body, you're gonna, like, your career's gonna suffer. I'd hurt them all, but it was like, this is my life. And I'm either gonna live it, like, this is either gonna be a part of my life, this walk, this dream, or I'm gonna live some other, like, crappy version that I know isn't my truth.

• 24:46Rich Roll?

  Right. But there's also this idea of what the walk was gonna be like versus the reality of it. And on some level, you could frame it as a unique and different way to promote your music. Like, I think there was this sense, like, the music's coming out and I'm gonna go from town to town. I'm gonna play these shows and walk with a bunch of people. And it'll actually be like, kind of a grassroots way of sharing my music in a different, you know, format, essentially. That it would be like this moving carnival across America. And it started out like that. It looked like, and I remember you sharing on Instagram, you would be in these college towns or whatever, and there'd be a bunch of young people, and you'd kind of end the day with a little mini concert.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  But then, slowly but surely, the people start to fall away, and the reality sets in of just how difficult this is gonna be.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. I thought, I thought it would be a little bit more of like a hippie dippy experience. I'd meet some beautiful people, like, hey, you seem nice. Y'all spend a few days here. Um, but then start to look at the map and the miles. And it's like, you got these frickin'.

• 25:57Rich Roll?

  You're gonna be doing this for the next two and a half years?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  You got these frickin' Rocky Mountains, you know? And they're 2,000 miles away. And look, I don't wanna be there in November. I wanna be there in August, you know? Or September at the latest. And so, the math just didn't work with that, like, hippie dippy thing, you know? It became this, it became this, uh...

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Exercise in extreme discipline because it is freaking hot, you know? You're walking through the summer in, you know, Missouri and Kansas. So it's like you can't roll out of bed at 10 a.m. And start trying to get 24 miles and you're gonna cook. So I had to get up at, I didn't have to do anything. I chose to get up at four every day and start, try to be walking by five. And I could get pretty much my 20, 20 of my 24 miles in before it started to get really hot. Anyways, I say this to, to illustrate that I never wanted to do it. Like every day my alarm went off and I never wanted to get up.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  It's 4 a.m. I wanted to sleep more, you know? And

• 27:16Rich Roll?

  Musicians don't wake up early anyway.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Right, and so

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  You're probably not a morning guy constitutionally.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I like to be, you know, like my job makes it hard sometimes. Like sometimes we start work at 10 p.m. So you don't wanna be super tired anyways. But on this walk, yeah, I never wanted to do it. And like, I just had to decide every day, I'm gonna do this anyways. And um, it didn't matter, also it didn't matter how I felt emotionally. Like the thing went off 4 a.m. And some days I felt sad. Great, get up and walk.

• 27:52Rich Roll?

  Right, doesn't matter.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And the next day you feel happy, you say, great, get up and walk. And I still realize like, I don't know anybody that's happy all the time or always in the zone. I'm certainly not. But I know people that show up all the time, you know, like they're, they're there for their commitment. Their word means something. I wanna be one of those people. And I do remember us talking about that last night.

• 28:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this idea that integrity is super important. And that, that shows up on the Everest challenge as well. Like I said, I was gonna do this thing, like I'm gonna do the thing.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, on Everest, that was the only thing left. And we could talk about that later. But um, again, I went back to the freaking spot, snake bit me and I walked.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Where it bit me, I could just see the Rockies on the horizon. They're like real small and it was really cool to see the Rocky Mountains having walked from the Atlantic Ocean. So I just, you know, went back to the spot, took a step, kept taking steps, went up and over the Rocky Mountains and then like I felt like I had an invincibility cloak. It's like this snake bit me, I went over the mountains, I could do anything. I started to dream while I walked. I started like to have this vision of myself climbing Everest after the walk was over. But I still had a long way to go, so I had to stay focused. And I walked across Colorado, walked across the Navajo Nation, walked across Nevada, walked

• 29:23Speaker 01

  into California, you know, walked through the Mojave Desert, walked into LA, I could see the Hollywood sign on my right, kept walking, you know, the pavement turned into sand at Venice Beach, kept walking. My walk escalated to a sprint and six months, three days after I started, after walking 2,851 miles, I dove into the Pacific Ocean. And I thought I'd feel accomplished. But interestingly, I didn't feel accomplishment in the water, I felt possibility. It felt like the first day of my life.

• 30:10Rich Roll?

  I think that's a really crucial insight. This idea that there are no finish lines, that it's just another step on your path.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  This like notch in your belt, but really just a checkpoint, right? This idea of checkpoints rather than kind of endpoints.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Rich Roll?

  And when you have, when you can kind of contextualize your accomplishments in that way. I think that keeps the ego at bay a little bit. It allows you to have a little bit more gratitude and humility and keeps you on track for what's next.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  I think it's fine to celebrate these things and acknowledge, like, I did this hard thing, of course, right?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:51Rich Roll?

  But you gotta keep moving.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  That's right. And I shouldn't have because my body is pretty jacked up. Like, I'm sure you've been there, probably worse than me, you know? But just from doing that same repetitive motion for six months.

• 31:06Rich Roll?

  I'm sure.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  It just hurt, man. Like, if I sat down, I stood up, like, it really hurt. Everything just hurt bad, like, and I was a little worried that it would feel like that forever. Like, maybe I jacked myself up.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  But I was so, like, I was so hypersensitive of over-celebrating it that I had this boxing coach, Coach Marcelo, in L.A. And I said, "Can you meet me at 4:30 tomorrow?" He said, "Yeah, no problem." So the day after I finished the walk, I go boxing with him.

• 31:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I just needed, like, I needed to-

• 31:48Rich Roll?

  Switch gears.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  I needed my body and my spirit and my mind to know, "Look, we're not done." Like, this thing is over, this chapter, but beginnings hide themselves in ends, you know? Like, we're gonna, we're working tomorrow, too, you know? So I just had to get up early and, like, work hard again the next day.

• 32:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  And during the walk, I had somehow, Elliot, connected me to Colin O'Brien. You know Colin, I think.

• 32:13Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  And Colin, I started to ask him about Everest, because he had summoned it before.

• 32:20Rich Roll?

  Well, before we even-

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:22Rich Roll?

  -get into that, like-

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 32:24Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a couple things. Yeah, no, it's cool. We got time, bro. We can breathe. Before we completely move off the walk- I know that there was this idea. Well, first of all, when you were in the hospital, I just remember you sharing videos of that experience and being with the walker and, you know, being really transparent about what you were going through at the time. And I don't remember the details of that, other than like seeing this person who was incredibly positive, like you were smiling and you were like happy. Like, that's the moment where you're like, shit, man, this whole thing went out the window. I didn't want this to happen. It's a disaster. But you had this big smile, like you do right now. And you're like, I'm in here

• 33:07Rich Roll?

  and they're treating me so well. And like, where does that facility to hold on to that kind of unbridled level of optimism come from?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Goggins, one word, Goggins. And I don't remember what, I don't remember if in his book, or on your podcast, or on another podcast, but I heard him talking about visualization. And I believe in like, the law of attraction, all that stuff. Like, before I went on this walk, I was writing in my notebook, I, Mike Posner, will walk across America, like, 100 million times, going on walks, just saying that, like, it's my mantra in my head. And I really believe it. Okay, we know about that kind of visualization, you visualize yourself being successful. But somewhere, maybe it was in his book, I heard Goggins

• 33:59Speaker 01

  say, you gotta visualize when things go wrong, too. And so, before I left, I did that. And I visualized like, myself breaking a leg on the walk somewhere. And I just visual, I saw myself like, rehabbing it, going back to the same spot where it broke, and finishing.

• 34:23Rich Roll?

  You had already rehearsed that whole thing. Like, okay, here we go. This is, this is what happens.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  It was already, the decision was made. And so, I never had to battle that internally at that time of the injury, because I'd already done it in my head. So, I got, I got our boy David to thank for that.

• 34:44Rich Roll?

  Yes, the tendency to have that impact on people.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  And it's like, I had, some like, law of attraction person might say, well, maybe you attracted the injury. Maybe I did, you know, but like, I had done enough research on this thing, and talked to enough people that had done the walk. To know like, hey man, you're not gonna go almost 3,000 miles without something bad happening. That's actually why you're going in the first place. You wanna go feel that horrible moment and see if you're gonna decide to keep going. Right? That's why you're doing it.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  Those are the teachable moments.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:20Rich Roll?

  Those are the experiences that give it the value that you're seeking.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  That, and there's a second part to that optimism, which is way less valiant or noble. It's like, hey man, we're out there. It's just like, it's just hot and hard.

• 35:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  And when I was hurt, even though my left leg was like in a lot of pain, the rest of me actually felt really good taking a break. And like, I was in air conditioning, I was sleeping in a nice bed. So, it was easy to smile about that kind of stuff.

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  For that, right?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that was part of it too. Like, the hospital was a lot nicer than the walk.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  What were some of the more impactful experiences that you had, besides the rattlesnake bite along the way? I mean, I know from people, I know a bunch of people who've run across America and walked it, etc. And one of the recurring themes that always comes up is how profound it is to traverse the Navajo Nation.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  That was a place that I was warned about before I got there by white people. They say, be careful when you go there, bad stuff happens, that kind of thing. And when I got there, there was just this outpouring of love and support from the from the Dene people. Dene is what they called themselves. Navajo was like a white word, just got thrown on them. And, yeah man, so basically on the walk, most of the time, you're walking on the side of a busy road and people were just stopping all day and they'd come out on the shoulder of the road and they'd say, can I pray for you?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  I say, "Yeah, of course." And they would pray for me in their language and they'd give me gifts like arrowheads. And someone even gave me like an eagle feather, which is like this very high honor that I definitely did not deserve. But like, let's be real about it, I'm a white guy walking on their land. They should be skeptical of me. They have all the reasons, talk about reasons. They have reasons to be skeptical of me, maybe even reasons to be hostile to me.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  But they weren't. They were just loving. And that sort of love for no reason touched me deeply. And yeah, just that, that 180 miles was, if that was the whole trip, that would have been life-changing. Yeah, that's amazing. Now, another story. So after I got off the Navajo Nation, I was walking on the Walupi Reservation in Arizona. And this big red F-350 like pulls to the side of the road. I'm sort of like hesitant, like it's, I don't know. I have some judgment or bias about the person who would drive that kind of big truck.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I'm like a little scared of them, even though I haven't even seen them yet. And this young man gets out of the truck. And he's on the other side of the highway. Cause I walk into traffic always, I want to see the people. And so he runs across the highway dangerously. And it's a 21-year-old named Rowan. And we sort of have small talk for a while. And before I left, this friend of mine taught me a question that you can ask that basically like if you get caught in small talk, it's like a cheat code to go deeper. And the question is, "If I pray for you, what should I pray for?" And so I asked this- That's a good one. Yeah, I asked this young man, "If I pray for you, what should I pray for?"

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And his name is Rowan. He is 21. And he, he thought about it and he looked at me and he said, "Five years ago, my dad died from drinking."

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Three years ago, my only sibling, my big brother, died

• 39:45Speaker 01

  from drinking.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And just three months ago, my mom died

• 39:54Speaker 01

  from drinking.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  He said, "If you pray for me, pray for my sobriety,

• 40:03Speaker 01

  because I'm the only one left."

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And then he turned and he ran back across the highway dangerously. He reached into his red F-350, pulled out this small leather satchel. He runs back across and he puts it in my hand. He looks me in the eye, he says, "This is sweet grass, it's sage. He goes, "This will keep you safe while you walk on our land from bad spirits."

• 40:32Speaker 01

  And he got back in his truck and he drove away with a hand out the window like that. And you just like, moments like that, they're, they're everything, you know?

• 40:42Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful. I mean, I think, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I couldn't help but reflect on the extent to which like, death is this theme that looms large over so many of these pivots and decisions that you've made. I mean, in many respects, you can track the decision to doing this walk back to the grief and the self-reflection that came with losing your dad and, you know, Avicii and Mac Miller and all these people that you've been close with in your life who have passed away,

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  leaving you, you know, to ask these deeper questions about yourself and your purpose and what it's all about and all of that. And so it's almost like perfectly orchestrated for Rowan to cross your path and share his version of that experience. And when I hear that, it just affirms to me like, oh, this is, this was meant to be, you're on the right path. Like this is what this is about.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, I, I just can't get over his spirit. Meaning, like, what do I mean by that? Like, how, when he was telling me that story, he wasn't looking for sympathy. Like, he was there to support me. That's why he showed up to give me that, you know, it's like, like, how can someone who's been through so much have so much left to give still? And that was just beyond beautiful to me, you know? And I, I won't forget it.

• 42:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think you came across somebody who was doing an unsupported transcontinental run also, right? Like, I, my friend Ricky Gates did that. He's got crazy stories about that. I mean, that's a whole other level. But that's also like a shot in the arm of like, hey, man, when you think it's hard, look what this guy's doing, he's sleeping on the ground.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  It's so cool because when, like, you make a decision, and I'm sure you've experienced this in your life too, you make a decision, you're gonna do this thing. And, like, for me, for our example sake, like, is the walk across America, we can use that. Everyone in my normal life think that's like a pretty wild thing to do. But all of a sudden, by making the decision, I'm thrust into this new community of walkers and runners. And in this community, I'm not special at all. In fact, I'm probably-

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  It's completely normalized.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  It's normalized. And actually, like, in that community, I was probably in touch with eight people or so that were either walking or running while I was. And I was the least impressive one of the bunch, by far. I was walking supported, meaning I had a friend going ahead of me in an RV that was, like, getting food, finding places for us to sleep. And also, I didn't have to carry everything because we had this support vehicle. So I just got, like, a little camelback on, you know? And you're right, there was this other guy, like, this is actually the day before the snake bite. It was in Colorado. And we're in La Junta, and yeah, somehow on Instagram, we had noticed each other.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  And we figure out, hey, it's this guy named Stevie. He's going west to east. He's running unsupported, and I'm walking east to west. We're gonna frickin' cross. So we said, hey, we gotta, we gotta link up, right? So we're texting and we crossing La Junta. And look, Rich, like, he seemed like a really nice guy, but this day is like tough. So I ain't going east, okay? I go west, man. That's it, dude. Right?

• 44:31Rich Roll?

  You meet and it's like, who's, if we're gonna hang out, who's, which direction are we going in?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Talk here for a while, but I'm not like, I'm go, I go east, bro. This guy like, we didn't talk about it either, but he's like, he just turned around. And he walked sixteen miles with me backwards. To be with me, to connect.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  He, he had a giant backpack on and he was running forty miles per day. He had a ukulele like bungee corded to like the outside of it. He didn't even use a tent. He would just sleep on the ground.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  He'd wake up sometimes like police kicking him in the head and like he, just everything I did was times a hundred. And then I remember he, he asked me, he goes, what do you do for music and headphones? I said somewhat proudly, I said, the first eight miles I walk every day is a silent meditation walk, you know? I was like really doing it. And then I go, and then after that, you know, so I put the head on, I call Elliot and stuff.

• 45:36Rich Roll?

  Right, making rolling calls.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. He goes, I didn't bring headphones.

• 45:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  What? He goes, I didn't bring, he goes, I just wanted to be deep with myself. He goes, sometimes I look on the phone for directions, but other than that, it's just me, me alone in here. He goes, it was horrible at first, but after a month, it's the best thing I ever did. I found a clarity that I didn't even know was possible inside me. And, uh, and stuff like that, just inspiring, you know, inspiring and, uh, the next day I got bit by the snake, I got better and, and when I went back, I said, look, like, I'm still gonna walk supported, but. No headphones the rest of the trip, you know, like I'm gonna do it how Stevie does it, you know, just, just hear it, that's it. No calls or if I'm walking, I'm just walking.

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  And you did that?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, a thousand more miles and it was, he was right, you know, it was like the, the clarity you got, just, it was unlike anything I, I knew.

• 46:39Rich Roll?

  And what, like, how would you characterize or articulate like what that experience taught you, like that latter half of the walk where you really went deep and inward in a way that you hadn't before?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Just having the time to stop, you know, like, let's say somebody, a friend or something, did something that bothered me or whatever. Usually I'm moving so quick, I might not even think about, like, oh, I'm just off to the next thing. But then you have, you know, you have eight hours to think about it. And so everything was just, all my relationships cleaned up, you know, if there was something that bothered me or someone, like, I finished that day or some, I call that person, we, I say, hey, that, that thing pissed me off, you know, like, let's talk about this. And with the absence of more stimuli all the

• 47:41Speaker 01

  time, more planning, my life became very simple, you know, whereas before I was doing a tour and I have this and work on that opportunity and it was like, no, you just get up and walk. My life became very simple and that gave me the space to, like, have everything cleared from the past so I could just be present, you know, and.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  I think that's really the, the point, you know, I forget, we, and after Everest, like I, I went on a retreat and was reminded of this. But we're supposed to like be, we're supposed to be here. We're supposed to be present. We're supposed to have enthusiasm and love and joy inside us.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  We're not supposed to spend our lives planning about the future always. Sure, you need to do that somewhat, but we're not supposed to spend our time dwelling on the past. We're supposed to be like in our bodies, like our mind should be in the same place as our body, you know, and creating some space to just stop, you know, was.

• 48:56Rich Roll?

  Things I have a hard time with that, though. We're not wired to be able to hold on to that. And the half-life of those types of experiences, whether it's the Looney Tunes, you know, circles closing in or, or the mindfulness and the presence that you were able to experience throughout that extended period of solitude tend to wane pretty quickly in the wake of those experiences. So how has that been? Like, have you been able to carry that awareness into your life in the aftermath of these experiences? Or do you find yourself defaulting back? Now you're back in LA, you're back in the studio. Like, how much of that are you able to like, hold on to?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  That's a great question.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  And sort of become the theme of my life, at least right now, this version of Mike Posner.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Because I kept getting these Satori flashes of everything, you know, like in the ambulance, it was peace and everything makes sense.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Summit Everest, we could talk about that, but another one of these deeply just perfect moments where I'm fully present. But you're right, they disappear. They go away and it's like, you know, there's gotta be a better way to access that peace than to freaking almost die or to risk my life climbing this insane mountain, right?

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  Or to have to go back to the monastery.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  That's the next one. And so I actually went back to the monastery after Everest. Uh, actually it's a Buddhist center. There's no monks there. Um, and they, the place I went, they have these solo cabins that are set up for like solitary retreats, which I really like. So you go, you drop you a little cabin with a single mattress and they see you in three weeks and you're just on your own. Each week they drop off a week's worth of groceries, but you don't see the person. It's like in a drop box. You just don't, you're by yourself for, for three weeks.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  And, um, I started to realize like basically if you can quiet the mind, right? That, that sort of feeling of peace is just there naturally. And you don't have to like have your dad die or walk across America or summit Everest or to be at the monastery. You just need to have a quiet mind. And, um, while like every moment of my life is not going to have the same emotional potency of finishing the walk or of almost dying in the thing or being on the summit of Mount Everest, of course not, like all of my moments, I believe have the potential to have an

• 51:44Speaker 01

  undercurrent of peace in them and at least awareness, you know, being where I, where I am. And so I'm back in LA now and I'm essentially doing the exact same thing I was doing before I left on the walk. I go to the studio. I work with artists. I help them write songs. I sometimes write my own songs. I produce songs. But everything's different on the inside. You know, who I am is different and.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  That's sort of just like the marquee on the show. That's like what I'm doing on the outside. Well, on the inside, my practice, and I mess it up more than I get it right, Rich, you know? But my practice is like, when I'm in the room, writing with someone and they're speaking, I'm trying to be present. That means nothing's in here. I'm not, I'm listening to their voice, not what the voice in here is saying about what they're saying. Trying, or maintaining some awareness of the physical sensation in my body, you know, as I'm working and, and yeah, there's some of that peace is, is here with me for sure, you know? And sometimes it's easier than others.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Being around you, you're a peaceful guy, like we connect, whatever. It's, it's easier for me to do it with you than if, whatever. But, um, that's my practice.

• 53:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine that's a creative superpower. You know, the idea that, you know, it's, it's calm at the bottom of the ocean and it's calm at, you know, 30,000 feet. You're above the clouds, right? And having that clarity or that open space opens the channel for that creative instinct or impulse to channel through like in the moment when you're working on a song.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  When I was at the Buddhist center, uh, I did this like, I would meditate sitting five hours a day and I'd do like three hours of walking meditation. It sounds like hard, but like it's, it's awesome, actually.

• 53:59Rich Roll?

  Right, it's all relative. You walk across America, so a three hour walk.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  No, it, it's split up like three, one hour. And like, yeah, it's actually a lot easier than regular life, um, cause nothing's there to upset you. So if you find yourself upset.

• 54:13Rich Roll?

  Your mind is attacking you constantly.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, if you find yourself upset, you know, I'm doing this. Cause there's nothing wrong here. I have everything and no one else is here. Anyways, the story I wanted-

• 54:25Rich Roll?

  But the mind will search for that thing to hang its hat on.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  To pull you out of that moment and distract you.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  I'll circle back, but you're right, it will do that. The mind is clever, cunning.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  And in my mind, like the voice, which I just call a voice in my head, I nickname it Charlie. Cause when I, in the absence of more stimuli and other people speaking and all that stuff, you really start to hear Charlie and like you start to notice Charlie's trends. Well, Charlie has some patterns. I've noticed. One is he's freaking way more negative than I thought. Like a lot of doomsday scenarios, like, hey, what if I do that? And then this might happen and that might happen and then I might die. He's like, whoa, how did we get there? You know? So we got that. And then the other thing I noticed about Charlie is

• 55:17Speaker 01

  he's incredibly repetitive. Like the same thought over and over and over and over again. It's like, I got it, man. I got it. And I had this-

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  There's Charlie again, looping that thing that he always talks about. It's so annoying and boring after a while.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  But sometimes it's a negative thing. It's like, dude, like, alright.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  There was one day, I think it was on fifth or sixth day there. I did my two hours sitting at the beginning of the day and I was just like, Charlie's getting quieter and quieter and then he's just like gone. And the two hours ends, I stand up and I realize that even though I'm not sitting anymore,

• 56:04Speaker 01

  meditating, I'm still meditating and it's no Charlie.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  And I go to make a snack. Like it was a, I had a piece of wassa bread and I put avocado on it. And while I made it, still no Charlie.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  And I closed my eyes, I took a bite and it was like fireworks of flavor. Like I could tell you, Rich, this without reservation is the best meal I've ever had in my life. And the main ingredient is like quiet mind. And so I tell you this story to say, when the mind is quiet, what's left? It's hard to put into words what's left, but it's not just like blank. It's actually like, it's like, forgive me for this, I can't think of a better way. It's like taking the condom off life, man. You're like, this is how avocado really tastes when I'm not covering it up with all my judgments

• 57:10Speaker 01

  and talking in my head and analyzing things. It's like, it's like, I remember putting a sock on, on my retreat and feeling like I was having sex, like putting a sock on my foot, like all the senses are heightened because it just like, we cover them up with just this blabber box in our head usually, you know? And so it turns out, I think, at least for me, when we, when we quiet Charlie, it's not this like state of blankness, it's like, there's a lot there.

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  Something comes alive.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I was feeling in the ambulance when I looked at that red paint and it looked brighter. That's what I was feeling, you know? So I think like thinking about reality is like putting on real dark sunglasses and dulls reality and, and presence is like taking those sunglasses off.

• 58:04Rich Roll?

  But I think that practice of naming your thinking mind allows you to create that distance and that understanding that there is your mind, which is good at keeping you alive and doing menial tasks and, you know, sort of propelling your body and into forward motion, but it's really not your friend when it comes to so many of the important things. And creating that separation allows you to understand that there is a gap. And a distinction between your higher consciousness, what it feels like, the experience of being truly present in your life.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:44Rich Roll?

  And the looping negative thought patterns of that thinking brain.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  And that, in truth, you are that higher consciousness.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 58:54Rich Roll?

  And disidentifying, because we all, we all over, over identify with the thinking brain.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  Right? And we think that's who we are.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  And developing the capacity to understand that that is not who we are. And that this is a voice that we can choose to listen to or dismiss, I think is a really profound practice.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  It's, it's deeper than you can ever imagine, right?

• 59:19Rich Roll?

  And freaking hard.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, a continual thing and, and I work on it every day, but I say, I'm definitely like there more than I ever have been in my life. And I'm not on the walk across America. I'm not at the monastery. I'm, I'm, I'm living a, a life.

• 59:40Rich Roll?

  Right, you're in the world.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's that, it's that adage of like, it's easy to be serene when you're in the cave. You know, metaphorically, like you're the, you're the monk on, in the monastery or in the cave. Removed from the real world, that's going to be an easier situation in which to cultivate stillness and quietude. But the real, like, advanced degree is can you carry that into the world?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  And practice that when you are immersed in stimuli and challenges, et cetera.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And when I was on retreat, I felt that it was, it was a lot easier there. It's like, it's set up to do that. It just gained a foothold, you know? I had a book while I was at the Buddhist Center by Thich Nhat Hanh. And there was a line in it and it said, retreat is about reentry. Retreat is about reentry. So what's that mean? He said that.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  If your retreat is not making you a better member of society, a better brother, sister, husband, wife, when you go back, you're wasting your time. You're not going there to like feel, this is what I used to do, because I've been to that place three times when I was in there. I thought I was like gonna gain some superpower or something, or at the very least, I was gonna gain experience that I could talk about and tell other people, I did this thing. Or I thought I was gonna like put something on. Well, that's BS, man. And it's selfish. Like, when you go on retreat, you should come back better. That's what the retreat is for, you know, period.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  And when I think about that experience, when I think about Everest and the walk, those are all kind of retreats. And so, yeah, what I'm up to now is practicing that stuff internally and then trying to share the stuff I learned, because those are pretty cool and privileged experiences, you know?

• 1:01:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  A lot of people can't take three weeks off of work and go sit alone in a cabin, you know, or walk across America. I mean, these are very unique and beautiful experiences I was blessed to have. So, yeah, my life now, I just, I go to the studio and I try to be present. And also, I just start doing like some, some speaking and like storytelling.

• 1:02:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Where I share some of these stories. Because I just want to share some of this stuff I learned, you know?

• 1:02:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Rich Roll?

  On the walk, and I promise we're gonna get to Everest.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  No, it's all good.

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  It's all good.

• 1:02:28Rich Roll?

  What are the things that occurred to me in thinking about like what this was about for you? And, and the different mic that kind of emerged from it, from the mic that began it, is this arc of transcending the ego. Because on some level, yes, the walk is about you, but deep down, we're all egoistic. And you are promoting an album on some level. And you're like, oh, if I do this, this will actually get a bunch of attention. I'll get a bunch of validation. And you had this. Imagined vision of of being joined by like this huge group of people as you walked into Los Angeles and all of you together would throw this big party and you'd all go into

• 1:03:09Rich Roll?

  the ocean. But what happens is there is this destruction of the ego along the way where you're forced to kind of meet yourself in a new and different way, such that when you arrive in Venice, it's really about the relationship between you and you. And you eschewed the temptation to have a lot of people there and chose to just have your closest friends and to walk into the ocean by yourself. And that's a really beautiful like, like evolution, I think, of Mike Posner. And perhaps that was something that you had to contend with again during Everest. And because we are all naturally egoistic, it

• 1:03:50Rich Roll?

  flares up. It's not like you've just transcended it. But you and you are this person who who has a public facing persona and has to contend with fame and everything that kind of comes with that. But I think that there's something really profound in that attempt, the striving to mute the ego, to tap into a greater level of humility and gratitude. And then just in you describing how you approach your studio time now, that strikes me as somebody who's who's kind of showing up in service to these artists that you're working with.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Trying to be.

• 1:04:25Rich Roll?

  Rather than like, hey, what am I going to extract out of this experience?

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a lot different. Sometimes you won't even write a song. You know, sometimes that I can see at first, just like overwhelmed with their their life. I'm like, let's just go for a walk. We don't have to write a song today. I don't care. But yeah, man, you're right. This ego thing is is not even real. You know, like when I when I think about who I am, who is Mike Posner? It's like this loose amalgamation of random memories that aren't even all the memories, right? Because I forget most of the stuff that happens to me. These memories and then like some cultural archetypes, like characters from movies that

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  I've like mixed up. Like, that's me. That's my personality.

• 1:05:18Rich Roll?

  And then you weave a story around that.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  You weave a story around it.

• 1:05:21Rich Roll?

  This trauma happened to me and this is why I'm this way.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  But this, this story slash concept, concept slash idea, I just realized one day like, it only exists in my head. Like, nobody else in the entire world has that picture of me in their head. They have, if they even know who I am, they have a different picture and it's much less fleshed out and they don't care as much about it. That being said, none of these, none of these like, stories slash concepts slash identities in our heads are real. Not like this is real, like this is a real thing. They're just like, these amorphous things that, that have no actual, tie to, to reality.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  And, um, just remembering like, they, it always wants you to feel like you're separate, doesn't it? The ego. Like, that's what the ego is. Like, I'm this thing in the world and I'm alone and, but in like actuality, it's not true, of course. Like, we come from our parents, we're attached to the planet, of course, in like deeply,

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  inexplicable ways. Like, we, if the sun was a mile further back, we'd all be frozen, you know? Like, we are connected to, to everything and, and, just, just like remembering to make that shift, life is, just seems a lot better, better.

• 1:06:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the separation.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  When I'm living from the, from the big place, not the ego place.

• 1:06:57Rich Roll?

  You can't walk across America, climb Everest and climb the however many mountains you climbed in preparation for Everest and not feel a deeper connection and sense of interconnectedness with the greater whole. There is some disillusion of the ego that would have to take place with that.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Rich Roll?

  Because you're meeting nature on such a grand scale.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  I think so. I think, I think it can go either way too. Like, they talk about that with psychedelics too.

• 1:07:27Rich Roll?

  It could fuel your ego. I did all these things. This is who I am. I'm Mike Posner and I'm my, my resume. I'm the only Grammy nominated guy who's climbed Everest and walked across America.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Rich Roll?

  And that is who I am.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  It could, yeah, it could go that way. So that's like up to you, I guess. Up to me.

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:58Rich Roll?

  So you finish this walk. Along the way, or at some point, this idea of Everest occurs to you.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Rich Roll?

  It's probably occurred to a lot of people.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Rich Roll?

  But you decide you're actually gonna act on it.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the, it was the snake bite over the Rockies where I'd start, like, I could do anything. And that, that's where a dream I dreamed about it before, like fantasized about. And it started to mutate slowly from a dream into a plan.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  I just remember, it wasn't that long after the walk where suddenly on Instagram, it's like you and Colin were at Mount Hood or something like that. You guys went on a climb.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Two weeks later, because I was already talking to Colin while I was on the walk. I said, man, is Everest like as crowded as they say? Is it like, because you know, there's a lot of hoopla about Everest, misinformation. And he'd been there. I said, is it crowded? Like, is it really, is it like, is it worth it? Like, is it beautiful? He was like, you know that feeling you get when you go to the Grand Canyon? I said, yeah. He's like, it's like that times a hundred. I'm like, that sounds pretty good, you know? And so, you know, he had done a lot of big projects, Colin, so he kind of gave me some advice, like how to end the walk. And then he said, look, do you know anything about climbing? I said, nope. He ever worn crampons? Nope. He goes, why don't you come climb Mount Hood with me after your walk?

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  I said, great. I go, but look, like, I'm really gonna come. You know, like, because we never met. I'm like, I'm really gonna come. He's like, okay. And so, yeah, two weeks after the walk, like, I was still, still pretty darn sore, but he took me up Mount Hood and we, we summited it. And I asked him, you know, if I want to keep getting better at this, how do I do that? And he goes, you should, uh, you should talk to Dr. John. And he introduced me to Dr. John Kudrowski. And that's the man that became my, my coach and my guide over the next year and a half. And I just, I'm all in. So I moved, I moved like basically next to John. I got a rental house there.

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  In like Colorado?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Colorado. And we just friggin' trained our butts off the next year and a half.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  What did that training look like?

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  John has a great line. He says, uh, he says, "Train for climbing mountains by climbing mountains." So that's what we did. When we, we got to Everest, you sit in base camp a lot, like, waiting for the right weather and your body. And you start to like, forget, like, forget you're a climber. Cause you're just sitting there waiting for so long, you know? And like my whole, that last year and a half, I've been climbing like every few days, like, you know?

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  Just hitting like all the 14ers?

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  14ers. We went to, uh, we went to Ecuador, kind of volcanoes there. We went to Pakistan. We went to, um...

• 1:11:01Rich Roll?

  For, Pakistan was K2?

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a whole other thing. I just went to base camp.

• 1:11:06Rich Roll?

  You were there, you were there when the Nepalese crew summited in the winter, right?

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  I was, I had left a few days before.

• 1:11:14Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, I was, I was at that base. I just went to base camp.

• 1:11:18Rich Roll?

  So you went, you went up to base camp, right?

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  That's it. I, I don't really want to climb K2, man.

• 1:11:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, not in the winter at least.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  I don't want to climb in the summer either. I always tell people that when I was doing Everest. I'm like, look, believe it or not, I do have a line, you know? Uh, cause everyone's line of acceptable risk, their risk tolerance is different. And it's fine, like, you, you climb within that, that risk. And K2 on the other side of my line, man, forget that one. But, um, yeah, we, we climb.

• 1:11:50Rich Roll?

  And this was like full-time? You're living in Colorado? You're there for the sole purpose of...

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Full-time. John had control of my schedule.

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  So, you know, somebody called, "Hey, Mike, can you come? Do you want to do this thing?" I go, "I gotta ask my coach." I had asked, you know, I didn't have to, I wanted it to be like that, you know? And uh, he would, he had control of my schedule first, right? So he'd say like, we're gonna do this, this, this, and this. And then I'd put the rest of my life in between the mountain, like, cause I told him, I go, look, I have no interest in going to Mount Everest if I don't belong there. Period. I won't be one of these yucko putzes that show up and they never like.

• 1:12:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of those.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  There's nothing, there's like, I don't wanna do that. It doesn't interest me. I wanna go on this journey with you and become a mountaineer. And when you, if you think I'm ready, we go together. He's great, we'll get you ready. And, and he did, so anyways, we're at base camp a year and a half later. And like I said, you, you're sitting there waiting for like a month for the right weather. And I started to forget like, that I'm a mountaineer now, that I'm a climber. And so I took a notebook out and I had my phone, all the pictures and stuff from the summits we'd done. And I just made a list of all the mountains we'd climbed, just to give me, instill some confidence.

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  Remind yourself that you actually did prepare.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this list, I couldn't believe it kept going. It was seventy-one mountains long. Seventy-one, we climbed Everest was the seventy-second we did together.

• 1:13:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's wild. So, in the preparation, what did you, like, cause I have no experience with high altitude climbing of any kind. I have an idea of what I think goes into tackling something like that. And you being a newbie going into it, what did you discover or learn? That defied what you expected it to be? Like, you're like, okay, we're gonna prepare for Everest, or this is what it's gonna be like. And then you're like, oh shit, I didn't realize it was this.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be so many things. I, I remember our first, our first mountain, Crystal Peak. Uh, we start climbing, and you know on your backpack, you have the little water bottle holders on the, on the side? So I have my water bottles in there, right? I get to this, we, the summit is like a thirteen-er. We get to the summit, John goes, take a drink of water. I take my water bottle, it's a block of ice. Can't drink that. He goes, water doesn't go on the outside of the pack.

• 1:14:28Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Okay, like day one.

• 1:14:31Rich Roll?

  One thing, yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Day one, you know what I mean? That water's gotta go.

• 1:14:35Rich Roll?

  I wouldn't have thought of that, yeah.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  I didn't think it's gotta go on the against it, against your back in the pack. So it stays liquid, you know? And then when you go like, I don't know, just when you go.

• 1:14:47Rich Roll?

  Like probably a million things like that.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  There's a million things like that, but then even so, like getting to the big peaks. Because Everest, my first eight thousand meter peak there, there everything's just up a notch. So even though you put it, you put your water in like another thing and the thing I, I really wasn't. You, I feel like I couldn't have been prepared for was just the way that altitude hit me up that high. I mean, I've been high, been twenty thousand feet plus.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  But this is another ten thousand, like twenty nine thou, you know, twenty nine, oh twenty nine. So, and it's exponential, right? Going from sea level to one thousand is a lot easier than going from twenty six thousand to twenty seven. I mean, light years different. And I just felt like up there, I just felt like horrible. I just felt like a zombie, like I couldn't sleep because, you know, we're talking about a third of the oxygen that you and I are breathing now.

• 1:15:50Rich Roll?

  You wake up gasping for air.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, soon, because the, you know, the respiratory system slows and sleeps. So right when I'd start to. Just my body thought of suffocating. And so, you know, on the summit push, you just like no sleep, five days and you get real. The other thing people don't realize is, yeah, on the summit and stuff, it's really cold. But you come down that same day. And as you get a little lower on the mountain and the sun comes out, you're still in that down suit. You start to cook, man.

• 1:16:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know you shared on Instagram some post where you were stripping down to like the gear you were wearing when you walked across America.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's the thing.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  It was getting hot.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so you're just like the, the, the exhaustion, the dehydration and the, the altitude.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  I won't say sickness, but yeah, it is, man. Like you're up there and you're probably at about just being there. Just being there, Rich. I was about 15%, I would say. And then you gotta climb the mountain with that percentage.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  There's only so much acclimation that occurs.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Well, acclimation makes it so you can do it, but it doesn't make it feel good.

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  I know that during the training phase for this, you went out to Poland though and did the Wim Hof.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  Experience with all those guys.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  That was awesome.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  I was.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  You were supposed to be there, weren't you?

• 1:17:20Rich Roll?

  And I don't know what was going on with me and I, I couldn't go. I probably could have. You know, it's one of those FOMO things where I don't know what's going on. Like that's the point, right? I can't even remember what it was that I had to do.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Has Wim been on your show?

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a couple of times.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  So have you ever practiced with them?

• 1:17:37Rich Roll?

  I have.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Well, then that's what we did. You're good.

• 1:17:40Rich Roll?

  But I wanted to have the Poland experience and I wanted to go with all you guys.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Rich Roll?

  You know, I was invited and it's like a thing. And then when you, when you guys were there, I was like, what, why, what's, why didn't you do this?

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  And Q said the same thing. He was invited too. He didn't come.

• 1:17:56Rich Roll?

  It looked like a blast.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Hey, it was, uh, that practice I think is life changing, man. It's really deep.

• 1:18:02Rich Roll?

  The thing is like, did you, so with those practices, were you able to apply them at base camp and above to try to help? Like self-regulate a little bit with the lack of oxygen?

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Both of them. I'd say like sort of the two cores and there's some other stuff, of course, but like, I'd say the main two pillars of Wim Hof's method are cold immersion, right? He does these ice baths. And breath work. Both of those were helpful for me, you know, one is like, look, just, everyone knows like, if you, if you.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  If you live in LA and you take a plane and you get off in Detroit in the middle of winter, it feels a lot colder to you than it does to someone living in Detroit.

• 1:18:46Rich Roll?

  Right? Right.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  So same process, like as I was getting ready to go to Everest, there was a river by the house that I was renting in Colorado and you just get in that thing in the in the middle of winter and just, you know, you take a cold shower. Cold shower in Colorado in the mountains is a cold shower, you know.

• 1:19:05Rich Roll?

  But the thing is, the difference is, like, if you go out and you run every day, like, you're gonna become a better runner. And you can kinda get used to the cold a little bit, but there's a cap on that. Like, it's always hard.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Yes, but I believe, look, don't quote me on this, because I was looking it up before Everest. I believe there is an acclimation process. They're saying, like, they they had some guys do ice baths and they were at the beginning, they were shivering after two months or whatever. So I think.

• 1:19:34Rich Roll?

  There is that, yeah, and I've noticed that just through doing it myself.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:19:38Rich Roll?

  But it never gets, it's not like, oh, this is easy now.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  It gets easier, I would say, for me at least.

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  Easier at the end.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Then you start to really like it. I don't know, like, for me.

• 1:19:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  I still will, like, stall before I actually get in, but the high I get from the cold. Anyways, yeah, man, I would just try to, like, make sure I got cold once or twice every day before I showed up to Everest to just change, like, my body's metric of what cold was. And then the breath work, yeah, I did. I did it all the time there. And I really believe in this practice, so much so that I'm actually studying to become a instructor.

• 1:20:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  I'm doing, like, the online courses.

• 1:20:22Rich Roll?

  Are you?

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I just wanna, I just wanna share that practice. It's so good, you know?

• 1:20:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's beautiful. And the, the output of the breath work is so asymmetric to the input. It's like, the input is breathing, you know, fully, and then you do some holds and whatever. You've had Wim Hof on. And, and the output is like.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  This amazingly blissful, peaceful state that's like, sometimes like borderline psychedelic and you're like, like you can do, I felt like someone gave me a cheat code to my own body. And I was like, how am I 33 and I didn't know like, you can just do this whenever you want. It's really cool.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, accessible at any time.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  With breath.

• 1:21:12Rich Roll?

  That will change the experience of, of your entire day.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm a meditator, so I, I meditate twice a day, every day, pretty much like, I don't know, eight, nine years now.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  And if I ever really get in a funk, like if I'm just like, feel depressed, I'll do that breath work and it seems to like.

• 1:21:39Rich Roll?

  Shift.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  It just seems to be able to pierce through.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  It has a much more dramatic, immediate effect than meditation.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say so.

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  I mean, those things are both great, but they're different.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Rich Roll?

  Qualitatively, I think. So.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:21:55Rich Roll?

  So you're up at base camp. One of the things that, that is wild about all of this, like, and I didn't realize this, I was looking a little bit more deeply into your story, is, is how normal avalanches are. That you're hearing them like, all the time when you're at base camp, from a great distance.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get there and you hear these thunder rumbles and they, they sound loud. And you go and you look at, these mountains are big, man. And you, you're like, where? It sounds like it's coming down on you and you find it and it's like, so far away and it looks this big, you know? It's giant, but it's really far away and the mountains are so big. So after you know, we're talking like, you probably hear that five times a day at least. And over a period of weeks, I started to become desensitized to that sound, just became kind of background noise.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  But Everest is, it's really dangerous, it's really real. Basically for every 100 climbers that go above base camp, one, one perishes. In fact, before we saw a weather window that we liked, John and I, four climbers that, you know, weren't on our team, but were in base camp with us, were dead.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  And so you got guys going up, not coming down.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  We had a, we had a friend.

• 1:23:28Rich Roll?

  That's some heavy shit when you're like, I'm next.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had a friend that went up and came down with really bad frostbite.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  And I was just thinking like,

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  what am I doing here? Like what, why, why am I risking my life here? And all the, all the bad reasons became really apparent. You know, like there was some part of me that wanted to be cool and tough. And it's like, well, that's a pretty dumb thing to die for, right? And she's all these just like reasons, we were talking about reasons before, like for me not to do it. But just one commitment for me to, to climb is I said I was gonna do it.

• 1:24:15Rich Roll?

  Right. The follow through, similar to, you know, after the snake bite.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  That's right. And.

• 1:24:22Rich Roll?

  Like, what does it mean to say you're gonna do something and follow through on that?

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  But then acknowledging like the ego part of it.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, I mean.

• 1:24:34Rich Roll?

  The validation part.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, there was a plethora of reasons why I was there. And a lot of them were cool and some of them weren't.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Which by the way, I think we even talked about this last time, it was true to walk too. Like, you know, part of me wanted, oh, that guy's cool, you know, whatever. And like, so, but that was, that Everest was so dangerous, so real, like death so close that that ceased to be, the looking cool ceased to be something that was pulling me upward on the mountain. It became something that was pulling me down. It was like, hey, man, if that's the reason right here, you should turn around. You know, and it was just, the only thing that had pulled me up was that commitment, man. And we saw a window we liked after, in late May.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  And we climbed to Camp Two, it was about 10 hours. And it was snowy hard. It was like a snowstorm a couple of days. So we stayed at Camp Two, but we knew there was good weather for the summit in a few days. We just had to wait. And the thing about.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Like steep mountains is it's not good to climb steep faces. The day after it snows, that's when avalanches happen because it's just all this new snow pack and it's, you know, gravity pulls it down. So we're just waiting, you know, after this snowstorm, a day or two before we went higher because we had to go on the Lozzi face, which is just real steep. And we're at Camp Two, 21,300 feet. I hate that place, man. It's the worst. Like, I just feel horrible there, can't sleep. And you're just there for a couple of days. You're just in the tent?

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  You get out of the tent and we had like a dining tent, which disappeared. I'll get to that. Like, basically, yeah, you can, I mean, you could walk to the, there's like a latrine tent, whatever, but it's hard to do anything. Right. You know, you walk from where I'm sitting to your sitting, I would be breathing like this.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Like, it's, I mean, I just, I can't explain the altitude, how, how hard that makes every, how bad it made me feel. And it hits different people differently. And that was another part of my journey. I go in the tent one night at Camp Two with John. John and I are in our tent and I'm pretending to sleep and I hear one of those rumbles. I don't think anything of it because I've heard it so many times by now. And it stops for a second and then all of a sudden, our tent starts to shake like from all angles. It feels like we're about to be picked up, blown off the mountain. A hole rips in our tent. The snow's hitting me in the face, filling up my sleeping bag.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  I'm screaming, "John, John, John, avalanche, avalanche!" I'm like, I'm sure in that moment, I'm dead at Camp Two. Avalanche is hitting our tent. And then right when I'm screaming, it just freaking stopped. And I'm like looking at my hands. They're still shaking and I'm like, how am I alive? What happened?

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  And we figured out that basically this avalanche slid, but it stopped just before hitting our camp. So what we felt was the air blast of the avalanche's like final breaths, basically. But still, the damage is real. Like that dining tan told you about was gone.

• 1:28:16Rich Roll?

  Just from the air?

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  Just like, yeah, because it's so big.

• 1:28:20Rich Roll?

  There's so much air getting displaced.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  It displaces all that air. Yeah. And, and we were lucky, man. The camp next to ours, Elite X Beds, Nimz's camp, was like destroyed. And thank God they weren't there. They were already at Camp Three.

• 1:28:34Rich Roll?

  They were, they had already gone up.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  They left the day before.

• 1:28:37Rich Roll?

  But they would have been toast.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  I mean, something bad would have happened for sure. It like, it was, but it's like we had time to feel sorry for ourselves. And still, like in this moment, I'm like, what am I doing?

• 1:28:50Rich Roll?

  Right. Shit is getting real.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  What am I doing? Don't want to die here. And it's still like, there's all these reasons like to turn around. Just that, that commitment to integrity, to pull me up. And so we climbed the next day to Camp Three.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Slept there, next day to Camp Four, and then you got a few hours at Camp Four to turn it around.

• 1:29:16Rich Roll?

  Right. You got like four or five hours and then you gotta hit it.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it takes two hours to get ready. Like getting your tank on, your big suit, all this stuff.

• 1:29:24Rich Roll?

  And you're not really sleeping, right?

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  No, that's what I'm saying. I didn't really sleep well. I slept okay at Camp Three because that's where I put oxygen on. Camp Two, I didn't sleep at all. Like we were there three day. I felt just bad. And then, yeah, from, you leave three, you go to four. That's, I got there maybe 11 a.m. and at 6 p.m. I'm gonna start getting ready.

• 1:29:47Rich Roll?

  And you're hitting the supplemental oxygen from that point forward?

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Once I put it on at three, I never take it off. So once you put it on, you don't take it off.

• 1:29:54Rich Roll?

  Sleeping with it, it's on all the time.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  If you, if you somehow take it off or run out, that's worse than having never put it on. That's really bad.

• 1:30:03Rich Roll?

  Because you've re-acclimated to.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:30:05Rich Roll?

  When you're, when you're doing supplemental oxygen, is that like sea level oxygen density?

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  I don't know, it's still really hard to like, I'm still really out of breath.

• 1:30:16Rich Roll?

  So even with it, you're still, you're still struggling. It's not like, oh, now I feel totally normal.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  No, no, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it did help me get some, some Z's at Camp Three.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  But yeah, moving real slow up there. And it depends how much you have and how, uh, how many liters per minute you have it set to.

• 1:30:39Rich Roll?

  Right, you open it up all the way, but then you're gonna run out.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  That's the thing, how many bottles do you have? So, and, and that's what you gotta be responsible for, like,

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  knowing how fast you're going as well and that kind of thing. So, yeah, at, at Camp Four, we had that, that window from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. to rest. I remember,

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  this sort of a strange story, I don't tell that much, cause I, I don't really know how to tell it that well, but I like went into some strange trance. Like, almost felt like I had psychedel- I was having these visions there. And granted, I know the altitude had something to do with it, cause we were just under 26, like 25,900. And for about an hour, I was laying in the tent, my eyes closed, and just see, just seeing visuals and I don't, it, it, it almost, yeah, it felt like peaceful in some way. Like, I felt a little bit removed from

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  the experience, like the, like you're always doing something, like managing something on the mountain. And I remember that experience kind of felt like it was giving me a zoom out. And then it was, then it was time to go. And, uh, started getting ready at 6, about 8:30 p.m. It was, you know, it was dark and the wind was blowing pretty good, but we thought that, um, once we got out of that saddle, it would, it would be better. And I'm climbing in a team of four, Dr. John, who we talked about, myself, and then our two local guides, Dawah Cheering Sherpa and Dawah Dorje Sherpa. And those guys are like, those are my buddies, man, I still talk to them like, a lot.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  And, uh, we just start, we start going and, um,

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  You're so worried about being, I was so worried about being cold. You hear all the stories, frostbite and stuff that, growing up, kind of that first face, and I was like sweating. And you don't want to sweat on big mountains like that because the sweat freezes.

• 1:32:50Rich Roll?

  freezes, yeah.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  And so you-

• 1:32:52Rich Roll?

  And it's dark out.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  It's dark, yes. It's 8:30 PM when we start, so we're climbing through the night. And where our aim is to be on the summit around sunrise. I started sweating, I'm like, man, I gotta stop, take some layers off. So I stopped, all these climbers start passing me. And that's the other thing, you don't want to be in a traffic jam up there. So after a few hours, there's a natural resting point called the balcony, where everyone takes a break because it's just kind of flat, like a balcony. And there's this crazy view. And I said to John, I said, look, when we get to the balcony, let's take like, everyone else is going to take a 10-minute break, let's take a three-minute break, and let's pass everybody. He said, great.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  So I get there, we take this three-minute break, and we pass like everybody except, there's only four people in front of us now. And I don't usually eat caffeine, but like, your appetite also disappears up there. So I was just eating like, you know, the gels.

• 1:33:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  With the caffeine, the Cliff shots, and I was just like, I feel like I had-

• 1:33:58Rich Roll?

  Another gear.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Some pep in my step, unlike the days before. And Daw, Cheering and I, we ended up passing that group of four. And then there was like these two headlamps way above us. And we kept climbing, we got up there on the south summit, and they had stopped. It was our friend Eric's. He was like, hey man, I think I was going too fast, I didn't want to get there in the dark. So he was just sitting there waiting. And then John came up, he was like, no, let's go now. And he's like, we're gonna hit it perfectly. So we walked past Eric's, and then Eric's came behind us. And Daw, Cheering was in front of myself.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  And I should remember, like, he went and he went on the summit.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  He turned around and he looked me in the eye. And it's just like this moment where you would think maybe you'd feel some pride up there. Like, I did it, that kind of thing. But I'm looking this guy in the eye who's carrying my extra oxygen, you know? And I was like, no, I'm here because of him, because of John and because of Dawud Dorje. That's the only reason I'm allowed to be here, period. Like, if I had to carry all that stuff, I don't think I could have done it. And so instead of this pride, it's just, it's just some cocktail of humility, gratitude and love. And I basically hugged him.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  John came up behind us and hugged me. And I flopped onto the summit, man. I just, I buried like my face in my hands on the ground and tears just exploded out of my face. And I remember I said these words. I said, like, they like dribbled out, he goes, come here. I was like, this took everything, this took everything. And it was, it was just such a beautiful moment, man. Because John and I had been working so hard for it to be up there with them. We were both just weeping. And just like in the back of that ambulance, you know, it's like there was peace and everything made sense.

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  How did it differ from the many times that you had imagined what that would be like?

• 1:36:27Rich Roll?

  Like, what did you suspect it would look like and feel like versus the reality?

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  That feeling of possibility that I had after the walk,

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  that wasn't there. That wasn't there.

• 1:36:47Rich Roll?

  In other words, that idea like after the walk like, oh, I can, there's way more in me.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  But it wasn't.

• 1:36:53Rich Roll?

  On Everest, like, oh, I did everything I could, but I'm only here because of these guys.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:58Rich Roll?

  Like that level of humility.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  That and just like, I didn't, I didn't want to do anything harder than that. I still don't.

• 1:37:04Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Maybe I should say harder. I don't want to do anything more dangerous than that. In fact, I wouldn't do that again. You know, I wouldn't. Uh, my, my risk tolerance has changed. But the mo- the moment itself was, this is one of the best moments of my life, you know, it was everything and, and more. It was just bea- it was perfect. It's beautiful. People don't realize mountains have shadows. But if you go get to a summit on sunrise, you see the shadow. I mean, seeing Mount Everest's giant pyramid of shadow cast over hundreds and hundreds of miles is like.

• 1:37:45Rich Roll?

  It was super clear too. I mean, I saw that photo.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Like, here's the thing, like,

• 1:37:49Rich Roll?

  So high up.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  You gotta realize you're so high, you're above the clouds.

• 1:37:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's the thing.

• 1:37:54Rich Roll?

  Always gonna be clear up there.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not, it's not always clear. It can be bad up there, but, uh, on some of the weather reports, like you'll ha- like that snowstorm we had, right?

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Where we were waiting in camp two, well, that storm was at 7,000 meters and below. Like, that's where those clouds were. So, uh, once we passed 7,000 meters, like, there was no new snowfall there. We didn't have to worry. You know what I, it was just interesting, like, you go above the weather to me. So the moment was,

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  I don't know what I, what I expected, but it was perfect. It was, it was unreal, man. I.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  It was everything.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  The way the journey itself affected my life was totally different than the walk. You know, where the walk almost, like we talked about, was momentum to do Everest. Everest was momentum to be here.

• 1:38:57Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  To be present.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  I think that's a really beautiful and mature takeaway from the experience because it's very easy to just let that turn you into an adventure junkie, where you've gotten some spike out of that experience. And you then, you know, basically devote a ridiculous amount of energy towards like just trying to repeat that or feel something again, like, you know?

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  And a lot of those guys suck, man.

• 1:39:29Rich Roll?

  And you're, you're, you're kind of like missing the point because you're ultimately running away.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:39:35Rich Roll?

  Or you're escaping your reality.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Rich Roll?

  Versus like really leveraging that experience to, you know, go deeper into what you just said, which is like how to be more present and how to have more gratitude and humility and all of these things.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  I think we might have talked about it last time. Did we talk about when I met Ram Dass?

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I don't remember.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  At the risk of repeating.

• 1:39:58Rich Roll?

  If I don't remember, other people don't.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fine. So I met Ram Dass, I don't know, eight years ago before I got into all these shenanigans. And I'll make this a quick story, but basically I got invited to spend some time with him at his house on Maui while he was still alive. And I had read some of his stuff, listened to some of his talks, and he had had a stroke by then. And so he was in the wheelchair. And he basically said a bunch, a bunch of stuff I heard him say before. Right? But there was something like, he just loved me and my friends that I was there with. He didn't know us, but he was exuding this like.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  I don't know, like, deep love for us. That it was like a body high or so. I mean, I walked out of his house, I keeled over and I was crying. I felt so connected to like the rusty gate and like the dirt and the cow shit. Like, he did something just by being him. And so I thought, I want to do, like, I didn't feel like I was in the presence of God or anything like that. I just felt like, hey, he's somebody who's done his work on himself. And I thought, I want to do that, you know? I want, I want when people are around me, them to feel that. And I honestly, when I stop, I can't really think of anything more important to do, you know? Than, than that.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  And when I'm hearing you talk about like these adventure junkies, like,

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  all those times, those guys suck, man. You're like with them and like they, like, they don't, they don't feel like, like they don't feel how like it feels to be in the room with you. Where I feel like comfortable and, and like, it's, it's just good. Like you have a, you have a peaceful energy and like, that, that, that's like more.

• 1:41:54Rich Roll?

  It comes from decades of, you know, doing some work and struggling and all of that stuff. I mean, I think on some level, the person who is that adventure junkie is seeking in their own way. And they're at a surface level of self-discovery. And hopefully, like, I see the best in people and that will lead them to other things that will deepen their trajectory. But I think, if you get, it's like anything, if you get stuck, then you're, if you get stuck in a certain realm, like you're, you're short cutting your growth, right? Like you always have to, like, you always have to like transcend whatever experience you have.

• 1:42:36Rich Roll?

  Like take what you can learn from it and then try to, you know, iterate on it or go to the next level. I mean, there's a, there's a saying in, in AA, you can't transmit something you haven't got, right? So when you're telling the story of Ram Dass, it's like, that guy's gone so deep for so long. And he's carrying such a heavy vibration of love and wisdom and experience. That yes, there is something really true and beautiful and magical about being in the presence of somebody who, who has gone that deep and you can definitely feel it, right? And it's very infectious. And you know, like when you, when you have that experience, you're like, I wanna, I wanna be able, there's, look, there's a lot of charlatans out there. There's a lot of people who can go,

• 1:43:20Rich Roll?

  anybody can go and repeat whatever Ram Dass has said, or their version of that.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Rich Roll?

  But when you're with them, you can tell, like, if you're tapped in even just a little bit, you can tell the difference, right? Between the hack and like, the guy who's like, speaking truth, from a place of deep understanding. And so, yeah, for me, it's like, how can I, go to that place, so that I, so that I can transmit, a vibration that comes from experience, not something I read in a book.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Have you ever had, uh, these experiences, like the opposite of the charlatan experience, where the charlatan is like this person dressed up, and they're like, supposed to be, like that guy, and they're not? Where, I've had these experiences where people who are not supposed to be that guy, or girl, or they are.

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  So, for example, like-

• 1:44:13Rich Roll?

  It's like politicians, it's like, who, who, who wants that job? It's like, it's, it's, there's a, there's a, um, uh, an inappropriate incentive that's attracting the wrong people to that rope. So, anybody who wants to be the guru, ultimately can't really be the guru.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I've had these experiences where people who don't wanna be the guru have guru qualities, such as, like, I'm in, I've been in the studio,

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  with rappers in clouds of marijuana smoke draped in forty gold chains, and like, I look in their eyes, and they're like, they're there. You know, and I'm getting like, that kinda feeling from them, and it's like, wow, okay, I'm pretty sure you never meditated, but, but you're, but you got it, you know, you're, I can just tell, you're, you're present. Like, when I'm speaking with you, you're right here with me, you're not somewhere off in the future or in the past, like, I can feel it, you know? I always think that's-

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Cool too when that happens, those unexpected ones.

• 1:45:19Rich Roll?

  You were at base camp for a long time, man. And I think I didn't really appreciate just what a huge extended endeavor the whole Everest thing is.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:29Rich Roll?

  Like, you're out for months.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  It was two months, door to door.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  Is that longer than normal? Because it seemed like you were sharing on Instagram, you're like playing concerts in some kind of like coffee house or something. I'm like, where is he?

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's like-

• 1:45:43Rich Roll?

  Like, you're just hanging out for what seemed like forever.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  We were, you know, so, you know, below base camp, there are these villages, you know, because you hike, you hike a week to get to base camp. And along the way, there's these villages in the Kumbu Valley where the Sherpa people live. And if you get bored, you can, you can go down to one of the villages and be in a little lower altitude, you know, for a day. Anyways, there was a hurricane, I think, or typhoon or something in the Indian Ocean. And that was causing the jet stream to stay on Everest longer than usual. Now, the jet stream hits Everest summit usually 50 weeks out of the year.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  So that's pretty much unclimbable, at least for my risk tolerance, you know? And we're talking hundreds of mile an hour winds, you don't want to be up there. And usually in May, late May, when the season switches from spring to the monsoon season, there's these two weeks where the, the, the jet stream gets pushed off the mountain. And this, this hurricane just messed it up and it was just staying on there longer than usual. So we had an extremely late summit, June 1st.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we were there, we were there a little longer than we thought. And, you know, that, that created some other problems, like lower on the mountain, because it's hot. It starts getting hotter and, you know, like the anchors and screws start to get a little loose and fall out. And, and more, the hotter it is, more stuff falls. So, I mean-

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  After that, that close call in Camp Two, that sound wasn't background noise anymore to me. And so, I, you just kept hearing them and, uh, we, after we summited, we got down to Camp Two, really compressed it. Well, that's a trip, like the false finish, I want to talk false finish line. You summit, but you're only at Camp Two. You gotta go down through the icefall.

• 1:47:51Rich Roll?

  It's like eight hours up, but then 12 hours down or something like that?

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was about, it was about a 17 hour day. So, cause, cause we started that day at four. We summited, came down at two. But you go to bed and you summit at Everest. But you're not done. You're still freaking on Everest. It's actually the most dangerous part of the mountain. Statistically, is the lowest part, the Kumbu Icefall. That's where all the crevasses are and the, um, ladders and that, that kind of thing.

• 1:48:21Rich Roll?

  I still like those were so low.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  That's the first thing you do on the south side. If you climb from the north.

• 1:48:27Rich Roll?

  Those look terrifying. I've seen all the videos. It's just like, I want no part of that.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  We had practiced the heck out of that too, on ladders and stuff. So it was pretty comfortable. But it's just interesting, like you practice on all these ladders in America and you get the, and you're wearing crampons. You get there and like the steps are all smaller. So it's like, it doesn't fit the same way anyways.

• 1:48:49Rich Roll?

  And Colin and Jenna were up there too, right?

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, they went on the same day as us.

• 1:48:54Rich Roll?

  You all went together, but they went up on a different day?

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  No, same day.

• 1:48:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, they did? Just later in the day?

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  They left a few hours after us, I think. But once you get to Camp Four, we just lost contact with them. I mean, the wind is howling. We didn't know what tent, what person's in. Um, but we summited and then when I was coming down, I saw them coming up. And I saw Colin and, uh, and Jenna. And they were, you know, they were, they were pretty much there. I knew they were gonna make it. It was pretty cool.

• 1:49:24Rich Roll?

  But that's like a cool moment. Cause you're like, that's the guy I was talking to on the walk across America. And like, actually here we are right now.

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  So much. He gave me so much advice. But he does this joke with me because, uh, Like, I'm this musician, right? I'm out like in these crazy places with John and him. So anytime like I'm in a place that I guess like I, on paper shouldn't be, like I land in the Skaar Do Airport in Pakistan. He always comes up and he's like, he goes, "Oh shit, is that Mike Posner in the Skaar Do Airport?" I'm like, "What's up, man?" Like, he's always doing these like, "In the Grand..." "Oh shit, is that Mike Posner on the summit of the Grand Teton in Wyoming?" You know, he's got these like folders and then... He did the one and actually is just like really cool. Like in that moment where we crossed on the, we were on the Hillary's staff.

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  And he took his, I don't know, he didn't have his phone. I think he had a GoPro, so he's like, "Oh shit, is that Mike Pose on the Hillary's staff?" I'm like, "Yeah."

• 1:50:26Rich Roll?

  You should do an edit of all of those together.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  We should, right, we should.

• 1:50:30Rich Roll?

  Wow, man. So here you are in the wake of all of these experiences. Like, how do you make sense of all of it? Like, what is the... What is the wisdom that you then carry into the studio? Like, how does this? I'm interested in how this all

• 1:50:49Rich Roll?

  congeals with and like, works with the art and your expression.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  That's the easy part. I mean, that just happens. Quincy Jones said, "The deeper the human you are, the deeper the musician you are." It's true. So, my perspective is totally different, you know? So where I write from is different. I don't, I don't have to try to do that. You know, the inspiration just comes up and, um, it'll, it's, it'll just be different, it'll be...

• 1:51:20Rich Roll?

  Right, but it gives you something to say. I mean, you can't be an artist if you're not living your life. So if you just sat in a studio in Hollywood for the last four years, you could create technically good music, but it's not... It would be devoid of the depth that you can give it now that you've lived like these rich experiences.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Yes. And there's a balance, right? Because there's skills involved in what I do.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  That I wasn't focusing on. And in some way, some of those things probably waned a little bit. My guitar chops are not as, you know.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  But you're right, that I've had periods of my life where it was the opposite, where I was just writing a song every day. And after a year of that, I'm writing some song about, I don't know, was it in my early twenties, I write some song about like being at a party and I'm realizing like, when's the last time you've been to a party, man? You don't do, you just, you just write, that's all you do. And, uh, and you know,

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  I always talk about this experience I had with redemption song, Bob Marley. It's my favorite song. I'm listening to it one day.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, I know all the chords in this song. I can hit all the notes and all the words in the lyrics are in my vocabulary.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  So why haven't I written a song this good?

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Well, that delta between wherever I am, where redemption song is, you know, is, is not found in the studio. It's not found by practicing guitar, you know, making my voice better in voice lessons or learning new words by reading. It's something deeper than that. And, uh,

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  I think that's part of the quest I've been on.

• 1:53:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta have a deep reservoir of life experience to get to a place where you have something to say.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:44Rich Roll?

  Worthy of a song like that and worthy of you being a steward of that expression. And when the universe decides that you're ready, I have no doubt that it'll just flow out of you.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:53:57Rich Roll?

  Without, without the thinking, without, what's it, Charlie?

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Charlie.

• 1:54:01Rich Roll?

  Without Charlie getting involved.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Charlie's not gonna have any part in that one.

• 1:54:05Rich Roll?

  But you came out of the gate with this, uh, with this freaking catchy tune, Mama Always Told Me. I can't get that out of my head. I don't know what it is, but you have a knack for like writing these songs that like just get lodged in the brain. Like that, that like pop sensibility, you know?

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  I don't know where I got that.

• 1:54:25Rich Roll?

  Do you think about that or is it just, I'm just doing what I feel? Or do you think, I know that these are, are characteristics of a pop song that work? And so I structure my lyrics or my beats around that, like how does it come together?

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  You try not to think about that too much, you know? But there is a frame, like there is a medium, we call it a medium of the song. What it's about three minutes shrinking as our intention spans shrink, you know? Songs are actually becoming shorter.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  And there's like a typical structure to the medium, which is there's a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus, another verse, another pre-chorus, another chorus, maybe a post-chorus, a bridge, one more chorus, and that's the end of the song. And, uh, so we play with this form.

• 1:55:21Rich Roll?

  Right, in a way a painter plays with the canvas that's mounted on a frame.

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  And sometimes we say, hey, we're not gonna do it. Maybe this song, I could just kind of one verse or you know, whatever, we're not gonna use that. And, uh, but the medium exists, you know, before me, and so I'm, I'm toying with it. And, uh, it's all about what you're trying to accomplish and you know, I guess what the spirit is calling you to do sometimes like, sometimes you think of a melody that's extremely catchy, but it's like almost so catchy, it's kind of corny. And you go, I don't, I don't, that doesn't fit, you know? So it's always different.

• 1:56:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Rich Roll?

  The music industry just seems to be always changing so quickly. I mean, it's changed so much just since the last time that we talked.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56:14Rich Roll?

  You know, now it's about TikTok and having your your songs trend there. And I know you've had some success with that. But the idea of like, I'm going to release an album versus I'm going to drip songs out. Like, how do you even approach it strategically? To think, you know, thinking about like, this is how you do it now. Or this is the way the music kind of environment functions versus the days when we were growing up, where it was you put an album out every couple of years and tour on it.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's certainly changed. For me, I'm just trying to create like, or live the life I want to live. I don't want to, right now, at least, go on like a big music tour. I'm really interested in the speaking. I just did my first like, speaking thing. I went to Ohio State and did like a

• 1:57:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:57:07Speaker 01

  45 minute talk where I shared some of these stories and had like some slides. And then I played like a few songs acoustic at the end. That was awesome.

• 1:57:15Rich Roll?

  You could do a full one man show that way.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, retreats about reentry, you know?

• 1:57:21Rich Roll?

  That's what it's called?

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Retreat, no, but that's why I'm doing it. You know, it's like, okay, you got to do all this cool stuff. What'd you learn? And can you share it with with other people in a way that adds value to to them? So, man, like, I'm probably the wrong person to ask about like, how we market music now.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  I don't really know.

• 1:57:41Rich Roll?

  You're just trying to hold on to the purity of what you do and let that stuff take care of itself. But you're doing like, like a combination of writing for yourself and then working with other guys.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I really enjoy that, you know? And and sometimes the writing is just an excuse to share some of this stuff. You know, what younger artists, I didn't have anybody tell me what to expect or what to do 10 years ago. It's wild, lonely industry, you know, especially when you have success. So, that, and then as far as like, how I'm sharing this stuff, like, I'm playing around on TikTok. I'm just being real on there, like showing what I do. I sprout, you know, I make music and that's about it, dude, you know?

• 1:58:25Rich Roll?

  And no big crazy adventure on the horizon? Like you feel like people are like, well, what's next?

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  They do ask me that. And that's the grab, there's no next, right? It's like, that's what I learned, there's no next, it's only here. It's only now, like, to anyone listening to this, like, news flash, this is your life, this is it, whether you're like, got the earphones in while you're making food or whatever, like, look around, like, this is it, you know? And who said, maybe it's Tietin, huh? And he said, if we can't be happy now, we can never be happy. I think he quoted the Buddha saying that, we have to make this moment the most wonderful moment of our lives. So that's like my snarky answer. And then, like, on the external plane, I'm up to stuff.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  I'm doing the speaking, I'm making music mostly with others now. But I'll make another album for sure at some point. And as far as the adventure stuff, I'm taking a break, you know? That Everest was really real, man. It was, uh, it's just so easily you could have not come back, you know? And so I still love being in shape and exercising that, like, that's a part of my life. But, you know, putting my life on the line. And if you die, like, who's it really hurt? Not you, you're freaking dead.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  It's like my mom, you know, like, that's not really, you know? And there's certain things I would like to think I would die for, if like, she was in harm's way or something, you know? But just to like, have a cool experience, to like, access a peace that...

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  I think can be accessed in other ways. I wouldn't, I wouldn't risk my life for that anymore.

• 2:00:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think that's smart. That's a good move.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's, it's cool. I, I feel really good, man. I feel really good. Dr. John and I are also, um, we're talking about this idea maybe next fall of, you know, speaking of retreats, reentry and sharing, we're thinking about hosting like a small group, maybe fifteen, sixteen people on the trek to base camp. Cause that's actually the kind of the coolest, one of the coolest parts of Everest is just being in the Sherpa villages and there's no cars and we're thinking about like hosting a trip there, but we're figuring that out.

• 2:00:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Rich Roll?

  And didn't you, were you like working on a song with Tom Morello and like laying down lyrics on your iPhone like when you were at base camp?

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  No, that, so, well, first of all, I got to work with Tom Morello, man.

• 2:01:11Rich Roll?

  I know, that's like the coolest.

• 2:01:12Speaker 01

  I'm a big Rage fan since I was little, so, um, we, we, we had this song done and it was an idea I had sent to him and then he did his thing with it. And basically, you know, I, I produced the song, which like essentially means like I should be overseeing the mixing process and like taking the song from, it's one of the hats I wear, producer, like you, you, you like finish it.

• 2:01:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  You know, but I didn't. I was like left to Nepal and Tom's texting me like, yo, have you heard the latest mix? It's like, you know, when you nitpick stuff, hey, the reverb's too loud in verse two or whatever. And I'm just like, dude, I can't, cause there's some crappy wifi at base camp. I said, look, man, I, I, I see you sent it, but I can't open it up. And Everest base camp, and I came back home and he was like, I said, FaceTime, I was like, yo, I want to apologize. Like I really like kind of dropped the ball on like finishing, finishing the mix. And he was like, oh, he's like, it's all good. He's like, so you like, you trekked to base camp? Cause that's the thing, like that's kind of a life-changing trip people do. They do the trek to base camp.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  And that's what me and John are talking about hosting in the future. I said, no, I submitted. He was like, what? You submitted?

• 2:02:33Speaker 01

  I was like, yeah, man. He's like, oh shit. He's like, it's all good, man. We'll finish the mix, you know?

• 2:02:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we got it done.

• 2:02:40Rich Roll?

  It's a pretty legit excuse, like, couldn't get back to you.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 2:02:44Rich Roll?

  I was at, you know, Camp Four.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:49Rich Roll?

  But that song hasn't come out yet, has it?

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  It, it came out, I want to say, on, it's Tom's song. Tom made an album that's not a Rage album, where he collaborated with all these different artists. And, uh, it's got like Springsteen's on it, and Chris Stapleton, and all these names that I don't deserve to be on the CD with, you know?

• 2:03:11Rich Roll?

  Sure you do, huh?

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  No, it was just, it's really cool. I think he put it out a week or two ago.

• 2:03:17Rich Roll?

  Hmm, I'll have to check it out. I didn't know it was out.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:20Rich Roll?

  Well, dude, I love you. I'm such a, you know, a fan, not just of your music, but just you as a human being. And I really enjoy being in your presence. And I think the way, the choices that you've made about how to live your life, how to conduct yourself, how to be a public figure with integrity, and live your life in such an authentic way is truly inspiring, man. And I'd like to have more of you in my life.

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 2:03:52Rich Roll?

  So, I really appreciate you coming here today.

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  Hey, listen, man, that means a lot. And what you're up to is so beautiful. Like, you, you have some, the most like beautiful people in the world on your, on your show, and you share their message.

• 2:04:14Speaker 01

  And, and people hear it. I, I met them. I'll say, that's probably like of all the interviews I did on like the, on, I was telling you before, I think we started recording on the walk, you know, like, people showed up so mu- many times, and all these different states that said they heard your podcast. And, um, beyond like just highlighting your guests, whatever they're up to, you, you take the time and, uh, and create a space where you like, you really see.

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  Them, and that's a gift. Like, when you, when, just by some of the things you reflect back, I can hear in your listening, like, you, you get me on a, on a level deeper than, than, uh, most people, like, than you get from just like having a conversation with somebody. So, that's a real gift, you know, to, to share with other people, um, to your listeners, but also each person I think that sits in this chair gets that from you, I presume. Thank you, man.

• 2:05:20Rich Roll?

  Appreciate that. Speaking of gifts, are you willing to share a song with us?

• 2:05:25Speaker 02

  I don't have a guitar.

• 2:05:26Rich Roll?

  We have a guitar here. It's not your guitar.

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  I wanna test it out.

• 2:05:29Rich Roll?

  I don't know. We'll see.

• 2:05:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 2:05:31Rich Roll?

  If it meets your standards, then we can do it.

• 2:05:33Speaker 02

  Let's do it, man.

• 2:05:33Rich Roll?

  Alright, cool.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Of course. Somebody told me God is simply what we don't know.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  I saw a butterfly, it was dead, but it was gorgeous.

• 2:05:48Speaker 02

  And all the robots are just walking down the sidewalk.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Kings that are little empires that they made up.

• 2:06:00Speaker 02

  And I'm wide open. Woo hoo.

• 2:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm wide open. Woo hoo.

• 2:06:25Speaker 02

  Dusty got shot and the notion got married.

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  Stewie's still dead and commitment's still scary.

• 2:06:37Speaker 02

  And I got a new woman, but I treat her like my old one.

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  If I keep this shit up, I know I'll end up with no one.

• 2:06:49Speaker 02

  And I'm wide open. Woo hoo.

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm wide open. Woo hoo.

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think anything matters. I don't really care at all. You wanna start a revolution? But nobody cares, everyone's tired. Work a little bit harder. And baby, so will I. You want a revolution? Nobody cares, everyone's tired.

• 2:07:49Speaker 02

  And the promenade's filled with a gray cloud. It's dripping black all over the playground. And the museum's all filled with the Snapchat. I got the head of a dog in my backpack. And underneath all my clothes is a snake skin that I stole from the temple when it caved in. Cause they built it too close to the fault line. When the capital burned, we were all high on the beautiful mess we created. There's a thought in my mind, this is sacred. In the future, this will all be ancient. And the water in the sink has been tainted with the urine of the governor's firstborn. On his second birthday, he got a surfboard. But he crashed it ever since, he's been dirt poor. So he picked up the guitar, he's trying to learn chords.

• 2:08:34Speaker 02

  And the people wanna start it all over. Cause the poets just murdered all the soldiers. And the monks have God on their shoulders. And the world's just another day older.

• 2:08:48Speaker 02

  Time wrote a new constitution. And Jimmy wants to start a revolution. My week is wide open.

• 2:09:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, wide open.

• 2:09:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, wide, wide open. Yeah, wide.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  Open.

• 2:09:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:10:02Speaker 02

  Old pirates, yes they're a-bye.

• 2:10:07Speaker 02

  Sword out to the merchant ships.

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  Minutes after they took eye. From the bottomless pitch. But my hand was made strong. By the hand of the Almighty. We flower in this generation.

• 2:10:31Speaker 02

  Triumphantly. So won't you help to sing?

• 2:10:38Speaker 02

  These songs of freedom. Cause all I ever have.

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  Redemption song.

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy. Cause none of them can stop the time.

• 2:11:12Speaker 02

  How long will they kill our brothers? While we stand aside and look. Ooh. Some say it's just a part of it. We've got to fulfill the book. So won't you help to sing?

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  These songs of freedom. Is all I ever have.

• 2:11:40Speaker 02

  Redemption song. Yeah, all I ever have.

• 2:11:48Speaker 02

  Redemption song.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  Emasculate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy. There's none of them can stop the time. How long will they kill our brothers? While we stand aside and look.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  Some say it's just a part of it.

• 2:12:47Speaker 02

  You've got to fulfill the book.

• 2:12:52Speaker 02

  Won't you help to sing?

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  These songs of freedom. Cause all I ever had.

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  Redemption's all.

• 2:13:21Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 2:13:52Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering

• 2:14:35Rich Roll?

  by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.