Prophets Walk Among Us — Thoughts On Beirut, Eradicating Single Use Plastic, Listener Q’s + More

Welcome to another edition of Roll On—my bi-monthly deep dive into (semi) current events, topics of audience interest, and of course answers to your questions. Once again serving up co-host duties is hype man Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist perhaps best known as David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me co-author. Adam has written about adventure sports, environmental issues and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is also the author of One Breath, which chronicles the life and death of America's greatest freediver, and is currently hard at work on a novel. Some of the many topics explored in today's conversation include: Heart rate zones, aerobic training, functional strength & dynamic workouts The Beirut explosion, Rich's experiences in Beirut & how you can help The politicization of USPS & compromised integrity of our forthcoming election Finding mentors in our every day lives Bureo Hat & Net Positiva -- products from recycled fishing nets The 30 Day No Single Use Plastic Challenge What is going on with QAnon LeBron James & Patrick Mahomes tackle voter suppression In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How is creative expression related to well-being? How does one move forward post-breakup? If there is a through-line of sobriety, diet, and endurance, what is the universal truth that threads them together? And my thoughts on Joe Rogan moving from LA to Texas, and the mass exodus of digital workers in this age of work from home. Thank you to Camille from Illinois, Gabriel from Puerto Rico, Josh from North Carolina, and John for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. This is one of my increasingly rare audio-only podcasts — you can find it streaming wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 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.

• 1:22Rich Roll?

  All right. Me and my hype man, Adam Skolnick, are back. Today, we talk about a ton of stuff. Beirut, what is happening with the post office, a challenge that we offer to rid our lives of single-use plastics, and many, many other subjects, including listener questions on journaling and creativity, navigating a breakup, tools for self-discovery, and the growing trend of city-center exodus. So strap in, because it's time to take roll call.

• 1:59Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, we're back. Welcome to another edition of Roll On. I kind of feel like we should call this Roll Call.

• 2:05Adam Skolnick?

  Roll Call?

• 2:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we need to rebrand it. I'm not sure. Either way, I'm here with my hype man, Adam Skolnick, journalist, author, swim run aficionado, environmentalist, activist.

• 2:18Adam Skolnick?

  Hey, good to be here. Roll Call. Wait, we've had, this is like the sixth one. So should we just rename it every six?

• 2:27Rich Roll?

  Give it a new name for every single episode?

• 2:30Adam Skolnick?

  Every six pack?

• 2:30Rich Roll?

  I don't know. Let us know what you guys think. A quick overview on the format, which is a little bit different than my typical long form interviews. We generally touch on a big story. We have a few thoughts on a couple of things today. We share a teachable moment. We do a little show and tell and we do listener questions. Did I miss anything?

• 2:53Adam Skolnick?

  You missed the part where we got evicted from the usual studio because of a construction crew.

• 2:59Rich Roll?

  So today, we are in the third iteration of our makeshift studio adventure. We're on this like tour of trying to find a different place to record the podcast for seemingly every episode. So just to backtrack, when COVID started, we decided the responsible thing was to move the podcast out of my home, which is where I've done it for many, many years. And we found this amazing space, this beautiful, huge cavernous studio location that was ideal for not just audio recording, but for video. We had this beautiful long table and we created this set. That space became unavailable. So we moved to a smaller

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  room and tried to recreate the same look and feel. And today, we showed up in that location to discover that there was a construction crew camped out front unloading a gigantic industrial drill.

• 3:54Rich Roll?

  And preparing to drill literally feet away from the microphones. And we realized, okay, this is not going to be a tenable recording situation. So at the last minute, we scrambled, found a little room to record. I'm on a bit of a tight timeline today. So we were unable to get the video equipment up and running. So today is, is audio only. And I should also point out, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast yet, but we are closing on a permanent studio space, a headquarters for the show for the long term. And that's very exciting.

• 4:31Adam Skolnick?

  Worldwide headquarters. It's amazing.

• 4:33Rich Roll?

  The worldwide RRP headquarters is underway.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  And that means more of what you love.

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It'll probably be Thanksgiving by the time we're fully in, but we've closed on the space. It's a raw, brand new 2,000 square foot, I think, warehouse space. So we're going to build a set. We're going to build offices. It's going to be like the ultimate hang and I'm super excited about it. We're also going to document it on video. I got my man Davey here and we're going to do a little series on the construction of that and the intention behind it, which I'm pretty excited about as well. So stay tuned for more on that.

• 5:10Adam Skolnick?

  That's gonna be awesome.

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  The word on the street, Adam, is that you've decided to tackle the zone two aerobic training. How's that going? We should call this section fitness corner or something like that.

• 5:23Adam Skolnick?

  Fitness in the gray zone.

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  Fitness check in after our conversation the other week.

• 5:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. Thank you for that. By the way, I went out as soon as we had that conversation, I ordered a Garmin Try chesty, which I've named Chester.

• 5:39Rich Roll?

  Chester, the heart rate strap.

• 5:41Adam Skolnick?

  Chester, the heart rate flogger. And so I wear that now. And right away I went out with it and. I did a benchmark run in the desert. This is right before the heat wave.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  To try to set your zones.

• 5:54Adam Skolnick?

  Set the zones. Well, I read that math stuff, right?

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  Math at home, yeah.

• 5:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that you sent over. And then you also sent the warning, prepare to be humbled. And so straight away, like my first runs were like, as you said, 10 and a half minute mile kind of pace keeps me in that 132. So according to math, because I haven't done the lactate training, 132, based on my age, is my target.

• 6:15Rich Roll?

  Right. Which is not a highly accurate number, I should point out.

• 6:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because you gave yourself a range, right?

• 6:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not a black or white thing. It's a range. It's a spectrum. And the DIY method of trying to establish your zones based on your age is an okay way of doing it. But ideally, you want to get into a proper lactate test where they're basically putting you on a treadmill or putting you on a stationary bike and ramping up the speed or the watts and then pricking your finger for blood at intervals as you notch up the intensity. And that way, they can determine with great specificity what exactly your zones are.

• 6:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and I will do that as soon as the pandemic is over.

• 6:56Rich Roll?

  Right. And whenever that may be.

• 6:59Adam Skolnick?

  In the meantime, so I figured, based on what you had said, you said your range is like 130 to 143. So I gave myself a range. Basically, I'm trying to stay in the green zone on Garmin, which translates to zone two on Strava and everything else. So what I found is I can, it's not hard to run in that zone. Like, it's

• 7:18Rich Roll?

  It's not supposed to be.

• 7:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And so I'm like, well, I could run at that zone kind of forever. Like, that's the good part. But the bad part is, once I left the desert and came back to my normal swim run terrain, I'm just seeing everybody, everybody pass me. And it's slower than 10 and a half minutes a mile.

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Adam Skolnick?

  It's like, in some cases, it's 11 and a half minutes a mile. It's so slow, it's hard for me to run at that pace. And so And so I'm kind of giving myself a little bit of slack, but yesterday I did a seven and a half mile swim run workout, which typically takes me maybe an hour and a half, I guess. And it took me almost like over two hours and I just felt a little bit demoralized. I felt like, you know, but it's only been a couple of weeks, so I'm just going to stick with it. I have talked to Teddy and Ted McDonald and a couple of other people and it sounds like to really get better and so that your zone two becomes an eight and a half minute

• 8:16Adam Skolnick?

  mile instead of a 10 and a half minute mile or slower, that you also have to work in some tempo runs, like you were saying, and some intervals. Is that what you'd say?

• 8:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that's less important than just persistently training in that zone two.

• 8:31Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  You should like once or twice a week have a speed or tempo workout.

• 8:36Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  But you don't need to be doing those that often. The focus, the gravamen of the training needs to be in that zone two space. And it is humbling.

• 8:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  But that's, again, that's the discipline. That's the work. It's checking the ego.

• 8:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Rich Roll?

  And staying consistent with it. And the other thing I would add to that is what you will find when you're not well-trained in your aerobic zone, the minute you step it up and go to a tempo pace, your heart rate will spike drastically. And then when you drop back down into a zone two cadence, it will take a long time for your heart rate to come back down. And the more fit you are, the more aerobically fit, I mean, by virtue of training in that zone two space, the more quickly your heart rate will come back down. Like you'll be able to normalize. So you'll be able to like ramp it up, like, okay, I'll do an interval, a 60 second tempo run, and then bring it back to zone two. And your heart rate will come right back down.

• 9:36Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 9:37Rich Roll?

  And that's a great indicator of how fit you are. If when you're trying to come back down, you're super winded and it's taking a long time for you to normalize once again, that's good information that you have work to do.

• 9:49Adam Skolnick?

  So really, it's just because that's what I came home yesterday, finding it so hard to believe. Like, so if I just keep doing, because what I did yesterday was what I normally do, three mile run plus mile swim plus three mile run plus kind of thing. And that's seven and a half miles in terms of be. And so I'm thinking like, so if I just keep doing that zone two, pretty soon those three mile runs are going to get fast, like just from that.

• 10:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you have to be extremely patient. This is a long game.

• 10:14Adam Skolnick?

  Like six months?

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  Long game. This is not the, uh, the menu for the time crunched athlete. This is the menu for long-term success, like years, right? But if you invest six, nine months persistently training this way, you're going to see tremendous dividends.

• 10:33Adam Skolnick?

  I'm excited because running has always been really hard for me. It's always been, and that's made it less fun. Like, it's always been, uh, suffering, like even if I'm running nine and a half minute miles, it never feels easy. And running this way does feel easy, um, which I like. And if I can get faster than I was before and it feels easy, like that's a, to me, that's a huge carrot. I love that.

• 10:56Rich Roll?

  There was quite a bit of feedback from the last time that we talked about this and a lot of people were saying, oh, I'm trying this for the first time. And what's great about it is that it's fun because you're not exhausting yourself. If you finish a zone two run and you feel super tired or spent, you didn't do it right. You're not supposed to be spent at the end of these. And that is counter programming because we feel like when we train or we work out, we should, you know, give it our best. And then when it's all said and done, we can be like, oh, man, I really laid it all out there. This is the opposite of that.

• 11:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  And again, that's the discipline. It's a different kind of discipline. It's a withholding discipline.

• 11:37Adam Skolnick?

  But it's still, you still burn a number of calories. It's not like the calorie count's that bad.

• 11:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:42Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just worried that someone's gonna call. Like, I was getting cheered on by people because I was running so slow, they probably thought that like something was wrong with me.

• 11:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Adam Skolnick?

  And I just don't want anyone to call the paramedics on me.

• 11:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:52Adam Skolnick?

  Like, I've had people call lifeguards and fire people on me, like in Hawaii, when they saw me way out swimming, and they're like, "He doesn't seem like he's going fast enough to mean to be out there," you know? Like, they thought they were saving my life. And then I'd, I'd come in, I'd swim in, and I, I hear sirens. I'm like, "God, I wonder what happened to somebody. I hope they're okay." And then I get to the beach.

• 12:13Adam Skolnick?

  And the fireman's like, "Wait a second, were you way out there?" And I'm like, "Uh, yeah, yeah, that was me." And he goes, "You're okay?" And I'm like, "Yeah."

• 12:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, someone called, someone called search and rescue on me.

• 12:26Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah, they're just not used to seeing people that far out. I went and swam in Malibu the other day, and I went way past out the break. And, and, and it occurs to me, I'm like, "They're probably watching me, worried," you know? Like, I'm fine, but, you know, that's their job.

• 12:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's fine. I'm like, I just don't want to get charged for search and rescue if I didn't need it.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  And just to put it into perspective, when I was training for my first Ultraman in 2008, and I was trying to acclimate to this program and, and fighting it all the way, thinking, "This is a terrible idea." Like, "How am I ever gonna finish this crazy race if this is the protocol?" And I remember getting passed by, like, pregnant women pushing their babies and stuff.

• 13:07Adam Skolnick?

  Pushing future baby and real baby.

• 13:09Rich Roll?

  "I'm training for this ultra endurance race, and I can't, you know, I can't even keep pace with, you know, so just, you know, invest in it, believe in it, trust in it."

• 13:20Adam Skolnick?

  I do. I trust you. And the cool part is, I've been getting quicker anyway, doing this gray zone thing. And, you know, for me, though, like, running a 10K at 6.5 miles an hour pace. Takes a lot of energy. Like, I can't imagine doing that for two, three hours. But I can imagine doing this, you know, green zone, like zone two, running at five and a half miles an hour for two or three hours. Like, I can see myself doing that.

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  And you'll be able to do that. The thing that you'll then have to bear in mind is this understanding that your heart and your lungs will develop more rapidly than the ligaments and the tendons in your joints, in your legs. And so there'll be this inclination, this desire to ramp up your volume quickly because you feel so good and you do have that sense like, oh, I could do this all day. And you're like, it's Saturday, I am going to go all day. But the problem is, it takes time for the muscles in your legs and the joints and the tendons and the ligaments to acclimate to that load. And you have to be very careful. And this is a big reason why a lot of people get injured because they, you know, allow

• 14:27Rich Roll?

  themselves to ramp up that volume too quickly. So, again, it's a matter of like, building the volume very, very slowly, even when you want to go harder and further, holding back, putting in a bigger week, putting in another bigger week, then having a rest week where you really dial it back and then notching it up very, very gradually. And for a long time, it feels like you're not doing anything. And you're like, when am I going to train?

• 14:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  But the curve is like asymptotic, like it feels flat for a very long time. And then, when you get to a certain level of fitness and acclimation, then you can dial up the volume. And that's where you really start to realize the benefits of this and see the gains.

• 15:09Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. Did you just call me asymptotic?

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  I called you, yes. That's your new.

• 15:14Adam Skolnick?

  I like that word. That's a word I've never heard before.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  Nickname for the podcast. I will say that I've gone in the other direction. Now for a little more counter-programming.

• 15:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Rich Roll?

  They say in the sacred, secret halls of recovery that you can't transmit something you haven't got. And part of the mentorship relationship that you have in that community is that you got to walk the walk. Like, you can't tell people or advise people to do a certain thing if you're not doing it yourself. And part of that dynamic, when you're the person in the mentorship role, is that it holds you accountable, like it forces you to be honest and look at yourself in the mirror. In a deeper way. And so after I delivered that monologue about all this fitness stuff the other week, I thought, am I doing this myself? For the most part, I am, but I thought, you know, I could do better. Like saying that publicly is holding myself to a higher

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  level of accountability. And I've made this decision to do something I haven't done for a very long time, for years and years and years, for the last decade, I would say that my training has been 90% zone two aerobic with like 10% speed and strength. And I've decided, because I'm sort of in a rut with all of this, and I'm having some back issues that I've talked about, and because I've been just repeatedly like running and running and putting in all these miles for so long, that I need to do something different for my long-term functional strength. So I'm flipping the equation completely, and I'm doing 90% strength and 10% aerobic, which is something I haven't done since I think

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  I was like 40. So it's been like 13 years.

• 17:01Adam Skolnick?

  So just strength, meaning high heart rate?

• 17:04Rich Roll?

  Everything from, well, mostly right now, and I only started this two weeks ago, but mostly functional strength and weight training.

• 17:13Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, so back in the gym?

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like just trying to get my body strong, like building it up, like this is my foundational work to take a body that is very efficient and acclimated to long distance pursuits and running and trail running and things like that, and to get really, really strong.

• 17:32Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  So it's gonna be a gun show come November.

• 17:36Adam Skolnick?

  It's gonna be like, you're gonna have that Goggins body.

• 17:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm kind of doing a little bit more, well, I mean, with less of the endurance stuff right now. Like, I'm really gonna back off the running and the cycling. I'm still gonna Put in some runs and some bikes and some swims, but the focus is really going to be on not bulking up, but just getting really solid and strong because I want to heal my back. As I get older, you can carry that endurance machine forward. You always have that and I can always tap back into that.

• 18:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Rich Roll?

  But what you lose is the strength and I don't want to lose that strength. And I've noticed that I have lost a lot of that and I want to build that back. And on top of that, I also want to show that a 53 year old guy who's been vegan for 13 years can still pack on some heat.

• 18:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Rich Roll?

  In the upper body.

• 18:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Rich Roll?

  Department.

• 18:24Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  So that's kind of what I'm.

• 18:26Adam Skolnick?

  So the home gym is all decked out or is that going to be over?

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  I have, I have a little bit of home gym stuff. And then there's a gym near my house that is open for limited times with social distancing. So I started to explore that, like if, you know, I'm using that safely for limited amounts of time throughout the week. So.

• 18:46Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 18:46Rich Roll?

  See how that goes.

• 18:47Adam Skolnick?

  That's exciting.

• 18:47Rich Roll?

  So the goal is like when the book comes out in November.

• 18:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  It's, it's going to just be a massive gun show.

• 18:54Adam Skolnick?

  You're just gonna, are you going to sign your own biceps for people?

• 18:57Rich Roll?

  No. See, now I'm on the hook, right? I gotta follow through now.

• 19:02Adam Skolnick?

  Now you, now you've declared it.

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:04Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I think that's cool. You know, I think that speaks to beginner's mind and the power of just trying something new and switching things up.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Adam Skolnick?

  Like you're doing with this.

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  I don't want to be stale. Like I want to do something different and keep this whole like journey dynamic.

• 19:17Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 19:18Rich Roll?

  All right. So what's the big story?

• 19:20Adam Skolnick?

  Well, the big story is Beirut.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  It is.

• 19:22Adam Skolnick?

  So the synopsis, as we all know, we've all seen the footage. Huge cache of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in fertilizer, but also explosives, including the Oklahoma City federal building attack, was detonated at the port and it was many, many times bigger than what was used in that attack in Oklahoma City. It killed 150 people plus, injured 6,000, left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Many are still missing. Critical infrastructure like hospitals and the country's main port were destroyed. Nearly half the city was damaged. And that was kind of like the last straw politically

• 20:02Adam Skolnick?

  and socially for what's been happening in Lebanon and Beirut. Before the coronavirus pandemic even, the economy was shrinking in Lebanon, the currency crashed because the banks there were kind of caught out in a Ponzi scheme like interest game where they would, the way they were getting foreign investment into the country was promising a high interest rate. And so foreign investment was coming in, but in order to pay that high interest rate, they had to keep getting more investors.

• 20:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:30Adam Skolnick?

  And so then investors started shying.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  Like a macro Bernie Madoff situation on a national level.

• 20:35Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly, on a national level. And sometime late last year, the foreign investment stopped coming because people sniffed it out. And they're like, wait, we can't do that. This isn't going to work. And then at that point, it became hard to get your own money out of the bank if you're Lebanese. And the currency crashed. And so people lost their, you know, half their net worth or more kind of overnight in the blink of an eye. And so then this happened.

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:57Adam Skolnick?

  So now you have to try to repair stuff.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  And there's a pandemic going on.

• 21:02Adam Skolnick?

  And there's a pandemic. And so like, what's going to happen? How much is steel and glass going to cost? Can you get your own money out of the bank? So this is kind of the totality of what's been happening in Beirut, which is a lot. I mean, can you imagine if all of a sudden, on top of everything we've been dealing with in the United States, if all of a sudden you couldn't get your money out of your bank?

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  And layer that on top of just a history of embattlement that this, you know, historic place has weathered over the millennia.

• 21:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Rich Roll?

  It seems to always be this vortex of conflict and strife.

• 21:36Adam Skolnick?

  And beauty. And like, and it's incredible.

• 21:40Adam Skolnick?

  You know, cultural kind of oasis.

• 21:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Adam Skolnick?

  So, yeah, and so, and what have the people in Beirut been doing since then? There's been protests, sure, but they're also armies of volunteers are the people cleaning up that city. Business people have been the ones investing in crews to help clean up. There's first aid stations and food stations being set up entirely by volunteers, entirely by the citizenry. And the government has quit and there's no real public response to this. It's all been kind of private groups organized, but in a community level. This is what happens when you have no government to help you.

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:16Adam Skolnick?

  You have no agencies to help you, you know, and you, you love Beirut.

• 22:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, on a personal, on a personal level, it's, it's absolutely heartbreaking. I mean, we all saw the videos of the explosion going off and, you know, it, I've never seen anything like that. I mean, it was just so horrific.

• 22:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine.

• 22:36Adam Skolnick?

  That shockwave was just nuts.

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  There was one video that was taken from somebody sitting at an outdoor cafe that I've been to. And the whole thing gets blown over. I mean, I've been to, I've been to Beirut twice and I love that city. And I've gotten to know quite a few people there who I consider to be my friends. The first time I went for a speaking gig, it was many years ago. It was probably 2013, maybe, maybe 2014. And I got to meet with a bunch of Beirut business leaders and I gave a talk and they like wind and dine me and introduced me to all these people and took me all over the place and gave me a tour. And they just were so incredibly welcoming.

• 23:20Rich Roll?

  One of the people I met on that first trip was a legendary endurance athlete called Maxime Chaya, who's kind of like their national, you know, adventure athlete, sports hero. He's just this amazingly. Dynamic, accomplished dude. He's climbed Everest. I think he did the Seven Summits.

• 23:38Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 23:38Rich Roll?

  He's done all kinds of, he's like the Ironman athlete in Beirut.

• 23:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 23:42Rich Roll?

  This is not something that a lot of people are doing.

• 23:44Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  And I think he was even like the Cannondale bicycle rep.

• 23:48Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  He was the one responsible for getting people on bikes in Beirut and all kinds of amazing things that this guy has done over the course of his life. And he took me to his home, which is outside Beirut, in the hills, maybe like 45 minutes outside of town. And we went cycling through the countryside and, you know, through this mountainous range. It was just Cypress, you know, groves. It was just so incredibly beautiful.

• 24:13Adam Skolnick?

  What year was that?

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  I think it must have been 2014, 2013. I can't remember. And one of the people that I met also on that trip was a woman called May Al-Khalil. And she founded the Beirut Marathon. She's got this incredible backstory that she tells in a TED Talk. I made a video about that experience. It's on my YouTube channel and also I shared it on Instagram recently.

• 24:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  She was an avid runner. This is a place in the world where there's not like, running isn't part of the culture necessarily, but there is a small running culture there. She was part of that. She got hit by a car in a near fatal accident, was told she would never run again, but she wanted to give this gift of running to her people. And she created this marathon that quickly became the biggest marathon in the Middle East. And she invited me to come and participate. So in 2015, I went back in November to participate in that marathon. And it was a life-changing experience for me to run in a part of the world that's so foreign to our Western lens.

• 25:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 25:19Rich Roll?

  And what I experienced was people from all parts of the world and all parts of the Middle East, people that typically are at odds with each other for reasons political and religious. convening collectively for this shared celebration of peace where everybody just runs. And I was very moved by the experience, like women running in burkas and women coming from, you know, like Saudi Arabia where it's not okay for women to run, coming and running. And seeing that really gave me this beautiful sense of the power of humanity and shared experiences.

• 25:57Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I mean, Beirut being where it is, it's like it was occupied by the Romans and maybe even some people say the Egyptians before that.

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  Well, there's Roman ruins.

• 26:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:08Rich Roll?

  All across the city, like the remnants of these Roman baths and the foundations of these Roman buildings. And it's layered like the rings of a tree. Like it just depends on how far down you want to dig. And you just tap into culture after culture after culture. There's mosques, there's cathedrals. It's this intersection of all these different cultures.

• 26:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 26:28Rich Roll?

  And I was told when I was there, like, if you want to build a building, like everything is a historic site. So it's like, well, if you build here, you're building on top of this. They have to do this calculus of like, yeah, it's a Roman ruin, but like, there's no place where you're not going to be affecting some aspect of the past.

• 26:47Adam Skolnick?

  The Middle East is like that. It's just so old and there's so much history there. It's like, uh, yeah, so the Romans, and then it was the Ottoman Empire for centuries. And then after World War I, I believe it was a French protectorate. And then independence in 1943. And since then, it's been fraught. You know, there's Palestinian refugees there. The Syrians and Israelis were kind of fighting over territory. And then there was a civil war in the seventies.

• 27:10Rich Roll?

  Civil war in the mid seventies. Yeah.

• 27:12Adam Skolnick?

  And Hezbollah, which is an organization that's funded by Iran, has an occupied part of the city. That kind of belongs to them, kind of their own thing. And they had a, they squared off with the government not too long ago. So it's, it's this.

• 27:26Rich Roll?

  It's complicated.

• 27:27Adam Skolnick?

  It's complicated. And there's Christianity as well as, it's not just a Muslim city. It's, it's really multicultural. And, uh, you know, Armenian presence there as well.

• 27:36Rich Roll?

  It's incredibly beautiful also. We've all heard, you know, the adage that it is or it was the Paris of the Middle East. It's certainly true. And they have this beautiful esplanade along the water where, you know, I would go running every day and jump into the sea and it's, it's quite spectacular, but it's also seen better days. You know, like when I was there the first time, there was something going on with the government where the trash wasn't getting picked up. And I mean, it's just a shit show, you know?

• 28:02Adam Skolnick?

  Literally.

• 28:02Rich Roll?

  From a civic perspective. And I had conversations with some of these business people like, you know, these are very sophisticated, well-to-do people. And I said, you know, have you ever thought about leaving? Like you could go be a banker in New York City or something like that, but they just love Beirut and they believe in Lebanon. And they're there for the sake of, you know, basically trying to improve this impossible situation that they're in.

• 28:26Adam Skolnick?

  I have a colleague from Lonely Planet who has been basing there. And I checked in with him afterwards and how he's doing. And, and he's like, you know, one of the things he said was, we don't have air conditioning right now, which I guess doesn't matter because we don't have windows. And he's still living in the place without windows, like because some people just don't have the money or the places to go. So, you know, some buildings have been condemned, but if your building hasn't been condemned and you have no windows, you're kind of like at the mercy of when those get replaced.

• 28:57Rich Roll?

  The blast radius of this thing was so extraordinary too, because I was watching videos of journalists on the ground in neighborhoods that I know that are quite distant from where the bomb went off.

• 29:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  And I couldn't believe the devastation, like literally, you know, miles away from where it exploded. It's just, it's hard to wrap your head around it.

• 29:19Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you were there and then when you ran the marathon, you left and like two nights later, there was like an actual terrorist.

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  Right. And I, I tell that story in that video that I made, but basically the marathon was November 8th. I left on the 10th and on the 12th ISIS bombed one of the Hezbollah neighborhoods called Bourj El Rajnay. I don't know how to pronounce that, but it's right next to the airport and I, you know, I'd driven through that area and I'd walked neighborhoods quite close to that, like the day before I left. And I just remember.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  Leaving Lebanon with such a full heart for its people and its history and such a deep appreciation and a sense of empathy, and then to see that happen was so shocking and devastating. It was the number one news story in the world for a day, but the following day was the Paris bombings, which were admittedly much more severe in terms of death toll and injuries.

• 30:22Adam Skolnick?

  The one where they're not the Charlie Hebdo, the one that were all over the city.

• 30:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That was literally a day later. And that erased Beirut from the news cycle completely. And a lot of people, I think, have now forgotten that Beirut had been bombed the day before.

• 30:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Rich Roll?

  Because all the focus went to Paris. And I think part of that is this sense that, oh, it's the Middle East, like, bad shit just happens there.

• 30:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Rich Roll?

  And I think we're seeing a little bit of that now because we're, what, 10 days or so since

• 30:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  the blast in Beirut. And I haven't seen very much in the news

• 30:59Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  about what's happening there.

• 31:01Adam Skolnick?

  You might not see anything unless something cataclysmic happens. You might not, something else.

• 31:05Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, the news cycle is advancing so quickly now that, you know, it's kind of part of our news culture, I suppose, that we just move on so quickly.

• 31:13Adam Skolnick?

  That's part of it. Part of it, I think, is kind of this long-held kind of American navel gazing. Like, here in the United States, we don't really, there are always reporters out in the world, reporting on stuff from all over the world, but, you know, we don't always get that oxygen, doesn't really flow there

• 31:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:32Adam Skolnick?

  unless something huge happens. That's part of it. Part of it is this idea of American exceptionalism, like, what happens here is the most important, so it kind of blots out some of this other major story. So that means that it's on to us to, if you care about the world, you know, it's not just what happens here that matters, it's what happens elsewhere that matters too. And so just to keep that in mind and seek out those stories. I mean, we really have to. I know you, you make a point of seeking out. Stories, not just from here, but from everywhere.

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I would add to that, that, you know, the first time that I went there, they put me up in this hotel called the Phoenician, the Phoenicia.

• 32:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Rich Roll?

  Which is this incredibly lavish hotel that was built during that Paris of the Middle East era. And, you know, it's like, this is where Frank Sinatra stayed, and this is when it was like, really hip to like, go to Beirut, and they had this incredible nightlife and all this sort of thing. Then the Civil, it was built, I don't know when it was built, probably in the early 70s. And right behind it is the Holiday Inn, which is a huge tower that was built in 1974, and was intended during its construction and its first year of operation, to be like, the, I mean, you know, when we think of Holiday Inn, we think of kind of low rent hotels, but this was meant to be like, state of the art, like,

• 32:50Rich Roll?

  this is where everyone's gonna stay, it's gonna be unbelievable. In 75, when the Civil War began, that hotel became a war zone, and just got shellacked. And it was sort of a symbolic goal in this strife, like, who could control this landmark?

• 33:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Rich Roll?

  And today, it stands as this gutted, bullet-riddled, historical edifice, that is like, almost like a symbol, like, a reminder of what had happened there. Like, they could have just torn it down or rebuilt it, but it stands there, just like it looked, probably in 1975, after it just got devastated. And it's still a military zone that's controlled by the Lebanese army. So when you go and you look at the top, you'll see dudes, you know, like, there's military vehicles in the, you could see them on some of the floors, and then on the, on the roof, you'll see guys patrolling with rifles. And it's just a reminder that this is an unstable region, I guess, so to speak. And when you tour the

• 33:54Rich Roll?

  city, you'll see buildings all over the place that are riddled with bullets, or, here's a little memorial where a car bomb went off and so and so died. And there's this palpable sense that anything can happen at any time. And when you come home, it gives you a greater appreciation for government stability on some level, although we're seeing a level of instability now, that I think is leading us to question that. But I think the overarching theme That I was trying to convey in that video and what that experience taught me and my other experiences, I've been all over the Middle East. I've been to multiple cities in Saudi Arabia. I've been to Bahrain. I've been to some pretty amazing places is that travel breeds empathy. And to the extent that, you know, when this pandemic lifts,

• 34:39Rich Roll?

  if you're able to travel and experience other cultures, I can't stress enough how important that is in terms of how you form your worldview and how you think about your participation as a global citizen on the planet.

• 34:55Adam Skolnick?

  Absolutely. And that's partly why I pay attention to news from other parts of the world is because of I travel and, or I did before the pandemic.

• 35:04Rich Roll?

  You did?

• 35:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I was, I would like to-

• 35:07Rich Roll?

  The asthmatic planet.

• 35:10Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. I think we should round it out. There was a video that you shared with me about Dr. Isra Sabiani-

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:19Adam Skolnick?

  Chronologist based in Detroit, who's Lebanese, who was out there to get married, right? You're gonna post that as well, right?

• 35:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people saw this video. It went viral. The New York Times covered it, as did many other publications. But it was a video of this beautiful woman in her, in her bridal gown, being videoed by a wedding videographer with a gimbal. It's all super pro and gorgeous. And in the middle of the shot, the explosion occurs and you see the chaos erupt. And in the wake of that, everyone was like, who is this woman, right? And it turns out that she's a Lebanese doctor who is doing her residency in Detroit and end chronology and had returned to Beirut to get married. And I'd read that after that clip ended, she went and started trying to help people in her bridal gown, like trying

• 36:09Rich Roll?

  to save people, like being a doctor in the midst of like- The calamity, which I think is really extraordinary.

• 36:16Adam Skolnick?

  And you're going to post that Bloomberg video, which I think is excellent to that one week.

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, there's a Bloomberg put out a video one week later. That's the only kind of postscript that I've seen like, okay, what's going on now? Like, it's a week later. There's, what are there 300,000 people that are homeless now? You know, all these buildings are uninhabitable.

• 36:34Adam Skolnick?

  High rises, yeah.

• 36:35Rich Roll?

  So, anyway.

• 36:37Adam Skolnick?

  So, there's things you can do. There are charities that, and we're going to post that right in the show notes. Places to give money to help in terms of feeding people and healthcare and whatever else contribute to the rebuilding. There are some reputable charities that we're going to post.

• 36:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:55Adam Skolnick?

  You can pitch in.

• 36:57Rich Roll?

  Cool. Let's take a quick break. We're going to take care of a little housekeeping and we'll be right back with more Roll On slash Roll Call.

• 37:07Adam Skolnick?

  Roll Call.

• 37:19Rich Roll?

  And we're back. Adam, what is going on with the post office?

• 37:23Adam Skolnick?

  The teachable moment. Save the post office. Okay, real quick, the Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor, reportedly with stakes and competitors, the US Postal Service has been heavy-handed in his attempts, he claims, to make it run more efficiently. But those adjustments that he has been trying to make include the removal of mail sorting machines. At least 19 have been removed from various depots. Each machine can process 35,000 pieces of mail per hour, so 19 is a big reduction. And he's slated to have 671 more taken out. This was reported widely over the last few days. He's also moved to end overtime pay, which is very critical because that's how carriers

• 38:08Adam Skolnick?

  cover for one another when they are sick, especially now. That's a big deal. So if overtime goes away, that means people will not get their mail, which is also happening right now. So these moves. Kind of underscore this rising concern across the country of the integrity of the November election. How is the post office going to be able to handle 80 million ballots cast by Americans? Could be more than that, could be less, but that's kind of the, that's the estimation. But then there's also problems that have nothing to do with the joy, which is that mail carriers aren't showing up for work. Maybe because of the pandemic, either they're scared of it or they could be sick. I talked to my own postal carrier. Admittedly, that's just anecdotal evidence, but what he was saying is in Santa Monica, 21 carriers didn't show up on Saturday.

• 38:50Adam Skolnick?

  And when those carriers don't show up, residents don't receive their mail. Some people haven't received their mail for a week at a time.

• 38:56Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 38:57Adam Skolnick?

  And he's taking on, he's working 60 hours a week. He's taking on overtime. If overtime goes away, he won't work 60 hours a week.

• 39:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:03Adam Skolnick?

  So he's not going to cover for it. You know, so that this is a problem, given the election is happening. And it's a problem in general, you know, like functional societies have impartial postal services that are not driven by profit.

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  It's so crazy that the post office is being politicized in this way. It's like, you don't even, you just take it so for granted. You never think twice about whether your mail's going to come.

• 39:26Adam Skolnick?

  Until now, right? So apparently the post office needs $25 billion. This is according to Trump, to be adequately funded through not just the election, but through the holidays. Pelosi just called the House of Representatives back into session to deal with this.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  So they definitely going to do that?

• 39:40Adam Skolnick?

  There, yeah, that's happening. There's a vote supposedly scheduled for Saturday to fund the post office. Of course, then it has to be also passed by the Senate and signed by the president. On Sunday, Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, did express openness to funding the post office through the election. So we'll see about that. But yeah, I mean, you know, is this a power grab? It certainly smells that way. You know, first of all, how a postmaster general is a partisan employee is crazy. But what's happening there does seem to be in line with what happened at the EPA, whereas a Republican president is in power and he's appointing people who undermine that agency that they're supposed to be overseeing and implementing policy.

• 40:22Adam Skolnick?

  So it's troubling for those of us who care about the environment, the EPA, or just having a post office. You know, but what do you think about all of this?

• 40:30Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it certainly smells of an authoritarian weaponization of what should be and is a public utility for a partisan gain. And, you know, whether or not that is the case, it will function to produce that kind of result unless it's resolved.

• 40:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 40:50Rich Roll?

  And I think, you know, I've sort of watched how Twitter has exploded over this and the outrage and all of that. And it goes back to what can we control? Like, we can talk about this and be outraged and voice our concerns on social media and, you know, all of that. But fundamentally, all we can do is control our own behaviors. What is our responsibility? Well, regardless of your political perspective, we all need to vote, right? So let's take care of that in advance. The election is in November. You can vote by mail now. Take care of it now. Don't wait until there's some kind of crazy crunch.

• 41:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I haven't, I don't think I've got my ballot yet, but one solution.

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  I just got, we just got ours.

• 41:34Adam Skolnick?

  Did you just get yours?

• 41:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we just did.

• 41:36Adam Skolnick?

  So I think that you can vote now and that will ease the mind because there is this fear that even if you postmark before the election and if they don't get it by a certain time, it won't get counted. I also, I'm a big proponent of early voting. You know, there's less polling places for early voting, but there's a number of them, at least in California, that starts 29 days before the election and you can go in and it's very quick, you don't wait in line, nobody's there really. And you go in with your kind of sample ballot prepared, so it doesn't take that long and you can wear a mask and it can be safe and you can wash your hands afterwards. And that's available to everybody in 39 states. There is some sort of early voting. Sometimes it's two weeks, sometimes it's 10 days, sometimes it's a month like in California.

• 42:18Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes it's the Thursday before the election, but it's still an opportunity to do it in a way that you don't even have to worry about the mail. So there's things you can do. I think also having conversations about this with people. You could call the White House and urge them to fund the post office. This is not, should not be a partisan issue.

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Adam Skolnick?

  You know, having a postal service that functions. Is a positive thing for people.

• 42:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 42:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  Do we have a verdict on whether there's gonna be poll stations open on election day? Or is that still being debated right now?

• 42:50Adam Skolnick?

  No, I mean, so far, election days have happened. You know, there's been primaries held everywhere. So, and we're gonna get into a little bit more, a little later in the win of the week, about kind of polling stations and opportunities to add to what's already gonna be administered by election commissions. But, um, yes, the problem with some of the primaries has been less polling stations than usual, but not no polling stations. So that's something worth watching. You know, like, the amount of polling stations, that's something worth watching. So that's why early voting and voting by mail very early are two solutions you can control to make sure your vote gets counted. And the fact that we're even having this conversation is fucking mental.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  I know. What is the fraud vulnerability with mail-in voting?

• 43:31Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it's a good question. I don't think there's been any proof that there's fraud. I guess one idea, if you have two addresses, you could potentially be registered in two places and vote twice, I guess. But I don't think that that has held water, because if those get discovered, then two votes don't count. So I don't think there's been any proof, there's certainly no irrefutable proof that more mail-in voting equates with more voter fraud. Voter fraud is not a big issue in the United States of America.

• 43:58Rich Roll?

  Right, we're led to believe that it is.

• 43:59Adam Skolnick?

  You know what the biggest voter fraud in the history of the United States has always been, is voter suppression.

• 44:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Adam Skolnick?

  That's the voter fraud. Uh, the Electoral College allows, you know, minimizes states like California's impact on the election as well. But the biggest voter fraud has been voter suppression. In Florida-

• 44:15Rich Roll?

  And gerrymandering.

• 44:16Adam Skolnick?

  And gerrymandering, yeah. But for a presidential election, gerrymandering doesn't matter. But in Florida, you know, there's been this, uh, some states have long had laws on the books permitting ex-felons from voting. Florida's, uh, state government changed that. I think it was either, either, no, there was a referendum and they basically allowed felons to vote for the first time, and then the state government enacted a new law, basically saying, yeah, they can vote as long as they pay all their fines, that they had unpaid fines, which is kind of like this poll tax, which used to be a trick used to eliminate poor people and black people from being able to vote, mostly black people. So there is a movement afoot, and we'll talk about in win of the week, about how to deal with that. So there's, there's solutions. The solutions are vote by mail.

• 45:01Adam Skolnick?

  Vote early and there's petitions, save the US Postal Service petition asking for the removal of Louis Lejoy and the full funding of the post office and that's out there.

• 45:11Rich Roll?

  Right, we'll link that up in the show notes. The concern from my perspective come November is that in the event that a significant portion of voting is done via mail, that that's going to delay the result tabulation and it just creates this cloud of uncertainty that will make it easier for somebody to say there's there's something not right with this or to stay in office and not leave. Like, short of a landslide in either direction, my concern is the instability of the government in terms of having a clear like directive for who is going to be the next president.

• 45:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Like if Trump loses, but he loses by a margin, is the guy going to leave? Is this going to be a thing that we're going to have to deal with? I mean, he's already, you know, seeding this idea that it's a fraudulent landscape.

• 46:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  Which creates the foundation for an argument that, you know, something is amiss.

• 46:12Adam Skolnick?

  I agree, it's problematic.

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Why can't we figure out how to have safe encrypted online voting? We trust our money online.

• 46:21Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  Our phones have facial recognition.

• 46:24Adam Skolnick?

  There are encryption experts working on voting. It tends to be extremely complicated. I think Travis County, Texas was looking at trying to include encrypted voting. That's different than the voting machines that we have, which are not connected to the internet, except when they're being programmed and then they are connected to the internet. I think what we're seeing with hacking, if the machines themselves are connected to the internet, they are vulnerable. So you, they shouldn't be connected to the internet. They can be networked and encrypted and there are some very smart people looking at that.

• 46:54Rich Roll?

  But it has to be kind of a Faraday box situation.

• 46:56Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 46:57Rich Roll?

  It's not online.

• 46:58Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  So if it's not online, then you still have to go to like a polling station.

• 47:02Adam Skolnick?

  You still have to go to a polling station. Now, there are other countries.

• 47:04Rich Roll?

  The last time I voted in the midterms, it was like a digital kiosk thing.

• 47:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right. So the digital kiosks, those are digital voting machines, but they are not connected to the internet, except when they're programmed originally. And then when they're standing in the polling place, they are not supposed to be connected to the internet. But encrypted voting, the same thing. They wouldn't necessarily be connected to the internet. But the idea is even if they were, they'd be unhackable. Because a vote creates a digital footprint that is then encrypted in the way that it can only be unlocked in a very certain way. And even if you hack into it, you won't know what that vote means. Because it'll have a digital code. And so you won't be able to tell what that vote means. So you couldn't necessarily monkey with the results.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  I feel like the word blockchain needs to be uttered here. I know nothing about blockchain other than that it means a distributed network where nobody can control it. But perhaps there's a solution in the blockchain that could resolve this kind of digital voting situation. All right, let's move on.

• 48:06Adam Skolnick?

  All right. So you posted something on Instagram that like, was amazing this week. And it was all about kind of your journey in sobriety, but in a very specific way and in what happened in Oregon in the rehab center. And I just thought it was really poignant. So I just wanted to find out what motivated you to do that and kind of where you're coming from with that.

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate that, Adam. Thank you. It feels like I told you to say that.

• 48:30Adam Skolnick?

  I know, but you didn't, though.

• 48:32Rich Roll?

  I know. Yeah, I think, you know, the idea behind that post was really to just honor some of the people that have been teachers for me over the years. And we tend to think of mentors and teachers as these highly qualified, aspirational individuals, like, oh, I want Gary Vee or Warren Buffett to be my investor mentor, or David Goggins to be my fitness mentor. But the truth is, we're all surrounded by teachers all the time. Every human being has a story to tell. They can be instructive and helpful in your life. And I think I said something like, the prophets walk among us. Like I said, you know, I spent all this time

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  with a bunch of, you know, hopeless, you know, marginally criminal drunks and meth heads and crackheads and needle fiends and junkies.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  But I became very bonded to these people and I learned a lot.

• 49:27Adam Skolnick?

  Where was this exactly?

• 49:29Rich Roll?

  From spending time. There was a treatment center in Oregon and just, you know, being in the recovery community for, you know, many, many years at this point, you know, over 20 years, met a lot of people and people from all walks of life who collectively get together in a way that, you know, these people would ordinarily never meet, right? And when you open yourself up and you're available to what they have to say and you're present, I think most people are, would be amazed at what you can learn from, you know, the people that are in your immediate environment if you just slow down and pay attention. And I think right now in this pandemic, we're being compelled to slow down. Like the fast pace of our life that we've acclimated ourselves towards has been interrupted.

• 50:12Rich Roll?

  And with that means we're having fewer interpersonal interactions. The, the number of people that we're exposing ourselves to every single day is far limited, is truncated, but there's also an opportunity for the experiences that we are having with those fewer people to be more meaningful. And to the extent that we can make ourselves more available to them, that we can be present and listen, I think that there's, you know, lots of wisdom to be mined from that.

• 50:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I mean, that's what stuck with me is like to be humble enough to know that like you don't have all the answers and that anybody can teach you something. Any interaction can teach you something, even if it's someone.

• 50:48Rich Roll?

  Even if that interaction is, I don't want to be like that. Or I see where that person has made this mistake and what it's done to their life and that's helpful to me.

• 50:58Adam Skolnick?

  But there's also this, you can't be defensive. You have to be open, right? Like a defensive posture closes off all those possibilities, doesn't it?

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Sure. But if somebody's sharing their experience, again, it goes back to this idea of breeding empathy, right? Like if you can connect with another human being and look for the similarities in their experience and how you can relate to them interpersonally, that brings you closer to that individual. It amplifies your own inherent ability to be empathetic. And I think that's very healing and I think we need that right now. We're so divided and we're so acrimonious. Everybody is on this razor's edge right now. There's so much tension in the air. It's being fueled by economic insecurity and the pandemic and this fear of getting sick and the vitriol on social media. And everybody's just waiting to snap.

• 51:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 51:48Rich Roll?

  They're not listening. They're not present. They're not experiencing other people for who they are. They're just waiting for their turn to reply.

• 51:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Rich Roll?

  To the extent that we can let go of that and just remind ourselves to be present and available to another human being's experience, our own lives are benefited in the process of that.

• 52:07Adam Skolnick?

  Love it. Cool.

• 52:09Rich Roll?

  What are we doing now?

• 52:10Adam Skolnick?

  Show and tell, although you can't see it. I'm wearing a hat that has the words Net Positiva on it. This is a hat made by a company called Bureo. They are an environmental company founded by three surfers, Ben Neppers, Kevin Ahern, and Dave Stover. They met in Sydney, Australia. They had different jobs at the time, but were trying to figure out a way to channel their passion into the ocean because they're surfers and the environment in general and a way to do it in a business oriented way, not as a nonprofit. And they

• 52:48Adam Skolnick?

  ended up getting funded to start a fishing net recycling business in Chile. At the time, the sardine fisheries in Chile, which tend to feed the salmon farming down there, the people that would go out and harvest the fish with their nets, when the nets got ripped up or it was time to get rid of them, they would just dump them because there was no...

• 53:11Rich Roll?

  They just stay in the ocean.

• 53:12Adam Skolnick?

  They would just stay in the ocean. Ghost netting, which is just like one of the most destructive ways of dealing. And plus, they can break down and, you know, they're made out of nylon, so it's a plastic solution.

• 53:21Rich Roll?

  All these fish get caught up in them too.

• 53:22Adam Skolnick?

  Fish, marine mammals, and then obviously contributing to the plastic problem. So these guys went down and they created recycling centers and incentivized the local fishermen to bring their nets back with them, dump them there, and little by little, they devised a way to turn those nets back into plastic nurdles, which is the base element, little pellets, which are the base element for all plastic products. And so they take that plastic net, return it back into the base element, and then theoretically, they can be turned into anything. So they've done that before. They came out with skateboards and frisbees. And then they started working with Patagonia. And the brim in this hat

• 54:02Adam Skolnick?

  is 100% made from these nets from fisheries that were used in Chile and Argentina. All of the Patagonia hats, which is Patagonia's number one selling item, they all now have hat brims. Made out of the Boreo plastic and a lot of their technical gear and waterproof gear going forward, it's going to be made from this kind of post-consumer plastic product, which kudos to Patagonia for that. Kudos for these guys to build a business model that actually works and is profitable. They have grown. They have, Greg Swinton runs their marketing team who sent me this hat, which is the hat that they give to the fishermen.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 54:39Adam Skolnick?

  So that's, so these are.

• 54:40Rich Roll?

  It makes them more mindful when they're out there. Like if they're wearing that hat, they're going to be thinking about.

• 54:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because their product's called Net Plus, Net Positiva in Spanish. And so they have, they're working with fisheries all across Chile now, in Argentina. They're looking to start working in Peru. They're really growing, really expanding, and the idea is it can be turned into any sort of high-value plastic product. And it's different. Some people, why can't we just recycle the plastic that isn't drifting in the ocean and turn it into something? Well, that's because that's such degraded material. It's not a high-level material. You can't turn that into anything.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  We think they're like plastic bottles floating out there, but it's like a goopy gel, right?

• 55:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you can make it into a bracelet or something like that. But the idea is to make that into a high-tech climbing apparel. You can't really do that. But you can with this stuff because it's a high-level, high-quality, post-consumer recycled product.

• 55:32Rich Roll?

  So are they just taking the nets when the fishermen are ready to retire them? Or are they actually going out and retrieving nets that are already out there?

• 55:41Adam Skolnick?

  The fishermen now are completely educated and informed. They bring the nets back and they put them into, you know, basically receiving centers, which are then taken to warehouses that Boreo has, and they're boiled down into new plastic.

• 55:53Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 55:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Rich Roll?

  That's super cool.

• 55:55Adam Skolnick?

  And it's providing jobs in Chile.

• 55:57Rich Roll?

  What's the website for that?

• 55:59Adam Skolnick?

  I think it's boreo.com, but I will make sure it's on the show notes.

• 56:03Rich Roll?

  I'll put that in the show notes.

• 56:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Rich Roll?

  On a similar note, on the issue of plastic, I had Darren O'Leary on the podcast recently. That episode hasn't gone up yet. And we kind of concluded it with me asking him, like, what's the most impactful thing that a person could do?

• 56:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Rich Roll?

  Something like that. And he was like, well, you got to get off the single use plastics.

• 56:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Rich Roll?

  Right? Like, of course, like, that's something that we all have control over, like, the water bottle emergency is just completely out of control. And to the extent that we can eradicate single use plastic from our lives, like, that's a very tangible, practical, doable thing that each and every citizen, individual can take control over in their lives. And I've been thinking about that ever since we talked about it. Not that it's a new idea. I've thought about this in the past. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna really take this to heart and try to do this. And I found myself at the store the other day. I just finished a workout. I needed some water. And I'm like, okay, I'm not buying water

• 57:07Rich Roll?

  in a plastic bottle, that's for sure. I ended up buying water in a glass bottle. And then I remembered, oh, Julie told me to pick up some ice, because our ice maker is broken in our fridge. So I just grabbed the ice and I checked out and I was feeling all good about myself that I'd bought this glass bottle. And then I realized, all this ice is wrapped in plastic. Like, even when I thought I was paying attention.

• 57:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 57:28Rich Roll?

  I realized that I was not paying attention at all. And so I've decided to embark upon a 30 day, single use plastic moratorium to see if I can do it. And what I've realized is, you know, to that point, it's harder than you think.

• 57:44Adam Skolnick?

  It's hard.

• 57:45Rich Roll?

  Because it's so endemic to every consumer product that you come across. Even if you're buying something that is made out of something else, there's still a plastic wrapper on it. Or if you buy something online and it gets delivered, it's, there's, plastic is everywhere. And it's more challenging than, it's not just, let's start with no more plastic water bottles, but beyond that, it gets complicated really quickly.

• 58:09Adam Skolnick?

  It does. And, and especially now in the pandemic, I do our food shopping at the farmer's market. I bring my own bags and.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  You're good. You're my, you're my role model.

• 58:18Adam Skolnick?

  And try not to take the plastic. But during the pandemic, like, for the first time, even the farmer's market stuff was prepackaged. And I was happy to take a plastic bag. And, you know, I was, we talked about this when I was originally on your podcast in 2016. You know, I'm a Five Gyres ambassador working on marine plastic issues. And I care a lot about it because there's billions of plastic particles in the ocean. They tend to look like plankton to marine life. They get nibbled. It ends up toxifying our food chain. Get fishing line wrapped around the necks of turtles and sea lions. I mean, it just, it you could take an Arctic ice core and pull it out and it's got plastic in it, you know, like we are the plastic age. Three hundred million tons of a year of new plastic is being turned out.

• 59:01Adam Skolnick?

  There's new plastic plants being planned because, you know, oil prices are down and there's all this you know, there's too much fuel to, in too much petrochemical now because of fracking. And so that's going to go into these plastic plants. They're trying to up it to 600 million. So there is a corporate cycle at work to keep single-use plastic in our lives.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:22Adam Skolnick?

  But you can minimize it. And when you do minimize it, there's all sorts of ramifications that are positive for you and for the world. So yes, I mean, it is something that you can get rid of very easily if you try. And that's really just as simple as, I mean, I used to do the same thing. I'd buy plastic water bottle all the time. As soon as I realized what was happening, I just switched to carrying my own water with me.

• 59:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:45Adam Skolnick?

  It's not hard to do.

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's, again, that's a very obvious thing, but it's the, you know, nefarious little things that you're less aware of.

• 59:52Adam Skolnick?

  You can't fully get rid of it. I mean, you're gonna buy, especially if you're vegan, you buy tofu or tempeh.

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  Well, everything is wrapped in this stuff.

• 1:00:00Adam Skolnick?

  Wrapped in plastic, like, but you can't really get around that 100% of the time. If you're doing food shopping, it's almost impossible. Like, if you're buying tofu, like, there's really no option. You're gonna have to buy plastic.

• 1:00:12Rich Roll?

  It's crazy that there's no other option.

• 1:00:15Adam Skolnick?

  But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be vegan, because like, the meat and the fish also comes into the store in plastic. So even if they wrap it for you in paper, it was once single-use plastic.

• 1:00:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:00:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Rich Roll?

  So what I wanted to do is make this kind of a community thing.

• 1:00:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Rich Roll?

  So what I want to do is embark upon this 30-day single-use plastic eradication project, which is really aspirational, right? Like,

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  You're not going to be able to do it 100%.

• 1:00:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  But to the extent that we can aspire to do better and do the best that we can, I'm going to do this. I invite everybody to join me and to chronicle your experience. Like, where is it impossible? Where is it frustrating? What are the changes that you made? And I think what I'm going to do is I'll post like a image on Instagram or something like that. I'll do a post on it. And I've got Roka, who's been a sponsor of the podcast, sent me a box of sunglasses. I've got like six pairs of amazing sunglasses, but I already have like so many sunglasses. I don't need any more sunglasses. So I want to give these away. So I'll post this thing on Instagram.

• 1:01:26Rich Roll?

  And then what I invite everybody to do is to embark upon this with me and then share your story in the comments on Instagram. And then we'll select some winners and I'll ship off those sunglasses to a select few. Whoever has the best story or the most kind of impactful experience, the way that you communicate it, we'll just, we'll select a few people.

• 1:01:47Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful. I want to.

• 1:01:48Rich Roll?

  Send those out.

• 1:01:49Adam Skolnick?

  There are people who are really good at being no waste, kind of, I guess.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Well, there's some no waste gurus.

• 1:01:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. So Trash is for Tossers, which is created by Lauren Singer.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  Right. I've tried to get her on the podcast in the past. We had some scheduling problems.

• 1:02:05Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:02:05Rich Roll?

  But I've been in contact with her. But she has like a no waste store in Brooklyn. I think, did she open one in LA too?

• 1:02:11Adam Skolnick?

  They were going to. I don't know. I mean, I met her on the Five Gyres Expedition in the, in the North Atlantic Gyre. And she is like the real deal. I think she started just doing what you're doing. I want to try to do this for a full year. And she was blogging about it or something. And that's how her whole journey began.

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Adam Skolnick?

  And so she can teach you, you know, the best way to, I mean, she makes it easy. Now you can buy like laundry detergent from her that doesn't come in a plastic bottle. But she, she kind of started creating those solutions on her own.

• 1:02:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:39Adam Skolnick?

  And she has all sorts of tips. So at Trash is for Tossers on Instagram, that's a good place to go.

• 1:02:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she's cool. There's another woman, her name is Bea something, B E A. I can't remember her last name. If memory serves me, of French descent. And she lives in Marin. She's got, you know, she's got a couple of kids. She's also written a book about this and she's, I think she did a TED Talk. I saw her speak once. And her entire. Garbage for the year, for an entire year of living with her husband and two kids, was all in one mason jar. I was like, how is that possible? When I look at the amount of refuse that our family produces weekly. And I just think that is so aspirational and badass.

• 1:03:26Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing.

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  And also looks like a huge amount of work, but it's kind of like when you're not vegan and you look at it, you're like, oh, that's gotta be so much work. You must spend all your time dealing with that.

• 1:03:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:35Rich Roll?

  It just becomes second nature. I'm sure for her and for Lauren, like, this is just their lifestyle. Like, they're so acclimated to these habits that it doesn't seem onerous to them anymore.

• 1:03:45Adam Skolnick?

  No, it's kind of like, I would guess, like, you know how when you first start eating almost vegan exclusively, or in my case, like 99%, how like all of a sudden your taste buds change? To that when you do try something that's not vegan, that tastes kind of dead to you. The flavor is not there, but vegetables and fruits have much more flavor. I mean, that was my experience of it. I imagine there are side effects like that from doing this too, like where you start to see these, these hidden bonuses that you didn't anticipate.

• 1:04:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And suddenly, everything pops out to you in technicolor. Where we're so used to it, we don't notice it.

• 1:04:19Adam Skolnick?

  But then if you have to backtrack, it probably hurts.

• 1:04:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So I think this 30 day challenge is equal parts, you know, environmental and also mindfulness. Like, it's like, how aware and present are you with what you're doing and the choices that you're making? And again, it goes back to slowing down. Like, if you slow down, you enhance your awareness, you're present in what you're doing. And when your hand is reaching out to the shelf to pick something up, like to really consider what that is, whether you decide to buy it or not, I think is a interesting and compelling practice to adopt.

• 1:04:56Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful. Nice one.

• 1:05:10Adam Skolnick?

  Should we move to win of the week?

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  Let's do it.

• 1:05:13Adam Skolnick?

  Big win of the week, I'm gonna give to LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes. You know who they are, best basketball and football players alive. They are come together, along with other elite athletes, professional athletes, to tackle voter suppression. And one thing that they're doing is opening up polling locations in dormant stadiums, like Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles is gonna be a polling place. There's arenas all over the country that they're turning into polling places. They are also aggregating their funds and paying poll taxes in Florida to make sure maximum number of black voters can vote. They're basically attacking voter suppression of black people across the country in a handful of ways. And they've created this organization called More Than a Vote.

• 1:05:56Adam Skolnick?

  And we're going to link to the letter that they just put out to fans, kind of an open letter detailing the work they're gonna do. I just think that is gonna have a major, major impact on voter turnout, which is gonna be one of the big variables to this election in November. And regardless of which way you're leaning, which they say in the letter, it's your right to vote, and it's really your responsibility to vote. But if you're not allowed to vote, then that complicates things.

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  Or if access to voting is just too onerous.

• 1:06:25Adam Skolnick?

  Because of the pandemic.

• 1:06:26Rich Roll?

  That is voter suppression. So that's super badass.

• 1:06:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Rich Roll?

  Very cool. The other big win of the week.

• 1:06:32Adam Skolnick?

  The other big win of the week. We say this tongue in cheek, but it is a win, is the new Georgia Republican Congresswoman named Marjorie Taylor Greene. She won on a campaign supporting QAnon.

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  So is she the winner of the week, or is QAnon the winner of the week?

• 1:06:52Adam Skolnick?

  I think QAnon won.

• 1:06:53Rich Roll?

  I think QAnon takes the cake for the weekly win.

• 1:06:56Adam Skolnick?

  Again, QAnon keeps winning, which is not good, by the way.

• 1:06:59Rich Roll?

  They keep winning.

• 1:07:00Adam Skolnick?

  They keep winning.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. I mean, we've talked about QAnon before on the show, but I think it is worth exploring further. Like, we kind of mock it and dismiss it, and we think of it as this bizarro fringe movement. And it's easy to malign it.

• 1:07:15Adam Skolnick?

  But that's only because they think, like, this cabal of people are trying to kidnap babies and eat, drink their blood, like Tom Hanks.

• 1:07:22Rich Roll?

  Of course. It's a global elite of evil child molesters.

• 1:07:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right, and drinking the blood of children.

• 1:07:28Rich Roll?

  Right, the drinking the blood part.

• 1:07:30Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, that's how, that's Tom Hanks's secret.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  I don't know where to begin with this, but let's start with the fact that this fringe ideology, in certain ways, the argument can be made that it's gone somewhat mainstream. It's kind of reached this weird cult religion fever pitch. And I think it poses a legitimate threat to our democratic institution.

• 1:07:57Adam Skolnick?

  Clearly. I mean, I think Kevin Roos, who we talked about with Rabbit Hole, basically was-

• 1:08:03Rich Roll?

  He's an incredible reporter, this guy.

• 1:08:05Adam Skolnick?

  Incredible reporter. And I think he was, like, the idea is that President Trump is the secret hero, and he's going to destroy this cabal, and as president, he's the big hero. But Kevin Roos, I think he pointed out that, like, or no, someone else did, like, at one point, QAnon was, is thought of as fringe now, but so is the Tea Party. I don't know if that came from Kevin or not.

• 1:08:27Rich Roll?

  Well, he did, no, he wrote an article, basically, you know, questioning whether QAnon was the new Tea Party.

• 1:08:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right, that's it, that's right. So, so he, he wrote that piece, and, you know, that's scary. But it's-

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  And the thesis of it, there's a lot of distinctions. There's a lot of reasons why QAnon is very different from the Tea Party, but the parallel that he's trying to establish is that there's this sense that these things are fringe movements that we don't need to pay attention to. And he's basically saying, like, this is a lot bigger than people think. Like, we mock it, and we malign it, and we dismiss it. But on Facebook, there are groups with millions of people who are chiming in and paying attention. Like, what's the next Q drop? And how are we going to decipher this coded language? And what does it mean? And it's almost like this adult immersive video game experience

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  that's filling a gap in people's lives now that we're working from home and have extra free time, and we're feeling less than great about our daily existence. Like, it's something to-

• 1:09:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's a role-playing game.

• 1:09:35Rich Roll?

  It is an incredibly immersive role-playing game.

• 1:09:38Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  And it's giving people who perhaps are lacking some level of purpose and meaning in their lives, something to do, something to participate in, to be a community member, you know, with other people, to, you know, throw these ideas around. And it's metastasized into this- Political movement that is actually really frightening.

• 1:10:00Adam Skolnick?

  It's kind of like a cult pop cultural meets politics movement. Like it really is. It's like, it's like the anti V for Vendetta. It's like the opposite of a V for Vendetta type movement. Like you ever see that movie?

• 1:10:12Rich Roll?

  But it's the same sensibility. This like, this idea that we're butting up against the machine. And in trying to really kind of, you know, on this theme of empathy, like trying to understand, like what is going on with somebody that compels them so much about this movement? And I think it's like this perfect storm of economic instability, fear about the pandemic. And the fact that in so many ways, the government has been dishonest with us and has let so many people down. And there's a distrust of systems. And with that, there's space to develop these conspiracy theories. So when we hear, you know, the narrative shifting and we become suspect of trusted institutions,

• 1:10:57Rich Roll?

  we're seeding this landscape for this kind of thing to occur. So, you know, the fact that it even exists is baffling to me, but I guess I can understand it on that level. And then when we are dealing with ideas around the virus too, like I think that's really just amplified the intensity.

• 1:11:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, insecurity is a big part of it. I think like empathy is one reason to discuss it. I think like there might be, some of your listeners might have knee jerk reaction to this is like, why do these guys keep talking about these kinds of things? Why is it, why are we getting political? Why are we having these kinds of discussions and beating the QAnon drum so loudly? And part of that might be because a lot of us who listen to you and care about these issues, we have tools for ourselves that we can, we could drown out the world. We might have tools, we might have the ability and wherewithal to be able to block it out. And our lives might be just fine if we just train and meditate and eat well and our lives are going to be good. But like, there is something about cluing into these larger trends that does matter, right?

• 1:12:02Adam Skolnick?

  Like to even people who might have it wired on an individual level, on a family level, and none of us have it wired completely. I mean, the acknowledgement of that, but we, we have tools. Why does it matter to keep talking about these things to you?

• 1:12:14Rich Roll?

  That's a great question. How do I answer this? I mean, I think that it matters because truth matters.

• 1:12:22Rich Roll?

  And I get concerned about our ability to function as a healthy society when we have this breakdown in communication and when we're living in various distinct realities. Like, if we don't share a sense of what is actually going on, then how can we move forward collectively? Yes, we can focus on our individual well-being. We can develop our spiritual life and our emotional lives and improve our relationships with those that we're surrounded by. But when you scale that up, how are we functioning collectively as a society? And I see, in the same way that we have an epidemic of lifestyle disease, I'm seeing a disease of the mind, right?

• 1:13:05Rich Roll?

  Like, what is the real virus right now? Is it coronavirus? Or is it an infection of ideas that is driving people apart from each other? And as a result, breaking down our ability to cohabitate in a healthy way.

• 1:13:24Adam Skolnick?

  Well said. I've been, I just finished a little light reading. It's Plague by Albert Camus. And, um, because I've been reading Plague, I'm watching Plague movies during this period of time. But one thing that comes out of it, you know, it takes place in the 1940s in North Africa. There's a bubba mic plague outbreak. And it's told from the perspective of several characters, but the thesis is people are more good than bad. And so even though we are harping on some of these things, I think it's important for us to affirm that that is, that we do believe that. And that's one reason for me, I think it's good to talk about these things because, you know, the only reason we're able to, or not the only reason, one of the main reasons we're able to build these kind of lives that we choose and follow our passions and work

• 1:14:08Adam Skolnick?

  out and meditate and do all the things that make us whole, is because we have a system that works, you know, that we feel like this underlying, that's the whole idea of the Black Lives Matter movement, that there's all sorts of people in this, in this country that don't have, don't feel stable to be able to build a life that is holistic, because they always have to be looking over their shoulders. But if you have an erosion of truth, then we're all going to be in that position too. And that's the warning of it, right? That's the warning shot. So to me, it's like... We need to build that so everyone has that foundation of stability and we can rely on things being equal and fair and that we can all have the opportunity to build those really uplifting lives.

• 1:14:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well said. All right, let's move it on.

• 1:14:51Adam Skolnick?

  Should we get to some listener questions?

• 1:14:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Adam Skolnick?

  This is from Camille in DeKalb, Illinois.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  Hello, this is Camille Baker from DeKalb, Illinois. I was listening to one of the recent Roll On segments and I heard Rich mention that he includes journal entries from Artist's Way as part of his morning mindfulness routine. And as an art therapist, I am very intrigued, shall I say, richly curious about how you stumbled upon the book as part of your journaling process and what your connection to creative

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  expression is as part of your, how should I say, your wholeness journey or your healthy journey or just kind of your wellness journey is the best way to say it. So yeah, love your show, love you, it's great, thanks, bye.

• 1:15:56Rich Roll?

  Thanks for your question, Camille. Journaling is a huge part of my daily routine, my daily regimen. I would say that it's more than just a part of my wholeness or wellness journey, it's part of being human, I think. You know, I began journaling in 1998, initially when I was in treatment. When I got out of treatment, I started seeing a therapist and he suggested that I check out the Artist's Way and I started doing the program there. And I've done the program many, many times over the years, but one of the things that I've maintained and continue to do with great consistency are the morning pages and the artist date, which are two of the fundamental practices in the Artist's Way.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  The morning pages, for those that don't know, are This practice where you start every day by writing out three pages in longhand in a notebook, not typing on a laptop or a computer, but actually getting pen and paper out. And the idea is to not edit yourself, to just start channeling and writing whatever is coming to mind. The idea being you're kind of clearing the cobwebs, you're trying to connect with your unconscious, and opening, over time, that channel of creativity to surface. And I found it to be one of the most powerful and practical things that I do to connect with my creativity. And by creativity, I mean not just creativity in a limited sense of like,

• 1:17:24Rich Roll?

  "Oh, I'm gonna be a writer, or a photographer, or a filmmaker, or a stand-up comic." I'm talking about the innate creativity that is endemic to all human beings, and part and parcel of what it means to be a fully expressed human being. Creative expression is entwined with everything that makes us who we are. We're all creative beings. And I think that most people are walking around incredibly creatively suppressed or stymied. And I think part of our job as people who are here trying to grow and progress is to bring voice to our unique sensibilities. That's what we're here to do. That's what we're born to do.

• 1:18:08Rich Roll?

  I go into depth about this subject with Chase Jarvis on the podcast, so you might want to check out that episode. He's a photographer and a filmmaker. He wrote an incredible book about creativity. And his whole thesis is, you know, as human beings, we're all born creative. And then we, over time, through our educational process, that creativity gets drummed out of us. And then we start to think that creativity is the purview of a select group of supremely talented people that we can't relate to. And that's just a lie. That creative expression is in all of us in our own unique various forms. And bringing expression to that, figuring out what that is,

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  and then sharing it with the world is a gift that we're all capable of doing. And I think it's incumbent upon all of us to... To do that, to bring more expression to that. You might also want to listen to podcasts that I did with Brian Koppelman, who's a screenwriter. He's the creator of the TV show Billions. He wrote the movie Rounders. He's written a lot of movies and he's just incredibly prolifically creative person. And this is a guy who's been doing the morning pages for like decades and he never misses a day. And he swears by it. He's like, I will not skip that no matter what. And he attributes his extreme creative output

• 1:19:31Rich Roll?

  to the diligence of this daily practice. And I think there's a lot of profundity in that. So check it out. Get on that Artist's Way program. Get those morning pages cranking out.

• 1:19:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, it's like, the danger is you just become a consumer only, right? Like, we're creators too. So like, we don't want to just become consumers. And you know, it goes back to what we were just talking about with role playing, like susceptibility to role playing type games or like a purpose that's beyond you. You're just a consumer in that relationship.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  And it's so easy now to only consume.

• 1:20:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's in our pockets.

• 1:20:05Rich Roll?

  We could just be consuming from that digital device in our pockets all day long. And it takes diligence to carve out time for creativity. So every time I look at my phone, I think, am I using this to create? Or am I using this to consume? We talked about that in a previous episode.

• 1:20:22Adam Skolnick?

  Absolutely. Cool. Let's hear from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

• 1:20:28Speaker 03

  Hey, Adam. Hey, Rich. Gabriel, all the way from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Rich, I discovered you through my YouTube feed. And since then, I've been watching countless videos of you. And wow, has it been so beneficial to me personally and my overall well being. And I thank you so much. Now, my question is, how do you get over a breakup? Now, I was in this seven year relationship with this person that I grew up with, my first love. We grew up together. We saw each other grow through the bumps, but nonetheless, we wanted to get married to each other. And that was the plan for 2020. Now, the complicated

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  part of the relationship was dealing with her in-laws. And it got to a point where it was just abuse for me personally. And I endured so much confusion and hardships that emotionally, I was just derailed. It was one moment that I decided that I can't take it anymore. And I ended the relationship for my emotional health. And it's not easy. Anyway, thank you guys so much. Take care, guys. Much love.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Thanks for your question, Gabriel. Glad you're getting a lot out of the podcast. I appreciate the kind words. And I feel for you, brother. Breakups are rough, man. First thing I would say is, you're 25, you're young, you have your whole life ahead of you. The fact that you're even thinking about how to process this in a healthy way speaks to how healthy you are as an individual. So I have full confidence that you're going to navigate this successfully and look back on it. And it's just going to be a blip on the radar. That's the first thing. The second thing I will say is that you ended it for your own personal emotional health. And I think that also speaks to how well that you're dealing with this. It tells me that you set a boundary for yourself and held

• 1:22:27Rich Roll?

  yourself to that boundary. And that's an indication of self-esteem and self-respect. So, good job there. I would add that I don't think that you should repress any of the emotions that you're experiencing. This is the moment to feel all of the feelings that you're having. Don't run away from them. Try to engage them. Each one of those feelings is an opportunity to learn something more deeply about yourself and what makes you tick. And to be patient. You can't rush this process. You can't snap your fingers and just get over somebody. Time heals. And this is going to take time. And just allow that process to unfold as it wants to unfold, rather than trying to control it.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  I also think that culturally, we tend to look at breakups as failures. This is a relationship that didn't work out. I feel bad about it because it failed. But I really don't like that nomenclature or that perspective. I think every relationship that we have, every relationship has its own unique timetable and its own unique shelf life. And every relationship, whether it perpetuates for the course of your lifetime, or it ends a month later, are all growth opportunities. And I think a relationship can be a success and still reach that termination point. Just because it's ended doesn't mean that either of you failed. Because people are not static.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Everybody is growing and regressing and changing all the time. And the idea that two people who are together are doing that in lockstep is bananas. Of course, we're gonna grow at different speeds, or we're gonna move in different directions at different times. Maybe one person is growing at a rapid rate and the other person is regressing, or not growing at the same rate. Or with that growth comes a change in your value systems that make you suddenly incompatible. I mean, that's normal. And I think it's shocking that any relationship works out. When you think of it in that context, you begin to understand that most relationships

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  become irreconcilable with time. And making a relationship work is a gigantic undertaking. And sometimes, ending them is the right choice. So, the growth for you and the assignment for you is to really go deep into these emotions that you're feeling, to really do a forensic analysis of what happened, to do an inventory of your part.

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  In not just the breakup, but in the relationship itself and what led to the breakup? And to identify whatever character defects emerged that you can work on for yourself? And to identify the growth opportunity, like what was dysfunctional about the relationship? And why? And, you know, what were you told that you were doing that didn't work? And can you see that objectively and own any truth that you can identify in that? And then what is it that you can change? So that moving forward, you can be in a healthier relationship with a more suitable partner in the future? Like, how can you approach your next relationship from a healthier perspective?

• 1:25:49Rich Roll?

  You know, we also have this kind of cultural mandate of looking at partners as completing us? Or filling some need or, you know, aligning with some programming? Or inherent pattern that we've repeated over time throughout our lives? Like, for example, if you had an emotionally unavailable dad, then you're going to seek that out. That same character trait is going to show up in the partners that you're choosing on an unconscious level? Or the diametric opposite of that? So it's about understanding that programming that can help you make a better, more objective choice? Next time that's in your best interest?

• 1:26:28Rich Roll?

  I would also say that it's important to focus on, not focus on what's the kind of person that I want to have in my life? Like, who is that idealized girlfriend or partner? And instead, focus on yourself. Focus on trying to be the best person that you can, the person that you would want to be with? Rather than trying to find the person who makes you feel like that person? Because, you know, water is always going to rise to its own level. So that's my big speech. I guess I will close that with just offering that the next time you're engaging in a in a relationship, try to approach it from a perspective of what can I give to this relationship rather than what am I going to get out of this for myself?

• 1:27:11Rich Roll?

  I think the more of that kind of mindset that you can have, then you're in a healthier position to have a highly functional relationship. And you're fucking 25, dude. You're going to be fine.

• 1:27:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. The only thing I'd say that's very well said. The only thing I could say from a guy that's been through some breakups is that, including one when I was 25, is that a lot of times, even though you were the one that ended this and you knew it was coming, a lot of times when men are anticipating a breakup or the end of a relationship, they don't actually feel the feelings during that kind of slow dissolution. It's like, once you've turned the page, all of a sudden it hits you with a ton of bricks and you realize and you kind of go into weird internal panic mode almost. Whereas women, when a relationship is ending, they kind of anticipate it and they start feeling those feelings a little earlier and they're better equipped to move on quicker. Where, and that's my experience anyway, and men, it takes a little bit longer.

• 1:28:06Adam Skolnick?

  And I wouldn't expect to feel necessarily even happy day after day after day until like a year after. It could take a year before you start to feel like your normal self again. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just the way it goes. And, and so I wouldn't rush that process. I think patience, like you said, Rich, that's key to these kinds of things and just don't even think about it like a year. You will wake up a year from now or from whenever the breakup happened and you will be finally feeling like yourself again. That's my, that's my prediction.

• 1:28:37Rich Roll?

  You know what I just watched recently that I think is probably the best movie that he should watch right now?

• 1:28:42Adam Skolnick?

  What's that?

• 1:28:42Rich Roll?

  Swingers.

• 1:28:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. That's a good one.

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  Because really, it's a buddy movie about one guy trying to get over his breakup with his girlfriend.

• 1:28:53Adam Skolnick?

  It's exactly that.

• 1:28:54Rich Roll?

  And it's actually got kind of a profound message in there amidst all the insanity of that movie.

• 1:28:59Adam Skolnick?

  And it gave us, you know, gave us Favreau and Vince Vaughn.

• 1:29:03Rich Roll?

  Vince Vaughn, yeah. And many other careers Doug.

• 1:29:06Adam Skolnick?

  Many other careers.

• 1:29:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So watch Swingers.

• 1:29:09Adam Skolnick?

  Watch Swingers ASAP. And don't mind the low production value. That's part of.

• 1:29:14Rich Roll?

  He's 25. He probably hasn't seen Swingers yet.

• 1:29:16Adam Skolnick?

  You might not have seen it.

• 1:29:17Rich Roll?

  It's hard for me to imagine that somebody hasn't seen Swingers, but.

• 1:29:20Adam Skolnick?

  You know what's sad is Swingers is closed now. The, the, the deli Swingers that was in the.

• 1:29:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Well, but the, the.

• 1:29:27Adam Skolnick?

  But that's not the one they were modeling after.

• 1:29:28Rich Roll?

  So the, the, here's a, a interesting aside. So the, the actual diner that they're at in the throughout the movie is actually the 101 diner.

• 1:29:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:29:38Rich Roll?

  And you know who the mayor of the 101 diner is?

• 1:29:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, of course I do. But you tell the people.

• 1:29:42Rich Roll?

  DK.

• 1:29:44Adam Skolnick?

  DK Gold.

• 1:29:45Rich Roll?

  He is. He always comes back to DK.

• 1:29:48Adam Skolnick?

  He might be, he might be there right now.

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  He might be.

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:29:52Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Let's go to North Carolina.

• 1:29:56Speaker 04

  Hey, Ridge and Adam. This is Josh from Raleigh, North Carolina. I've heard it said that the universal is rooted in the particular. As someone who found your podcast years ago when peeling the onion of veganism and endurance sports, but stayed for the honest discussions of sobriety, my question is this. If there is a through line of sobriety, diet and endurance, what is the universal truth that those particulars point to? Thanks so much. I look forward to listening and it's fine to play this on air.

• 1:30:29Rich Roll?

  That's such a good question.

• 1:30:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:30:31Rich Roll?

  I really love that question. Thank you, Josh. I think that the through line is self-discovery. It's personal growth. Like whether it's some kind of diet, protocol, veganism or otherwise, whether it's movement, you know, there's, these are just tools for stripping away the layers that separate you from a higher version of who you are. Like when I decided to go vegan, it didn't occur to me that I was doing this to develop a, a better relationship with myself. I wasn't consciously aware of that. But when you strip away the crap that you're

• 1:31:14Rich Roll?

  eating, suddenly there's an awareness that starts to percolate up. And I'm like. Why did I always eat that thing? Or why is culture set up where we're supposed to do this and not question this? You start asking yourself questions. And I think there's a grappling with your higher self that starts to occur that over time quickens or deepens your connection with your higher self. You know, whether it's veganism or endurance sports, it could be minimalism. Like what happens when you strip away the excess in your life? And you're left with yourself and you have to be with yourself. And you have to look at yourself in the mirror and there's no distraction. What do you do then? How terrifying is that?

• 1:31:59Rich Roll?

  When you have to meet yourself for who you actually are? So again, these are things that I've used. Like endurance sports was fundamental in my journey because I was spending so much time alone by myself, out in nature with an elevated heart rate and no distractions. And I was very confused at the time about who I was and what I wanted to do and how to express myself and you know, who am I fundamentally? Right? As cheesy as that sounds. And that process was like this gauntlet that really taught me about who I am and what makes me tick and what my values are and who I wanted to be.

• 1:32:43Rich Roll?

  So it's not about veganism or endurance sports as much as it is finding some analogous vehicle that can be that tool for you. Because we're here to be authentic to who we are. Like goes back to the answer I gave to the other question. Like fundamentally, we're here to grow. We're here to express our most authentic self. And we, in order to do that, we have to discover our unique blueprint and figure out what our values are. And then the journey becomes, how do you align those values with your actions?

• 1:33:20Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. Self-discovery and that that is so rich, right? Cause that is like.

• 1:33:25Rich Roll?

  And that's the universal, like the particular is I'm not going to eat this or I'm going to do this activity today. And the universal is who am I?

• 1:33:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Who am I and why are we here?

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:33:36Adam Skolnick?

  But it's micro and macro. Cause you're like, okay, who am I? Like, because the world's always trying to tell you who you are, right? Like, and part of that is you, you make choices and depending on how old you are, those choices end up kind of creating an identity for yourself that you might wake up and be like, wait a second, how did I become this person?

• 1:33:54Rich Roll?

  It's about regaining control over those reins, right? And rather than allowing your identity to be dictated to you by a group that, you know, you feel more comfortable being aligned with, or whatever marketing message, or a television show, or music video, or whatever it is, to start shouldering responsibility for crafting that identity for yourself.

• 1:34:15Adam Skolnick?

  But what's interesting is like, you're saying self-discovery, you know, you started out by, I'm going to try not eating this and eating this instead. It's like, for me, I'm going to try swimming in the ocean because it's like, feels good. But then you don't realize like, that does become like.

• 1:34:30Rich Roll?

  A spiritual odyssey.

• 1:34:31Adam Skolnick?

  It does become an odyssey.

• 1:34:32Rich Roll?

  What happens when I can't, you know, pick up that bottle and drink that thing?

• 1:34:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  And understanding like, oh, that was stunting my emotional and spiritual growth. I thought I just liked being drunk.

• 1:34:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:34:45Rich Roll?

  But there's so much more going on, like these little actions that, you know, we don't realize are so powerful and potent in determining like who we are and the decisions that we make about who we want to be.

• 1:34:58Adam Skolnick?

  Love it. All right. Last question from a mystery man. I'm not even sure his name's real.

• 1:35:04Rich Roll?

  He's in an undisclosed location.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  Hey guys, my name's John. I'm calling from an undisclosed location that is not in California or Texas. I was wondering what you guys think about Joe Rogan leaving LA, moving to Texas? Do you think there is a mass exodus out of major metropolitan areas and people moving to less populated areas, whether the effects of climate change are less severe, the overall quality of life better? Have you guys personally thought about leaving California? By the way, thanks for recommending Down to Earth on Netflix. My wife and I loved it. Thanks a lot. Bye.

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  Cool. Thanks, John. I will answer your question if you will tell me what undisclosed location you're.

• 1:35:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Where do you live, John? First things first.

• 1:35:43Rich Roll?

  I'm now I'm obsessed with figuring out where John is.

• 1:35:46Adam Skolnick?

  He's in a silo, deep in Middle Earth.

• 1:35:48Rich Roll?

  First things first, I'm not surprised about Rogan leaving California for Texas. I think Texas fits him. It makes sense to me. It seems aligned with his sensibilities. But also, you know, his Spotify deal is about to kick in and I think he stands to save like 16.8% in income tax by moving to Texas from California. So from a purely financial perspective, it makes perfect sense.

• 1:36:13Adam Skolnick?

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:14Rich Roll?

  And, you know, he's mentioned it on his show a couple of times. I mean, he's, if he's more centrally located, it's easy to get people from both coasts. It will be interesting to see how it affects the show because when you're in, like, I can't imagine not living in LA or New York just because by virtue of proximity to guests and having access to those people. In the pandemic, now we're compelled to do a lot of this Zoom stuff. You know, I'm hoping that we're going to get back to, you know, some ability to do these in person. And I've been able to do that occasionally with a mix of Zoom stuff. But at some point, when it's safe to congregate again, how is that going to impact the show? But he's just conducting his show the way he always has with doing testing onsite and stuff like that. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see.

• 1:36:57Adam Skolnick?

  But Austin is a, Austin is not like, I mean, it's a cultural kind of center as well.

• 1:37:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, we thought about moving to Austin.

• 1:37:06Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:37:06Rich Roll?

  Years ago. Yeah. When, when we were kind of going through our, you know, financial dismantling.

• 1:37:12Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right.

• 1:37:12Rich Roll?

  And looking to really downsize. Like, I thought really seriously about moving to Austin. And I love Austin. I think it's a fantastic place.

• 1:37:18Adam Skolnick?

  I've never been, oddly enough.

• 1:37:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's cool. You would love it. You would love it.

• 1:37:21Adam Skolnick?

  I was told.

• 1:37:22Rich Roll?

  On a, on a broader level, first of all, I'm not leaving. I'm here in California to stay. But I have found myself thinking about it in a way that I hadn't previously. Like, where would I go? Like, yeah, Byron Bay sounds pretty good right now. You know what I mean? Like, getting out of the US completely. And I think we're starting to see, and we will continue to see, what I think will be a mass exodus from metropolitan areas, you know, with this work from home movement, the virtual workforce explosion. Most, not most, I don't know about most, but a lot of companies are not going to go back to normal. Even in the event of a vaccine and the virus lifting, a lot of these things are going to remain.

• 1:38:07Rich Roll?

  They're going to persist.

• 1:38:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, commercial real estate is going to suffer, don't you think?

• 1:38:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're going to, we're going to see this crazy real estate fallout and. What's going to happen with that? Who knows? But listen, you've contributed to the New York Times. If you were a New York Times reporter, living in Manhattan or Brooklyn right now, doing stories, nobody's going into the New York Times. Like, why would you? There's no reason that you would have to live proximate to the corporate headquarters. So why would you, where you're paying exorbitant rent, when you could live wherever you want to live?

• 1:38:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, I've heard that New York rents have already dropped 15%. Because so many people have left because of the pandemic. And I just heard that today. We haven't seen that drop in Los Angeles yet, but I think it could be coming. I'm like you, man, I think about it all the time. I think about, I think about leaving all the time. But I mean, I could never live away from the ocean now. Like, I know that. And so I'm pretty much locked into high rent.

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  Go to Costa Rica, go live in Costa Rica.

• 1:39:10Adam Skolnick?

  I can, but now I'm on this podcast twice a month. It's hard to get here from Costa Rica.

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right?

• 1:39:15Adam Skolnick?

  I know. That's like, it's really messing up my game plan if Trump wins.

• 1:39:18Rich Roll?

  I think what's happening is the pandemic is just an accelerant on all of these trends that were in various stages of nascent infancy. So virtual workforces, online education, all these kind of percolating trends are now just blossoming in the light of our current situation. And they're only going to become entrenched and exacerbate this exodus. When you realize that we can decouple place from profession, people are starting to wake up and realize like, oh, if I could live wherever I want, and it's not tied to my employment, what would that look like? So I think, yeah, of course, people are going to flee

• 1:40:01Rich Roll?

  the places where we're seeing, you know, viral outbreaks and exorbitant rents to live in a place where you can have the lifestyle that you want for yourself. I think meanwhile, we're going to see massive changes in, in education. We're already seeing it. I think it's going to put a lot of mid-tier colleges out of business. I think we're going to see the explosion of telehealth. Again, this decoupling of place and the need for proximity is really going to amplify these technological trends that are going to give people a different lens on how they want to live. You know, why live in Manhattan or Silicon Valley if you can work from home and avoid like rent that's just bananas?

• 1:40:46Adam Skolnick?

  What about together?

• 1:40:46Rich Roll?

  And what's gonna happen to city centers?

• 1:40:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:40:49Rich Roll?

  That in a long-term sense, like I think it's gonna revolutionize how we think about downtown areas and commutes and civic spaces. Even when we can congregate again in a healthy way, what is that gonna look like?

• 1:41:02Adam Skolnick?

  But don't you think it could be, because like, we're basically seeing a rerun of how things like, it used to be cities, city centers were vibrant places and then all of a sudden in the seventies, suburban, suburbia.

• 1:41:15Rich Roll?

  They're going trends.

• 1:41:16Adam Skolnick?

  And everyone left and downtown LA was a shithole and like, nobody wanted.

• 1:41:20Rich Roll?

  Now it's coming back.

• 1:41:21Adam Skolnick?

  And now it's awesome and then it's gonna leave again. Like, isn't it kinda like this ebb and flow and human, in the human space?

• 1:41:28Rich Roll?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:41:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:29Rich Roll?

  But I think what's not gonna go away is the human need for connection.

• 1:41:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  You know, like, people wanna be together. And there's something about city centers that draw people to them irrespective of their employment.

• 1:41:43Adam Skolnick?

  That's why I think there's gonna be a correction. Eventually, it's gonna come back because in some places like newsrooms, there is an energy of collaboration that's important. I mean, there is something to that. So I think some companies will choose to come back to the office, but maybe, I mean, maybe not for a while.

• 1:42:00Rich Roll?

  It's weird, like, it used to be the big benefit is that you could work from home, but now the benefit will be like, you get to come into an office.

• 1:42:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you get to get away from your family.

• 1:42:07Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? It's weird. And like, I could do what, I suppose I could do what I do anywhere, but like, I miss New York.

• 1:42:15Adam Skolnick?

  Do you?

• 1:42:16Rich Roll?

  I would love to have, I'm like, rents are dropping in New York? Like, I wonder if I could get an apartment in New York? You know, like, even though New York is a shitshow right now. Like, I miss that immersion in culture and people, you know? And I live in, I live in a beautiful place in LA, but it's relatively remote. Like, I'm not in, I'm not, like, the vitality and the energy of that place is so specific and so rejuvenating, at least in short bursts, for me. So, you know, I would wanna be in that community irrespective of my employment.

• 1:42:49Adam Skolnick?

  Well, someone will take those apartments. I mean, the good thing about, about New York rents dropping is that there's all sorts of working people that made the city cool, like, way back in the day that got priced out.

• 1:42:59Rich Roll?

  That's my hope, my hope is that it will bring the cool people back, right? Because New York got boring because it's just too overpriced. And all the interest, all the people that made New York interesting had to leave.

• 1:43:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. We'll see what happens. I'm not leaving California anytime soon.

• 1:43:15Adam Skolnick?

  Not that anyone really asked me, but

• 1:43:17Rich Roll?

  I'm asking you.

• 1:43:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, although I do think about it. I do think about it. And I think of Australia as well, but that's because I could get a passport.

• 1:43:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, California's got problems right now, but there's a lot of great stuff about it.

• 1:43:31Adam Skolnick?

  I'll tell you where I wouldn't move from California, and that's to Texas. I just wouldn't.

• 1:43:36Rich Roll?

  You wouldn't move to Texas?

• 1:43:37Adam Skolnick?

  No, I don't think I would. I mean, I like it. I've been there and it's cool.

• 1:43:40Rich Roll?

  You haven't been to Austin, though.

• 1:43:41Adam Skolnick?

  I haven't been to Austin. That's true. I do want to go to Austin.

• 1:43:44Rich Roll?

  Reserve judgment until you visit it. Austin is cool. I understand why you're like, I'm not moving there, but like, I can appreciate Austin.

• 1:43:50Adam Skolnick?

  I love Utah, though. I would think about Utah.

• 1:43:52Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:43:52Adam Skolnick?

  I love Utah.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It's like the

• 1:43:55Rich Roll?

  I'm not moving to Utah.

• 1:43:56Adam Skolnick?

  No? It's beautiful. It's like, it's like the, it's like almost Colorado. I know. No ocean. That's why I won't live there, but yeah.

• 1:44:05Rich Roll?

  All right, let's wrap this up. That's it, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks for your questions. I appreciate it. How do you feel, Adam? Do you feel like we did a good job today?

• 1:44:14Adam Skolnick?

  I feel great. Yeah. I mean, I always feel like we did well, but I mean, maybe that's just

• 1:44:19Rich Roll?

  Sounds enthusiastic.

• 1:44:21Adam Skolnick?

  Well, maybe I have overinflated self-esteem and I always think I did well and then I find out later.

• 1:44:25Rich Roll?

  I thought you did a wonderful job. I enjoyed that thoroughly. You can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick on all the social places. If you want your message considered to be read and answered on the show, leave us a voicemail at 424-235-4626. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify. Hit that notification thing on YouTube, except not for this one, because we didn't film this one.

• 1:44:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, not on YouTube.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  But in general, I suppose. Check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll put links up to everything that we talked about, including all of those ways that you can get involved and contribute. You can also submit your question on our Facebook group, the Rich Roll Podcast Facebook group.

• 1:45:10Adam Skolnick?

  I have one more question before you sign off. We're in a very superhero room right now.

• 1:45:16Rich Roll?

  Hmm. We're in an undisclosed location.

• 1:45:19Adam Skolnick?

  We're in undisclosed locations surrounded by various superheroes and villains.

• 1:45:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Adam Skolnick?

  Who's your, who's your favorite Batman?

• 1:45:25Rich Roll?

  My favorite Batman?

• 1:45:26Adam Skolnick?

  Your favorite Batman?

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  You're coming at me with a curve ball here.

• 1:45:29Adam Skolnick?

  I know. Well, I'm staring at Batman.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Rich Roll?

  I gotta give it up to Christian Bale for sheer intensity, but I got a soft spot in my heart for Michael Keaton.

• 1:45:41Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:45:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Adam Skolnick?

  I go Christian Bale.

• 1:45:45Rich Roll?

  There's a revisionist history around the Michael Keaton Batman.

• 1:45:48Adam Skolnick?

  Is there?

• 1:45:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Adam Skolnick?

  I haven't listened to that one.

• 1:45:50Rich Roll?

  He's being resurfaced as the greatest Batman.

• 1:45:52Adam Skolnick?

  Is there? Oh, okay. So, but it's not an actual episode of revisionist history?

• 1:45:55Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. It's a, it's just a kind of a percolating cultural philosophy.

• 1:45:59Adam Skolnick?

  Cause he's the most like, he's kind of merging. Michael Keaton is like a merger of, of Adam Rich meets Christian Bale.

• 1:46:06Rich Roll?

  Little bit. I don't know. Blake, what do you think?

• 1:46:09Adam Skolnick?

  I like Adam West, man.

• 1:46:10Rich Roll?

  Really? Adam West?

• 1:46:11Adam Skolnick?

  Adam West.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  Just for sheer satire and like.

• 1:46:15Adam Skolnick?

  I watched it as a kid.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Adam Skolnick?

  Really? Me too. That was still on when you were a kid? On TV land. Yeah.

• 1:46:21Rich Roll?

  Davey, do you have an opinion on this?

• 1:46:22Adam Skolnick?

  My only opinion is not George Clooney.

• 1:46:25Rich Roll?

  Not, yeah. I think there's consensus that it's not George Clooney. All right.

• 1:46:30Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:46:31Rich Roll?

  This is getting ridiculous. We're done. Thanks, everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello and also Blake today for audio engineering production. Show notes and interstitial music. Blake typically videos the show, but we had a situation today.

• 1:46:47Rich Roll?

  Jessica Moran for graphics. We got Davey Greenberg on portraits today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships, holding court at the 101 diner as we speak, although I think he's in Seattle right now. Theme music, as always, by my boys Tyler, Trapper and Harry. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for tuning in. Let us know how you thought this one went. How did it land for you? Hit us up on the socials and we'll see you back here in a couple of days with another episode. You want to take us out?

• 1:47:15Adam Skolnick?

  Be cool, be kind.

• 1:47:16Rich Roll?

  Right on, right on. Peace.