Roll On: The Slap, The Swim & The Self-Myth (+ 'The Rollies'!)

In today's episode of 'Roll On', Rich Roll & Adam Skolnick discuss Will Smith, Lia Thomas & Taylor Hawkins. Plus: nominees for the 1st annual "Rollies' awards, a coaching call check-in with Chris Hauth & much more. Vote for your favorite "Rollie' nominees HERE. To read more and to peruse the show notes, click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To grab your copy of Voicing Change Vol. II, visit: https://www.richroll.com/voicing-change-ii/ This is a fun one—enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Roll on his back. My spidey sense tells me this one might be a little controversial, and it's coming right up, but first.

• 1:33Rich Roll?

  Adam, should we do the show?

• 1:35Adam Skolnick?

  I don't see why not.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  I don't know, man.

• 1:38Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:39Adam Skolnick?

  I understand.

• 1:40Rich Roll?

  But you know what?

• 1:41Adam Skolnick?

  What?

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  F it.

• 1:43Adam Skolnick?

  Listen, it's either do it, or let's just get the hell out of here and have a good day.

• 1:47Rich Roll?

  We're gonna do it. Let's do the show.

• 1:48Adam Skolnick?

  Fine.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Born in 1966.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  A man of many talents.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  And the will to push through.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  He turned his life around. He wasn't doing so hot. Rich Roll! He got rid of that weight and he gained a lot of wisdom. Rich Roll! He lives in a tent. Rich Roll! Thank you all so much for playing along and I hope you have a wonderful night. And I'd like to welcome to the stage, Mr. Rich Roll!

• 2:54Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Roll On, where journalist, author, mask-wearing friend of whales, and generally pleasant human Adam Skolnick and I dive into matters that range from deeply grave on the one hand to fairly dunder-headed on the other. Today, I would say leans heavily into the latter with a light dusting of somewhat controversial topics before a little bit of wonderful we're calling the Rollies. Stay tuned for the Rollies. Slice of wonderful. The first annual Rollies. And then, closing with a coaching call, check-in with friend of the podcast, Chris Hout, holding my hand to the salty water fire in this lead-up that I find myself in

• 3:39Rich Roll?

  towards an impending 12 and 1/2 mile open water swim that I made the unfortunate mistake of putting on my calendar. But first, how goes it, my periodically gilled friend of feathered pen and finned fishes? You know, I need a feathered pen. I'm surprised you don't have one.

• 3:59Adam Skolnick?

  I know, I need one, but the problem is, I've been into a business mode lately. I've been putting the finishing touches on my business plan.

• 4:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. I can't wait for this.

• 4:08Adam Skolnick?

  For the spa space.

• 4:10Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 4:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Rich Roll?

  Do tell.

• 4:12Adam Skolnick?

  So, if you're like me, you love a forgiving mirror and a scale that's a little bit light. Am I right?

• 4:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like a little funny mirror that makes you look skinny and handsome?

• 4:22Adam Skolnick?

  Not a funny mirror. You want it to be like...

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  Just tweaked a little bit.

• 4:25Adam Skolnick?

  Tweaked enough to where like it's slanted down or something, so yeah.

• 4:29Rich Roll?

  Well, they have them, they can compress like the way that you appear in them, so you look maybe fifteen, twenty percent svelter.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, well, get me that guy's email, because I need that. So I want that, and then we're gonna, we're gonna monkey with the scale, so they're like two, two and a half pounds light.

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:48Adam Skolnick?

  So you come to my spa, you have the treatment, you work out, you do whatever you want to do, and then you, you see yourself in these mirrors, and you get on the scale, and you leave so happy, and as soon as you step out, we hit you with a full-scale membership pitch, six months in advance, and you will pay it.

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. This is the idea.

• 5:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's my idea.

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I assume that you anticipate scaling this scale idea.

• 5:14Adam Skolnick?

  The scale, the funny scales?

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  To become the new unicorn in the wellness space?

• 5:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, this is it, baby. I mean, ten years from now, I will be the bad guy in a Netflix show with a billion dollars in my pocket.

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  Do you have the charisma to be able to be the front man for this?

• 5:29Adam Skolnick?

  Well, maybe not.

• 5:30Rich Roll?

  To walk into the Softbanks and score those, you know, two hundred million dollar Series B financing rounds?

• 5:36Adam Skolnick?

  I might need, I might need like a fake, a fake German or like an Israeli partner that can really get in there.

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  Well, this plays into what we're gonna talk about later in the show, about self-mythologizing.

• 5:48Adam Skolnick?

  No, but in all seriousness...

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  I like it.

• 5:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, thank you. I might come to you for, during my Serie A. Is it Siri or series?

• 5:55Rich Roll?

  Series. Get your VC talk straightened out first.

• 5:59Adam Skolnick?

  Series double A. Series double A battery.

• 6:02Rich Roll?

  Not double A.

• 6:03Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  No.

• 6:05Adam Skolnick?

  But I'm honestly, I'm nervous to be in Calabasas today, because this is kind of Calabasas-adjacent.

• 6:09Rich Roll?

  It's ground zero right now for...

• 6:11Adam Skolnick?

  Will Smith could be anywhere.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we got the Will Smith situation, which we're gonna get into a little bit later in the show. Also, adjacent to Taylor Hawkins.

• 6:22Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  Who lives nearby as well. So lots to talk about.

• 6:27Adam Skolnick?

  Lots to talk about, but can I say one more thing before I finish my end of the hellos? You know, you ever get off the mic and you wish you-

• 6:35Rich Roll?

  First of all, hold on. What's the name of this spa endeavor?

• 6:39Adam Skolnick?

  The name of my spa?

• 6:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what are you gonna call it?

• 6:41Adam Skolnick?

  You look great, baby.

• 6:43Rich Roll?

  I think you need like a techy word, like the one word that doesn't really mean anything.

• 6:47Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. Spatastic.

• 6:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that, no, that's not what I'm talking about.

• 6:52Adam Skolnick?

  No, but with like an exclamation point.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  Put a pin in that and we'll figure that out later.

• 6:55Adam Skolnick?

  All right, let's spitball it.

• 6:56Rich Roll?

  All right, what else were you gonna say?

• 6:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you ever get off the air and you just wish there was one thing you wish you'd said? During the four by four recap, I never thanked everyone for the lovely messages and all the encouragement. I got a lot of encouragement from listeners and people who are paying attention and I really appreciate it. It really does help. It makes a big difference in the motivation. I don't know. I'm sure Jason feels the same way and I just wanted to thank everybody.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  Very cool. Yeah, well said. Right on. Well, let's get into it. First thing I want to say is we just introduced the show with a little bit of a tweak on the theme song that you guys heard. You might be wondering where that came from. That is the very talented Noble Sun, who's a Vancouver musician as well as a voiceover actor. Apparently he's huge on TikTok. He's got a massive TikTok following. Where he does voiceover type stuff and people share it like crazy. Anyway, he was the live musical act when I did this live event in Vancouver a couple of months ago.

• 7:57Adam Skolnick?

  Remember that.

• 7:58Rich Roll?

  Maybe several months ago at this point, where he introduced me for this event that we did in a church, this live podcast.

• 8:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Rich Roll?

  And he was kind enough to let us share it.

• 8:09Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 8:10Rich Roll?

  And he's poking fun at me and I thought it was all in good spirited fun, so.

• 8:15Adam Skolnick?

  Some people can handle being poked fun at.

• 8:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Adam Skolnick?

  Some people can't.

• 8:19Rich Roll?

  Well. Another thing we're gonna put a pin in and talk about in a little bit. Meanwhile, I guess I, uh, I feel good. My swimming is ramping up.

• 8:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, what does that mean, ramping up? You're going to, like, I noticed on Instagram.

• 8:32Rich Roll?

  More consistent, a little bit increase in the volume as I head towards this 12 and a half mile swim that I'm gonna do in June.

• 8:38Adam Skolnick?

  Four and 5K swim sessions, right?

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, Chris, you know, I check in with Chris, which is gonna be the latter part of this show, and he'll talk us through, you know, the whys and the hows behind all of that. But actually, the more I swim, the better I sleep, which means I feel better during the day. So it all feeds on itself. And I'm going to Miami later this week. For a speaking thing, I'm gonna get there a little bit early and stay a day later so I can get in some good ocean swims in the warm water. So I'm looking forward to that.

• 9:04Adam Skolnick?

  Nice. Beware the jellies.

• 9:07Rich Roll?

  Uh, I know, that's a thing there, for sure. Hopefully, it won't be too much of a problem.

• 9:12Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know in winter, or this time of year, if it's that bad. I think it might be more of a later spring, summer thing.

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not sure either. I will find out and report back.

• 9:20Adam Skolnick?

  Alright.

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  Uh, meanwhile, the first thing that I wanna talk about is, uh, the sudden death of Taylor Hawkins.

• 9:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  Dead at 50. I have to say, I didn't see this one coming. The beloved drummer for the Foo Fighters. And apparently, I just found out this morning, you told me this, I knew that he had been complaining of chest pains, but apparently, there were 10 drugs in his system.

• 9:46Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think I told you that I knew he had had a drug problem, because it was in the obit I read. Because I didn't, you know, I'm not-

• 9:52Rich Roll?

  Like a drug problem that was in the past?

• 9:54Adam Skolnick?

  Well, he'd had it. And then I saw someone else on Twitter who was, that you retweeted, I think. Or you had even said, you know, check on people, like, you know, a lot of people who've had, who've either relapsed or overdosed. Remember that, you shared?

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  Jessica Leahy.

• 10:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right, Jessica Leahy's tweet. And I think she must have been referencing Taylor Hawkins. So that's when I kinda read his obit and found that out. It's like, there must be something to- These rockers that they kind of like, they get to a certain age and they're questioning, or even at any age, questioning like, why me? Like, why, what do I deserve it? Or somehow?

• 10:27Rich Roll?

  Well, I think you're reading, you're reading into something that we don't really know anything about.

• 10:32Adam Skolnick?

  Well, no, in his, I believe he's quoted as saying something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:36Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 10:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this is a tough one because, I mean, he was 50, but he looked quite a bit younger than that, very vital.

• 10:44Adam Skolnick?

  Looked great.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  A guy who seemed like he was super friendly with everybody. Nobody has a bad thing to say about him. And, you know, like you had mentioned about Calabasas, like, he lived in Hidden Hills, his family still lives there, obviously. He had lived in Topanga before that. And I would see him out, when I would go trail running, I'd see him out mountain biking all the time.

• 11:01Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  He was always out there. So, this is a sad one, man, you know? And it goes to that point of, you know, addiction doesn't discriminate, doesn't matter who you are, how rich you are, how successful you are. And, you know.

• 11:16Adam Skolnick?

  Or even if you've been sober for a period of time.

• 11:18Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly.

• 11:20Adam Skolnick?

  That must be like, what do you think about that as a sober person when you hear something like a relapse like this? That ends this way? Do you want, do you always feel like it's, it's right there? It could happen at, at any time?

• 11:32Rich Roll?

  Well, the adage is that your inner addict is doing pushups in the dark all the time, just waiting for that moment of weakness to express itself. And I experienced that when I relapsed. It was like it picked up and went from zero to 100 in the blink of an eye. So, it is beneath the surface at all times. And I know what that feels like. I'm reluctant to say anything specific to Taylor Hawkins because I don't know anything about, had he been sober, did he relapse? Has he been using the whole time? Who knows? I don't, I don't know.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  But relapse is a part of recovery and people think of relapse as this huge failure. But in reality, the miracle is, you know, each day that goes by that the addict or the alcoholic doesn't use or drink, you know, and sort of keeping that in perspective. Because the yearning is so strong and it's cunning, baffling and powerful. So it's not surprising when somebody who has a long-term sobriety relapses. So it's not, it's not like shocking in that regard, but it's just sad in this case. Because he was, you know, somebody who did seemingly have it all and was loved by a lot of people and, and seemed at least when you would see him in photographs or in videos to be enjoying his life.

• 12:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Rich Roll?

  Right? Which makes it confusing.

• 12:52Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe it's the confusing part is that life is always, it's definitely harder for some people than others and there's harder situations than others. I'm not saying otherwise, but like, there's always a blade, there's always a knife's edge, like nearby in everyone's life. It's not easy to deal with life.

• 13:10Rich Roll?

  Well, nobody gets out of life alive, you know, and nobody gets out of life without pain and suffering and obstacles. So we project onto these very successful people who, you know, are very good-looking and, and have everything that we aspire to have ourselves.

• 13:24Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that's so sweet to say that about me.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  And imagine that they live these lives that are, you know, without any kind of toil or consternation or pain. And it's just not the case. Like every single person that I've ever met, no matter their life circumstances, is going through something and, you know, it's inescapable. So obviously he had some kind of issue that he was contending with and, you know, it's just, it's just sad and it's heartbreaking to see this happen.

• 13:53Adam Skolnick?

  He lived a great life. His mom gave him drums when he was a teenager, I think it was, or maybe even a little, like a 10 or 11. He was one of those kids that like was into rock, like before most people his age or into music before most people his age. And he was going to shows, you know, and his like mom gave him that drum set and it just opened up his world from what I read. He just always wanted to be a rock star. And that way, he is like John Fushanti. Is it John? Yeah.

• 14:17Rich Roll?

  John Fushanti.

• 14:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, long time heroin addict. He was really young. He was kind of a wonderkin guitarist that hooked up with Flea and then Flea brought him in. And he's the guy that was basically the guitarist on the Rick Rubin records, Californication and the and Blood, Sex, Sugar Magic that kind of made the punk pop in a way.

• 14:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:37Adam Skolnick?

  And.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  But then they had to part ways with him, then he came back to the band.

• 14:41Adam Skolnick?

  He's come back twice, I think, yeah.

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so but he's not in the band now.

• 14:44Adam Skolnick?

  But same idea, like, kind of always knew, wanted to be a rocker.

• 14:47Rich Roll?

  It's true of a lot of these guys. I mean, Tyler and Trapper, Trapper got his first drum set when he was, I don't know, eight, seven, something like that. Tyler picked up a guitar when he was about the same age and never looked back. So I've seen that play out. I saw also that Travis Barker had shared something on social media about his history with Taylor. Like, did Taylor grow up in Orange County?

• 15:10Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  He said Taylor would go to his shows and, you know, they knew each other at a very young age.

• 15:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  You know, they've been in it for a long time.

• 15:19Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  Anyway, sad.

• 15:20Adam Skolnick?

  Rest in peace.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Rich Roll?

  What else do we want to talk about? Oh, I wanted to quickly mention that Julie had a booth for Shrimu at the Oscars gifting suite, which was really cool. So she came back with all these stories of meeting all these cool people.

• 15:35Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 15:35Rich Roll?

  The way these things work, though, like, they set up these hotel ballrooms or whatever, and there's a bunch of vendors in there, and they usher these celebrities in. And the idea is they get to partake in the products and all of that kind of stuff and get their picture taken with the people, the owners of these companies. And it's it's kind of like a PR sort of thing.

• 15:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  I think there was maybe only one Oscar nominee or two Oscar nominees of the whole thing, though. It's it's generally all these other celebrities. Like, there's this whole weird ecosystem.

• 16:06Adam Skolnick?

  Is it the days before, or is it?

• 16:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was like Friday, Saturday before the Oscars.

• 16:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Rich Roll?

  But Ukars came by, friend of the pod.

• 16:13Adam Skolnick?

  Look at that.

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  Ukars, John Bukar, and some other cool people, Greg Grunberg, Viola Davis.

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  Somebody from Euphoria that Julie met. Anyway.

• 16:23Adam Skolnick?

  Utkarsh was in my living room this weekend.

• 16:26Rich Roll?

  He was.

• 16:27Adam Skolnick?

  Well, he was on the television.

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. Because you were watching the dropout?

• 16:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're gonna talk about that, too.

• 16:33Adam Skolnick?

  He's great. He's always great.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  Utkarsh is blowing up. He's inescapable now. He's in so much stuff.

• 16:38Adam Skolnick?

  He's fabulous. He's always great. He's always entertaining.

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  He's always good.

• 16:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  You want to talk to us about OZ?

• 16:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. OZ Perlman, OZ the Mentalist, Attempts to Break Robbie Ballinger's Central Park Record. It's happening on April 8th. I don't know how, the exact dates, but earlier this year, or last year. Was it last year? Yeah, middle last year.

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  I can't remember when Robbie did it.

• 17:02Adam Skolnick?

  It was the fall.

• 17:03Rich Roll?

  It was within the last year.

• 17:03Adam Skolnick?

  When did you do your 10,000 event? It was right around then.

• 17:06Rich Roll?

  That was like last spring? I can't remember.

• 17:09Adam Skolnick?

  Anyway, he, Robbie's first time around Central Park, running in Central Park at all, ever, was apparently doing loops around Central Park. And he was trying to have the most miles logged, or the most loops around Central Park during its opening hours. I guess it's open from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. There's five hours closed. And he wanted to have the most loops. He ended up running 100 miles. And that is the new record for Central Park. And OZ is going to try to break that record. OZ says that, you know, for him, like, running Central Park is hallowed ground. He says he knows every pebble on that course. He's been doing, he's been running there so much for his entire life. So, he's gonna be doing it to raise money for Save the Children Ukraine.

• 17:54Adam Skolnick?

  He has, is trying to raise $100,000. He's personally putting in 10, he told me, and he wants everyone to kick in. If you're interested, he says he's gonna be doing loops all day from 6:00 a.m., starting at the engineer's gate. And you can join him for the loops. He's gonna be running at a pretty quick pace. He's a great runner. But you can join him. You can just kind of cheer him on. He'll finish around midnight or 1:00 a.m. He's gonna try to do 100 miles plus one or two loops. So we'll see how he does. And he's in touch with Robbie. Apparently Robbie's been really gracious and encouraging and wants him to break it.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  That's good to hear.

• 18:30Adam Skolnick?

  Super cool.

• 18:30Rich Roll?

  They're in communication.

• 18:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Rich Roll?

  Over this thing.

• 18:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:33Rich Roll?

  Because I'm very protective of Robbie.

• 18:35Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah?

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Robbie's my boy.

• 18:38Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 18:38Rich Roll?

  But O's, we should say, came here and did a podcast.

• 18:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  It's an unbelievable podcast.

• 18:43Adam Skolnick?

  When's that coming out?

• 18:44Rich Roll?

  It has not published yet, so the audience is like, who's O's the mentalist?

• 18:48Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you'll find out.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  We talked about him the other day, but yeah, he's, you know, a very interesting human who has a very particular skill that is bewildering and also happens to be this incredibly accomplished ultra marathon runner. So this is an interesting challenge that he set for himself. And given, you know, my friendship and allegiance with Robbie, it'll be interesting to see two podcast guests vie for the title of this Central Park Loop record.

• 19:18Adam Skolnick?

  But when you have former podcast guests who've become friends, really, I mean, you stay in contact.

• 19:24Rich Roll?

  FOPs.

• 19:24Adam Skolnick?

  When you have certain FOPs going head to head for something like this, has this happened before? Or is this the first time?

• 19:30Rich Roll?

  Uh, I don't know if it's happened in this way before.

• 19:34Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  But it's fun to see FOPs in the wild, like FOPs at the Oscars. That's always cool.

• 19:40Adam Skolnick?

  Did you get any FOPs?

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  A couple. Well, Travis Barker was playing drums onstage.

• 19:44Adam Skolnick?

  He was he?

• 19:45Rich Roll?

  And then Tony Hawk gave out an award with Kelly Slater and Sean White.

• 19:52Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, that's cool.

• 19:53Rich Roll?

  Those two guys have been trying to get on the podcast and have come close a couple times, but still.

• 19:57Adam Skolnick?

  Kelly and Sean?

• 19:58Rich Roll?

  It hasn't worked out. Yeah. Who else? Maggie Baird, mom of Billie Eilish.

• 20:04Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:04Rich Roll?

  Was caught on camera.

• 20:06Adam Skolnick?

  FOP.

• 20:07Rich Roll?

  Being backed by, by Billie and Phineas after they won their Oscar the other night. I don't know.

• 20:12Adam Skolnick?

  Well.

• 20:13Rich Roll?

  It's cool. It helps you feel more connected to what these people are doing out in the world.

• 20:17Adam Skolnick?

  It is cool. I think your listeners probably feel the same way. And this is the first time then FOPs are gunning for, well, they're not doing it at the same time. It's not quite a Colin versus Lou situation.

• 20:28Rich Roll?

  No, no.

• 20:28Adam Skolnick?

  But it is O's trying to take Robbie's Central Park title.

• 20:33Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 20:34Adam Skolnick?

  Again, that's Engineers Gate, April 8th, 6 a.m.

• 20:37Rich Roll?

  Where's Engineers Gate?

• 20:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's at 90th and 5th Avenue. And he's running counterclockwise. He says his crew will be set up at the gate with posters and signs. They're expecting hundreds of runners throughout the day. So that's what he's saying. It's being publicized to the local running clubs. That's how it's gonna

• 20:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Right on. All right. Well, let's keep things moving. We have so many things to talk about. I think we're about to really step in it now.

• 21:01Adam Skolnick?

  Why?

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  Because we're gonna talk about NCAA swimming and in particular,

• 21:05Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  the controversy surrounding Leah Thomas and what has been transpiring in the world of women's competitive swimming and the sort of role of transgender athletes in sport. And this is a very heated topic, obviously. Opinions are pretty inflamed around this, which has made it difficult to talk about it in any kind of objective sense.

• 21:28Adam Skolnick?

  Actually, we even talked about it weeks ago about is it something that you want to get into, right?

• 21:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I have misgivings about even talking about it at all because I think people have their minds made up about this and it's certain to alienate certain people or, you know, set certain people off. But I also think it's a really important thing to talk about and it falls squarely into terrain that I care about as a competitive swimmer with a long history and love for this sport and also as somebody who cares deeply about human rights, civil rights and the transgender movement. I have transgender people in my life that I care about, transgender people in my family. So I'm very close to this issue and I feel like it would be cowardly to not talk about it on some level, as sort of nerve

• 22:18Rich Roll?

  wracking as it can be to kind of unpack something that is so hotly debated at the moment. And I feel like this case is in some regard like the ultimate test case because perhaps it's not the first instance, but one of the first instances in which a pretty elite level swimmer decides to transition from male to female, putting them in a position to, you know, succeed on a level that perhaps they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. I mean, you came up with a couple other test cases that I'm less familiar with.

• 22:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, there was an athlete named Juniper Eastwood who won running events from the University of Montana and C.C. Telfer at a place called Franklin Pierce University. She won the 2000 19 Division Two National Championship in the 400 meter hurdles. So which is Division Two, this is Division One in swimming. It's a different level. It doesn't sound like C.C. Telfer was vying for the overall national championship. So it's a little bit different in that case. And it's just a more high profile case and it's coming at a time when it's this issue is in the forefront.

• 23:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Really, the issue is this tension between inclusion and fair play and whether or not these two things can coexist in any kind of meaningful way, right? Or perhaps they're irreconcilable in a case like this. So with respect to Leah, this is somebody who was born genetically male, started swimming at five on the men's teams. And I think part of the narrative that's out there that's misguided is that as a male swimmer, wasn't that successful? Wasn't that great, but actually pretty good. One of the Ivy League's best swimmers, finished second in the men's 500, 1000 and 1650 freestyle, the Ivy League Championships as a sophomore.

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  So when you look at them on paper as a male, weren't going to make the Olympic team, but still, you know, rather fast in the grand scheme of being a male competitive swimmer.

• 24:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  Of course, began to transition and then during the pandemic, when nobody was competing, used that year to continue this transitionary process and emerged at the NCAA Championships this past year with, I think, 34 months of hormone therapy under her belt. And prior to that, going to the Ivy League Championships and like slaughtering everyone and winning all of these races, which I think put her on the map.

• 24:45Adam Skolnick?

  And finding one of the fastest times, I think, in the country at the 200 in that championship.

• 24:50Rich Roll?

  Correct, correct. And so that really kind of put the whole issue on the national news map. And then made her sort of a hot potato for the right wing to kind of weaponize this controversy for political points. We've seen a lot of that lately.

• 25:06Adam Skolnick?

  You mean, blowhard politicians trying to use something to make themselves more powerful?

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  A little bit of that, right?

• 25:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Rich Roll?

  Some fear mongering around that.

• 25:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Rich Roll?

  And this is a really tricky one because on the one hand,

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  It's pretty clear from a purely objective point of view that this hormone therapy that Leah has undergone does not eradicate advantages that she was able to accrue by living as a man for the better part of her life, right?

• 25:42Adam Skolnick?

  Or going through puberty.

• 25:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, going through puberty, developing, you know, the muscles and the, you know, all of that that goes into that. And then 34 months of hormone therapy is not really going to undo all of that.

• 25:54Adam Skolnick?

  So what is that, just pills?

• 25:56Rich Roll?

  I don't really even know, actually. I think it's hormone therapy, but I don't know if it's, I think it's predominantly pills. I should know more about that than I do. She goes into the NCAA championships and what's interesting is there was an expectation that she was just going to wipe the record boards clean and just crush everybody, but she actually won one event. She won the 500 free.

• 26:17Adam Skolnick?

  Because she won that first one and it seemed like it was setting up for that.

• 26:21Rich Roll?

  Right. But she didn't win any other events.

• 26:23Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  And her time in the 500 free was quite shy of Katie Ledecky's time. She went 433. Katie Ledecky's record is 424. It's a pretty significant difference. She got fifth in the 200 free and was that the only other individual event that she competed in?

• 26:41Adam Skolnick?

  Wasn't she in the 100 as well or no?

• 26:43Rich Roll?

  I think she swam in the 100.

• 26:44Adam Skolnick?

  But she was never a contender in the 100, I don't think. But she did swim in the 100, I think.

• 26:48Rich Roll?

  Did she?

• 26:48Adam Skolnick?

  I thought so. Maybe I'm wrong.

• 26:50Rich Roll?

  So just to break this down, when she was a male, she was 554th in the 200 free and then she went to top ranked as a female. And her 500 free, transitioning from male to female, her time difference was 6% slower as a result of that transition. And when you look at the differences-

• 27:13Adam Skolnick?

  In the 500, you're saying?

• 27:14Rich Roll?

  In the 500, yes. And when you look at the differences between male and female performances in that event, the range is typically about 10 to 11%. So her time difference being just 6% different means that you could infer from that that she gained somewhere between 4 and 5% in advantage, right?

• 27:39Adam Skolnick?

  And you're saying in the 200, she went from 554th ranked as a male to the top ranked female, but that's before the championships.

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because she got fifth.

• 27:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:48Rich Roll?

  In the 500 free, her ranking went from 65th to first. And then in the 200 free, back to the 200, her time difference was just 3.76 slower in an event that typically has a 7 to 8% advantage when you compare males to females. So there does seem to be a gap here.

• 28:09Adam Skolnick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:09Rich Roll?

  And I think it's important to point out that, first of all, not for a moment do I suspect that Lea's intentions in transitioning were anything but pure. Like, there's a great Sports Illustrated article, in fact, I think it's the only article where she actually goes on the record to talk about this at all.

• 28:29Adam Skolnick?

  It is, yeah.

• 28:30Rich Roll?

  And when you read that, you realize, like, this is a person who really feels like they were in the wrong body. And this transition is an attempt to be authentically who she is.

• 28:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, this is not a craving, lust for a medal.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, I'm gonna transition so that I can be better at my sport. I mean, that's ludicrous.

• 28:46Adam Skolnick?

  That is ludicrous in this case. That is probably the fear driving a lot of these people nuts that are against.

• 28:51Rich Roll?

  Right, extrapolating on that, there's gonna be a wave of people who are gonna transition so they could dominate their sport. There's no evidence to suggest that anybody would actually do that.

• 28:59Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 29:00Rich Roll?

  But that is part of the fear.

• 29:02Adam Skolnick?

  That is the fear.

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  Issue, of course. So, her, you know, motivations being pure in that regard, I think is important to recognize. And I think it's also important to recognize that she didn't break any rules. Like, she adhered to all of the NCAA and USA Swimming rules regarding her, you know, ability to compete. So, to vilify her, I think is misplaced emotion. We can have a conversation about the fairness of the rules that the NCAA has set up regarding this, but I don't think that that should be aimed at in Lea's direction.

• 29:38Adam Skolnick?

  I read somewhere, early on in all this, before the NCAA's, that, and this came to the third party, so I don't even know if she feels this way, that she saw herself as a Jackie Robinson. And that rubbed me wrong.

• 29:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a...

• 29:51Adam Skolnick?

  Because that's not fair.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  That's a tough one, that's a tough one.

• 29:53Adam Skolnick?

  That's, yeah, I mean, it's a little bit ludicrous to compare that. But I don't know that that came from her.

• 29:59Rich Roll?

  I don't know either. I hadn't heard that.

• 30:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Rich Roll?

  In terms of the fairness versus inclusion...

• 30:06Rich Roll?

  Landscape, though, obviously, we want to create a situation in sport where everybody can be included, and we also want to create a terrain in which it's fair for everybody. And I think there is a cogent argument to be made that this is not fair, the way the rules are currently written. And the science is still emerging, but to say that this type of hormone therapy for this amount of time will create a situation where the playing field is fair, I think we're seeing that that's not the case. And I'm very sympathetic to the female, the young women athletes who have to compete against Lea. And it's not

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  a binary thing. Like, this is a difficult thing, because I also believe that Lea should have the opportunity to compete. But how do we create a situation in which fairness becomes, you know, a rubric by which we're establishing that fair playing field? And I don't have the answer to that.

• 31:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's a tough one. The way I kind of think about it is, there's elite athletics, and there's athletics. And when it comes to athletics, just youth athletics, inclusion is priority. You gotta let people be, you gotta let people have access to it. I don't think your high school sports teams are elite, sorry to say. So when it comes to a high school level, if there's someone who identifies in a certain way, and they want to compete, I say you open the door to them. Just because you're on a varsity team doesn't make you elite. When it comes to national championships and gold medals, I think that's where it

• 31:46Adam Skolnick?

  becomes a little bit dicier. I think one year on testosterone is not enough, obviously. But you had just painted a picture, it was actually 34 months, so it's closer to three years, which from my understanding is the Olympic standard, that now the NCAA has just adopted, they've just changed from one year to three years.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  It's, I think it's 36 months now, did they adopt that?

• 32:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they just, they just adopted, the NCAA just changed it to the Olympic standard.

• 32:13Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a three-year period. So unless you begin your transition in high school, you're probably not going to be able to compete in collegiate athletics.

• 32:22Adam Skolnick?

  But you were saying that Lea actually had 34 months of testosterone.

• 32:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she had 34 months.

• 32:27Adam Skolnick?

  So she was close to it.

• 32:28Rich Roll?

  But she's a fifth-year.

• 32:29Adam Skolnick?

  Senior.

• 32:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, because she redshirted the year.

• 32:32Adam Skolnick?

  But she was close to it, and she still was. Based on these numbers, it had an advantage, though.

• 32:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Adam Skolnick?

  So that 36 months is questionable.

• 32:40Rich Roll?

  Right, that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't think that hormone therapy for X number of months fully considers all the variables that come into play in terms of performance.

• 32:50Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. You know, listen, if you're making a life choice like this, there are so many things that you have to go through. I never saw, like, competing for a gold medal as a human right. You know, like, I just don't see it that way. Like, if things fall, like, we don't all have the human right to be in the Olympics. It's just not the way it is. There are certain standards you have to meet. So if you're changing from male to female, and you've gone through puberty as a male, and you're trying to compete, I don't see how that's ever gonna be fair. I don't see, unless there's this body of science. Like, I don't, unless you, you know, you've gone through surgery or something. I just don't see how you could ever convince me that that's going to be fair. And I don't know if that's just my own bias.

• 33:35Adam Skolnick?

  And I'm not, I'm not against people competing in sports. Like, I don't see age group. If you're an age group triathlete, more power to you, go for it. Doesn't concern me. If you're a varsity athlete in high school, cool. When you're talking about the Olympics, I think that's where I draw the line. Olympics, NCAAs.

• 33:51Rich Roll?

  Well, there's so many different permutations of this, too. Like, what happens if you're intersex? Or, you know, what happens if you? And then, like, a broader discussion about doping and just natural advantages. Like, Michael Phelps's gigantic feet and hands and wingspan. Like, is that a biological advantage? Of course it is, but that's okay.

• 34:13Adam Skolnick?

  Of course.

• 34:14Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 34:14Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, I think we're talking our way...

• 34:16Rich Roll?

  These are on the extremes, right?

• 34:18Adam Skolnick?

  I know, but I just think that the fact that we're trying to equate Michael Phelps's arms and legs to... It just shows you how kind of strange this discussion has become. Because it's so new. In the way humans have been kind of living for so long in society, it's so new. We're all wrestling with how to adjust and sports is pretty crusty and old. Like we're running from standards that it's not really that fluid, right?

• 34:47Rich Roll?

  It wasn't that long ago when, in swimming at least, they didn't have the mile for the women because they didn't think that women could do it without suffering some kind of like...

• 34:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right. We're talking about like the most conservative, like sports are a conservative, I think, a very conservative place. So, you know, in terms of like, society has advanced very quickly, but then at the same time, we have these issues like, don't you remember the Koreatown spa that like, there was a trans woman in the Koreatown spa naked and people who were guests at the spa women didn't like it. And then it became an issue and then all of a sudden, the spa didn't even kick anybody out, but it just became on the news and then there were protesters in front of the spa. We're trying to figure out the right way to operate, given inclusion, but sports is a tough one because of its conservative nature and because it's...

• 35:39Rich Roll?

  Well, because the essence of sport is fairness, fair play, right? So reconciling fair play with inclusion becomes problematic. I mean, I do agree with you and like that idea that on the sliding scale of how you calibrate this, at the amateur level, at the younger level, inclusion is much more of a priority than it becomes as you kind of scale up into the more elite levels. And I don't know how you solve this problem. Obviously, you know, individual sports like swimming are one thing. It's a different thing when we're talking about combat sports and people can actually get injured. That's, you know, a whole other sticky wicket. What I will say is, I don't

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  like how this, this particular scenario with Leah has become this political hot potato that is now paving the way for states to pass laws banning trans kids from competing on sports teams.

• 36:36Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  Which is, you know, we're talking about sports teams where inclusion should be the priority, right?

• 36:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  So, the weaponization of this is really...

• 36:46Rich Roll?

  Unsettling to me, but at the elite level, when we're talking about the NCAA championships or the Olympics or whatnot, I think we have a long way to go to figure out how to solve this. Perhaps there's something about rethinking how we categorize these things all together. In boxing, we have weight classes, right? Is there something that we could be doing, you know, for other sports that would solve the inclusion problem and also ensure fairness for all? And again, I don't have

• 37:16Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying like a trans division in the Olympics?

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but even that's problematic.

• 37:21Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:22Rich Roll?

  You know, so I'm not saying that that's the solution, but I think we need to get creative.

• 37:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:27Rich Roll?

  And, and I don't know. I don't know. This one's really hard.

• 37:32Adam Skolnick?

  I'm with you. I think that like the fact these politicians are passing, you know, 10 states have passed laws banning trans kids competing is, is a runway to unnecessary suicides. You know, like you're gonna have

• 37:46Rich Roll?

  For sure.

• 37:46Adam Skolnick?

  You're gonna have kids who take their own lives because they feel people look at them in a certain way and, and they feel like they don't have the same possibilities and that is just reprehensible. There is a Republican governor in Utah that tried to, he did veto a law that came through like this and they overrode his veto. So you're talking about a group of people that are really just bullying people who are trying to figure out who they are. And that really sits, that does not sit well with me.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  And it's just rooted in fear.

• 38:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Rich Roll?

  Really.

• 38:25Adam Skolnick?

  I do think there is this, the fear of will someone claim to be trans and go through the hormones to win a gold medal? I definitely think there's people that could do that. I think human, there are, I think humans, I just don't, I think there are humans that could do that. They would do that for a gold medal. I do. I think that that, that exists, but.

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  I guess it exists. I don't see that being a rampant thing.

• 38:52Adam Skolnick?

  No, no.

• 38:52Rich Roll?

  Or something that we need to, you know, really overly concern ourselves with.

• 38:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:57Rich Roll?

  And I also think that, you know, this situation with Leah is relatively unique because

• 39:07Rich Roll?

  At least in swimming, it's the first instance in which somebody who was actually quite good at their sport made that transition, which creates, this is why this is, you know, such an inflamed situation.

• 39:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 39:19Rich Roll?

  There's an interesting article in the Independent that takes a counterpoint on this.

• 39:24Adam Skolnick?

  On the data?

• 39:25Rich Roll?

  Basically, well, it basically argues that Leah didn't have this unfair advantage.

• 39:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  And kind of goes into the time differences, like during this period of transition, there was like a year and a half when she didn't compete because they were undergoing that hormone therapy and it was COVID and there were no competitions. Like, they make an interesting argument, but I think, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I just think that it goes to this issue of it being more complicated and nuanced than just pouncing on, this is 100% unfair because this is a man competing in women's sports, or the alternative, which is, they followed the rules, so why is everybody so upset?

• 40:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right, I'm with you. There is one trans athlete in elite athletics that I wanted to just shine a light on really quickly, and, born a woman, born female, and is now non-binary, named Quinn, Canadian soccer, women's soccer team member, grew up playing soccer in girls and in women's, was a collegiate soccer player at Duke, became identified as non-binary sometime before the Olympics, and was on the Canadian Olympic team that won gold medal in Tokyo.

• 40:40Rich Roll?

  But, hormone therapy?

• 40:43Adam Skolnick?

  No hormone therapy because born female, so the Olympic rules are, if you are male and are transitioning to female, you have to go through hormone, you have to get those testosterone levels down.

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:55Adam Skolnick?

  If you are born female, you can compete in men's sports anytime you want. The question you're asking, did Quinn take testosterone prior to going to Tokyo? I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem so in what I read.

• 41:08Rich Roll?

  I really want to get this right and understand it to the best of my ability, but it's tough, and I'm 55 years old, like, this is all new, and, you know...

• 41:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, to us, it's new.

• 41:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, to us, it's new, right?

• 41:22Adam Skolnick?

  Not to date ourselves.

• 41:24Rich Roll?

  It's a tough one.

• 41:25Adam Skolnick?

  We're rolling with it.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  And I find myself, you know, I'm somebody who always, you know, kind of lives in the gray and I can sympathize with both sides of this argument. It's a really tricky one to solve.

• 41:36Adam Skolnick?

  I think that really when it comes down to is when you're talking about inclusion, the reason people, some people are upset is, is you want to create the space for inclusion in all sports. When you get to the elite levels, Leah being allowed to compete takes somebody else from being able to go to the finals, the NCAA finals. And that's probably where the angst comes in. I'm not saying they should be anxious about it.

• 42:03Rich Roll?

  And it's understandable.

• 42:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right, but I do get it.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  Nancy Hogshead McCarr, Nancy Hogshead won three gold medals in the eighties in swimming. She was a, you know, superstar. She's now a lawyer who's been very active in like Title IX and women in sports issues. And she has been very outspoken and taking, taking a pretty hard stand on this.

• 42:27Adam Skolnick?

  Hard stand how?

• 42:29Rich Roll?

  Siding with the women, saying this is unfair and, you know, kind of recruiting people to sign petitions and do all sorts of stuff. And she's taken a lot of flak for that, for her, you know, pretty uncompromised position on this. And she, so her perspective is like fairness is, is more important than inclusion at this level. The other argument being like, we have to make a place for everybody on some level. But how do we do that and make sure that it's fair?

• 42:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think that like, this whole idea of fairness has its limits because inclusion is important at, at the level of, but as you go up in tiers into-

• 43:11Rich Roll?

  You mean inclusion has its limits, not fairness?

• 43:13Adam Skolnick?

  Inclusion has its limits if you're trying, when you, when you get to the elite, right? There's, people are cut all the time from teams. You know, you should be allowed to compete and then there's a point where you get to an elite level and you, it has to be based on some rules and fairness, right? I mean, I think. So I kind of side with-

• 43:36Adam Skolnick?

  Kind of a gray sliding scale, but I'd like to see the fact that politicians are getting involved in trying to cut this off at like the 10-year-old level, 12-year-old level-

• 43:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that I don't like.

• 43:46Adam Skolnick?

  Is reprehensible.

• 43:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that I don't, we can agree on that.

• 43:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  And we're not going to solve this problem today.

• 43:51Adam Skolnick?

  Thankfully, we don't have to.

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  We don't.

• 43:53Adam Skolnick?

  We could just talk about it on Mondays.

• 43:55Rich Roll?

  I know. All right, well, why don't we take a quick break?

• 43:59Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, my God.

• 44:00Rich Roll?

  We're going to put, I'm going to put links up to a bunch of articles about Leah in the show notes, because-

• 44:05Adam Skolnick?

  You guys should read them, because I, it isn't, it is a lot-

• 44:09Rich Roll?

  It's more than what you see on social media.

• 44:10Adam Skolnick?

  A lot more nuanced, a lot more nuanced.

• 44:12Rich Roll?

  That's the main thing I want to get across.

• 44:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, a lot more nuanced, and it is important to try to, to open our minds to.

• 44:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, for sure. All right, take a quick break, and we'll be back with the Rollies. All right, we're back. Just to put a button on the Leah Thomas discussion, we were talking during the break about the importance for injecting nuance into these conversations, and Adam, you made the point about just the need to disabuse people of these really, like, convinced takes that everybody has on everything.

• 44:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 45:00Rich Roll?

  That they are absolutely right, and they come down on one side or the other side. Because I was, I was sort of saying, do we handle that appropriately? Like, I don't feel like I really managed to articulate a succinct position on this, but because I don't know the answer to it. And is that valuable or not valuable?

• 45:21Adam Skolnick?

  I think in this day and age, the big problem we have is-

• 45:27Adam Skolnick?

  Everyone's so political and so sure of their political position. It's like, I remember in the nineties, when I was first became an activist. I was the most political person I knew. And I thought that was a good thing. And I think it was at the time, because there were certain things that I felt strongly about and I wanted to help. Now, the problem is, everyone is more political than I was in the nineties. And the thing I didn't really realize then, which I now realize, is when you're political, even if it's for the common good, you're kind of inherently a little bit of an asshole. Because you're not trying to harmonize. You're trying to influence.

• 46:07Adam Skolnick?

  And that takes a certain amount of hard-headedness and a certain amount of being so sure of yourself. And I'm using asshole, obviously, as a joke, but it is kind of that way. And now we have a world where people are so sure of their positions that nobody's listening. We live in a world of assholes, Rich.

• 46:28Rich Roll?

  Well, certainty definitely takes the cake in terms of trying to get audience capture and attract people to your position.

• 46:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  So that you can further whatever cause it is that's important to you. And we have lost sight or appreciation for the nuance and the gray. And this is a topic that is just brimming over with gray, I think.

• 46:50Adam Skolnick?

  You say it so much more eloquently than I say it.

• 46:52Rich Roll?

  I feel like you just said exactly what I would have said.

• 46:55Adam Skolnick?

  I think you said what I would have said.

• 46:57Rich Roll?

  All right, enough. We're done with this. We are gonna do the Roly's.

• 47:02Adam Skolnick?

  The Roly's!

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  The Roly's is the first inaugural award show on this podcast. I'm pretty excited about it. It is inspired by the Oscars. Today is Monday. Yesterday was the Oscars. Our original sort of take on it was, F the Oscars, because we're doing the Roly's. And then insanity broke loose. And this cultural moment occurred that I feel like we have to talk about, because it just happened. Of course, this podcast will not publish until Thursday.

• 47:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 47:33Rich Roll?

  At which point, there will have been a billion takes on the Roly's. On this subject matter, and perhaps people are already overly fatigued of even talking about it. But of course, what we're referring to is the Will Smith, Chris Rock incident. Will Smith walking onstage in the middle of the Oscars live telecast and slapping Chris Rock across the face in response to a joke that Chris Rock made about Will's wife, Jada's shaved head. I have to assume that Chris Rock was not aware that Jada is suffering from alopecia. We can grant him that, I think. You're gonna grant that? But this is such a strange cultural moment. It was so odd.

• 48:18Rich Roll?

  Like, it's so surreal that this even occurred. Were you watching the Oscars? I was watching it. And anybody who watched the live telecast realized that there was, like, when this was going down, you saw the slap, and then there was a glitch, and the sound went out on the telecast. And then there was, like, a hard cut. You could see Will Smith, and you could see him mouthing words. You couldn't hear what he was saying. The sound picks back up with Chris Rock basically saying, "Well, that was crazy," like, perhaps the greatest moment in television history, and then proceeds to introduce the documentary award, leaving us to think that it was a scripted gag, because that's kind of what it looked like. Right.

• 49:00Rich Roll?

  And I thought that that was the case until much later in the telecast, when, of course, we're on our phones, and I'm with my kids, and we're scrolling through social media. And it becomes evident that that was not a scripted thing, that this actually happened. Yes. He actually slapped him. And then, of course, you could hear the audio from the telecast in Australia and Japan that were being shared on social media, where you could hear what Will Smith had to say. And it was rather shocking.

• 49:28Rich Roll?

  I don't even know where to begin with trying to understand what's going on here. And then, of course, for Will Smith to then win best actor, get up and give this strange speech. Is this the biggest celebrity meltdown in the history of Hollywood? Like, what is happening?

• 49:47Adam Skolnick?

  On-air meltdown?

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  On-air, live television.

• 49:50Adam Skolnick?

  Like a newsroom on-air meltdown flavor to it, right?

• 49:55Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, the sheer magnitude of perhaps the most beloved A-list celebrity in the world doing something like this is unthinkable.

• 50:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's bizarre.

• 50:09Rich Roll?

  I know, right? And I'm still wrapping my head around it. Like, again, it'll be Thursday when this goes up and everybody will have kind of settled into how they feel about all this, but I'm still like trying to wrap my head around, like, my brain is melting over this happening.

• 50:22Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, so here's a question. Is it chivalrous to stick up for Jada in that moment?

• 50:27Rich Roll?

  Yes, but violence is not the solution. So I think, well, here, first of all, here's what happened. Like, Chris Rock tells this joke, the G.I. Jane 2 joke.

• 50:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. By the way, can I stop you there for a second? Nobody even fucking heard of G.I. Jane at this point. Like, you have to be old to even come up with that idea as a joke.

• 50:47Rich Roll?

  I know what that joke is, of course, and they're old enough to know that joke. It's Demi Moore with the shaved head.

• 50:52Adam Skolnick?

  So that makes you wonder, was Chris Rock free associating? Because it's his age group, it's his pop cultural moment, that when Demi Moore shaved her head and became G.I. Jane, and that was a big deal in the, I guess, early 90s, was it, when that happened? It was like, she was like the beautiful A-list star of the moment, and she shaved her head and became G.I. Jane. Like, that's what he's joking about, but like, anyone under the age of 40 has no fucking clue what G.I.

• 51:18Rich Roll?

  Maybe not, but that's neither here nor there.

• 51:20Adam Skolnick?

  Right. No, the question, my point is, was that written for him, or did he free associate? Because that does matter.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  Right. Who knows? You know, I don't know the answer to that. Maybe that will come out in the days intervening between when we're recording and when this gets released, but I think the point is, how do you respond in that moment? And so the camera cuts to Will Smith. He actually laughs at the joke.

• 51:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 51:43Rich Roll?

  You could see Jada, who looks none too happy about this joke. So I suspect maybe Will then looked at his wife, realized she was unhappy, and felt some compulsion to right this wrong or do something about it. If he were to walk on stage and had he, instead of slapping Chris Rock, asked for the microphone and said, "Listen, that was inappropriate and, you know, I don't think that she deserves that, nor does anybody deserve to be talked to that way," or something like that, he could have walked off like a hero.

• 52:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Rich Roll?

  But I think resorting to violence is never the solution to this. And to do it on live television in front of tens or if not hundreds of millions of people, live on the evening that is meant to be perhaps your

• 52:28Adam Skolnick?

  Your coronation.

• 52:28Rich Roll?

  most celebrated ever because everybody knows that you're going to win Best Actor for King Richard.

• 52:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  It's just strange because he's somebody who has built his career on being very intentional about how he interacts with the public. It just seems like a slip or a mishap that would never occur.

• 52:51Adam Skolnick?

  Well, he sucker slapped, he sucker slapped somebody.

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, clearly

• 52:54Adam Skolnick?

  He wasn't even a fair situation.

• 52:56Rich Roll?

  He came overcomp with emotion. He was completely out of control, which is so uncharacteristic for him.

• 53:01Adam Skolnick?

  The shouting was even weirder. I found the shouting to be even weirder.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was, that was where the real violent urge came out.

• 53:08Adam Skolnick?

  Because you saw his, like, the slap, you think, okay, he's going to go up there and slap him, and then he's going to chill out. But that's not what happened.

• 53:16Rich Roll?

  And then his speech, which is sort of being characterized, at least on Monday morning, as an apology. I mean, he didn't apologize to Chris Rock. And, and he talks about, you know, the pain of enduring criticism, being a celebrity over all of these years. And then proceeds to talk about being put on the planet to, to spread love and be this protector. And then drawing a comparison to his impulse to protect his family and his wife to, to that of Richard Williams was very strange. And I don't know if you saw this, because you didn't watch the telecast, right?

• 53:52Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 53:52Rich Roll?

  Like, they cut to the, the Williams sisters in the crowd, in the audience, and they're sitting there. Clearly, you know, not sure about how to sort of hold themselves or look like.

• 54:05Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that's where my mind went right away. It's like, because I was watching.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  They looked pretty uncomfortable to me.

• 54:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I was watching Bad Vegan to prepare for this podcast that we're doing right now. And because the Oscars have lost their luster for me. And I wasn't even watching it, although I did see King Richard, which I actually quite enjoyed. And I got the texts that were coming in and I saw the stuff. We went on and we watched the video and all of that. But the thing that I immediately thought of was poor Venus and Serena, because at the Critics' Choice Awards, when Jane Campion made her comment about how like she has it harder than the Williams sisters because she competes against men. Do you remember that comment?

• 54:47Adam Skolnick?

  Bringing them into her speech in a way that was uninvited and I think cruel and dismissive of these two all-time greats. And then you have this, the Oscars. This is another moment for them to be at the Oscars and to be celebrated and they have to deal with this bullshit. I mean, to me, it's like, it just shows you that draws the line between sports and Hollywood and a lot of people like to mix them together. The funny part about this whole thing is, when it comes to these awards, like, they're completely subjective. It's not an objective victory like a Grand Slam championship. And so it's like, to me, it diminished everything. It really pulled the veil back on what this really is,

• 55:26Adam Skolnick?

  which is just a bunch of people sit in a room pretending that these winners are actually winners when they're just popularity contests and some bullshit.

• 55:33Rich Roll?

  Right, or that it's even really important.

• 55:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, right, exactly.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 55:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Rich Roll?

  But I still can't get over how surreal the whole thing was.

• 55:40Adam Skolnick?

  Surreal. And also this comparison to Richard Williams. I mean, the thing that's so absurd is that Richard Williams would never do that in a fucking million years.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  That's the thing.

• 55:49Adam Skolnick?

  Never.

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  Right? And had he done something like that, it would have destroyed everything that he was working towards for his daughters.

• 55:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  So that's a tough pill to swallow if you're the Venus sisters, sitting in the audience, watching this whole thing.

• 56:04Adam Skolnick?

  The Williams sisters, yes.

• 56:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the Williams sisters, sorry. And just Will Smith being this person who is known for being measured his whole career.

• 56:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, clearly.

• 56:16Rich Roll?

  And kind of a self-help guru personality on YouTube and the like.

• 56:19Adam Skolnick?

  He's a YouTuber. This, I think this could be his descent to the black hat YouTuber that he always wanted to be. He might be trying to angle for a Jake Paul fight. He could be Jake Paul's next, next fight.

• 56:30Rich Roll?

  Well, one thing for sure, it's going to be interesting to see like how this plays out in the intervening days. Like if you're on his publicity team, doing crisis management right now, what advice are you giving him? Like, is there going to be an apology tour? Like, how is this gonna play out?

• 56:47Adam Skolnick?

  You want to ask me my advice if I was on there? You know, here's my advice.

• 56:50Rich Roll?

  What's your advice as a professional flack?

• 56:53Adam Skolnick?

  Will, will, will, show great concern and do nothing.

• 56:58Rich Roll?

  Meaning just don't comment on it.

• 57:01Adam Skolnick?

  Don't comment.

• 57:01Rich Roll?

  Don't go on the talk shows.

• 57:03Adam Skolnick?

  No mas.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  And just see how, see what happens.

• 57:05Adam Skolnick?

  Lay low. Yeah. Chris Rock, on the other hand.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Adam Skolnick?

  Needs to give an interview.

• 57:11Rich Roll?

  I listened to Bill Simmons and Jimmy Kimmel were breaking this down on Bill Simmons podcast and Kimmel said that Will Smith declined to be on the show, but who he really wanted to talk to was Chris Rock to get his perspective on this whole thing. I mean, Chris Rock having to react to this in real time, looking clearly flustered.

• 57:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 57:30Rich Roll?

  At what had just transpired.

• 57:32Adam Skolnick?

  I felt for him. He was actually a pro.

• 57:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, at the same time, I mean, clearly the awards cast was taking a bit, like sort of a light version of what Ricky Gervais does, because they were making fun of the celebrities and kind of taking the piss out of them, which is fine on some level, but clearly in Will Smith's mind, a line was crossed that he didn't appreciate. And there were some other kind of tasteless stuff that was going on throughout the evening and you can argue about whether it was funny or not.

• 58:02Rich Roll?

  But. The manner in which he decided to handle this was not okay.

• 58:07Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you do wonder if there's some bad blood between them because Chris Rock joked about Jada six years ago in 2016 on the Oscars stage about because I guess.

• 58:17Rich Roll?

  They had boycotted that year.

• 58:18Adam Skolnick?

  They boycotted the Oscars because all the acting nominees were white and then Chris Rock made the joke that Jada's on a TV show. So that's like, you know, she wasn't even invited.

• 58:28Rich Roll?

  She wouldn't have been invited anyway.

• 58:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. So he made a more tasteless joke.

• 58:33Adam Skolnick?

  And so maybe, maybe there's like this bad blood. Maybe they're just really not funny people and they're worth half a billion dollars, whatever they're worth, and they feel like they should be worshipped and not ridiculed. And in my book, if you're worth half a billion dollars or anywhere close to that, you deserve to be ridiculed and that's just part of your position. And that's what the money is for. And it's like, you know, bottom line is this, you are wealthy, you are powerful, you're the top dog in Hollywood. Awesome. Hey, I loved, what's the zombie, zombie movie?

• 59:04Rich Roll?

  I forget what it's called.

• 59:05Adam Skolnick?

  That one I loved. And I loved, and I really liked King Richard, but the bottom line is you're not entitled to walk through life not made fun of. That's just the way it is. And if you're like, you've been through the wringer for a long time, this is your big night. I mean, obviously you weren't handling your big night well. Like you were emotionally overwrought. You weren't chill. You know, you should have been more chill. So that's my take on it. I mean, like, it is bizarre. It does make you wonder about where his state of mind is and, and all of that.

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  Do you think he recovers and that everybody just moves on and forgets about this?

• 59:41Adam Skolnick?

  Of course he recovers. He's bankable. You know, what you wonder is he's had, he has a big book out. He did a book. He collaborated with a subtle.

• 59:47Rich Roll?

  Mark Manson.

• 59:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, with a subtle art guy. And they've got it. It's a top five on Amazon. Does his book sales go up? Do they go down? Probably go up, right?

• 59:56Rich Roll?

  Hmm, I don't know.

• 59:58Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  We shall see, but yeah, fascinating, like just unbelievable that that occurred.

• 1:00:04Adam Skolnick?

  It's crazy. By the way, was that happening while Sean Penn was smelting his Oscars? Or did Sean Penn not smelt?

• 1:00:10Rich Roll?

  As far as I know, he has not yet smelted them because he said that he would smelt them publicly. So I assume there will be some kind of live cast or something like that.

• 1:00:19Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:00:19Rich Roll?

  But listen, shout out to Sean Penn, whatever you think of this guy, like he walks his talk like he's in Poland and he was in the Ukraine.

• 1:00:27Adam Skolnick?

  He was, he was.

• 1:00:28Rich Roll?

  You know, boots on the ground.

• 1:00:30Adam Skolnick?

  He was.

• 1:00:30Rich Roll?

  Taking a stand saying if they don't let Zelensky do a live stream into the Oscars telecast that he will personally melt down his Oscars, smelt them.

• 1:00:40Adam Skolnick?

  He said smelt.

• 1:00:41Rich Roll?

  Is the word that he was using.

• 1:00:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he used the word smelt.

• 1:00:42Adam Skolnick?

  Is he going to self smelt?

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:00:45Adam Skolnick?

  He's the type of guy that self smelt.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  I respect the, you know, hardcore stance on this.

• 1:00:49Adam Skolnick?

  Me too.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, the Oscars was never gonna let Zelensky beam in, you know, to the middle of this. That was never gonna happen.

• 1:00:56Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  But.

• 1:00:57Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I respect him even more if he self smelts. I don't want him to hire a smelter, like, you know, it would be so Hollywood if he hired like the greatest smelter.

• 1:01:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but smelting at home probably isn't like a wise or safe practice.

• 1:01:11Adam Skolnick?

  It doesn't have to be home.

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  You need a facility for smelting.

• 1:01:13Adam Skolnick?

  You know what you should do?

• 1:01:14Rich Roll?

  What, how hot does it have to get to melt that thing down?

• 1:01:17Adam Skolnick?

  He needs to rent the Kodak Theater and smelt it on stage.

• 1:01:20Rich Roll?

  On stage, yeah. Well, I look forward to whatever media circus is gonna swirl around that public smelting.

• 1:01:26Adam Skolnick?

  It's possible nobody shows up.

• 1:01:28Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:01:29Adam Skolnick?

  You think there'll be a lot of smelters?

• 1:01:30Rich Roll?

  I would show up for that. I wanna see him do that.

• 1:01:33Adam Skolnick?

  Listeners, we're gonna livestream from the smelting pan.

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  From wherever that transpires, who knows? Um, all right, we're gonna get off the Oscars, but final thing before we do so. Friend of the pod, Lindsay Kraus, walked home with an Oscar. Uh, the queen of basketball was a New York Times op doc that she was a producer on, so congratulations to Lindsay.

• 1:01:52Adam Skolnick?

  Congratulations to Lindsay and Steph Curry and Shaq were also producers.

• 1:01:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:01:58Adam Skolnick?

  Pretty wild.

• 1:01:59Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:02:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  Um, and I feel bad for Questlove, who had to go up and accept his documentary award right after the whole thing.

• 1:02:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:07Rich Roll?

  That guy's the coolest.

• 1:02:08Adam Skolnick?

  That sucked. And his movie's phenomenal.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:02:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Rich Roll?

  Uh, Summer of Soul.

• 1:02:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:02:14Rich Roll?

  Is the movie.

• 1:02:14Adam Skolnick?

  Congrats to Quest.

• 1:02:15Rich Roll?

  All right, so we're gonna move on to the rolies. There's a lot of talk in the world of content creation about audience capture.

• 1:02:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:02:24Rich Roll?

  For those that don't know, audience capture is when you configure your content to kind of give the audience what you think they want. Like, you look at your metrics and you're like, "Oh, when I do this controversial thing, or I take this hard stand, or I have this person on as a guest, I get more views and more attention, so I will do more of that."

• 1:02:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  So that I will get more audience. Well, what we're doing here today, I would say, is quite perhaps the opposite of that.

• 1:02:51Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody wants this, you're saying?

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  I don't know that they do. So whatever the opposite of audience capture is, that is maybe what the rolies are.

• 1:02:59Adam Skolnick?

  But the rolies-

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  And this was your idea, by the way.

• 1:03:01Adam Skolnick?

  This was my idea. I soft pedaled this pitch last roll-on, two weeks ago, and tried to get you to commit to some categories pretty much right away, but we finally cobbled together our categories.

• 1:03:13Rich Roll?

  Right. So who knows whether this'll work or not.

• 1:03:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:15Rich Roll?

  But essentially, the idea is, in the spirit of the Oscars, if we were gonna do our own award show here on the RRP, what would that look like? What would the categories be? And this is what we've come up with, for better or worse.

• 1:03:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:28Rich Roll?

  Some categories might be more interesting than others, but, uh, what we're gonna do is, we're gonna go through the categories and the nominees, and we're gonna have a link in the show notes, or in the description below, if you're watching on YouTube, that you will be, you will be able to click on, that will pull up like a Google form, where you, the audience members, can vote, and next roll-on, we will announce the winners.

• 1:03:55Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 1:03:55Rich Roll?

  How's that sound?

• 1:03:56Adam Skolnick?

  This is great.

• 1:03:57Rich Roll?

  Kick us off with the first category. I feel like we should have some kind of music cue that plays in.

• 1:04:11Adam Skolnick?

  All right, ready?

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Adam Skolnick?

  We're starting with a, just like in true Oscars form, we're coming out hot with best endurance performance in an RRP supporting role. The nominees are... Davy.

• 1:04:30Adam Skolnick?

  Multiple marathons and trail races. He went from zero to a goddamn good runner.

• 1:04:37Rich Roll?

  Right, so this is a guy who literally hadn't run ever before and in a year's time has suddenly become one of the bigger running enthusiasts you're ever gonna meet.

• 1:04:48Adam Skolnick?

  With great times.

• 1:04:49Rich Roll?

  He's got a running shoe collection that I would rival any professional runner at this point and is obsessed. He even created his own Instagram account just for his running.

• 1:04:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  Davy Runs, which lands him in good stead as the first nominee.

• 1:05:04Adam Skolnick?

  And a sub for our marathon would have been even faster if he hadn't had a knee injury. He ran through a knee injury.

• 1:05:10Rich Roll?

  Correct. Big Sur on the horizon and New York City Marathon, right? Coming up.

• 1:05:15Adam Skolnick?

  And he ran that trail race with the other two nominees coming up. Blake, first ultra, great performance in the pool as well.

• 1:05:24Rich Roll?

  Diversity.

• 1:05:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. He's on his way to becoming the next great swim runner.

• 1:05:29Rich Roll?

  Right. So Otillo is next for Blake. He's been in the pool, he runs, he does it all. You know Blake, you love him. He's the guy behind the video camera here today. Davy is our photographer for those that are new. So yeah, Blake in good stead.

• 1:05:48Adam Skolnick?

  Jason.

• 1:05:49Rich Roll?

  Ooh.

• 1:05:49Adam Skolnick?

  His run streak is close to 300 days now.

• 1:05:53Rich Roll?

  That's right.

• 1:05:54Adam Skolnick?

  The Malibu half, multiple trail races, he's done the four by four by 48 twice. He is the king of consistency.

• 1:06:01Rich Roll?

  He is the king of consistency. This is not new for Jason. Unlike Davy, Jason has been living this lifestyle for a long time, so he gets kudos for that.

• 1:06:09Adam Skolnick?

  Wow, that sounds like a...

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  Never misses a day.

• 1:06:12Adam Skolnick?

  Sounds like

• 1:06:12Rich Roll?

  Tackled many, many in adventure out there, too many to list. He's also the longest standing team member of the podcast. Not that that plays into the endurance performance piece here, but to be an endurance athlete, you gotta go the distance, right? Jason has gone the distance.

• 1:06:29Adam Skolnick?

  Sounds like someone's already decided who he's voting for.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  No, I'm just giving some context for people that don't know. Jason is our longtime audio engineer and now kind of producer at large.

• 1:06:38Adam Skolnick?

  And he's run 100 milers.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  He has.

• 1:06:41Adam Skolnick?

  And then the last nominee, as we go down the list of talent from, from top to bottom, and I do mean the bottom.

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  These are in no particular order, but go ahead.

• 1:06:51Adam Skolnick?

  Adam, I think that's me. Alcatraz swimmer, and if you remember, he finished with a flourish by circling multiple sailboats in the harbor. Malibu half marathon, two times, four by four by 48. Swims with sharks, he swims with whales. He doesn't swim fast, but he swims.

• 1:07:09Rich Roll?

  There's a little embellishment here. I mean, this is just not right. You came up with this category and you included yourself as a nominee.

• 1:07:15Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, that was me who wrote this?

• 1:07:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  Come on.

• 1:07:19Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, am I allowed to be in this list?

• 1:07:21Rich Roll?

  You may be, look, you're the on camera, on mic talent.

• 1:07:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Rich Roll?

  People know who you are, unlike some of the behind the scenes talent here. But

• 1:07:30Adam Skolnick?

  I'm trying to

• 1:07:30Rich Roll?

  On the subject of self mythologizing, which we're going to get into here, this is a good, this is proof, evidence.

• 1:07:37Adam Skolnick?

  Evidence of the American impulse.

• 1:07:39Rich Roll?

  From cultivating your own image in furtherance of the American dream.

• 1:07:44Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not saying

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  Of one day winning a rolly.

• 1:07:46Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not saying vote for me, but what I'm saying is, vote for me. A vote for me is a vote for you.

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:07:53Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:07:53Rich Roll?

  So there you go. Davey, Blake, Jason and Adam, nominees for best endurance performance in an RRP supporting role. And yes, like the Oscars, we come out of the gate with a supporting role award because that's how they do it there.

• 1:08:06Adam Skolnick?

  I will say that of the four, I am the, the worst athlete, if that helps.

• 1:08:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, now you say.

• 1:08:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Adam Skolnick?

  I will say, based on, based on the data.

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  Reverse psychology that you're gonna play?

• 1:08:17Adam Skolnick?

  Based on the Strava data, it's pretty obvious.

• 1:08:20Rich Roll?

  All right, next category.

• 1:08:22Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:08:22Rich Roll?

  Moving along.

• 1:08:23Adam Skolnick?

  Best endurance performance of the year by RRP guest.

• 1:08:28Rich Roll?

  So, we talked about how many nominees there should be for each category.

• 1:08:33Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  I think you originally proposed three.

• 1:08:35Adam Skolnick?

  I did.

• 1:08:36Rich Roll?

  But fuck it, you know, we have a bunch here.

• 1:08:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:08:39Rich Roll?

  The way it is. We got, we got Hellicite Bay, who of course ran across the United States. We got Robbie Ballinger, who we were talking about earlier, set the, set the Central Park Loop record, also did this Colorado crush, 52 14ers.

• 1:08:53Adam Skolnick?

  And finished with the Leadville 100, I think, right?

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  Correct, yes. We have the great Courtney Dewalter, who just won everything, basically a ton of stuff. It's really not even fair.

• 1:09:03Adam Skolnick?

  She's the GOAT, right?

• 1:09:04Rich Roll?

  She's the GOAT, right? But then we have Harvey Lewis, recent podcast guest. He ran 354 miles in the Bigs, Big Dog, Big Dog's Backyard Ultra.

• 1:09:16Adam Skolnick?

  Holy cow.

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  We have Lea Goldstein, who won Ram, first female victor in the cycling race, Race Across America. Then we have the Iron Cowboy, who did 101 consecutive iron distance triathlons.

• 1:09:30Adam Skolnick?

  We were there with him.

• 1:09:31Rich Roll?

  We were.

• 1:09:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's quite a day.

• 1:09:33Rich Roll?

  Timothy Olson, who ran the Pacific Coast Trail.

• 1:09:37Adam Skolnick?

  Pacific Crest Trail.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  Crest Trail.

• 1:09:39Adam Skolnick?

  He had the FKT.

• 1:09:40Rich Roll?

  Today. Yeah, he got the FKT.

• 1:09:42Adam Skolnick?

  FKT for the PCT.

• 1:09:43Rich Roll?

  Person to run the PCT. FKT in the PCT.

• 1:09:47Adam Skolnick?

  He did the FKT, FKT in the PCT, baby. Timothy Olson.

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  Two more. We got Lewis Pugh, who swam in the Arctic Circle.

• 1:09:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, he swam in the Arctic to raise awareness of climate change in Greenland.

• 1:09:58Rich Roll?

  Popped into a roll-on by Zoom.

• 1:10:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Rich Roll?

  From South Africa to share about that. And final nominee, Jason Caldwell, for his Pacific Row.

• 1:10:08Adam Skolnick?

  Rode across the Pacific from...

• 1:10:09Rich Roll?

  Fastest, like crushed the record.

• 1:10:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Was this, was this San Francisco to Hawaii?

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, Hellicite Bay, Robbie Ballinger, Courtney Dewalter, Harvey Lewis, Lea Goldstein, Iron Cowboy, Timothy Olson, Lewis Pugh, and Jason Caldwell.

• 1:10:24Adam Skolnick?

  That's a hell of a list.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  That is. That's a lot of nominees.

• 1:10:27Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 1:10:27Rich Roll?

  I'm sure I left people off too, who are deserving.

• 1:10:30Adam Skolnick?

  See, that's how you do a list, without favoritism, Rich, just in, just in the future.

• 1:10:34Rich Roll?

  Just include as many, just include all of them?

• 1:10:37Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, like, the previous nomination list, your favoritism really came out.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:42Adam Skolnick?

  Is my point.

• 1:10:43Rich Roll?

  Here's an interesting category that we have.

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  Coolest person of 2021. Who do we have? Johnny Greenwood. Let me talk about him, because that was my addition to these nominations. You're the Johnny Greenwood guy. Yeah, Johnny Greenwood. You guys know who Johnny Greenwood is, right? Radiohead lead guitarist and keyboardist turned film composer. Yes. So, this guy, this is incredible. This is like Danny Elfman 2.0. Even better. His music is extraordinary. In the past, he has scored "There Will Be Blood," "The Master," Yeah. "Inherent Vice," "Phantom Thread." Clearly, he's Paul Thomas Anderson's favorite, right? Yes. And this year alone, he wrote the film scores for "Spencer,"

• 1:11:30Rich Roll?

  "Power of the Dog," and "Liquorice Pizza," which is pretty incredible. Yes. While also being in the coolest band in the world. It's unbelievable. Are they still the coolest band in the world? I mean, if you ask me, they are. Oh. I don't know. I am asking. Depends on who you talk to. Yeah. But, you know, we're a couple of old men. I don't know. What about your kids? Well, for my boys, Radiohead is king. Okay. Yeah, and will always be king. Fair enough. Johnny Greenwood, actually, this year, ended up doing a fair amount of press, like campaigning, because he was nominated for an Oscar for his score for "Power of the Dog." And it was super interesting, these interviews, him talking about his process of how he thinks about

• 1:12:10Rich Roll?

  writing music and how he scores these things. And with "Power of the Dog," the idea was to create music that was somewhat haunting and foreboding, while also being true to the sort of tropes of a Western. And he wanted that, like, banjo sound, but he wanted it to sound, like, more suspenseful. So, a lot of the score is him playing, essentially, the way you would play a banjo, but playing it on a bass, like a cello. Interesting. And if you go back and listen to the music, like, it's very unique and cool. It is cool. So, anyway, I just find that to be fascinating, and so that's why he is... Did you watch "Power of the Dog"? Yeah, I love that movie. Only got one Oscar.

• 1:12:55Rich Roll?

  You can't be in one for Best Director, but... Got shut out by Cota in a lot of the other categories.

• 1:13:01Adam Skolnick?

  Did you watch Cota?

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  I have not seen Cota.

• 1:13:03Adam Skolnick?

  Me neither.

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  All right, why don't you hit me with the next nominee?

• 1:13:06Adam Skolnick?

  So this nominee really probably belongs to the coolest person of 2022, but you had said, you know, whatever, put him, keep him in there. Rafael Nadal. Rafael Nadal.

• 1:13:16Rich Roll?

  Rafael Nadal. You're obsessed with Rafael Nadal.

• 1:13:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm a latecomer obsessed with Rafael Nadal. Rafael Nadal, for those who live under a rock, is one of the greatest tennis players of all time. He has the record for 21 Grand Slam titles. He tied Roger's record and then Novak Djokovic tied that. So the three of them held it together. And then Novak was set to, basically, he was in the US Open final and he could have had the record for himself. And no one ever considers Rafael Nadal, really, because a lot of his titles came for the French Open. Roger was always the greatest. Rafa was right there. And then when Novak started to take over,

• 1:14:00Adam Skolnick?

  everyone just considered, oh, we all have to now agree that Novak Djokovic, who's kind of this insufferable, strange view, he has strange views.

• 1:14:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:10Adam Skolnick?

  He wouldn't take the vaccine. I'm not judging anybody. I'm just saying he wouldn't take it. And, and because of that, he couldn't compete in some of these Grand Slams that just happened. But even before that, he's, he's just been this lightning rod for a number of reasons. And no one really liked him that much. He'd get booed a lot, even at the titles he was winning, Novak Djokovic. And then in the US Open, something magical happened. Everyone loved him. We were all content to say, okay, he is the greatest. But then he lost. And then this year in the Australian Open, coming off injury, Rafael Nadal won the 21st Grand Slam. Novak wouldn't compete because he wouldn't take the vaccine. They wouldn't let him in. There was a big high profile thing where they almost let him in and then they didn't let him in.

• 1:14:53Adam Skolnick?

  And when Rafa won it, no one thought he'd win it because he'd been hurt, he hadn't been playing. And I think there was this like sigh of relief in the tennis world and everyone was like, loved Rafa because they didn't have to admit that Novak was the best anymore. So the tennis world just loves this guy. I happened to just see him in Indian Wells and the place was just wild for him. I mean, like everywhere he went, every match he was in, sold out. He's a full-on rock star. But what I love about him isn't just that he's a great tennis player. It's that when he loses, he always talks about going back to practice. He's always says the right thing. He never blames any circumstances or injuries for his losses. He's never a baby about the rules. He's always a straight shooter. And

• 1:15:36Adam Skolnick?

  not only that, he takes the corniest sightseeing pictures ever. If you go on his Instagram, you can see him riding a bike with a goofy helmet around DC, taking pictures of himself in front of like the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and like really funny like dad, like very Griswoldian tourist photos. And so I think all of that.

• 1:15:56Rich Roll?

  And not slapping anyone.

• 1:15:57Adam Skolnick?

  He never slaps anyone. He's like the most humble, hardworking, greediest guy. Never was considered the greatest. You know, Roger was the greatest, then it was Novak, and now it really might be Rafa, and I think that's a beautiful thing.

• 1:16:11Rich Roll?

  Case well stated.

• 1:16:13Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  All right. Next nominee, somebody whose name has come up on this show in the past.

• 1:16:20Adam Skolnick?

  Bo Burnham.

• 1:16:21Rich Roll?

  Bo Burnham. He did make what I think is the most groundbreaking special of the last year. I just love Inside, his one-man show. And I also love the fact that like, as soon as he made it and released it, he just ghosted everybody and like, didn't do any press. And you know, he would once in a while, like, put up an Instagram post just to say like a song was available, or when it went on streaming, or whatever. But he did, to my mind, unless I'm not aware, like, no interviews over this at all. Just put it up there. And true to the kind of themes of that special, just went back to living his life, I suspect.

• 1:16:59Adam Skolnick?

  You know?

• 1:17:00Rich Roll?

  So there's something kind of ballsy and cool about that.

• 1:17:02Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. It's the best comedy.

• 1:17:06Adam Skolnick?

  Hour that I saw in many years.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, one of the greatest, I think, one of the greatest pieces of comedy I've ever seen. And it goes on the list with like Live at the Sunset Strip, Richard Pryor, Delirious.

• 1:17:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:19Adam Skolnick?

  You know, Baby Cobra, Ali Wong, I mean, whatever. I'm mentioning there was, there's been a lot of great ones, but this is definitely on that list. Wouldn't you say?

• 1:17:26Rich Roll?

  I would, yeah, for sure.

• 1:17:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Rich Roll?

  Uh, next nominee, Nims Dal Persia.

• 1:17:31Adam Skolnick?

  Nims Dai, uh, Persia.

• 1:17:33Rich Roll?

  Nims Dai, is that how you say it?

• 1:17:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  He just goes by Nims though, right?

• 1:17:36Adam Skolnick?

  He goes by Nims. Nims is, this year had a big hit with 14 Peaks on Netflix, his documentary about, um, breaking the record for all 14 8,000 meter peaks in the Himalayas. He broke a record that was at seven years or something, and it was the great Messner. I think it was Rudolph Messner, pretty sure. And he broke the record and he did it in six months. And he's Nepalese.

• 1:18:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:02Adam Skolnick?

  And so the idea, of course, that release comes on the heels of him leading a team of Nepalese climbers to the winter summit of K2, first ever to do that.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, first people to ever summit K2 in the wintertime.

• 1:18:16Adam Skolnick?

  That was January 2021. I was lucky enough to be able to cover that. And, um, and Nims, then he had 14 Peaks come on after that. That became one of the biggest hits on the streaming.

• 1:18:26Rich Roll?

  Huge.

• 1:18:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And, and it really goes into his backstory and you meet his wife and you see his, you know, his commitment to, all the way up, there's scenes where he's holding a climber who might be dying on the slopes and, and just his commitment to his team and his climbers and to, and to working hard. And he's like a Rafa type and, and, you know, like a Goggins type, like that kind of grit.

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  Earned and deserved his spot.

• 1:18:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  In the nominees, the rolly nominees of coolest people.

• 1:18:56Adam Skolnick?

  And our last rolly nominee is?

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Billie Eilish.

• 1:18:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:18:59Rich Roll?

  Won the Oscar along with her brother, Phineas, last night, uh, for writing and performing the Bond theme song, No Time To Die. So, how old is she now? I mean, she's so young.

• 1:19:12Adam Skolnick?

  Let's see.

• 1:19:13Rich Roll?

  And she just absolutely dominates the music industry and now is an Oscar winner. Dominated the Grammys, dominates the Oscars, put in an incredible performance last night and just has so much life ahead of her. And I just think she's super cool. But anyway, it was really cool to see her perform last night and, uh, Yeah.

• 1:19:33Adam Skolnick?

  Twenty.

• 1:19:34Rich Roll?

  Twenty.

• 1:19:35Adam Skolnick?

  Twenty.

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  Get out.

• 1:19:36Adam Skolnick?

  That's what it says.

• 1:19:37Rich Roll?

  Only twenty.

• 1:19:38Adam Skolnick?

  Born December eighteenth, two thousand and one. A satch.

• 1:19:42Rich Roll?

  Crazy. How many Grammys does she have?

• 1:19:45Adam Skolnick?

  Let's see.

• 1:19:46Rich Roll?

  Like five or six or something?

• 1:19:49Adam Skolnick?

  Um, we are aware that most of these nominees are men and we have Billie Eilish, woman, but Billie Eilish is a huge superstar in our defense, so we came up with a good list, I think, here.

• 1:20:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, while you're looking up how many Grammy she has, I'm gonna launch into the next category, which is my favorite category by far.

• 1:20:09Adam Skolnick?

  By six, six Grammys.

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  Six Grammys, okay. This next category is best limited series about narcissistic self-mathologizing, AKA the scammer series. So I don't know if you guys are all aware, but there is this trend in streaming media right now of these limited series and mini-series that are about these, you know, amazing ascents to power, money, and fame, and then precipitous falls.

• 1:20:44Adam Skolnick?

  Supernovas, as it were.

• 1:20:46Rich Roll?

  Basically supernovas, right?

• 1:20:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:20:48Rich Roll?

  You are a supernova.

• 1:20:49Adam Skolnick?

  Wink, wink, nod, nod.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  And this category is just rife with so much deliciousness.

• 1:20:56Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:20:56Rich Roll?

  The first nominee is super pumped by friend of the pod, Brian Koppelman, and his writing and producing partner, David Levine. This is the story of Travis Kalanak and Uber.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  Um, if you're into great dialogue, this is fantastic. If you enjoy Billions, this is right up your alley. And essentially, the theme of this is the theme that recurs throughout the other nominees that we're gonna get to, which is the person who has the audacious dream and outsized ambition and a crazy amount of ego and charisma. The sort of requirements to manifest something massive into the world like Uber are also the qualities that ultimately precipitate your decline, right? They ruin you because you can't get out of your own way. And that's the kind of recurring story motif amongst all of these.

• 1:21:52Adam Skolnick?

  Does it start with him? Does it start with him waiting for a cab that never comes?

• 1:21:58Rich Roll?

  No, there's versions of that throughout, though. You haven't watched this one yet, have you?

• 1:22:03Adam Skolnick?

  Well, no, because unfortunately, this is the only one I haven't seen an episode of, and that's because I don't get the showtime add-on.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Get on that.

• 1:22:11Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:22:12Rich Roll?

  But yeah, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Travis Kalanick. And, you know, it's fascinating to watch, you know, something that most of us have used, Uber, and like how it came into being, and how it, you know, sort of transplanted the taxi industry completely. Like, how did that happen? Well, it didn't happen, you know, by accident. It happened with great will and intention, for better or worse.

• 1:22:35Adam Skolnick?

  There you go. And aside, what's your favorite JGL film?

• 1:22:38Rich Roll?

  What's the cancer one that he did?

• 1:22:43Adam Skolnick?

  Fifty Fifty, that's mine, too. I love Fifty Fifty. With Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick.

• 1:22:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:22:50Adam Skolnick?

  She's fabulous.

• 1:22:51Rich Roll?

  Did you see Mysterious Skin, the Gregor Rocky movie?

• 1:22:55Adam Skolnick?

  Missed that one.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Anyway, all right, moving along. We don't have all day here.

• 1:23:01Adam Skolnick?

  We crashed.

• 1:23:01Rich Roll?

  We crashed. So, this is the We Work story.

• 1:23:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:23:06Rich Roll?

  Based on the podcast, We Crashed. I don't know what to say about this one.

• 1:23:11Adam Skolnick?

  Two podcast-based nominees here.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  Right, we do, right. I mean, this one is just off the rails, over the top. I mean, Jared Leto is going full banana in this one with like prosthetic teeth and like the accent, the Israeli accent.

• 1:23:25Adam Skolnick?

  I love his Israeli accent.

• 1:23:26Rich Roll?

  Playing Adam Newman, who's partners with Miguel McKelvey, friend of the podcast. It's sort of surreal to watch this, knowing Miguel.

• 1:23:34Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you know Miguel?

• 1:23:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know Miguel, and I would consider myself a friend of Miguel's. And when I'm watching this, I'm like, is this exactly how it happened? I'm not sure. But just watching Jared Leto, like, hangdog this whole thing, is so out of control.

• 1:23:50Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. I love it.

• 1:23:52Rich Roll?

  And Anne Hathaway, I think this is really her show. Like, her performance is actually pretty remarkable as Rebecca.

• 1:23:58Adam Skolnick?

  She's always great. She's always great.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  It's a much more nuanced performance. Like, she has these

• 1:24:02Adam Skolnick?

  More reserved.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  Interesting ups and downs. I don't know, how many episodes in are you at this point on this one?

• 1:24:07Adam Skolnick?

  Just one.

• 1:24:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. So she gets, there's a lot of meat on the bone for Anne Hathaway in this one. So, same story. Like, guy with, you know, huge ambition and unbelievable charisma, like, wills this thing into the world against all odds. And ultimately, it's his ego that gets in the way and precipitates his demise.

• 1:24:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  It's, it's interesting how this, you know, sort of shows up in all these different narratives that are about these, you know, ostensibly tech companies. I mean, WeWork isn't really a tech company, but it's part of that kind of Silicon Valley mindset of being a disruptor, right?

• 1:24:49Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting, because you

• 1:24:50Rich Roll?

  Reimagining work.

• 1:24:51Adam Skolnick?

  You, as we go through these, and the next nominee isn't quite in the same level, but like, in terms of, like, how you feel in terms of sympathy towards the main character. I think of, like, Wolf of Wall Street, there's a gold standard, it's supposed to be an expose on how bad a guy Jordan Belfort is, but you end up loving him and all those cronies.

• 1:25:12Rich Roll?

  Celebrating these people. And it is a weird thing. It's like, am I supposed to be rooting for Travis Kalanick here?

• 1:25:17Adam Skolnick?

  You do, though, right?

• 1:25:18Rich Roll?

  In the same way when you watch Billions, it's like, are you supposed to be rooting for these billionaires?

• 1:25:22Adam Skolnick?

  It's hard.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  Everybody's acting terribly, right?

• 1:25:26Adam Skolnick?

  But yet, you root for them.

• 1:25:27Rich Roll?

  And it's, it's sort of delicious, peppered with some, you know, a healthy dose of schadenfreude.

• 1:25:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:25:35Rich Roll?

  I think there's something about, and I want to get into it once we get through the nominees, like, why is it that we're attracted to these? Like, is it because when we see them fall, it makes us feel better about our own lives?

• 1:25:45Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting. We should get into that. I mean, I think that the dropout, the Elizabeth Holmes story about Theranos and

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  So that's the next one. The next nominee is the dropout.

• 1:25:53Adam Skolnick?

  And then, I think, because of the way Amanda Seyfried plays her, and because of the writing, you see kind of the creepiness in the back of her mind. Like, you're not feeling The sympathy, I think, for her as you do these others because she's not a superwoman. Like, from the beginning, you see that she's really tortured.

• 1:26:11Rich Roll?

  She's not gifted with charm and charisma.

• 1:26:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:14Rich Roll?

  She has to develop an adaptive strategy because she lacks that. So she cultivates this weird voice and the clothes that she's wearing to, you know, overcome that deficit that comes naturally to Adam Newman and to Travis Kalanick.

• 1:26:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:26:30Rich Roll?

  Which makes it, you know, like, it's just...

• 1:26:31Adam Skolnick?

  Which makes it more nuanced show, I think, more interesting.

• 1:26:34Rich Roll?

  It's much more nuanced. And also, I think, what's different about The Dropout versus We Crushed and Super Pumped is they do spend a lot of time on her background. So you see her at a young age, moving through the world for, you know, the better part of like an episode and a half before we even get into Theranos. Whereas the other shows just drop you into those tech companies or those companies like at their inception. So, so I think that helps you be a little bit more empathetic to where she's coming from. And I think The Dropout is, is perhaps, you know, at least the most artfully crafted of all of these shows. And just a knockout performance, I think, by Amanda Seyfried. Like, when she's looking into the mirror and she's working on her voice, like, I don't know how many episodes...

• 1:27:18Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah, no, I know, I saw that.

• 1:27:19Rich Roll?

  It's creepy and bizarre, knowing how the story plays out. It's unbelievable. And we have to shout out Utkarsh, who has a great part in this series as, as a graduate student at Stanford, who kind of ushers Elizabeth Holmes into this graduate lab and then ultimately becomes one of the first employees in Theranos.

• 1:27:43Adam Skolnick?

  He's fabulous.

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  He's always good. And again, based on the podcast, The Dropout.

• 1:27:49Adam Skolnick?

  So I just want you guys to know in Hollywood, you can adapt, roll on anytime you want. Just let us know. Give us a call.

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  All right. Next, next nominee.

• 1:27:58Adam Skolnick?

  Inventing Anna.

• 1:28:00Rich Roll?

  This is just...

• 1:28:00Adam Skolnick?

  The Anna Delvey story.

• 1:28:01Rich Roll?

  This is just straight up trash. This is trash.

• 1:28:04Adam Skolnick?

  This is the Shonda Rhimes massive hit. It's a spectacular hit.

• 1:28:08Rich Roll?

  I know. The trashiest of all of them, for sure.

• 1:28:11Adam Skolnick?

  Starring the actress that we grew to love on Ozark. She was like, she's the um.

• 1:28:17Rich Roll?

  She's phenomenal.

• 1:28:18Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, she's great. What's her name?

• 1:28:20Rich Roll?

  I forget her name. I should know her name. What's her name? Um, look that up.

• 1:28:24Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:28:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but this is perhaps the most crystallized version of what it means to self-mythologize, because she arrives in New York intent upon taking over high society.

• 1:28:34Adam Skolnick?

  Julia Garner.

• 1:28:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Julia Garner, in this quest to kind of create this elite club for high rollers and powerful Manhattanites.

• 1:28:43Adam Skolnick?

  The Anadelle Foundation.

• 1:28:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:28:48Rich Roll?

  It's delicious in that regard, and at times very hard to watch.

• 1:28:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's not a good show.

• 1:28:52Rich Roll?

  Certainly earned its, yeah, earned its place as a nominee on the subject of self-mythologizing.

• 1:28:59Adam Skolnick?

  It's not a good show. And by the way, I, the journalist isn't likable. There's very few likable characters in it.

• 1:29:05Rich Roll?

  I would agree with that.

• 1:29:06Adam Skolnick?

  Um, her lawyer, I think, is the exception. He's likable.

• 1:29:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Adam Skolnick?

  Honorable mention.

• 1:29:11Rich Roll?

  Honorable mention.

• 1:29:12Adam Skolnick?

  Not a fictional take.

• 1:29:13Rich Roll?

  We're gonna spend a couple of minutes on this one. The honorable mention, because it doesn't quite fit into this genre. It's sort of askew, but I think it's still relevant.

• 1:29:21Adam Skolnick?

  It's a documentary series, which is different.

• 1:29:23Rich Roll?

  Netflix, I think this was the number one, I don't know if it still is, but it was the number one show on Netflix.

• 1:29:28Adam Skolnick?

  Was it?

• 1:29:29Rich Roll?

  And it is Bad Vegan.

• 1:29:30Adam Skolnick?

  Bad Vegan.

• 1:29:31Rich Roll?

  Bad Vegan. This is the story of Sarma Malangalas.

• 1:29:34Adam Skolnick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:35Rich Roll?

  Who was the proprietor of Pure Food and Wine in New York City, which was the kind of premier raw food establishment for many years. I've eaten there many, many times.

• 1:29:46Adam Skolnick?

  Is it still a thing? No.

• 1:29:48Rich Roll?

  Well, it's closed now because of what happened.

• 1:29:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Rich Roll?

  But, uh, I don't know. I mean, every time I would go to New York, I would go there. And it was, it has this beautiful back outdoor patio. The food was marvelous and amazing. She originally founded it with Matthew Kenny, who she met and worked on his cookbook. And then they worked together for a number of years. They split, Sarma took over the restaurant, owed Jeffrey Chotero, is that how you say his last name? The restaurateur financier guy, like $2 million. And so was servicing that debt as she was trying to grow this business and then falls under the spell of this man. Nairdewell. Who, yeah, Nairdewell, who turns out to be this unbelievable grifter. Yes.

• 1:30:35Rich Roll?

  Victims her, manipulates her, puts her through what they call quote unquote cosmic endurance tests. And I'm not sure she's completely disabused herself of his spell. Still. And that's the most interesting thing, because you haven't watched this whole thing. No, I watched the first episode. So I remember when this whole thing went down, essentially Anthony Strangest, this guy, manipulates her into giving him money. She begins siphoning money out of the restaurant and giving it to him for various purposes that end up going towards expensive travel and watches and gambling and the like.

• 1:31:18Rich Roll?

  And it got so bad that she couldn't make payroll anymore. She's trying to rationalize this. It's a house of cards. If topples on top of her, it's a longer story. And it's fascinating to watch this show and see how it all plays out. But she basically ends up going on the lam. She has a different version of what actually happened, but there's a warrant out for her arrest. Anthony and her like are holed up in a hotel room in Tennessee where Dolly World is. Really? I've been there. Oh, you gotta watch the rest of this show. It's unbelievable. Okay. And they end up catching her because Anthony orders a Domino's pizza and his name's on the credit card and they flagged it and the cops descend on the hotel room and arrest them. They both do jail time.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  She basically bilked pure food and wine out of $1.6 million that ended up in Anthony Strangest's bank account.

• 1:32:09Rich Roll?

  And the restaurant goes out of business and it's just the strangest thing because she's this, you know, sort of face of raw vegan cuisine, beautiful girl, smart, went to Wharton, and was really fetid, you know, for being this big personality in the vegan movement, and somebody who was well-liked by her staff and all of that. So this pivot from being, you know, a rational actor who was running a viable business, to this strange world of being under the spell of this guy who was truly a grifter. Like, how does that happen to an intelligent woman?

• 1:32:44Adam Skolnick?

  You wonder how, like, how is it these really smart people do really stupid things? Because it's also stuff that, like, people from the outside looking in, just from the first episode, you could see, were like, "This guy's bad news." Like, everybody who met him immediately knew he was bad news.

• 1:32:58Rich Roll?

  And this, like, this story, when it happened, was perfect for Vanity Fair, New York Magazine. So there were a lot of long reads about this at the time, like, how could this possibly happen? And this, you know, raw vegan queen ultimately gets toppled by a Domino's Pizza. She was very quick to say, "I'm not the one who ordered the pizza, that was Anthony."

• 1:33:22Adam Skolnick?

  That was her biggest offense in some people's minds.

• 1:33:24Rich Roll?

  But what's interesting about this show is that she participates in it. So it's a docu-series in which she's basically on camera giving her version of events.

• 1:33:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  To try to set the record straight. And so with that, I felt myself more sympathetic towards her than I had just in reading these articles. But I also have to say that when I got to the end of it, I really didn't feel like she had learned anything. Like, there was like an empathy piece that was missing. So I'm interested in how this is gonna land when you finish watching it. It's like, she gets to the other side of it, and then she still calls up strangers and wants to know how he's doing. And she understands intellectually, she'll never be able to borrow money again, it's unlikely that she'll ever be able to

• 1:34:13Rich Roll?

  have a restaurant again. But on some level, also feels weirdly unapologetic, or not quite emotionally connected. Like, she's very robotic about the whole thing.

• 1:34:25Adam Skolnick?

  I see a huge-

• 1:34:25Rich Roll?

  Which left me feeling like, a little bit empty about the whole affair.

• 1:34:29Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry to interrupt. I, um, see a big parallel here, that I hadn't thought of until you were talking about this. Smart people who fall under the sway of people that should be see-through to so many.

• 1:34:46Adam Skolnick?

  Doesn't that sound like intelligent people that have fallen under the sway of a QAnon? Or a political figure? Or like, smart people in Russia that believe Putin's lies, that they're not invading Ukraine? Or so, isn't that like, isn't that thing, doesn't that encapsulate so much about our current problems in terms of information and, and what we believe?

• 1:35:08Rich Roll?

  Certainly, there's gotta be similarities there. I mean, I think in the case of Elizabeth Holmes, and Adam Newman, and Travis Kalanick, these people were persuasive because they were able to espouse the ambition that they had for these companies with a sense of like, world-changing purpose. And also, this idea that it would make everybody wildly powerful and rich, right? And that's what people want to hear. So, to the extent that you can charismatically deliver a message that somebody wants to hear, I think that is relevant to your point. I think in the case of Sarma, part of the Anthony Strangest's message was like, this

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  idea that, like, this weird cosmic thing that, like, you're special, and I'm gonna put you through these tests, and if you can get through them, like, he fed her like, a bill of goods. This is, like, completely bizarre. About, "There's a plan for you, and there'll be more money than you can ever need." Like, she-

• 1:36:11Adam Skolnick?

  And your dog will be immortal.

• 1:36:12Rich Roll?

  Her culpability was that she, part of how she fell under the spell of this guy is that he was promising her great riches.

• 1:36:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:36:19Rich Roll?

  And, and she wanted to believe that that would be the case, right? And so, even when any outsider could look at this and say, "There's something terribly wrong here," he would say, "You have to stick with me, just, you know, you gotta, you gotta wire me this $10,000, and I promise you in a month, you're gonna have everything that you want and you need, and we're gonna make all your ambitions true." And this kept continuing until she was so deep in, that the only way out for her was to convince herself that everything he was saying was true, including that her dog would be immortal.

• 1:36:49Adam Skolnick?

  Immortal.

• 1:36:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there was, and he, you know, had this other life, or this past, that she didn't really know anything about.

• 1:36:57Adam Skolnick?

  Black ops.

• 1:36:57Rich Roll?

  She was able to, like, you know, like, compartmentalize that.

• 1:37:00Adam Skolnick?

  Black ops.

• 1:37:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just the weirdest thing.

• 1:37:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  This smart, intelligent person could be so manipulated. So perhaps we're all more easily manipulated than we want to believe.

• 1:37:13Adam Skolnick?

  Well, how do you think I've kept this job so long?

• 1:37:15Rich Roll?

  Like, how do you think Oz, the mentalist, was able to get me to say things he wanted me to say?

• 1:37:19Adam Skolnick?

  Are you still thinking about that?

• 1:37:21Rich Roll?

  I am. Can't stop thinking about it.

• 1:37:24Rich Roll?

  But, you know, the fact that Sarma kind of gets all the way to the other side of this and doesn't seem to really have had any kind of emotional growth arc, I think is one important takeaway from that.

• 1:37:36Adam Skolnick?

  Do you want to get back into the schadenfreude or move along?

• 1:37:39Rich Roll?

  Well, I think, just in terms of like, all of these shows, the meta-commentary here is like, why are these so popular right now? Why is it that this is the kind of thing that people like to watch? Why are these all coming out at the same time? And I think there's something very American about it, this idea of self-mythologizing. Like, you can come here and you can be anybody you want to be. And so, the incentive structure is to lie or elaborate or to, you know, leverage your charisma to convince people of doing what you want them to do, to kind of manifest this outsized dream. And that can go, you know, wrong when, you know, the house of cards falls on top of you and the truth is

• 1:38:22Rich Roll?

  revealed. But, the fact that these are popular indicates that we, there's something about us that's attracted to that, and perhaps that is the schadenfreude of, you know, seeing powerful, rich people collapse on top of each other. I don't know.

• 1:38:37Adam Skolnick?

  Like, a certain slap?

• 1:38:40Rich Roll?

  Like a certain slap, yeah. Like, now we're all talking about Will Smith.

• 1:38:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:38:43Rich Roll?

  What's gonna happen to him? It's the car crash that you can't turn away from.

• 1:38:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Rich Roll?

  I suppose. I don't know.

• 1:38:50Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting. Alright, let's move on. Let's do some speed rounds through these next ones. We don't have to get too deep into it.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:56Adam Skolnick?

  Most RRP/LARP-like film of 2021, meaning these are the films that fall into the wheelhouse of one rich role podcast?

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  Right. If this podcast was a piece of filmed entertainment, who would be the nominees?

• 1:39:14Adam Skolnick?

  The Alpinist.

• 1:39:16Rich Roll?

  Good one.

• 1:39:17Adam Skolnick?

  14 Peaks.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  Another good one.

• 1:39:20Adam Skolnick?

  Don't Look Up.

• 1:39:21Rich Roll?

  Perfect. Of course, don't look up.

• 1:39:23Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, we're living that right now.

• 1:39:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:25Adam Skolnick?

  Roadrunner.

• 1:39:27Rich Roll?

  Love it.

• 1:39:27Adam Skolnick?

  Of course. The Rescue.

• 1:39:30Rich Roll?

  From Friends of the Pod, Jimmy Chan and Chai Fosarelli.

• 1:39:34Adam Skolnick?

  Dopesick.

• 1:39:35Rich Roll?

  Dopesick. About the opioid crisis in the Sacklers.

• 1:39:38Adam Skolnick?

  The Alpinist is about the mountaineer in Canada.

• 1:39:42Rich Roll?

  The ice climber.

• 1:39:42Adam Skolnick?

  Ice climber, 14 Peaks is NIMs.

• 1:39:45Rich Roll?

  It's a good list. Also, I should say, we're probably missing stuff, so, audience members who are outraged right now because we didn't include X, Y, or Z, go easy on us.

• 1:39:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, go easy on us.

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  This is the rolly.

• 1:39:56Adam Skolnick?

  We're doing our best.

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  Did I say at the outset of this podcast that we were gonna venture into the dunder-headed?

• 1:40:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Rich Roll?

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:40:05Adam Skolnick?

  That's where we are right now. I've watched, I've watched the first three of these. I did not yet see Roadrunner or The Rescue, which I should see.

• 1:40:11Rich Roll?

  You haven't seen The Rescue?

• 1:40:12Adam Skolnick?

  I know, and I covered the Thai cave thing. But you know what? I'm waiting for the, there's a couple of Thai cave series coming out on Netflix. There's the fictional one, which is by the guys behind Crazy Rich Asians. And then there's also the documentary where it focuses on the Thai soccer team themselves, because that's, Jimmy and Chai didn't have access to the soccer team.

• 1:40:32Rich Roll?

  But you gotta see The Rescue. And yeah, the Thai Rescue itself has spawned like its own world of industry.

• 1:40:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. I gotta see it. I wanna see it. It's just, you know, some of us are raising 19 months old. 19 months old? 19 month olds.

• 1:40:46Rich Roll?

  Always with the excuse.

• 1:40:48Adam Skolnick?

  I know. That's so un-Raff of me.

• 1:40:50Rich Roll?

  That really is. Next category, best book by an RRP guest in 2021. This was a tough one.

• 1:40:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:40:59Rich Roll?

  Lots of books, lots of great guests. You know I love all my guests. You know I love all their books. I wouldn't have them on the podcast otherwise, so lots of nominees here. And if your favorite isn't on this list, I get it. I didn't wanna take anybody off this list, but here's what we came up with. First nominee, Bravy by Alexi Pappas. Then we have Think Again by Adam Grant. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, although that book was written a couple of years ago, even though Matthew was on the podcast last year. So how, what are the rules here? There are no rules. It's whatever we say.

• 1:41:31Adam Skolnick?

  I think you put that on.

• 1:41:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I did. I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying, we're, we're, we're a little fast and loose.

• 1:41:39Adam Skolnick?

  The rules, the rules lean towards inclusion, except when they lean towards exclusion.

• 1:41:43Rich Roll?

  Whatever I say they are in the moment, subject to change. Uh, next book, Dopamine Nation by Anilem Ki, great book. Regeneration by Paul Hawken.

• 1:41:53Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm, great one.

• 1:41:54Rich Roll?

  Your Turn by Julie Lithgow Heims. The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller. Stolen Focus by Johann Hari.

• 1:42:03Adam Skolnick?

  A nouveau classic.

• 1:42:04Rich Roll?

  Yes. And Transcendence by Scott Barry Kaufman.

• 1:42:07Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 1:42:08Rich Roll?

  That book was written in 2021, although he was a guest in 2022. So again, I don't, you, you do your interpretation.

• 1:42:14Adam Skolnick?

  I feel like Bravy's winning this.

• 1:42:16Rich Roll?

  What's that?

• 1:42:17Adam Skolnick?

  I think it's going to be between Bravy or Think Again, Adam Grant or Alexi.

• 1:42:20Rich Roll?

  Maybe. We'll see.

• 1:42:21Adam Skolnick?

  That's my feeling.

• 1:42:22Rich Roll?

  We'll see. Um, what's next?

• 1:42:24Adam Skolnick?

  Best Rich Roll, nouveau obsession. Sprouting, weightlifting, but heavy.

• 1:42:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:32Adam Skolnick?

  Heavy.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  Heavyweights. All right. The nominees are sprouting.

• 1:42:35Adam Skolnick?

  Sprouting. Sprouting and you're, how's your sprouting going?

• 1:42:39Rich Roll?

  It's fallen off a little bit. I'll be honest.

• 1:42:41Adam Skolnick?

  I saw that coming.

• 1:42:44Rich Roll?

  Keep going.

• 1:42:45Adam Skolnick?

  How, how about your lift, weightlifting? You're lifting heavy.

• 1:42:47Rich Roll?

  Uh, well, once I started swimming a lot, I had to back off the weights. So now I'm, I've just, I spend the winter getting strong and then now I'm in the pool. So I'm not doing as much in the gym as I was.

• 1:42:58Adam Skolnick?

  But if that's your, your cup of tea, Decoding the Gurus.

• 1:43:01Rich Roll?

  Big one.

• 1:43:01Adam Skolnick?

  We, we haven't talked about it yet. I wanted to give you a little, uh, place to talk about it. You love this podcast.

• 1:43:06Rich Roll?

  I love these guys. Yeah. They're fantastic. Decoding the Gurus podcast.

• 1:43:10Adam Skolnick?

  Ice baths.

• 1:43:11Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:12Adam Skolnick?

  You like ice baths?

• 1:43:13Rich Roll?

  I do like ice baths.

• 1:43:14Adam Skolnick?

  Adam's swim mask.

• 1:43:16Rich Roll?

  That is everybody's ultimate obsession, is it not? Should we just announce the winner of this category right now?

• 1:43:22Adam Skolnick?

  There you go, folks.

• 1:43:24Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:43:25Adam Skolnick?

  All right. The next one?

• 1:43:27Rich Roll?

  This next category, I don't know. This is your idea.

• 1:43:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:29Rich Roll?

  I'm, you know, distancing myself or any responsibility for this category.

• 1:43:33Adam Skolnick?

  But here it is. Ready? Luckiest rocker of all time. Ringo Starr, George Harrison.

• 1:43:41Adam Skolnick?

  Or Ringo Starr?

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  Jason's gonna have a beef with you.

• 1:43:45Adam Skolnick?

  Care to comment?

• 1:43:48Rich Roll?

  Alright, do what you will with that.

• 1:43:50Adam Skolnick?

  Personally, I'm voting for George.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Next.

• 1:43:53Adam Skolnick?

  The dystopia you would most want to live in?

• 1:43:56Rich Roll?

  I like this category.

• 1:43:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I like this one too.

• 1:43:58Rich Roll?

  The nominees are Dune.

• 1:44:01Adam Skolnick?

  With the giant caterpillars?

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  You want to be mining spice? Is that the dystopian future for yourself?

• 1:44:07Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just saying, if you want to mine spice while dodging giant caterpillars, Dune is your world.

• 1:44:13Rich Roll?

  Not caterpillars.

• 1:44:14Adam Skolnick?

  Worms.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  Worms.

• 1:44:14Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry.

• 1:44:15Rich Roll?

  Station 11, I mean, they seem to have fun in Station 11. They're putting on Shakespeare plays, cruising around. There's some jeopardy, but you know.

• 1:44:24Adam Skolnick?

  Your kids might end up in a weird youth cult.

• 1:44:27Rich Roll?

  That's the risk. Not a lot of creature comforts.

• 1:44:32Adam Skolnick?

  You might have seen your entire family die.

• 1:44:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Next nominee, Don't Look Up.

• 1:44:36Adam Skolnick?

  Don't Look Up.

• 1:44:37Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's where we're all living right now. So do you want to stay where we are and just live in denial until, you know, we're all just eradicated overnight?

• 1:44:45Adam Skolnick?

  I think so. I think I would choose three out of this.

• 1:44:48Rich Roll?

  I think I would too.

• 1:44:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And the fourth?

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  The fourth is Squid Game.

• 1:44:53Adam Skolnick?

  Squid Game's rough.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  Lots of riches on the upside if you win the Squid Game.

• 1:44:56Adam Skolnick?

  Tough to win that game.

• 1:44:57Rich Roll?

  You gotta suffer through some bullshit, though.

• 1:45:00Adam Skolnick?

  Did you watch it, finally?

• 1:45:01Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:45:02Adam Skolnick?

  It's so good. Alright. Best performance by a scooper in a leading role?

• 1:45:07Rich Roll?

  This is another Skolnik classic.

• 1:45:09Adam Skolnick?

  The Cold Stone guy?

• 1:45:11Rich Roll?

  What's that guy's name again? He's friends with Joanne Molino.

• 1:45:14Adam Skolnick?

  Number one. Number two, Adam at Ben & Jerry's.

• 1:45:17Rich Roll?

  Of course it's Adam at Ben & Jerry's.

• 1:45:19Adam Skolnick?

  I could win three rolies.

• 1:45:23Rich Roll?

  You rigged it. You created the categories and then slipped yourself into them.

• 1:45:27Adam Skolnick?

  I won three of these things.

• 1:45:28Rich Roll?

  I'm disqualifying you.

• 1:45:30Adam Skolnick?

  You know what?

• 1:45:30Rich Roll?

  This is about, this is more, this is the tension between inclusion and fair play, Adam.

• 1:45:36Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna, if I win my rolies, I'm gonna smelt them on the air.

• 1:45:40Rich Roll?

  There you go. Alright. We'll livestream it here on the R and B.

• 1:45:44Adam Skolnick?

  Best streaming series?

• 1:45:46Rich Roll?

  No surprise. These nominees, because we've talked about them before. By the way, is anybody even listening or watching this anymore?

• 1:45:53Adam Skolnick?

  Are you guys still there?

• 1:45:54Rich Roll?

  Does anybody care?

• 1:45:56Adam Skolnick?

  I think we could have clipped it a little bit.

• 1:45:58Rich Roll?

  I know. It's kind of ridiculous, right? But all right, we're gonna get through this, I promise. The nominees are White Lotus, we love it, we've talked about it a lot. Station Eleven, we love it, we've talked about it a lot.

• 1:46:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Rich Roll?

  The Northwater, which I think is the Rafael Nadal of the category.

• 1:46:17Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:46:18Rich Roll?

  This is an incredible limited series that went underappreciated. I think Colin Farrell gives like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say the performance of his lifetime, but an extraordinary performance. This is the, this is the show about the whaling ship in, I forget, early, the turn of the century.

• 1:46:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:37Rich Roll?

  And it's really quite something.

• 1:46:38Adam Skolnick?

  He's like the bad lieutenant on a whaling ship, right?

• 1:46:40Rich Roll?

  Sort of.

• 1:46:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42Rich Roll?

  With a heart of gold.

• 1:46:43Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:46:44Rich Roll?

  Kinda. Ruthless.

• 1:46:46Adam Skolnick?

  You know how much I love In Bruges?

• 1:46:47Rich Roll?

  Colin is a revelation in this show.

• 1:46:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Rich Roll?

  New Edition nominee Severance. Yeah, it's a 2022 show, but fuck it. I like it.

• 1:46:58Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:46:59Rich Roll?

  I think it's pretty good. You, you're not crazy about Severance, are you?

• 1:47:01Adam Skolnick?

  I did not fall under the spell, the slow-moving, odd, bop-beat spell.

• 1:47:06Rich Roll?

  That's part of the gestalt.

• 1:47:07Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:47:08Rich Roll?

  You have to acclimate to this world.

• 1:47:10Adam Skolnick?

  That's what you guys who like Severance, you look down upon us.

• 1:47:12Rich Roll?

  The feet gets turned up ever so slightly, and then you wake up and you're at full boil.

• 1:47:17Adam Skolnick?

  You know what I watch mostly?

• 1:47:18Rich Roll?

  Peppa the Pig?

• 1:47:20Adam Skolnick?

  An elephant documentary on Disney.

• 1:47:23Rich Roll?

  The Berenstein Bears?

• 1:47:24Adam Skolnick?

  No, it's that elephant documentary on Disney narrated by Meghan Markle.

• 1:47:27Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:47:28Adam Skolnick?

  We watch it constantly.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:47:31Rich Roll?

  Have you seen Succession? Because that's the other nominee.

• 1:47:32Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I've gotten into Succession lately.

• 1:47:34Rich Roll?

  Like, starting from the beginning?

• 1:47:36Adam Skolnick?

  Starting from the beginning.

• 1:47:37Rich Roll?

  It's fantastic.

• 1:47:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  All right, we're, we're getting close to the end here.

• 1:47:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:42Rich Roll?

  Next category, best filmed content, period. Series, film, whatever.

• 1:47:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:47Rich Roll?

  What, who are the nominees here?

• 1:47:48Adam Skolnick?

  Bo Burnham, Inside.

• 1:47:50Rich Roll?

  Check.

• 1:47:51Adam Skolnick?

  Denis Villeneuve.

• 1:47:54Rich Roll?

  That's so poorly pronounced.

• 1:47:56Adam Skolnick?

  Denis?

• 1:47:57Rich Roll?

  It's Denis Villeneuve.

• 1:47:59Adam Skolnick?

  Villeneuve.

• 1:48:00Rich Roll?

  For Dune. Dune is my favorite movie of the year. I love Dune.

• 1:48:03Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:48:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The Northwater, back with The Northwater. Then we have Severance. Station 11 and you slipped a rogue nominee in here.

• 1:48:13Adam Skolnick?

  Rich's stealth TikTok account.

• 1:48:15Rich Roll?

  You know, Adam, I wish, I wish I had like some finstas. That's what the kids call them, right?

• 1:48:23Adam Skolnick?

  You have some dance moves.

• 1:48:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Adam Skolnick?

  Wait till you guys see Rich roll tap dance.

• 1:48:28Rich Roll?

  That will never be filmed.

• 1:48:30Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. Check the show notes.

• 1:48:32Rich Roll?

  I think it's time now for the honor rolly, which is our, everybody, you guys know what this is, right? The lifetime achievement award.

• 1:48:42Adam Skolnick?

  It is time for the honor rolly.

• 1:48:44Rich Roll?

  For exceptionalism and yeah, we're almost at two hours here. The lifetime achievement award for the hardest working film professional. Who could this be, Adam? This is an effort based award. You know how much I like?

• 1:48:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:58Rich Roll?

  Working hard to achieve your goal, overcoming the talent deficit gap.

• 1:49:03Adam Skolnick?

  This is the Rafa Nadal of, of rolies.

• 1:49:05Rich Roll?

  Right. There is only one person who could possibly earn this award.

• 1:49:10Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna let you say it because I know he's, you know him personally.

• 1:49:13Rich Roll?

  The award goes to

• 1:49:17Rich Roll?

  Mr. Frank Grillo.

• 1:49:22Rich Roll?

  Come on, give it up for this guy. He's been around for a long time, but in 2021, he had eight films come out.

• 1:49:30Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 1:49:30Rich Roll?

  And he has currently 11 movies that are filming or in post-production.

• 1:49:36Adam Skolnick?

  Damn.

• 1:49:37Rich Roll?

  11. Hardest working man in show business.

• 1:49:39Adam Skolnick?

  And he has literally.

• 1:49:40Rich Roll?

  Maybe Utkarsh could, could get the, could get the honor rolly next year. We'll see.

• 1:49:45Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:49:45Rich Roll?

  He's on his way, I think.

• 1:49:47Adam Skolnick?

  You're in the running.

• 1:49:48Rich Roll?

  But this year, we gotta give it up for Frank Grillo. He's in Malta right now filming a movie. Trying to get him on the podcast. It's just a scheduling thing. Hopefully when he comes back from, from Malta.

• 1:49:57Adam Skolnick?

  He's huge in Malta. He's enormous.

• 1:49:58Rich Roll?

  He's huge, he's, he's worldwide.

• 1:50:00Adam Skolnick?

  He's got, he's gone worldwide. They call him Worldwide Grillo.

• 1:50:04Rich Roll?

  This guy knows how to act in an action movie.

• 1:50:08Adam Skolnick?

  This guy knows his action.

• 1:50:10Rich Roll?

  Um, all right, we've got one more category.

• 1:50:12Adam Skolnick?

  All right, this is yours.

• 1:50:13Rich Roll?

  All right. Most overrated, overhyped film of 2021. Let's be honest, there's only one nomination for this. Only one movie deserving of this title, and that is The Matrix Resurrections. Because that movie was fucking terrible.

• 1:50:30Adam Skolnick?

  I was, I was 20 minutes deep into that when I looked at April.

• 1:50:34Rich Roll?

  Which hurts.

• 1:50:35Adam Skolnick?

  Looked at me and we're like nah.

• 1:50:37Rich Roll?

  It hurts because I love The Matrix so much.

• 1:50:39Adam Skolnick?

  Come on.

• 1:50:39Rich Roll?

  And I wanted so much to be, it to be good. And I know Lana Wachowski was trying to like, sort of play with our expectations and, and you know, upend what we thought that movie should be.

• 1:50:50Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:50:50Rich Roll?

  So some of it's purposeful, but it just didn't work for me at all.

• 1:50:53Adam Skolnick?

  No, well, even the original sequels didn't work. So I'm not surprised this one didn't work.

• 1:50:58Rich Roll?

  That's true.

• 1:50:59Adam Skolnick?

  But there is a competition, a late coming competition in this category.

• 1:51:03Rich Roll?

  Who's that?

• 1:51:03Adam Skolnick?

  Adam's TikTok account. Short-lived as it was.

• 1:51:07Rich Roll?

  You know, not such a good joke, but you know, I'll let you have it.

• 1:51:10Adam Skolnick?

  Oh wait, sorry.

• 1:51:12Rich Roll?

  Are we gonna end it? Oh, you just took it off? All right. It's gone. The Matrix Resurrections.

• 1:51:18Adam Skolnick?

  The Matrix Resurrections.

• 1:51:19Rich Roll?

  Just give them the rolly right now for that one.

• 1:51:22Rich Roll?

  So how did this go? Should we do this again next year or was this a bust?

• 1:51:27Adam Skolnick?

  I think we do it again. I think we do it bigger. I think we, we start earlier. We, we even do, I think we need to stage it. I think we need some staging.

• 1:51:36Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:36Adam Skolnick?

  We need to invite the honor rolly to come and, and speak.

• 1:51:40Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:51:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I think we go bigger. I think we go deep.

• 1:51:43Rich Roll?

  The production values are starting to escalate here.

• 1:51:46Adam Skolnick?

  The costs.

• 1:51:46Rich Roll?

  Let's just see how it lands with the audience first. And if we get a bunch of hate mail, then we'll, we'll, we'll see.

• 1:51:52Adam Skolnick?

  I know a great production designer that can help us with this.

• 1:51:54Rich Roll?

  Who's that?

• 1:51:54Adam Skolnick?

  Zuma.

• 1:51:55Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:51:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. You should see how he rearranges furniture.

• 1:51:59Rich Roll?

  All right. Enough. We're done. That was the rolies.

• 1:52:02Adam Skolnick?

  Been kicked off.

• 1:52:03Rich Roll?

  Take from him what you will.

• 1:52:05Adam Skolnick?

  It seems like you hated the rolies.

• 1:52:07Rich Roll?

  I just don't like, is this what people are tuning into the podcast for? I don't know. I don't know. But we will, we, they will tell us.

• 1:52:16Adam Skolnick?

  We are tastemakers.

• 1:52:17Rich Roll?

  Are we?

• 1:52:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm, I'm not sure.

• 1:52:20Rich Roll?

  Do you, do you feel like you're actually making people's tastes, Adam?

• 1:52:24Adam Skolnick?

  No, I feel like, you know what? This is the best, this is what I am. I am the kind of guy that at an art museum makes jokes about the art. I am an art heckler.

• 1:52:34Rich Roll?

  You're basically an old.

• 1:52:37Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  Old man Gen X.

• 1:52:39Adam Skolnick?

  I'm the guy that goes to the art museums and can't not crack jokes about whatever I see in front of me. That's what I am. That's what I want you to know about me. Yeah. So therein is why I am so.

• 1:52:54Adam Skolnick?

  Verbose.

• 1:52:55Rich Roll?

  Verbose? Fill in the blank. Maybe like tweeted us and let the audience fill in the blank there, what that adjective should be.

• 1:53:04Adam Skolnick?

  My friend Kelton Reed, who is the Writer Files, has the Writer Files podcast, great podcast, said this about Will Smith's slap. He said he wished it had been with a stiff glove, like a gentleman.

• 1:53:19Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 1:53:20Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I challenge you to a duel, Christopher Rock.

• 1:53:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, like that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really think that's the way that went down.

• 1:53:28Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  But we have breaking news that the Academy is launching an investigation. That's just, we just found that out.

• 1:53:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that is breaking.

• 1:53:37Rich Roll?

  During the break.

• 1:53:38Adam Skolnick?

  How dare you disparage my countess.

• 1:53:40Rich Roll?

  What are they gonna uncover? That it happened?

• 1:53:44Adam Skolnick?

  The deeper motivation?

• 1:53:46Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, all right, let's wrap this up. We're gonna put a pin in everything for now, and we're gonna turn our attention to my conversation with my coach, Chris Hauth, who is gonna chime in as part of this accountability strategy. This is self-serving, Adam. Like, I figure if I have Chris come on every two weeks and I do this Zoom call with him on like my progress, that will hold me accountable for actually showing up to train and following through on this open water swim race that I've got planned. So.

• 1:54:20Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 1:54:20Rich Roll?

  The idea here is.

• 1:54:21Adam Skolnick?

  Are you gonna tell people the race? You haven't actually unveiled the course yet.

• 1:54:25Rich Roll?

  I'm doing an open water swim race this summer. Let's just call it that. And so it's sort of, on the one hand, like, holding me accountable, but hopefully, the second motivation here is to sort of pop the hood and let the audience in on how the kind of vegan sausage is made. In other words, like, how I work with and communicate and collaborate with Chris, who's been my coach since 2007, to hopefully give people a sense of how that dynamic works, how I think about and go about preparing for an athletic adventure in the midst of a busy life, but also hopefully provide a sense of how you guys, the audience, might think about and go about preparing for your own. So, again, this is the first in what will likely be a series of brief check-ins with Chris in this lead-up, and

• 1:55:10Rich Roll?

  I hope you enjoy it. So. I guess I'm saying this is me and Adam signing off until next time. Thanks for joining us on today's Absurdist Jaunt. We'll see you back here in a couple of weeks. Any parting words of wisdom, Adam?

• 1:55:26Adam Skolnick?

  Don't slap strangers or friends.

• 1:55:29Rich Roll?

  Wise advice. Under any circumstances?

• 1:55:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'd say under any circumstances. A slap is a slap is a very middle of the road gesture. You can do better.

• 1:55:43Rich Roll?

  Either like full blown punch in the face or no violence.

• 1:55:47Adam Skolnick?

  Or stand down.

• 1:55:49Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna think about that.

• 1:55:50Adam Skolnick?

  Never slap.

• 1:55:52Rich Roll?

  All right. In the meantime, let's go to me chopping it up with the great Chris House.

• 1:56:06Rich Roll?

  Good to see you, Chris. I'm excited to embark upon this new little experiment here. Unfortunately, I can't get you down here every other week to do a proper in-person coach's corner, but what I can do is check in with you and do this segment where we are intending to kind of hold me accountable on this trajectory that I'm on to hopefully not drown and complete this 12 and a half mile open water swim that I'm going to be doing in June. So I look forward to all of your words of wisdom to make sure that I'm going to be okay.

• 1:56:45Chris Hauth?

  Well, it's good to have you back, back on board the training train. It's been sort of since swim run, right?

• 1:56:53Rich Roll?

  It's true. It's true. I mean, that's the last time that I trained for anything with any level of intentionality. So it definitely feels good to put something on the calendar and have a sort of north star to, you know, guide how I'm making decisions about my fitness and the rest of my schedule every single day. Although my life is infinitely more complicated than it was even during O-T-L-O and certainly a thousandfold more complicated.

• 1:57:23Rich Roll?

  Than it was in a good way than it was when I was training for Ultraman. So for me, the big challenge is being okay with not having a perfect track record in terms of being able to do every single workout and trying to hold it a little bit loose and be flexible and make sure that I'm having fun and it's nourishing my life as opposed to feeling really onerous and burdensome and a drag.

• 1:57:51Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, that's the big difference too, right? That it doesn't drain you of energy, the workouts and the training and having a goal, an event to prepare for, that it's something that excites you, invigorates you and you look forward to and it awakens that passion and that curiosity again versus something that just drags energy out of us as well as, you know, doesn't keep that same excitement and motivation going. You know, I'm not a big fan of motivation, I'm a fan of drive and something deeper to pull us through this training. But this, something to return back to a deep part of you, quite honestly, and reawakening that swimming version of you will be fun.

• 1:58:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and a little bit scary, like just scary enough, right? That I can't be too much of a slacker.

• 1:58:43Chris Hauth?

  Exactly, and that's, I think you touched on it, that's one of the most important things of choosing a goal. It's gotta be a little bit scary. You have to have a little bit of fear in there or else you're not gonna take it and yourself and the training as seriously.

• 1:58:56Rich Roll?

  Right, but I am excited to just do a swim event. We're both swimmers, that's our background, and then we both had our respective experiences in multi-sport. But I haven't done just a proper, open water, super long distance swim in and of itself, and that's my strength, right? Like, why haven't I done this? So I am kind of excited to see what that's gonna be like.

• 1:59:21Chris Hauth?

  I think you're gonna love it. I think you're really gonna enjoy it. Now, you'll see in the process to getting out there and doing a few test swims, you know my coaching strategies are always around simulations, and I think you'll enjoy those alone in lakes and so forth and just getting comfortable with that all-day swimming pace again and zoning out into that.

• 1:59:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're not quite there yet.

• 1:59:46Rich Roll?

  We're not quite there. I hadn't swum with any regularity in a very long time. So my reintroduction to doing anything structured in the pool has been humbling, to say the least. And before we even dive a little bit more into that, I think it's worth talking a little bit about, on the subject of humility, I suppose, what just transpired with respect to Jesse Itzler doing Ultraman Arizona on ostensibly very little training and the guidance that you gave him and what transpired on Instagram that we all watched with glee, seeing him complete that very difficult race. And then we had talked earlier about he credited you

• 2:00:29Rich Roll?

  and thanked you profusely for the guidance that you gave him. And now you're on the receiving end of a lot of inbound emails and text messages. And I can just imagine, it's like, oh, Jesse did Ultraman Arizona on no training? How can I do Ultraman on no training?

• 2:00:44Chris Hauth?

  Or any endeavor on no training.

• 2:00:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which kind of misses the point, right?

• 2:00:50Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, it does. But that's the thing about him. And when we had that discussion in Minnesota two weeks prior to him doing Ultraman, is that I know him well enough that he has a consistent training background. I know that he's been cycling some, that he's always a consistent runner. And so he has a platform to launch from. This isn't literally out of zero. And he has a history to do hard things, especially from a mental standpoint. So you put all those ingredients together, I felt pretty good about saying yes.

• 2:01:23Rich Roll?

  Which, yeah, I can't imagine you would be so quick to say with other people. Like, he does have that background and the mental game, the mental fortitude, which is kind of what he leads with.

• 2:01:37Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, and we discussed this sort of never defer approach. And quite honestly, it brought up bigger emotions and bigger thoughts as we were talking about it even post the event. He's had a lot go on in the last week in his life, but he also had the opportunity.

• 2:01:59Chris Hauth?

  He lost his father, quite honestly, right? And so he had the opportunity by not deferring, doing this event with his father, watching and still taking part in this visual activity and seeing him suffer and work through this. And he was so proud and like, had he not done this, right? Like, it just, the universe, how bizarrely it aligned in this respect. I mean, I haven't even talked to him about this aspect, but never defer, at least go through the filter process, talk to the people around you and take chances because you never know what the adventure and the experience will bring. So it was a special, special event with him.

• 2:02:44Chris Hauth?

  And yeah, you know what? We spoke every evening. I texted him during the event so that the crew could read him things and so on. But it's, you know, we knew that with fueling and hydration and the proper mindset, there is a way, a narrow way to navigate through this. And he did it.

• 2:03:03Rich Roll?

  He had to really thread the needle. I know that the swim was the scariest part for him and he caught a bit of a break with that because the chop in the wind was so crazy that they called the swim off when I think he was about a kilometer or a kilometer and a half into it. And he got a bit of a breather before getting on the bike. So I think that, you know, basically put him in a good position to be able to complete this thing. And he can always say that he is an Ultraman. And had he, you know, wavered, like you said, or deferred, perhaps it never would have come around again, or it would have come around again in a way where he would have been less suited or prepared to be able to complete it.

• 2:03:42Chris Hauth?

  Well, you and I have talked about this before and this is, ties us back to your event. It's more a question of our lives are not going to get emptier anytime soon. Right? It's just, that's what I told Jesse.

• 2:03:53Rich Roll?

  I keep deluding myself about that, though. I keep thinking, like, it's gonna calm down, like, to my grave, right?

• 2:03:58Chris Hauth?

  No, no. And that's what I said to Jesse. I was like, do you think in a year from now, if you differ, all of a sudden, your schedule is gonna be emptier? Like, his schedule is filling up left and right with all the projects. Exactly. So I said, let's just take it now, while you can. And you're healthy, you're not injured. It's a key ingredient for something like this. And we'll find out. And he lived a true adventure. And that is where you don't know if this is a reality or if you can finish. And you really have to dig into a place. He knows what an adventure, an endurance adventure, is like already when you're trained for it. He's done enough of those. Well, guess what? He got to do something very few of us ever get to do.

• 2:04:43Chris Hauth?

  Do one untrained. Like, showing up at a 100-mile run with no training. Or something like that. Like, just imagine that. So that was something I was extremely proud of his grit and resolve with, that he did not let any voice get in the way of his finish.

• 2:05:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, speaking of voices getting in the way, I've got lots of voices in my head that are angling to get in my way and often succeed in that regard. But I am really encouraged and excited about this preparation phase that I'm in right now. So we've been working together with some degree of intentionality for only like, I don't know, four or six weeks at this point, I think. And taking it very gradually. But just the consistency in the pool, like, it's already kicking in. I have so much muscle memory from swimming that I trust and know that with regularity, it will come back, even though I'm, you know, getting up there in years.

• 2:05:45Rich Roll?

  And it's been good to be able to just get in the pool every day, see just the tiniest bit of incremental improvement. And I feel myself... Doing what I always do, which is, why is this workout only 3,500? Like, I can go 5,000.

• 2:06:01Chris Hauth?

  I was gonna comment on that.

• 2:06:03Rich Roll?

  I had enough time to stack another 1,500 on top of this. And I have to remember, I remember this in our Ultraman ramp ups, where I would start feeling really fit and get anxious about wanting to up the volume prematurely. And always remembering that that, that, that slow build is part of building that strong foundation, because it will get hard and it will get harder than you think it's gonna get in time, but at the right time.

• 2:06:31Chris Hauth?

  At the right time. And again, it's keeping you healthy and injury free and motivated throughout. And so many people will enter into a great event or an adventure or an experience. And the first, you know, 10, 14 days, they're all gung ho on the training. And next thing you know, it's like, oh, oh, this is a lot more than my body can handle and that my life schedule can handle, quite honestly. I jumped in a little bit too aggressively. And so I was also noticing that with you, sort of trying to cheat in a few 5,000 yard swims. So I want to keep in mind that we wanted to be sure that you know what we're doing and why. And so we're first building your endurance. And your endurance is gonna be about doing the distance.

• 2:07:16Chris Hauth?

  And then it's gonna be about stamina, which is about doing the distance faster, right? That's the difference between the two. One is how long can you go? And the other one is how long can you go fast? Fast relative to what we're looking to do for the event that we're getting ready for. And so your confidence in being able to swim around 30,000 yards is what you're sort of thinking, is going to revolve around us gently building our weeks so that then we can put the windows of training together, where you have some extra time, that we can do some serious volume in. And you build that confidence in a healthy and enjoyable way. Because if your shoulders start hurting

• 2:08:00Chris Hauth?

  or you're just depleted, that's not gonna do us any good in May if your event is in June. We don't, we want to avoid that. We want to peak at the right time and also build the confidence along with it so that you hit the event knowing, I can do this.

• 2:08:15Rich Roll?

  I'm certainly not going to head into this with the kind of lack of preparation that Jesse approached Ultraman, but here we are at the beginning of May and this thing is in June. Like, that's not that much time. It is a little bit scary and I think that motivates me like, "Hey, man, like, we gotta make some hay here or this is gonna be a disaster."

• 2:08:37Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. Well, and that's why we're sort of gonna break it down into weeks where, well, let's say 12 weeks to go, 12, 13 weeks, no pressure, but that we have, you know, a long workout, a long aerobic workout that you feel comfortable in just not paying attention to pace, but just swim your all-day pace and do some long sets. We'll do something where we're gonna do a lot of intervals and steady state work, where you feel good about, once again, the stamina that you're building, so how fast you're holding the steady states, not best effort, but just, "This is faster than I usually would swim, but now I'm doing 8 200s or 6 300s instead of just shorter or less volume." And then we'll do some, a workout with some speed and drills in it, you know, so that

• 2:09:21Chris Hauth?

  you get your, your power back and integrate all that into your swimming economy so that you get back into the pool and those thousands or eight hundreds of going at all-day pace feel really comfortable, steady, and you have good traction on your pull-through.

• 2:09:39Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Quick footnote, I said May, I meant April. We're at the beginning of April, but either way, not that much time. It's been fun, kind of on Instagram showing, like, you know, I write out the workout in a, in a Sharpie and then I share it on Instagram stories, because I think people who aren't immersed in the world of swimming think you just go to the pool and you swim back and forth until your time is up, and that's very far from the truth. Everything is broken up into sets. Every set has an intention, and I'm always trying to read between the lines when I look at the sets that you come up for me and think, "What is the purpose of this? Like, why is this set coming after this one?" Oftentimes, it's sort of like, "Oh, I see. He wants me to ramp up to some tempo

• 2:10:22Rich Roll?

  or do a little bit of hypoxic breath work." And then go right into an aerobic set to see how my body responds and how long or quickly I can return to that baseline. So it's all about like different modalities for acclimating to an endurance race and then mixing it up with obviously all the kind of technique based stuff, drills, kick, making sure all your body parts are being trained properly as well.

• 2:10:49Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. I mean, you got to figure we can't go out and swim 22,000 yards each workout, right?

• 2:10:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no way.

• 2:10:55Chris Hauth?

  You're getting ready.

• 2:10:55Rich Roll?

  I couldn't do that once. I couldn't do that at all right now.

• 2:10:59Chris Hauth?

  So therefore, how do we make a 4,000 yard workout affect when you're getting ready for 20,000 yards? And so creating fatigue pockets, intensity, breath work, things like that, and then returning to your go all day pace will highlight to you how you're progressing in your fitness, right? We're creating insertion points that are supposed to fatigue you and now how does that feel swimming a 400, a 300 or a steady set from that? And that's where we're at right now.

• 2:11:30Rich Roll?

  Right. One of the other pieces to this that I kind of presented you with is the idea of building in some cycling into this for the sole purpose of expanding your, my aerobic like zone two base, because I can ride my bike longer than I can swim in the pool right now. I can go out for four hours, five hours, maintain an elevated heart rate for an extended period of time without risk of injuring myself unless I get hit by a car or something like that. Like I'm not going to throw my shoulder out or anything like that. How do you think about that? Like how beneficial is that going to be? Should I just be in the pool and maximizing that because we have so little time? Or do you

• 2:12:13Rich Roll?

  think that I'm getting a value add from that?

• 2:12:16Chris Hauth?

  There is a value add, especially mentally with regards to I know I can do a two, three, four hour activity right now. Where my heart rate is elevated. And so that is definitely part of it. I do that a lot with swimming and running as well. Well, I can go out when I do a coast drive, for example, and I ride my bike six to eight hours a day. Well, that doesn't necessarily translate into my running ability, but it does translate to me that I know I can do something continuously for six to eight hours. And so that helps build my confidence for running and so forth. And so that's how I would mainly approach it. Yes, there is a fitness point in the beginning here where your zone two and elevated heart rate, just even in an aerobic space, is going to be helpful,

• 2:13:01Chris Hauth?

  delivering more oxygen to the working muscles and so forth. But eventually, we're going to hit a point where that is truly active recovery and mental space versus the value of time in the pool, for sure. But we're not there yet.

• 2:13:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:13:16Chris Hauth?

  And I actually like that time out there because you're using different muscles and the oxygen, the stress is lower on the body. So that then when you return to the pool, there's a more intentional focus around it.

• 2:13:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And it also gives my upper body muscles a day to bounce back a little bit so that when I am in the pool, it's not just junk miles or what have you. I can be a little bit more focused and fresh and try to get the most out of it.

• 2:13:44Chris Hauth?

  Yes, for sure.

• 2:13:47Rich Roll?

  One question about zone two. So when I'm on the bike, like I know what my zones are heart rate wise, assuming they haven't varied dramatically from what they used to be. But when I'm in the pool, I'm not wearing a heart rate monitor. I'm not really paying attention to that.

• 2:14:02Chris Hauth?

  What?

• 2:14:03Rich Roll?

  I could. I could be like a total tri dork and wear that strap in the pool.

• 2:14:08Chris Hauth?

  And stop your watch.

• 2:14:10Rich Roll?

  Lots of people do that.

• 2:14:11Chris Hauth?

  And you gotta stop your watch after every 150.

• 2:14:14Rich Roll?

  Come on, I want that file. And click it when you do the drills to make sure that it's logging your yardage accurately.

• 2:14:20Chris Hauth?

  For kicking.

• 2:14:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. But I do, because I have such a, like yourself, like such a robust background in swimming, like I'm pretty connected. Like I know what my kind of effort levels are to achieve that. But if somebody's watching this or listening to it, and they're thinking about how they're approaching their training in the pool, how does the conversation around zones apply to that person?

• 2:14:44Chris Hauth?

  That's where we often have an 800 or 600 or 500 at the end of a swim practice, sort of where you jump into your all-day pace. We wouldn't do it as much by heart rate because we're not going to be testing heart rate. But at the end of a workout, let's say you say, all right, I'm just going to no clock or get my time for a 500, but it's got to feel like my go-all-day swim pace. Like I'm going to go swim the next two, three hours at this pace. I would usually suggest at least 500. I personally do 1,000. And then that pace gives me a good idea of what my true aerobic zone two swimming pace would be. So for us, let's say, just so that you get a number around it, let's say it's 120 right

• 2:15:30Chris Hauth?

  now, 121. Literally, you just go all-day pace. If I had to swim 10,000 straight right now, at what effort level would I start? And that's what I'm going to swim that 1,000 at. Well, over time, we'll notice from that sensation, what we usually know as heart rate when we're outside biking and running, that that time will come down. Same effort level, that it's going down to a 118 and a 117. So we keep one sensation the same, output level, feel, RPE, and the time improves as we're getting fitter. But we want that at the end of the workout. Otherwise, our RPE and our sensation is going to be a little bit off. So that's why it's key to sort of burn off the anaerobic juices and especially muscle

• 2:16:15Chris Hauth?

  glycogen too. And then with those tanks empty, you get a better sense and RPE of what you are truly going at an aerobic pace at.

• 2:16:25Rich Roll?

  Right. One of the techniques that you have deployed with me over the years that I think is really effective is making sure that your key discipline is being trained under fatigue, right? So in Ultraman, you never want to go out and run on fresh legs because that's not going to be the experience at the race. You always want your runs to be on the heels of a very difficult cycling workout or swim workout so that Every time you're running, you're tired. In this case, because this it's just one discipline, but it is so long, I suspect at some point during this training cycle, you're going to throw some stuff at me like maybe a difficult ride, you know, right before that swim.

• 2:17:09Rich Roll?

  So how do you think about or what do you have in store for me in terms of stressing me in that way?

• 2:17:15Chris Hauth?

  I love negative split swimming. Right where you have to start the first half of whatever it is and make the second half faster. So that you A, you learn your pacing, but B, you really have to dig deep in order to make that second half faster. So you're coming into that second half of those eight hundreds, of those thousands of, let's say, forty one hundreds. Each 10, you're progressing the interval. Things like that where you are coming into the last 10 with a pretty good load in on the arms and the body and the whole system. So similarly like that. Now, of course, we can do it cycling, but it's a different type of fatigue. It's actually, in my opinion, a little bit better running.

• 2:17:59Chris Hauth?

  But again, we don't need that for what you're planning to do. I think what you're going to find is long swim workouts and then having a money set, as I like to call it, at the back end. So let's say you just swim a 6,000 or 7,000 yard workout. And then we do a money set and you're like, oh.

• 2:18:18Rich Roll?

  Right, putting the main set at the very end of the workout.

• 2:18:20Chris Hauth?

  Exactly, exactly. And, and again, that builds confidence that knowing at two hours in, I can still do X, Y, Z, that feels good.

• 2:18:30Rich Roll?

  Right. One of the things that that I always experience, and I've shared this in the training logs with you. When I start to get back in the water with some consistency is that I begin with one gear. Like I have an aerobic base, so I can get in and swim back and forth, fine, but the minute I have to ramp it up and do something hard, my arms won't do what my brain is telling them to do because I don't have the strength. And to the extent that I can ramp it up a little bit, I can't sustain it for any significant period of time. Like I just completely fall apart. So as we build that aerobic base and start throwing. Going down some tempo sets and descending sets, et cetera. That starts to slowly come together and then I start paying attention to what we were talking about earlier. Like, how many gears do I have?

• 2:19:15Rich Roll?

  Can I go to two gears and then three gears and four gears? And how much control do I have? Like, if I'm doing a set of descending 100s, can I really lock in and make sure that I'm inching down in time with each one in a consistent way? And the better adapted I am to doing that, the more fit I am. And the more quickly my body will reset to baseline, particularly on short rest. That's a really good indicator that the fitness is starting to come online.

• 2:19:46Chris Hauth?

  As well as what you're also going to notice is your understanding, your feel of pace is going to be critical in open water. So you don't start too hot or too slow on event day. And you want to be able to know what that pace is no matter what. Even if you're hungry, even if you're fatigued, even if you're whatever it is, whatever the burden on you is, that you still can click into whatever your open water swim pace is. Or at least you can feel what 110 is like, what 115 is like, and what 120 is like and so forth. I was talking to somebody today, and he's doing a last man standing event. It's going to be critical that you know your pace.

• 2:20:31Chris Hauth?

  And the same thing for open water, there's no clock. So you want to be able to just know, okay, I'm swimming pretty well. I can feel my pace is going very well.

• 2:20:43Rich Roll?

  One of the things that I have to get comfortable with is knowing that I'm going to show up at this race not as fully prepared as I would like to. And that kicks in a lot of ego stuff. Like, I don't want to toe the line unless I know that I've put in 110% and earned the right to be there and have taken it seriously, et cetera. And that's just not the reality of my busy life. So can I show up at 65% or 70%, depending upon how busy I get?

• 2:21:15Chris Hauth?

  You're just like every one of my other athletes.

• 2:21:18Rich Roll?

  I can't, and like, still have fun and let go of all of that other bullshit, because who the fuck cares?

• 2:21:26Chris Hauth?

  Exactly. Well, your current 110%, that's the key.

• 2:21:31Chris Hauth?

  That's the key that unlocks this all. You cannot compare yourself to 25-year-old rich, 35-year-old rich, 45-year-old rich. It's your current 110%. If you feel you did what you could going into this event, it takes so much of a burden off. You can't be somebody different. You can only be you. And your ability to do what you currently can, that's going to be critical. That's showing up with intention because you know, this is all I can do. I'm not futzing around watching Netflix all day. I've got a busy life. But when I do show up, I gave it my best. And come event day, you will have that to fall back upon.

• 2:22:15Chris Hauth?

  Is there always wishful thinking of, well, back in the day, I could have done this? Of course there is. But you can't be that person again. That's the past. And you're gonna not enjoy your day and this experience nearly as much if you're stuck in the past version of yourself.

• 2:22:33Rich Roll?

  Right. I will say that it's a lot less time-consuming to just swim than to do all the other nonsense that takes up so much time. You know? It's like, wow, hour and a half and I'm done for the day. And it's just, yeah, it's on the way to work or whatever. It's like, that's not so bad.

• 2:22:51Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. Yeah, the main thing is for me over the next week or so, or two weeks, is that you really understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, and get a good sense of where we're progressing to, right? And like we talked about, we have some longer workouts. We have some shorter stuff. If you have extra time, I'm gonna give you an extra workout or two and put it into Training Peaks so that you can choose from the library and draw down from that. And that we sort of navigate through these next two, three weeks with some consistency that you feel good like I'm progressing. I'm not just treading water, I'm progressing. And you're gonna find that just being in the pool frequently is gonna automatically do that for you.

• 2:23:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so much of it is the consistency.

• 2:23:34Chris Hauth?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:35Rich Roll?

  But final thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, what are the, what are my blind spots right now? When you're looking at my logs or you're thinking about getting me ready and you knowing me as well as you know me? Like, you know, when you have a shake-your-head moment? Like, what is it that you wanna tell me?

• 2:23:53Chris Hauth?

  Well, one, it's it's training where you are, not where you want to be. Right? That's the key. And that's when you jump ahead and do the 5,000 yards. Because it feels good. And of course, you're in our mind, we go, okay, that's a quarter of the race. That's great, right? I can already in March do a quarter of my day. But again, we're building along a plan. There's a path. There's a clarity to where we're heading. And so we got to trust the process, number one. And then secondly, you know, like you, you've brought both the things up already. The other one is be good to yourself. This is, this is gonna be fun. This is where you exhale. This is where we don't want to judge ourselves and compare ourselves to past versions.

• 2:24:36Chris Hauth?

  But just really embrace, look at this, I get to swim outside in California on my way to work. Feel great, have a lot of energy, fill my cup before I go to work. And just good physical activity. It's something I love to do. We always get out of the water feeling awesome and like invigorated. And that was pretty good. Yeah, our arms might feel a little tired. But the whole cleansing aspect of swimming is so powerful. And yeah, go with those two things. It's gonna be fine. You're gonna have a blast doing this event. I think you're really gonna enjoy open water swimming. I'm excited for you. And you will be ready.

• 2:25:16Chris Hauth?

  It's like what I told you when you just did wildflower triathlon way back many years ago. And you're like, dude, I'm thinking about Ultraman. And I was like, I'll get you ready. This isn't a question of if, just a question of how.

• 2:25:30Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, if nothing else, just having this conversation with you and sharing it publicly, which makes me feel very vulnerable, makes it so much less likely that I'm gonna like cop out and not show up. So if it serves no other master other than to, you know, hold me accountable to show up, then it is a, I know that's part of your dastardly plan, but it's effective.

• 2:25:57Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, it's training weeks, not workouts. Keep that in mind. Training weeks, not workouts. So you just keep stacking the workouts, you'll stack the training weeks and it'll all come together.

• 2:26:08Rich Roll?

  Excellent, man. Well, I'll do my best and I'll check in with you in another two weeks publicly. And you can, you know, take my address and tell me what I'm doing wrong and tell me what I'm doing right.

• 2:26:20Chris Hauth?

  I will.

• 2:26:20Rich Roll?

  And we'll just go from there.

• 2:26:22Chris Hauth?

  Remember, be intentional with the whole thing. And also, as you're going through it, something I always like to tell athletes is, what does this look like when it's going well? So as you look ahead of your week of training, go, what does this week look like if it went really well? On Friday, how will I, or on Sunday, how will I look back and go, you know what? That was a pretty good training week. It takes us out of the intervals and the pace and more bigger picture. I had a good week.

• 2:26:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, one of the things that you've done is kind of create a bunch of workouts. And then I say to you, I'm not sure which days these are going to work because my schedule is very fluid. And being a little bit loose with that, like just if you get these three things in on whatever days. And then if you have extra time, you can work this in. But if you can't, don't worry about it because the core is taken care of.

• 2:27:11Chris Hauth?

  Exactly.

• 2:27:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right, my friend. Well, I appreciate the guidance as always. It's been, how long, it's how many years has it been? We started around early, we started 2007, late 2006?

• 2:27:26Chris Hauth?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:27Rich Roll?

  Is when this conversation began?

• 2:27:29Chris Hauth?

  I still have that first email.

• 2:27:31Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do?

• 2:27:32Chris Hauth?

  That introductory email from Gavin.

• 2:27:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, I'd like to resurface that. I'm sure I have it too, but forward it to me. Like, that's, that would be fun to see. Good, man. Well, thank you for all the sound advice and guidance.

• 2:27:47Chris Hauth?

  Absolutely. And our circle closed again. Gavin swam with me this morning.

• 2:27:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did? Wow. For those that don't know, my roommate, when I lived in San Francisco, and the initial point of contact between the two of us, he is steady as they go. The most consistent human being I've ever met.

• 2:28:07Rich Roll?

  We love you Calvin. Cool man. Well, I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Chris. All right. All right. Thanks, Rich. Peace.

• 2:28:42Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.