Roll On: Creation Over Consumption

Welcome to another edition of Roll On—my bi-weekly deep dive into (semi) current events, topics of audience interest, and of course answers to your questions. Serving up hype-man duties is 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 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. Today's conversation begins with a quick update on my forthcoming book Voicing Change and the subscription offering we are currently building. We then pivot to ruminations on goal setting based upon my personal experience and that of my many past guests. We talk about the latest coverage of the coronavirus, spikes across the country, the mask-authoritarianism debate, and the current constitutional crisis occurring in Portland. We honor the legacy of John Lewis, exploring his history and many accomplishments, including his pivotal role in the civil rights movement. We shoutout my friends Utkarsh Ambudkar and Darin Olien and their respective Netflix offerings: We Are Freestyle Love Supreme and Down to Earth--both mandatory quarantine viewing. We discuss the KFC-Beyond Chicken collaboration debut. And we send some love to legendary ultra runner Tommy Rivs — a beloved athlete and friend currently in the ICU (now in a coma since recording) suffering from undiagnosed COVID-like symptoms and severe respiratory distress. If you're able, please consider a donation to Tommy's GoFundMe to ameliorate medical expenses. A little goes a long way. And finally, we switch gears to answer a few questions submitted by audience members on our Facebook Group page and voicemail. How can we best ration our time between consumption and creation? What can we do to abate feelings of powerlessness and fatalism about the future of humanity and the planet? How do you maintain sanity while both working and being a parent and part-time teacher during this unique time in history? And How do you ease into running? The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you to Patrick Dean, Bel Rumi, Joe from Pittsburgh, Bill Lawrence and Julie from Minnesota 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. I'm digging this new format. I hope you find it equal parts entertaining and informative. 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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• 1:22Rich Roll?

  All right. Me and my hype man, Adam, are back. I am taking roll call. Let's do this.

• 1:33Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Another edition of Roll On, Roll On Life, I guess, our AMA Ask Me Anything-formatted version of the show, where me and my hype man, Adam Skolnick, journalist, activist, author, co-author of David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me. And Bon Vivant at Large joins me to break down, I don't know, current events a little bit and do things topical, answer listener questions, et cetera. So, thanks for tuning in. Adam, how you doing?

• 2:07Adam Skolnick?

  Doing good, man. I've been Bon Vivant at home.

• 2:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12Adam Skolnick?

  Like the rest of us.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  You're getting your swim run workouts in, though.

• 2:15Adam Skolnick?

  I am. I've been doing a lot. I can thank you for that. I love this sport.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool. I just got an email. Did you get the email?

• 2:22Adam Skolnick?

  It depends on how you define cool.

• 2:23Rich Roll?

  Did you get the email from Otello today that they were going to be hosting their world championship event in Sweden and now they had to pull it?

• 2:33Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, I did not know that.

• 2:34Rich Roll?

  It's canceled for the year. Yeah.

• 2:36Adam Skolnick?

  And Inga Din is happening or not?

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  I think that one is happening.

• 2:39Adam Skolnick?

  That's this week?

• 2:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but the world championship event is getting shelved.

• 2:42Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sorry to hear that.

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  As of now, at least. So, at the same time, we can still get out and swim run.

• 2:47Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. What I love about it is it's not quote unquote "cool." I'm the only person that I see.

• 2:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's nobody else. Running around the streets of Santa Monica with a pull buoy attached to your leg in a wetsuit.

• 3:00Adam Skolnick?

  And I don't even wear goggles like most swimmers. I wear a mask because I'm so used to freediving. So, it's low profile swim, like really a freediving mask.

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  Do you get any weird looks?

• 3:12Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah. You get weird looks. But, you know, I have gotten quicker. Like, it's interesting. When I first started training for the Catalina race, I was like, not. I'd been running on a treadmill and now, and running on the street, like, I was not very quick at all. But I have gotten quicker, running longer distances during quarantine. I've definitely gotten more fit during quarantine. It's a trip. And this last weekend was the first time I actually shed the wetsuit and was just in jammers and a rash guard.

• 3:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Adam Skolnick?

  And a pull buoy. And it felt so much better running in that.

• 3:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the water temp is good right now.

• 3:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  I remember when I did the world championship event a couple of years ago, I got together with the local swim run crew in the days leading up to the race, and we did a workout through the streets of Stockholm. So, it was me and like, I don't know, eight dudes running literally down very busy streets on a weekday in wetsuits with pull buoys and caps on and the whole thing.

• 4:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Rich Roll?

  And swim run is such a part of the culture there that no one looked twice. Like, business people are walking down the sidewalk and we're running, you know? It's such a weird thing.

• 4:16Adam Skolnick?

  It is weird. And then swimming in your shoes. I keep thinking like, who? Who is watching me get in in my running shoes, swimming? But I do love it. I mean, I have to say, like, there's something about the workout that afterwards, like, the combination, and I've been doing kind of, uh, like, a three-mile run, a 1.1-mile swim, and then like, a two-to-three-mile run on the back end.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:37Adam Skolnick?

  And it's, you know, it takes me like, an hour and a half. And I, afterwards, I feel like it's amazing how I feel. I feel better than if I just ran, or if I just swam.

• 4:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's definitely a full-body experience.

• 4:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  Good, man. Well, you're looking fit. You might be the fittest I've ever seen you.

• 4:52Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, man.

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  But you have a baby on the way, so things might shift a little bit.

• 4:55Adam Skolnick?

  The dad bod is real.

• 4:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Adam Skolnick?

  The fear of the dad bod. Yeah.

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  So what we do here is, we make a couple announcements. We're gonna talk about a couple top-of-mind subjects. Um, we're gonna share some good news, some show-and-tell, and we're gonna take a quick break, and then do questions from the audience. So to kick things off, a couple quick-

• 5:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm excited about this, by the way.

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  It is good.

• 5:19Adam Skolnick?

  This new format. We're tightening it.

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  We're trying to, yeah, we're trying to tighten it.

• 5:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Rich Roll?

  We'll see how it goes.

• 5:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  I'm not exactly, uh, circumspect in, in how I speak, so I don't know how much I can adhere to the strictness.

• 5:33Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you just tell the pipe man to back off if he starts, if he starts cracking the whip.

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, it's your job to crack the whip.

• 5:39Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 5:40Rich Roll?

  Um, a couple of quick announcements up top. Uh, Voicing Change update. This is my new book. Very excited about it. We're still in the process of finalizing it, but most of the heavy lifting is done. Uh, Timeless Wisdom, inspired from the Rich Roll Podcast. It's gonna be coming out in November. It's looking beautiful. I'm super proud of it and excited about it. I'll keep you guys up to date on exact release date, but I'm so proud of this creative expression, which was very much a team effort. Uh, a lot of really talented designers, and it's been a collaboration with them, and with the guests, of course. So I'm excited to be able to share my guest's wisdom in a different kind of format, so-

• 6:22Adam Skolnick?

  I'm excited for it.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  That's been going on in the background, with everything else that's been going on. I've been working on that pretty, um, intensely. Uh, I'll show- So if you want to have your question answered here on the podcast, you can leave it on our Facebook group, but we would actually prefer you leave us a voicemail. That way we can play the audio on air, which is really fun. We're going to do a little bit of that today. The phone number, just so you guys all have it, is 424-235-4626. And I want to thank everybody who filled out the survey that we posted on our Facebook group about this subscription idea that we're working on. It was super helpful to get everybody's input and feedback. We're taking it to heart, and that is also something that is in motion,

• 7:06Rich Roll?

  and I'll keep you posted on that as well. And then one final quick follow-up thing.

• 7:10Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yes.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  We waxed on the other day about Queer Eye and Karamo.

• 7:15Adam Skolnick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  And this is, I still can't believe this happened, but a couple of days later, I got a DM from Karamo on Instagram, and he's like, "Hey, man, I love the podcast. I'd love to come on. I heard you guys talking about me," which completely blew my mind.

• 7:30Adam Skolnick?

  Has that ever happened before with other, anybody else that you were kind of throwing out there on the podcast? It has to have happened before.

• 7:36Rich Roll?

  Maybe. I don't know. Might be the first time.

• 7:39Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  I mean, I just couldn't believe that he, I think he's BSing me. I don't think he actually, somebody might have told him, but whether he listens or not, I don't know. We'll ask him. But I got him on the schedule for August, so I have that to look forward to.

• 7:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's really exciting.

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  Assuming that that happens. What was really funny about that is that my 13-year-old daughter, who loves Queer Eye, she, I showed her the DM. I was like, "Check it out. I'm going to get Karamo to come, to come over." She's like, "That's not him. Like, that, somebody, that's a bot account." And I was like, "No, it's got a blue star. Look."

• 8:09Adam Skolnick?

  It's the blue check.

• 8:10Rich Roll?

  She's like, "Somebody hacked his account." Like, she just couldn't wrap her head around the idea that Karamo would have any interest whatsoever in anything that I'm doing. So...

• 8:19Adam Skolnick?

  I think, I think she might actually listen to that episode.

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  She might. She's not going to believe it until he actually shows up, and then she'll wonder, you know, how much I paid him or something, I guess. So we'll see. But if you're listening, Karamo, thank you. I'm really looking forward to talking to you.

• 8:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's exciting. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to just come and be in the audience for that one, because I'm excited. I can't wait to hear him.

• 8:42Rich Roll?

  What are we doing now? The teachable moment?

• 8:44Adam Skolnick?

  So, yeah. So, we're going to start with some top-of-mind subjects, and it starts with a teachable moment. So... What do you have for us?

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  So, one thing that comes up a lot, and I get a lot of questions around this, is how to set and achieve a goal. So, I wanted to just spend a couple of minutes speaking broadly about my perspective on that. I think it's a nuanced thing. I do think it's really important to have a goal, but I don't think that it's crucial that you obsess about that goal. And what I mean by that is, we have to have something to look forward to that then allows you to create structures that move you in a specific direction. Like, you can't score if you don't know where the goal line is, right? So, you have to establish what you're working towards, and that brings everything else into focus.

• 9:35Rich Roll?

  A perfect example of this is, I diddled away most of the quarantine not working on this book.

• 9:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 9:42Rich Roll?

  Because there was no deadline, because we're self-publishing it. It just seemed like this ephemeral thing, and I could finish it whenever I felt like it. And what that meant is, basically, I got nothing done on it for like, a year. When we finally established, "Look, it's got to get done by this time," and that timeframe seemed almost impossible to achieve, then I got my butt in gear, and I created a plan, and I worked towards it, and accomplished it. For me, that's what it took. Maybe that's not the way it is for everybody, but I do think that there is something magical about setting a date on the calendar where you want to have accomplished a certain thing.

• 10:16Adam Skolnick?

  So, not just the goal of write the book, but actually have a deadline imposed, either, like, an external deadline?

• 10:23Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, the goal in this case was, "Complete this manuscript by this date."

• 10:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 10:28Rich Roll?

  Right? So, the deadline creates structures around achievement of the goal. But then, I kind of forget about the goal itself, and I become very focused on the tasks that have to be completed every single day. So, I break out a calendar, a big, one of those big desktop calendars, and I try to figure out what has to happen every single day in order for this to become real. And then, my focus is just on what needs to happen. That day, and I forget about the big goal and I forget about even what has to happen tomorrow. Then it becomes about process because I really think that unless you can fall in

• 11:10Rich Roll?

  love with process and immerse yourself in process, that the goal doesn't really matter. And I should say also foundational to this is that whatever goal you set for yourself should be the right goal. I think just picking any random goal is not great. Like that goes into a longer conversation about the inner work required to set the appropriate goal for yourself and understanding the why behind it. You need clarity on the why. Why is this goal important to you? What is it going to do for your life? Once you have that sorted out, you set the goal and then you create all the tasks that have to happen on the specific days leading up to that. And you can create little stepping stone goals along the way that you can celebrate when

• 11:52Rich Roll?

  you achieve them because that keeps you invested, it keeps you excited, it keeps you intrigued by this journey. Like I think it's good to reward yourself and take those moments periodically to celebrate the small wins because big goals are achieved by tiny little wins every single day.

• 12:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  So I think that's super important.

• 12:14Adam Skolnick?

  I do a terrible job at that. I don't really give myself space to celebrate anything.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  You should. You should. You know, I think it feels indulgent to do that, but I think what that does is it makes me feel more emotionally invested in the process. And again, it's all, I can't emphasize this enough. It is about process. And there's something about, once you've initiated that process and you're working, you're moving forward and you're getting those little wins every single day, that creates momentum. And there's something really magical about momentum. I just know for me personally, when I have momentum, then I become this moving object that's very difficult to stop. And I don't know what it is about that psychologically or neurochemically, but for me, it works. Once I've established momentum, then other things feel like a distraction and I'm much

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  more invested in the process itself.

• 13:08Rich Roll?

  I would say in addition to that, that it's important to create accountability for yourself. You can be accountable to yourself, but I think it's also important to be accountable to externalities, other people who will help keep you on track. I think you need to be selective about who those people are. You want people who are on your page and are gonna celebrate you and are also encouraging you towards the achievement of this goal. You don't want to be accountable to people who don't believe in you or think that you're wasting your time. So who you pick to be your accountability partner, I think is really important. That person should also be somebody who's not afraid to call you out when you're missing the mark.

• 13:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, right.

• 13:49Rich Roll?

  You know, this is something that you see all the time with fitness goals. You do it with somebody else or with a small team or a group of people. You're more likely to get up at five o'clock in the morning and show up for that group run or that November project workout because you know your friends are there waiting for you and they're gonna notice if you don't show up. So it's the positive accountability, the people who are gonna say, "Keep going, you're doing great." And the negative accountability of people who are gonna hold you to account if you don't show up or you start to slack.

• 14:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and there's something specifically about writing books too, that the process kind of takes over your brain in a weird way.

• 14:25Rich Roll?

  Well, it's so all encompassing.

• 14:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like a tunnel that you can't get out of and the momentum becomes just charging through it. And it can become distracting, you can get like lost in the tunnel. But for me, when I'm working on something, then at any time of day, ideas can pop in to improve whatever that piece of writing is that I'm working on, especially if it's a book.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  But then those breaks, whether it's going out for a swim run workout or taking a walk or whatever it is, are important to then gain perspective. And if you don't, if you don't do that, right, that's where the idea pops in or the thing you didn't think of when you're so mired in the details. You know, you have to provide space for that.

• 15:03Adam Skolnick?

  The problem solving.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and then if you miss like a daily goal accountability wise, but you still have the bigger goal on the calendar, do you have advice not to get too down on yourself? Or how do you, like if you?

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  You start to fall off?

• 15:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, if you start to fall off, how do you refocus?

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I think you then recalibrate. You break out the calendar and figure out, all right, so I'm behind what's going to have to happen for me to achieve this by this date. You either change the date or you create a different structure to which you're more likely to adhere. I think you have to do an inventory and say, why is it that I fell off or couldn't maintain this, you know, daily routine? Maybe I was overly optimistic about what I could achieve in a certain day. Like, make sure that whatever you establish as your daily practice is manageable and fits within the construct of your busy life. If you, you know, overcast that, then you're setting yourself up for failure.

• 16:03Rich Roll?

  So I think it's important that the things you have to do on a daily basis are very manageable. Because the truth is, in order to achieve big goals, you don't have to do that much in a single day, as long as you're doing it consistently. It's the 1% rule. Like, there's a compound interest that occurs. Like, if you're showing up for a half an hour every day to do something, if you do that every day for a year, or 18 months, or two years, or 10 years, the difference is astronomical. It's not just an additive thing. It's an exponential benefit that you reap from doing that. So again, it's all back to the now, the day. And it's related to principles of 12-step, which is, you know, it's just about the moment.

• 16:47Rich Roll?

  Like, what are you doing today? Like, in sobriety, it's like, make sure your head hits the pillow sober. That's all you gotta worry about. You don't have to worry about tomorrow. With respect to achieving a goal, it's like, okay, here are the things I have to do today, and I don't have to worry about the things I have to do tomorrow, or that big intimidating goal that's looming out in the surface that just seems impossible.

• 17:07Adam Skolnick?

  And there's a liberation that comes from, like, all of a sudden, once you have it mapped out, and you know it's about the little bricks to build the big structure. There's a, you know, when you're just sitting there looking at the big structure, this big design that you have in your brain, and you're like, wow, how am I gonna ever do that? And you just focused on that, it does become intimidating.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  Right, and then you become paralyzed.

• 17:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you can become paralyzed, but once you lay one brick, you realize, wait a second, I can do this. You know, it's just, everything becomes manageable.

• 17:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and every brick that you lay... Creates additional confidence

• 17:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Rich Roll?

  In your ability to achieve the thing that feels impossible. And a perfect example of that was me training for Ultraman. Like I, you know, I wasn't, you know, contrary to what people might suspect or imagine, like I wasn't some crazy gifted, you know, endurance athlete. Like I worked really hard to achieve my ultra endurance goals. And when I began training for this race that just seemed like an absolute impossibility, it was hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea that one day I would get to a place where on the third day of this ultra endurance double Ironman race that I'd be able to run 52 miles. And it was just brick by brick by brick over an extended period of time, you know, leading

• 18:28Rich Roll?

  up to doing a 40 mile training run, which was like the craziest thing I could ever imagine doing. Six months earlier, that would have seemed impossible. And it's literally just by doing little things every single day that are moving you forward.

• 18:42Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful. I love it. So let's, uh, there's a couple of things we want to talk about from the news. First is Congressman John Lewis's passing. Um, just give a little bit of a recap. John Lewis was the child of a sharecropper, um, ended up going to Nashville for college, uh, where he got involved in desegregation of lunch counters. Um, and that Nashville crew ended up being really foundational and informative of the, of the student movement within the civil rights movement. He became a Freedom Rider, one of the original 13 Freedom Riders that rode Greyhound buses through the South to desegregate, um, the national transportation system.

• 19:26Adam Skolnick?

  He ended up the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which is basically the student arm affiliated with Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was his organization. He was the youngest speaker of March on Washington. He led the Selma march. He got beat.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  And he's been arrested like forty times.

• 19:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, something like that. And a congressman for over thirty years. I mean, the man was a giant.

• 19:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he was a giant. He was the conscience of Congress. And what a beautiful expression of life. Like, somebody, when I think about him, I think about somebody who lived their life in strict accordance with their values and never really wavered, even when, you know, basically, culture and society was up against him. Like, he was, he had the fortitude and the sense of self to never, you know, basically allow himself to be swayed from what he believed in. And that strength, that center of gravity that he was able to hold for so many years is so powerful and why he's so revered.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  You know, he will certainly be missed. And it's interesting that, you know, he's lived most incarnations of this civil rights movement. I mean, instrumental in the Civil Rights Act getting passed, all the way up through the recent protests at the very end of his life.

• 20:52Adam Skolnick?

  He led a sit-in in 2016 in Congress at the floor of the House of Representatives to try to force

• 21:00Adam Skolnick?

  the Republicans to move on gun control issues.

• 21:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so he was protesting all the way through.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You know, I aspire to that level of advocacy and strength.

• 21:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Grayson Schaefer, who I know from Outside Magazine, he used to be an editor there. He posted something on Instagram, just thinking about the amount of courage it takes to march into the teeth of an attack of, you know, it was vigilantes and cops on the bridge in Selma, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and to lead that group going in there unarmed, ready to get beat, knowing you could die.

• 21:36Rich Roll?

  Knowing, yeah, knowing that, you know, it was a very perilous situation. And always, you know, his, his whole thing was nonviolence from the beginning.

• 21:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And learning those Gandhian techniques.

• 21:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Adam Skolnick?

  And to understand that, like, I take away from, like, reading about him recently, it's just like, Like the incubator that was Nashville, you don't think of Nashville as an incubator for the civil rights movement, you know, but it really was because it wasn't just John Lewis, other people came out of that and and kind of the entire student arm of the civil rights movement came out of the the people that were working together in Nashville. Pretty interesting.

• 22:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he was beloved on both sides of the aisle.

• 22:16Adam Skolnick?

  He was.

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  And he will be missed. Obama wrote a beautiful piece about him on Medium and also the New York Times wrote an extended obit that is worth your attention and I can link those up in the show notes.

• 22:28Adam Skolnick?

  Cool. So then, obviously, the big issue here this last couple of weeks has been the reemergence of a virulent COVID-19 in the United States of America and all that that has wrought. And I think that we're both, we don't want to get too politicized here with it, but a couple of things have come out, stand out for me. And one that I wanted to talk to you about and get your take on was this idea of of masks or anti authoritarianism and and the American love of freedom and how that's being reflected right now in two very different takes on things. One is the anti-mask crowd, who people who don't want

• 23:09Adam Skolnick?

  to wear masks see that orders of mask ordinances around cities and states as an example of authoritarianism. And then in Portland, right now, there are extended Black Lives Matter protests and in and the city has been dealing with that for ever since George Floyd died. And more recently, the federal government has sent in Customs and Border Patrol agents that are basically jackboots on the ground that are taking people off the street, even people who aren't at the protests have claimed to be arrested and in blacked out cars by unidentified federal agents and then turned up, the next thing you know, they're in federal

• 23:48Adam Skolnick?

  court. So in a way that feels very authoritarianist to a lot of people, especially those protesters. And and you have kind of Those two things juxtaposed. On the mask front, I was reading a great article in the Salt Lake Tribune by Courtney Tanner, and it was about how in conservative counties, they don't want their children to have to wear masks. Mothers are spitting in masks at county council meetings. And then you go to Huntington Beach, California, where the guys Chad and JT.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, who, what's their YouTube channel, those guys?

• 24:25Adam Skolnick?

  Chad Goes Deep.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:26Adam Skolnick?

  And, and they have the amazing, they, they, these guys are hilarious and they turn up at like city council meetings all the time and troll the city council.

• 24:33Rich Roll?

  In that video, they're going around trying to give away free masks.

• 24:36Adam Skolnick?

  Trying to give away free masks.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  People are getting super angry at them.

• 24:38Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. And it's the same thing that's happening in Provo, Utah. So it's not just happening, it's not fringe, really, these reactions to masks.

• 24:45Rich Roll?

  So interesting. I think, you know, what I find fascinating about this is the different lenses through which people perceive authoritarianism. On the one hand, you have the anti-mask crowd who are, you know, rallying against this edict that we wear masks as an infringement on their liberties. And on the other hand, we have these federal troops, essentially, this militarized police force that's patrolling the streets of Portland.

• 25:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Rich Roll?

  In uniforms that don't have names and don't necessarily designate their authority and, you know, unmarked vehicles and vans, et cetera, rounding people up, arresting people. And there's a certain contingent of people who, I would suspect that the people who are against wearing masks don't have such a big problem with that. And the question then becomes.

• 25:39Adam Skolnick?

  And vice versa.

• 25:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and vice versa, right? So the, yeah, the people, exactly. So the question then becomes, what is truly authoritarian? What is the real risk here? Where are we seeing inroads on our, on our democratic ideals and living in a truly liberty-oriented democratic society? Right? To me, you know, and I have to, like, is this my cognitive bias? Like, to me, you know, I don't have a problem wearing a mask. It's a mild, I don't like wearing a mask, it's a mild inconvenience. But to the extent that there is any evidence whatsoever that it might be helpful or protective for other people to, you know, keep them from getting sick, I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to do it. But when I see.

• 26:24Rich Roll?

  Troops in a city on federal authority against the wishes of certain state governors and mayors and local politicians, patrolling streets and arresting people seemingly, you know, I don't know, I'm not, I haven't borne witness to any of this, but I read that Esquire article about this, that's more deeply concerning to me and feels like a greater threat to our liberty and far more authoritarian than this idea like, hey, let's wear masks and look out for each other.

• 26:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I talked to somebody who was at the protest in Portland on Friday night and it was similar to what we had here where the police kind of did escalate the tension as opposed to try to de-escalate it.

• 27:10Rich Roll?

  If you ask them who they are, will they identify themselves?

• 27:14Adam Skolnick?

  I think that that has started to trickle out. It's really hard to know exactly what's happening because when you come, when you have these kinds of really tense situations, nobody is an objective observer, you know, so it's hard to know exactly what's happening and what is mistakes, mistakes being made that are legitimate infringements on civil liberty and what is like, they're doing it on purpose? Like, you know, where, where is that line? It's so gray. But we do know the mayor of Portland has asked for the federal agents to leave. We do know that. And, you know, there was this line from the Salt Lake coverage, this was in Provo, and one of the leaders, a Republican who sits on the county council in Provo, said, "I don't like government mandates."

• 27:58Adam Skolnick?

  And he's, he's on the county, he's on the county council. He's, "I don't like government mandates." But, and that's true, right? Like, so a lot of us don't like it. So the question is like, what is it in the American soul that makes us these love, this lover of liberty, but maybe to our own detriment, to the point that we, we want, we don't want to be told what to do, no matter what, but in this case... In terms of the masks, people are doing it and it could really come back at them in the form of a virus that could kill them. Like, what is that? And it's already kind of made us nationality non-grada all over the world. We're down to about 28 countries. We can go visa-free. It used to be we can go almost anywhere with the American passport. That passport has been devalued.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  Right. So there's a, there's a stricture on our liberty right there, our inability to, to travel globally.

• 28:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Rich Roll?

  It's so fascinating how vociferous and angry people are, certain people are when asked to wear a mask.

• 28:56Adam Skolnick?

  It is funny.

• 28:56Rich Roll?

  And you see that in that comedic video with those guys. They're basically like, "Hey, do you want a free mask?" And people are flipping them a bird and telling them to fuck off.

• 29:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 29:04Rich Roll?

  And getting really angry.

• 29:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's not a mask, it's a muzzle.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  So why is it, why is it making people so angry, I think, is one question. Like, what is that rage all about? And that's something we talked about a couple of weeks ago, right? That like repressed rage that's just beneath the surface that I think has a lot to do with, you know, people feeling like they don't have as much agency in their lives as, as they feel like they deserve. And that's a longer thing that we went into before. But juxtaposing that onto what we're seeing in Portland and then contextualizing it with this, this argument around free speech, like where, where is the speech being impinged? Like, if you're unable to protest because you're going to get arrested, even if you're

• 29:49Rich Roll?

  doing it legally, that seems like a greater repercussion and inroad on free speech than being told to wear a mask.

• 29:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well, they, they relate, right?

• 29:59Rich Roll?

  Why is, and, and how and why did wearing a mask become so politicized?

• 30:04Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that, I think, takes us back to the QAnon and all that, all the YouTube coverage and, and the negativity around this, the people who think the pandemic is a hoax, which you did hear in that, in that comedic video in Huntington Beach. But you also hear it in the, in the council rooms and in the protest lines in Salt Lake City and Provo, that people don't believe. They don't believe in the virus. So there's this idea that we want freedom to the point of our own detriment, right? There's something about that's very American about that, that we want freedom so badly it's to our own detriment. And, you know, our friend Dan Buettner studied this when he did Blue Zones of Happiness. Like, where is, where does the paradox of choice kind of tip against you when you have so much individual freedom

• 30:49Adam Skolnick?

  that it actually works to reduce your happiness?

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  Right. So the example that Dan cites is Singapore.

• 30:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Which is basically an authoritarian rule.

• 30:58Adam Skolnick?

  Government, yeah.

• 30:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, authoritarian, where, and also a place where...

• 31:02Adam Skolnick?

  Unapologetically.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, basically where for certain seemingly minor offenses, you can get caned and, you know, the repercussions are very severe.

• 31:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  And yet, the happiness quotient there seems to be very high.

• 31:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  Which is super interesting.

• 31:18Adam Skolnick?

  Some of that's basic needs are taken care of versus freedom. So here, we lust after freedom, but we don't do a great job of taking care of people's basic needs. You know, we don't have, the education system is, has suffered. We could go all the way through the list, you know? So it's interesting. It's just something to think about. Like, with the, on an individual level, what do you think about that? Like, for you, you kind of create your own discipline around sobriety, around being plant-based, all of those things. And you could look at that as, I'm not allowing myself this or that. But what has come with, is there a freedom in that? Or is there a freedom within a structure that we should be aspiring to instead of all freedoms all the time?

• 32:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good question. I think that if you look at any creative expression, some of the, some of the most beautiful works of art come out of restriction, right? Like, the independent movie where they had no money and no time, and yet created this amazing work of art that stands the test of time. Had they had a hundred million dollars to do it and as much time as they wanted, that doesn't necessarily mean that it would be of more value or even better, right? You hear this time and time again with artists, like, because there were restrictions placed upon them, that forced...

• 32:38Rich Roll?

  A level of creativity that they were forced to tap into something that they didn't know that they had, right? And that brought greater expression to whatever it is that they were trying to say. You know, you could say the same thing, like, to my own personal experience, okay, I know drugs and alcohol, I only eat plant-based foods, I've, you know, I've, I've removed a lot of things from my life, so I have restricted choice in certain regards. Doesn't that mean that I'm less happy or that I don't enjoy my life? And my answer is that, that it's quite the contrary.

• 33:10Adam Skolnick?

  The opposite.

• 33:11Rich Roll?

  Through that restriction, I have created greater freedoms for myself.

• 33:16Adam Skolnick?

  And there's no better parallel to what's happening, because if, if we all wear masks and we can get a handle on this virus, we can actually have our lives back.

• 33:23Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think another thing.

• 33:25Adam Skolnick?

  Less restriction.

• 33:26Rich Roll?

  Another thing worth noting that, that, that our mutual friend Dave Goggins would probably echo, is that we need to develop a greater capacity for anti-fragility.

• 33:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 33:40Rich Roll?

  We need to be more emotionally resilient to everything that's going on.

• 33:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 33:45Rich Roll?

  And that comes through putting yourself through difficult situations personally, where you become adapted to being outside of your comfort zone. Extrapolating that, it means that when you are in the presence of somebody who doesn't agree with you, or perhaps you're anti-mask, but somebody wants to give you a free mask, you don't lose your shit.

• 34:05Adam Skolnick?

  You don't have a fit in public.

• 34:07Rich Roll?

  You can maintain some level of equanimity and grace and kindness with other people. But the fact that everybody is so hair-triggered by everything, when I see that, I see a lack of emotional agility. I see, I see a very emotionally fragile populace that could benefit from maybe focusing more on their own. Personal challenges and trying to become a better version of who they are rather than shouting at other people who are voicing some opinion that perhaps they don't agree with.

• 34:45Adam Skolnick?

  You guys have to see the Chad and JT thing. Shout out Chad and JT.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  We'll put a link up in the show notes.

• 34:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  I think Casey tweeted that one out too.

• 34:53Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, did he?

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Adam Skolnick?

  I, um, my thing with masks, my hair trigger is the people that wear the mask, but with their nose peeking out.

• 34:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:00Adam Skolnick?

  Which is basically like, would you walk down the street with your dick hanging out of your pants?

• 35:04Rich Roll?

  Well, there's that meme everywhere. Yeah. Like it's the same as doing that. Exactly. I know. I see that all the time.

• 35:10Adam Skolnick?

  Like, why wear pants?

• 35:11Rich Roll?

  I see that all the time.

• 35:12Adam Skolnick?

  I trust the guy, like, I remember being in Paris and seeing a guy, like, just a naked guy walking down the street and he's less creepy than someone who's like half dressed.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  I also told Chris Howth in one of our Coach's Corner episodes, we did one at the very beginning of the pandemic. We were talking about masks and I said the masks, the masks suffer from a branding problem. If we just called them aerobic capacity enhancers or something like, all the arguments around like you're breathing your own, you're breathing carbon dioxide, you're not, this is making you more sick or it's impairing your immune system. Like the science doesn't bear that out. It's not true. But to the extent that you may believe that it's inhibiting your oxygen intake, this is just making you a stronger human being. Your body is

• 35:57Adam Skolnick?

  There you go.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  adapting to less oxygen, which is making you a better athlete over time. So if we just rebranded or renamed these things as athletic enhancers.

• 36:08Adam Skolnick?

  Cardiovascular aid?

• 36:11Rich Roll?

  Basically, yeah. Maybe, maybe they, they would have a higher adoption rate.

• 36:14Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think so. I think that there's some web, there's some YouTube video out there that we're not watching.

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  Probably. That's not part of my algorithm of suggested videos.

• 36:25Adam Skolnick?

  No, the evils of masks. But, um, but you know, listen, I think, uh, For me, as a longtime travel writer, where I had this many times with the American passport, like where I could just breeze through without a visa to so many countries, and to see that kind of flake away is sad to me, but I do understand it. And I kind of felt like at some point that could come, that could happen. And to me, that's sad. Like, it's, it's, it shows, at one time, it was the passport that can get you almost anywhere without having to go through the process of getting a visa. And now, most of the places we can go without a visa are in the Caribbean, the Bahamas just banned us. We're banned from Europe. I mean, it's, it's unprecedented.

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Adam Skolnick?

  It hasn't happened before.

• 37:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Rich Roll?

  Well, the incidence rates are, you know, through the roof right now. Florida, Arizona, California. You know, we've got real problems trying to contain this thing. And to the extent that wearing a mask might help, I'm gonna wear a mask.

• 37:35Adam Skolnick?

  Cool. Let's go into something, another segment, we're calling it Show and Tell, and where we get to talk about things that we washed, we saw, we're gonna, you know, it could be food, it could be media.

• 37:48Rich Roll?

  Well, let's start, I want to start with Tommy Riz.

• 37:51Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right, we should start with Tommy.

• 37:52Rich Roll?

  While we're on the subject of masks. So Tommy Riz, Tommy Rivers Poozy, for those of you don't know, is a legendary beast of all things, running endurance and ultra endurance. He's a beautiful guy, and a very accomplished runner. I think, I think his PR in the marathon is something like 218. He's won two, I believe, two consecutive rock and roll marathons. Beloved in the endurance community, a legend on the trails and the road. And a guy that I met when I flew out to Utah to run the final marathon with the Iron Cowboy for his 50 Ironmans in 50 states in 50 days, and Tommy had spent Quite a bit of time with the Iron Cowboy. I don't know how many days of that adventure

• 38:37Rich Roll?

  he joined James Lawrence, but it was a lot. And so I got to run with him and talk to him and spend a little time with him. And just a beautiful guy, loving guy, smart guy. He's got two daughters and a wife. I think he's getting his PhD. I know he's a, he's a physical therapist, but I think he was in grad school. I don't know if he completed grad school or not. But anyway, the reason I bring him up is because he is in the ICU right now. I think he's been in the ICU for over three weeks, coming up on a month with COVID-like symptoms. I'm not sure that he's been technically diagnosed with COVID. How old are you?

• 39:15Rich Roll?

  But he's got maybe early 40s, I think. He has severe respiratory distress and he's in very serious condition right now. And he's been posting videos on Instagram, sharing, you know, what it's like to be in his condition. And this is, this is one of the fittest human beings you're ever gonna see. He's at 218 marathon? Specimen of, you know, just this, the eight pack abs and just live and, you know, with the beautiful stride and just a magnificent, beautiful athlete. And like I said, a very loving guy. And he's very sick right now. So there's a GoFundMe that's been set up

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  to allow people to help contribute to his significant medical expenses. And I just wanted to wish him well and alert people to the GoFundMe. This is a guy who's given so much to the community and really needs our help right now. So I'm going to link up that, that GoFundMe in the show notes. And you can find him on Instagram at Tommy underscore Rives. So we're thinking about you, Tommy, and his brother Jacob as well, who's been trying to help get the word out about this. We're with you, man.

• 40:26Adam Skolnick?

  Just goes to show you.

• 40:26Rich Roll?

  And Tommy's like, wear a mask, you know?

• 40:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, it could hit anyone.

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  There is, look, people with metabolic disease, people are overweight, people with cardiovascular and respiratory ailments are more susceptible to COVID than than the average person.

• 40:44Adam Skolnick?

  The serious aspect of COVID.

• 40:45Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And like I said, Tommy is not officially coronavirus diagnosed. It's weird that they can't figure out what this is, but to the extent that perhaps this is COVID, this is a guy who you would think is very unlikely to be suffering to this extent from something like this. So just be aware.

• 41:06Adam Skolnick?

  Good. Well, Tommy.

• 41:07Rich Roll?

  So switching gears.

• 41:09Adam Skolnick?

  Switching gears. Thanks for that. Sorry about that. My computer has died.

• 41:13Rich Roll?

  It's all right.

• 41:13Adam Skolnick?

  So I need to power it up. But let's get to Darren Olean's new show with Zac Efron, Down to Earth.

• 41:21Rich Roll?

  So most people have probably been made aware of this by now, but my man Darren Olean, who's been on the podcast a bunch of times, has a new show with Zac Efron on Netflix. It's called Down to Earth. It's a limited series. I think it's six episodes. Where these two guys traveled to really cool destinations.

• 41:41Adam Skolnick?

  Iceland, Costa Rica.

• 41:42Rich Roll?

  And explore everything from regenerative agriculture to sustainable energy and everything in between. And this is really cool. It was the number one show on Netflix a couple of days ago. I don't know where it is right now. It's certainly in the top five or 10 at the moment. And it's been great to see Darren get introduced to a much more mainstream, broad audience than he was originally. And this is a guy who deserves the spotlight as much as anything. He is not only one of my best friends, but he's a wealth of knowledge on so many subjects. And this is now an opportunity for everybody in the world to experience some level of his expertise. And I think it's great. And to pair it with Zac is, you know,

• 42:25Rich Roll?

  this is a guy who can, you know, he's so world famous that, that, you know, people are going to tune in just for him. And then they get to see Darren. And I just think it's really cool. So I'm really proud of them. And there's a, there's a kind of interesting backstory to this, which is that. Zach got introduced to Darren because he heard Darren on the podcast.

• 42:46Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 42:47Rich Roll?

  So that's what got him interested in Darren to begin with, which is super cool. So I feel like

• 42:52Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome.

• 42:52Rich Roll?

  Like I, you know, I helped, you know, behind the scenes, I helped these two guys get together. In fact, I was out cycling a couple of years ago. My friend Connor Dwyer, who's been on the show before, who's really close with Zach and with Dylan Efron, Zach's brother, who I'm friends with. And they were going on and on about Darren. I was like, well, let's, when we finish the ride, let's go over, we'll go over to his house. So I brought, I brought these guys over to Darren's house. They met him and they're like, oh, Zach, Zach's going to be so mad that he wasn't here and Darren's taking them through all his superfoods and his special water stuff and, you know, everything like that. And that led to those guys getting together and ultimately creating the show. So I'm going to take full credit.

• 43:39Adam Skolnick?

  Without you.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  But I'm just really, I'm really excited about it. I think it's a perfect blend of kind of entertainment and education. It's certainly oriented around a mainstream audience. I think if you were to ask Darren, he would have preferred that it was, it struck a much more serious, in-depth tone. But, you know, in order for shows like this to kind of cross-pollinate and reach the most number of people, they also have to be kind of light and entertaining as well. So.

• 44:06Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think, I would like to ask Darren, because for someone who has brought a, I mean, I'm 95% plant-based occasionally. I eat a little bit of fish, but less and less so now. But I've brought my wife, who is plant-based, April to Mongolia for a month and, you know, Argentina and Iceland looked to be in that same score. Like, it's not easy to be plant-based in some of these locations. I would love to hear, when you, I think you're gonna have the guys on, right? It'd be good to have Darren answer to that.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  No, I'll have Darren back on. Zach has left the country.

• 44:38Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 44:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know that I'm, I'm at, I could say where he is. I know where he is because I wanted to get those, those guys on together.

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  I'll get Darren back on to talk more in depth about it.

• 44:50Adam Skolnick?

  That'd be an interesting thing.

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  I'm sure there's all kinds of cool behind the scenes stories.

• 44:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, for sure. That'd be cool. Awesome. And then another documentary, but not a series, but an actual feature-length doc.

• 45:02Adam Skolnick?

  Was finally released and that was fabulous. I know you're excited about this.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  Did you watch it?

• 45:07Adam Skolnick?

  I did watch it.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.

• 45:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 45:10Rich Roll?

  What a great movie.

• 45:12Adam Skolnick?

  It's an amazing movie. Do you want to tell people the basics?

• 45:15Rich Roll?

  So if you caught my episode a couple of days ago with Dr. Andrew Huberman, I had for the audio version of the podcast, I had Utkarsh Ambudkar on for a brief like 15, 20 minute segment to talk about the movie. Utkarsh is longtime friend of mine, who has been on the podcast. He was on two years ago. I think it's episode 373, if I'm not mistaken.

• 45:39Adam Skolnick?

  How did you meet him?

• 45:41Rich Roll?

  I just, I know him through friends of friends and he's friends with DK too. And what I love about Utkarsh is just this amazing, I mean, I love a lot of things about him, but, but his story is remarkable in this incredible arc that he's had from being somebody who was very talented as a young person, but also very much in his ego and, and, and lost in his addiction, that it really hamstrung his ability to move forward in his career. And it wasn't until he got sober that he's had this beautiful renaissance where now his career is exploding. But one of the, part of his origin story is being part of this small group of very talented artists called Freestyle Love Supreme, of which Lin

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  Manuel Miranda was a founding member of, which is essentially this group of people who would get together and do these freestyle, spoken word, spontaneous performances that were very audience engaged. It started in a bookstore. Yeah, it's improv, but with a rap.

• 46:42Adam Skolnick?

  Meats, rap battle.

• 46:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:44Rich Roll?

  And, and this is the kind of creative crucible that birthed everything from In the Heights to Hamilton. Like, Hamilton doesn't exist without Freestyle Love Supreme.

• 46:54Adam Skolnick?

  Probably not.

• 46:55Rich Roll?

  It all goes back to that. And this documentary is a

• 47:00Rich Roll?

  Elegant and lovely portrait of not just that story, but the love and friendship between these young men. And they have incredible footage of them when they're all super young.

• 47:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because it started between Anthony, Tommy and Wesleyan. And was, uh, did Lynn go to Wesleyan?

• 47:20Rich Roll?

  Lynn went to Wesleyan as well.

• 47:22Adam Skolnick?

  So four guys from Wesleyan, basically, that became friends. But two of them were really tight and they were the, they were freestyling together. And then Lynn joined the group and it was like, you know, it's just like a supernova.

• 47:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:36Adam Skolnick?

  And, uh, and they, so you see these guys from the early twenties and you follow them to the Edinburgh, uh, you know, theater festival. Yeah, the fringe festival. Uh, you follow them back to New York. They're like, they get the keys to the, to a bookshop that, that became their, their house theater. A little black box theater.

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  It's like thirty seats.

• 47:59Adam Skolnick?

  Like thirty seats. And then you see, you know, Lynn's arc and you see how some people kind of, I think, um, Ukash came, came in a couple of years later. Yeah, but when he came in, he was like, like Lynn called him nuts and bolts. The best pure rapper they had.

• 48:15Rich Roll?

  I know, it was crazy. Lynn basically is like, he's the most verbally dexterous rapper I've ever seen.

• 48:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And but then they trained him to like, to steer it towards improv comedy and make lighthearted stuff versus kind of the big up yourself type rap battle where that kind of tradition that he came from. So interesting to see the footage. The footage itself is, is worth watching. So you could see this. And then, then of course, like you said, you learn Tommy's secret to becoming a Tony, Tony winning director.

• 48:44Rich Roll?

  Latching yourself on to a MacArthur genius.

• 48:47Adam Skolnick?

  Just follow Lynn Manuel wherever he goes.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  But the movie is very clear that Tommy elevates everything that they do. Like Lynn was, was, you know, sure to point out that, you know, Tommy was the guy who could call him on his BS or tell him when he was missing the mark a little bit. And, you know, the fact that those guys have stayed together through thick and thin and growing older and all the kind of permutations of life and always come back to this one thing, like the reverence that they have for this creative, this very pure creative expression, the recognition that not only do they owe it to that for all the success they've had in their life, that it's critical in keeping them fresh and creatively inspired and active.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  You know, and I think the lessons in there are, you know, respecting the process. Like, I think if there's anything, and Ukash pointed this out when I talked to him the other day, like, the movie doesn't exactly demonstrate how long all of this took.

• 49:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 49:52Rich Roll?

  Like, this is going on for many, many years, you know, before Hamilton and then Freestyle Love Supreme being on Broadway and remind me to tell you the experience of seeing it in person.

• 50:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Rich Roll?

  But just the idea that it's friendship, it's pure love and devotion to a very particular art form that forces you in a way that other art forms perhaps don't do as stridently to be completely present and to be in the purest expression of your personal truth.

• 50:25Adam Skolnick?

  In the moment, too, right?

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in the moment, completely.

• 50:27Adam Skolnick?

  I love, I love when Lynn has to puke, like, before the show, like, even

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  Every time.

• 50:32Adam Skolnick?

  Now, like, even now.

• 50:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Adam Skolnick?

  And, um, I mean, I think that's amazing. And like, talking about Tommy, he's, he's like, one of those that knows how to coach the greats, you know, that's what they say about great directors, they know how to coach the best actors and the best, the best creatives. So

• 50:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Adam Skolnick?

  I think that that's not an easy skill to have. I mean, that's

• 50:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:51Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing. And Chris Jackson, who was George Washington in Hamilton?

• 50:56Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:57Adam Skolnick?

  Um, he was in this group from the beginning, he was in In the Heights. So it's, it does show you, like, the last, if you can form a band of creative souls like that, you can stick together, uh, it's incredible where that can take you.

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Adam Skolnick?

  And you saw them.

• 51:11Rich Roll?

  I did.

• 51:11Adam Skolnick?

  How did, so you saw, I remember you going, it was like last fall, right?

• 51:14Rich Roll?

  It was in November, I was in New York, and I was there to do some, I can't remember why I was there, do some podcasts and stuff like that, but I was like, I'm seeing this show. Yeah. Ukash is like, I got you covered. I got an extra ticket for Bird, our, our, our book agent. I brought him. And I had a sense of what it was gonna be, but I was not prepared for just how transcendent this experience was. Like, it was magnificent. I mean, Bird was just like, the entire time. I've never been more entertained in a theatrical production in my life. Amazing. I just was astounded at the skill of these individuals to do what they do, because

• 51:55Rich Roll?

  it's so inaccessible. Like, the, the quickness of their mind and their ability to rapidly respond to what's happening and create something so extraordinary out of whole cloth in the moment, is just very difficult for me to wrap my head around. So it was incredible to witness it. How long did it go? And, I mean, I can't remember. It was like an hour and a half. And it's very audience participatory. I mean, you see in the, in the documentary, they bring somebody up on the stage and they, they ask them about their day, and then they just create an entire musical number out of this person's mundane, daily experience. And it's the most hilarious thing you've ever seen. And then afterwards, we went backstage, Bird and I went backstage,

• 52:38Rich Roll?

  and then we're standing on the stage after everyone left, and it's like Ukash and me, and those other guys, and like Lynn's standing right there. And I was like, I'm looking at Bird, like making, I was like, how is this happening? Like, how am I standing on a Broadway stage next to Lin-Manuel Miranda with my buddy Ukash? Like, and I think about Ukash's arc, and how it all could have gone terribly wrong, and how he, he pulled his life together, and is now able to be in his full expression, doing what he loves, and on a Broadway stage. Like, it's just, it, it gives me goosebumps to think about it. And, and it reminds me of

• 53:19Rich Roll?

  Human potential, you know, when we can become spiritually fit, what we're capable of doing.

• 53:25Adam Skolnick?

  And it's never too late to actually find that redemption, right? Like if you can dedicate yourself back to the cause and to yourself and to be kind of connected to your self in a new way and empowered way.

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent. One thing I forgot to mention when I had Ukashon the other day is, is he's the guy, like if you missed my podcast and you don't know who this person is, if you watch the Oscars, you will remember he was the guy on stage who did a freestyle rap, like in the middle of the show, where he was talking about people in the audience. And go back and watch that. It's pretty incredible.

• 54:00Adam Skolnick?

  I think I do remember that. I do remember that.

• 54:02Rich Roll?

  That was Ukash.

• 54:03Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. I do remember that. Yes. Amazing. I mean, if you're a fan of Hamilton, it's must see, obviously.

• 54:10Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent. Yeah. Here's our big show and tell moment now.

• 54:15Adam Skolnick?

  So we have a big show and tell. There is a new plant-based product dropping right now. It's a collab between KFC, a KFC Beyond Meat collab. It's called Beyond Fried Chicken. And here it is.

• 54:32Rich Roll?

  Blake, it's, it's available in how many, like 59 restaurants in Southern California? Not every KFC. There was one in Simi Valley, though.

• 54:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's interesting the ones that they chose. It's like, it's not the ones you think are in the communities that you would associate with like plant-based enthusiasm.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  Venice and Los Feliz.

• 54:52Adam Skolnick?

  No, it's like in kind of the areas where there, there aren't so many options, which I think is great.

• 54:58Rich Roll?

  I think that is good. I wonder if that was part of the calculus, though, or how they made those decisions about where to, where to, you know, introduce it.

• 55:05Adam Skolnick?

  They didn't tell me that. They did share, you know, one of them is in Redlands, which is near Loma Linda, which is a blue zone, kind of very much a vegetarian place. And there's other vegetarian fast food places in Loma Linda. But they said it was a wheat and soy protein, so not the pea protein that you get.

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  Beyond.

• 55:21Adam Skolnick?

  Beyond Burger.

• 55:22Rich Roll?

  Patty, the burger is a pea protein base, so this is wheat and soy.

• 55:25Adam Skolnick?

  This is wheat and soy. I'm not sure. They didn't, they didn't kind of divulge if it's using the same cow gut machines. From the, I'm guessing not. I'm guessing it's totally different. I know that it started in 2019 when KFC and Beyond got together, and I think it was KFC approached them, but at least that's what the press agent said to me.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  Beyond Meat is also available at Carl's Jr., I believe.

• 55:49Adam Skolnick?

  As a burger?

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  As a burger.

• 55:51Adam Skolnick?

  And Impossible is the fat burger place, right?

• 55:54Rich Roll?

  Uh, yeah, that's right.

• 55:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I know.

• 55:56Rich Roll?

  Burger King, Burger King is Impossible.

• 55:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:00Adam Skolnick?

  Carl's Jr. is Beyond, I think.

• 56:01Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 56:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we picked this up and the idea was we were gonna do a taste test. I've never tried this, but then Adam informed me that.

• 56:12Adam Skolnick?

  It is being handled by the same people that handle the chicken and fried in the same fryers, which is, obviously, that's not surprising.

• 56:20Rich Roll?

  That's not ideal. So as a, as a, as a vegan, I'm gonna, I'm gonna forego trying this for that reason.

• 56:28Adam Skolnick?

  A swim runner like myself that's not looking to get on the podium.

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  They look like Chicken McNuggets.

• 56:33Adam Skolnick?

  They do. They are, they don't look like a chicken.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  I don't, it does not look like a chicken.

• 56:39Adam Skolnick?

  It looks like a, a rhombus.

• 56:41Rich Roll?

  It looks like a Hot Pocket.

• 56:42Adam Skolnick?

  It's a, it's a rhombus.

• 56:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Adam Skolnick?

  Ah.

• 56:45Rich Roll?

  I can smell it, though.

• 56:47Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 56:49Rich Roll?

  Hmm. It's probably cold at this point, yeah.

• 56:51Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, you can taste the herbs and spices.

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Adam Skolnick?

  Colonel's herbs and spices. It's good. It has more of, you know, a lot of times the plant-based chicken products are very rubbery.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:04Adam Skolnick?

  This one has more give to the tooth. It does, it does have more of a chicken breast kind of texture.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Adam Skolnick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:11Rich Roll?

  Chewiness.

• 57:12Adam Skolnick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:12Rich Roll?

  Striated.

• 57:14Adam Skolnick?

  DK, you should try one of these.

• 57:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:16Adam Skolnick?

  Blake and DK.

• 57:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, come on in here.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  I'm surprised you got DK on camera. Why? Because you guys are.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna share my, I'm gonna share my opinions on this in a second.

• 57:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 57:28Rich Roll?

  All right, give it a go. Tell me what you think.

• 57:31Adam Skolnick?

  You don't want one?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  It does feel like Kentucky Fried Chicken on the outside.

• 57:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't have a...

• 57:38Rich Roll?

  It smells like Kentucky Fried Chicken, I can tell you that.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  My palate isn't as developed as Adam, but I would eat this. I have no problem with this.

• 57:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, alright.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Especially knowing that it's healthy.

• 57:50Adam Skolnick?

  It even looks like chicken.

• 57:52Rich Roll?

  So here's the thing. Let's break it down. You're approving.

• 57:58Adam Skolnick?

  Look, I also love Impossible Burgers, but I don't think it's the healthiest way to approach your diet.

• 58:05Rich Roll?

  Right, so here's the thing. This is somewhat controversial, so I want to kind of be very clear about my perspective and my opinion on this. I think the fact that there's this collab between KFC and Beyond is a good thing. Just like I support Beyond Meat's collaboration with Carl's Jr. and Impossible's collaboration with Burger King. Like, these are improvements, iterations on a broken system. Now, these are not health foods. Even if this was not fried in the same deep fryer where they cook chicken, I might have tasted it, but this is not something that I'm gonna be eating.

• 58:49Rich Roll?

  Maybe as a delicacy, like once in a very rare blue moon, but...

• 58:55Adam Skolnick?

  That's why people go to KFC for the delicacies.

• 58:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're not going to KFC or Carl's Jr. or Burger King to eat healthy, right?

• 59:01Adam Skolnick?

  They call it the caviar of fried chicken.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  These are not health foods.

• 59:04Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  At the same time, I think it's a good thing that this is happening. I think that this is a move, it's a pivot away from animal agriculture. It's a pivot towards a more plant-based world. Certainly, animals' lives are gonna be spared as a result of this. And this is a good thing, to the extent that we can introduce... Plant analogues to animal foods that people like and convince them that it tastes just as good and is slightly healthier than what they were eating before is a move in the right direction and that's a move that I celebrate. There are a lot of hardcore vegans who would say, you know, you got to boycott Burger King, you got to boycott McDonald's and all these places. They're slaughtering billions of animals every year. That's all

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  true, but we have to celebrate the wins. And we live in a capitalist society. These gigantic conglomerates are responding to consumer demand. And to the extent that the consumers are demanding plant-based foods or plant-based analogues to animal foods that they like, that's something we need to support, right? We need to fan the flames of positive change. And if everybody starts buying the Beyond version of these Chicken McNuggets at KFC, they're going to make more of those and less chickens. KFC, Burger King, McDonald's, Carl's, these are companies that are not going away.

• 1:00:26Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:00:27Rich Roll?

  Right? They're trying to adapt to the times. They're not doing this because they're trying to be amazing human beings. They're responding to consumer demand.

• 1:00:36Adam Skolnick?

  They want money.

• 1:00:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, basically, it's a capitalist pivot because this is where consumer demand is going. And the more consumers that demand plant-based foods, the more companies like this are going to react and respond and move in a direction that is better for everybody.

• 1:00:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, for me, I've come to embracing a plant-based, almost exclusively, I should say, plant-based lifestyle because of the cruelty of the system and because of the water pollution and the runoff that comes from it and destroys oceans. So, systeming animal agriculture. So, you know, that's where I come from. But I also have always liked fried chicken and there's things I do like about that kind of old diet that I used to have. And so it's nice. For me, I like having this option. One thing that troubles me a little bit from all these kinds, because they're like tech companies, Beyond

• 1:01:37Adam Skolnick?

  and Impossible. And I love, I do like them and I buy their products and so I'm a fan.

• 1:01:41Rich Roll?

  And I should say in full disclosure that I own a couple of shares of Beyond. Not that that's influencing.

• 1:01:47Adam Skolnick?

  Not that that's any of your business.

• 1:01:48Rich Roll?

  But I, just in full transparency.

• 1:01:50Adam Skolnick?

  I like that. I don't, but, but I would, I would. But I don't yet. But the one thing that kind of is curious is, is as, as bad as the current kind of CAFO structure and these, like, the high-density raising of animals is, you know, it didn't start that way. And it used to be, food could be one of those things that you could empower smaller businesses and a family farm. And it's obviously not that way anymore.

• 1:02:21Rich Roll?

  Certainly not with chicken farming.

• 1:02:22Adam Skolnick?

  Not with chicken farming. So I'm not saying that this is like, going to change, but there is something troubling about like, the winner-take-all thing that happens from, from when businesses, when the siphon of money starts going to fewer and fewer straws, right? And, and, and it kind of goes up and enriches less people. It's, it's a little anti-democratic in terms of business when a couple of winner, winners in a space take all of the money. And so I'm not saying that that's happening yet because there are competitors in, in plant-based food, food space. But it could get there. And so that's one thing that I think about, just long-term.

• 1:02:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:59Adam Skolnick?

  What do you think?

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  In other words, you're saying, to the extent that the impossibles and the beyonds and the, perhaps at some point, the Memphis meats.

• 1:03:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Rich Roll?

  Are gonna basically create like, an oligarchy of plant-based meat analog.

• 1:03:13Adam Skolnick?

  If it becomes big, if it becomes bigger and bigger, and like, it's not just a million people, but it's like, or, you know, I don't know how many plant-based people there are. But there's, you know, 50 million people buying all these products on a regular basis. If it's going to less and less people, then the wealth is going into fewer pockets. So, and, and that's kind of how we got into this current political situation that we're in now.

• 1:03:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, thinking broadly about that, I think that is something to bear in mind. I mean, there is increasingly more and more competition. There were just a couple of these. Now there's lots of these companies that are, that are doing this. And the technology is also rapidly evolving.

• 1:03:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple more companies start to, you know, make, make their mark in this space.

• 1:04:01Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. And maybe there's a way to do it where you're not just, it's not just... It's not a factory here and a factory there. Maybe there's a way to expand it and employ people all over.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, one downstream implication of this is the monocropping that you see with the pea and the soy and the wheat and all of that, which, you know, also needs to be addressed.

• 1:04:22Adam Skolnick?

  Quinoa did that, too. You know, it's like, yeah. There's always trade offs, right? There's no perfect solution. This is now one solution. So you got people who are going to KFC to maybe be like, you know what? Today for my kids, I'm going to get the Beyond Chicken Nuggets because I can't get my kid to eat anything. He eats the Chicken Nuggets. He's got to eat something, or she, and I'm going to get him the Beyond, or her the Beyond.

• 1:04:46Rich Roll?

  Well, anything's better than Chicken McNuggets.

• 1:04:49Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And these aren't McNuggets.

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  So let's just start. Yeah, exactly. But let's start moving in the right direction. And when we look at the biggest offenders of climate change, animal agriculture is up at the top.

• 1:05:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Rich Roll?

  So to the extent that we're creating solutions that are admittedly imperfect, that are reducing our reliance on the CAFO system to produce food for wide swaths of the population, that's something that's good.

• 1:05:21Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. Well done, guys.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  It is complicated. All right. Let's do win of the weeks and then we'll take a break.

• 1:05:26Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:05:27Rich Roll?

  What do you got?

• 1:05:28Adam Skolnick?

  Win of the weeks. Well, you want to go first?

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  Well, my buddy getting a Netflix TV show and blowing up is huge. Like, his book, I think, is number 10 now on Amazon, Superlife. And his Instagram went, I think he might have had like 70,000. And I checked this morning and he's at like, almost 200,000 now in a week.

• 1:05:46Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:05:46Rich Roll?

  So it's great. He should be, you know, he should have, he should have a New York Times bestseller and he should have a million followers on Instagram because he deserves it and he's the real deal. So that's my win of the week.

• 1:05:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well done, Darren. And you know what's cool is that the producer of that series, like the company that's involved, were Anthony Bourdain's. They used to do Anthony Bourdain's show.

• 1:06:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it definitely, you know, it's a tip of the hat to that genre.

• 1:06:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Rich Roll?

  Programming.

• 1:06:13Adam Skolnick?

  No question. My win of the week is live sports coming back.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Adam Skolnick?

  Which is partly why I'm wearing this hat here. Go Dodgers, go Lakers. And I've been waiting for sports, you know, and not every one of our listeners here are fans of the ball sport, but I am basketball fanatic, baseball fanatic, and there is a great vlog, Casey Neistat tweeted it out and is a huge fan of it, and it's by someone who's looked up to Casey for a long time. It's a rookie from the 76ers named Matisse Thybulle, and he was a four-year player at University of Washington. He's now a rookie on the 76ers, and he brought his camera and his particular lens to the bubble in Orlando,

• 1:07:01Adam Skolnick?

  where all the players are, and he's got a YouTube-style show. He started this channel like a week ago, and there's like over half a million subscribers, and he is rocking it with these really interesting, well-done edits of 10-minute videos where you're really seeing kind of this surreal moment in professional sports up close and personal. He does everything. He shows you the testing, he shows you the food, he shows you how they're spending their time, he shows you a little bit of the practice court.

• 1:07:30Rich Roll?

  I think it's really cool. I saw Casey tweeted it out, you know, maybe at the very beginning, like right after maybe his first video, and he's like, "This is my new favorite YouTube channel." And now, I watched episode two and three today. He's got almost a million views on these videos. He's getting all this press interest, and it definitely owes a debt of creative inspiration from Casey. He's got some cool Casey edits in there and stuff like that. But what I took away from it, I think they're great. Like, I was fascinated to see this. But you just see the mundanity of these guys who are stuck basically in

• 1:08:12Rich Roll?

  an average hotel in Orlando with not a lot to do, other than go to practice and get tested, just waiting for something to happen. Like, they're playing cards and they're trying to figure out like how to spend their time during the day. And you think of NBA players living this, you know, crazy lifestyle, and you realize like... It's almost like they're like stuck in a dorm somewhere.

• 1:08:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  Basically.

• 1:08:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's a trip, you know, because going in, when you see the Florida numbers peaking and you worry about people getting sick and you think about it, but like watching this actually made me feel better about the odds of them getting through the season.

• 1:08:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, the precautions that they're taking are insane.

• 1:08:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they're taking these crazy precautions. They have a lot of resources at their disposal. There's really, yes, do some people who work in the bubble go home at night and could they possibly get infected? Yes. Could that end up in a player getting infected? Theoretically, yes, but there are so many barriers in place. I feel a lot better of their opportunity of getting through it. I also think of like, it is surreal. Like, I can't imagine going through that for like two or three months. Like, the 76ers are a team that's a contender. They could be there for the duration. The Lakers could be there for the duration. I mean, we hope they are. But like, and there's all sorts of reasons why they're there. They're there for their own financial interests. They're there for the greater financial interests

• 1:09:28Adam Skolnick?

  of NBA players in general, because if they don't get to certain financial benchmarks, then their, the, the deal they have with the owners could go away and they could end up making less money as a collective in, in following seasons. But at the same time, they are there also to entertain. And they are taking a lot of discomfort and risk. And there is something there where there, it's, it's a selfless act to go to the bubble in some ways, too. It's not just a selfish act to get paid. It's people who want to serve the game and, and are do, and are putting themselves in this very bizarre situation. And part of it is, is a public service. So I think, I think that I took that away from it as well.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  You know what would be wild?

• 1:10:09Rich Roll?

  If, if Matisse's YouTube videos get more views than the games.

• 1:10:13Adam Skolnick?

  That, that's not, that's not completely out of the realm of possibility. I mean, certainly some games, he's gonna, he's gonna, he's going to. Yeah.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Adam Skolnick?

  He reminds me of, who's the tennis player? Who's the young tennis player? Sissy Pass. Sissy Pass had a YouTube channel. Sissy Pass is, is a top 10 tennis player, you know? Matisse is, is a rookie and he's kind of making his name. I mean.

• 1:10:35Rich Roll?

  I love the FaceTimes he does with his dad, by the way.

• 1:10:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And but he's, and but, you know, Sissy Pass had the same thing. He has a, he has a YouTube channel that was doing well, but he, as a top 10 player, he dropped it because he has other, you know, this is kind of Matisse's thing of, of able to get through the monotony, right? So he's.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  Right. He's sitting in his hotel room, he's got nothing to do, so he's just editing these videos.

• 1:10:58Adam Skolnick?

  For hours. It's amazing.

• 1:11:01Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:11:01Adam Skolnick?

  Let's take a break.

• 1:11:02Rich Roll?

  Take a quick break and we'll be back with listener questions.

• 1:11:05Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Cool.

• 1:11:19Rich Roll?

  All right, we're back. So listener questions, what do you got for us?

• 1:11:22Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, cool. We're gonna start with some that we got through Twitter and Facebook. This is from Patrick Dean via Twitter. Really enjoying this format. Here's a question. With all the incredible online content out there, all the great videos and articles about everything from personal development and outdoor athletes to literary and social issues, how can we best ration our time? Thanks.

• 1:11:44Rich Roll?

  Patrick, it's a good question. I think, I think the important thing to bear in mind is your ratio of consumption to creation. There's this illusion of productivity that occurs when we're consuming uplifting content. We think we're actually doing something because what we're receiving is uplifting and it's educational and it's informative and it makes us feel like we're capable of achieving our goals. But the illusion, of course, is that it convinces you that you've actually done something when you haven't. So I think it's really important, first of all, that's, it's good. I think it's really important to be mindful of your information diet, the kind of content that you're choosing

• 1:12:29Rich Roll?

  to consume on a daily basis.

• 1:12:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, great question in that regard.

• 1:12:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and to the extent that we're in this, you know, stay-at-home moment, for a lot of us, we're spending much more time in front of our screens and it's easy to just click and click and click and mindlessly just hit the next YouTube, you know, video without thinking through. Is this the best allocation of my time?

• 1:12:54Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, it hits it for you.

• 1:12:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, it does?

• 1:12:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, it'll just play.

• 1:12:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it just hits it.

• 1:12:58Rich Roll?

  Unless you interrupt the flow.

• 1:13:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you can just relax in the bar calounger.

• 1:13:03Rich Roll?

  Um, so, yeah, so you gotta, you gotta first be mindful about that diet. Your information diet, your entertainment diet, and make sure that you're calibrating it so that it's in your best interest. Then you have to check the valence of consumption versus creation. There's a lot of talk about screen time, but I think screen time is too broad a term because you can be using screen time to write a book or, like Matisse, edit a video or, you know, write a poem, like there's, create music. There's, there's plenty of creative, productive, positive ways to use screen time where you're actually in the creation process rather than the consumptive process.

• 1:13:45Rich Roll?

  So, the first thing is doing an inventory of how much of your screen time is consumptive versus creative and trying to calibrate that valence so that you're using your screen time for more creative output. And then being objectively honest with yourself about the extent to which you're consuming content and perhaps deluding yourself into thinking that that's actually moving you towards your goals, I guess is the best way of answering that question.

• 1:14:13Adam Skolnick?

  I like that.

• 1:14:13Rich Roll?

  Do you digest or do you produce? And if you're not leveraging the content that you're consuming to produce or make changes or create forward motion in your own life, then it becomes a distraction. Gary Vee says this all the time. He's like, "I hope that you stop listening to me and watching me one day because if you're stuck on just watching those people who are motivating you, but you're not act- like, if you just watch David Goggins videos all day long, but you never put the running shoes on and go outside or do a single push-up, then you're missing the whole point of what he's trying to explain to you.

• 1:14:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:14:49Adam Skolnick?

  Agreed. I like that, the ratio of consumption versus creation. For me, I think of screen time, I don't, I don't even think about my computer. It's, it's rare that, like, I'm on the computer unless I'm writing or working. Um, I think of my phone. And when I'm on my phone, the screen time really is a consumptive experience. It's not so much a creative experience, although I do take notes in my phone sometimes, so it can, it can blur the line.

• 1:15:11Rich Roll?

  What about all those TikTok dance moves you got going on?

• 1:15:14Adam Skolnick?

  Bro, don't, don't tell them about my TikTok name. Do not, do not mention my TikTok handle. So- In terms of consumption, are there like two or three kind of go to things that you're always hitting? Like is there, is there like a guilty pleasure or is there something that you're always like, is there a podcast that you kind of listen to on a regular basis? Beyond just kind of, just something for you, not really even for work?

• 1:15:39Rich Roll?

  I mean, I would say podcasts are, are the thing that I consume the most on, on my phone. And I've been consuming a little bit less because I'm not in my car as much. But when I'm out training, it's definitely, you know, that's my go to form of edutainment. And I mix it up. I mean, I have to look at my phone to tell you what I'm listening to lately. But it tends to be, yeah, sometimes I'll use it. I, I listen to stuff that has nothing to do with anything that we talk about here. Like if I, you know, I'm not listening to the shows that are similar to my own because that feels like homework.

• 1:16:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:16:15Rich Roll?

  And I need to, you know, broaden my perspective in other areas. So I listen to like a lot of tech stuff. I like Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway on their Pivot Podcast. I like, I like Professor Galloway's new Prof G Show. I've been listening to that. I like Reply All, which is stories about the internet.

• 1:16:31Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  That are fascinating, like long form, kind of journalistic, deep dives into weird corners of the internet. I think that those guys, PJ and Alex, who hosts that show, do an amazing job. You know, I like storytelling.

• 1:16:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  I'll listen to some Rogan podcasts, but not all of them. You know, I, I mix it up.

• 1:16:50Adam Skolnick?

  Gladwell?

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Gladwell for sure.

• 1:16:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Rich Roll?

  Who is, I'll say it right now, nobody does an ad read like Malcolm Gladwell.

• 1:16:57Adam Skolnick?

  He throws his whole body into it. That's a full body experience. I want to watch it.

• 1:17:01Rich Roll?

  There's a whole production that goes into how he crafts these ad reads and the writing that, that.

• 1:17:07Adam Skolnick?

  It's funny. Well, you get, it's like, it's where he gets to be funny, I think, more than anything. And, and he is funny. But yeah, I was listening to Revisionist History the last couple of days. It's, new season is out. Big fan.

• 1:17:19Rich Roll?

  It is. He's another guy I'm trying to get on the show. We've had emails back and forth and haven't been able to make scheduling happen. And that's one I really want to do in person. So I'm willing to wait a little bit longer.

• 1:17:30Adam Skolnick?

  I like it. Yeah, that's another great one. Okay, from Bell Roomy on Facebook. I feel overwhelmingly disheartened by humanity. I'm generally a happy person and laugh all the time and still do. But I find myself wanting to get evangelical about stuff I feel passionately about. But when I do, understandably, I feel like no one wants to hear it. What can I do to abate these feelings of powerlessness and fatalism about the future of humanity and the planet? Little light question for you.

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. I feel you, Bell Roomy.

• 1:18:01Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  I'm empathetic to the melancholy.

• 1:18:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  I understand what that feels like. It reminds me of something I tweeted a long time ago that seemed to connect with people, which was something along the lines of if you're breaking paradigms, you can't, you can't really expect people to applaud you for it. Like, the mainstream is not going to take kindly to your, you know, counter-programming. It just doesn't work that way, right? So if you're trying to do something different, if you're stepping outside of what is considered to be standard operating procedure, people tend to be threatened by that and they're defensive around it and they're not necessarily going to celebrate you or accept you for that choice. And that's just part of it. It's not personal, right?

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  So the first thing I think is understanding that this is not an attack on you personally and people who don't want to hear it from you are really saying more about themselves than they are about any choice that you're making. And I'm also reminded about the life of John Lewis. Like, this is a guy who basically has been spent, devoted his entire life to butting up against the system to express what he believed in, knowing that he was only going to move the needle a little bit, but it didn't matter to him because this was his truth, right? So if it's your truth, it shouldn't matter. And I think you need to just be clear on what your values are and focus on leading

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  the life that you want to lead and step outside of any expectation or desire or need for anybody else to approve of that and certainly From, you know, free yourself from the need to convince anybody that you're right in there and you're wrong, because that's a recipe for the fatalism that you're currently experiencing.

• 1:19:54Adam Skolnick?

  It's like to be the change versus trying to get people to change.

• 1:19:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:59Adam Skolnick?

  There's nothing wrong with activism. I'm a big, I mean, we need activists, but sometimes there's a limit to what you can do in terms of person to person.

• 1:20:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Rich Roll?

  So, live your life, live your truth, feel free to express that, but create a healthy boundary between yourself and any expectations you have that you're going to be convincing anyone else to do anything differently than they're already doing. And I think it's important to always lead with compassion and love and understanding. And that's another thing that John Lewis stood for, right? He's not coming from a place of anger and frustration and judgment.

• 1:20:36Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  That never works for anybody. So, to the extent that your advocacy or what you're trying to express to other people about your choices versus their choices, to the extent that that is tainted with some level of judgment or sense of superiority, that's not going to work, right?

• 1:20:54Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  No one wants to hear it for a reason, because nobody wants to be told that they're doing it wrong, or no one wants, and people don't want to be judged. So, you have to just live your life, live your truth, and the sense of powerlessness or fatalism emanates from this attachment that you have to other people changing, right? Control the controllables. All you can control is your behavior, what you're doing, and your reaction to the world. And to the extent that you can be more mindful and more present and more responsive and less reactive, the happier you're going to be. As Guru Singh always says, "Less emotion, more devotion."

• 1:21:36Adam Skolnick?

  Ooh, I like that.

• 1:21:37Rich Roll?

  Didn't he say that the other, the other day on the podcast?

• 1:21:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:39Rich Roll?

  I'm always thinking about that, right?

• 1:21:41Adam Skolnick?

  That's great.

• 1:21:42Rich Roll?

  More devotion, less emotion.

• 1:21:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And all I can say is if you think people don't want to hear about biodiversity, try telling them a swim story sometime.

• 1:21:52Rich Roll?

  Try to get somebody excited about a swim run race. See how that goes.

• 1:21:56Adam Skolnick?

  Try to give them the blow by blow on swim run.

• 1:21:58Rich Roll?

  Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna put a wet suit on and you're gonna run down the street. You're gonna love it.

• 1:22:04Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Now, we're going to the voicemail. We're digging into the voicemail.

• 1:22:08Rich Roll?

  So let's, should we repeat the voicemail number for people so that they can do?

• 1:22:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Rich Roll?

  Maybe Blake can put that up on the screen, too. So, we love this new voicemail. Adam set it up. 424-235-4626.

• 1:22:20Adam Skolnick?

  One more time?

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  I have to go back up here. 424-235-4626.

• 1:22:26Adam Skolnick?

  Awesome. Let's hear from Joe from Pittsburgh.

• 1:22:30Speaker 03

  Hi, Rich and Adam. Joe from Pittsburgh. Even with the question of schools reopening unresolved, many parents have already made the decision to homeschool or use cyber school this fall, myself included. Any thoughts or tricks on how to maintain sanity while both working and being a part-time teacher during this unique time in history? Thanks, guys, and feel free to use this clip on the air.

• 1:22:50Adam Skolnick?

  So also, that was echoed by Bill Lawrence on Facebook, who was asking for advice on resources for homeschoolers because he knew that you and Julie did that at one point.

• 1:22:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, thanks, Bill and Joe, for that question. It's kind of a two-part question. One is homeschooling resources, and the other is how to kind of maintain sanity as a parent when you're trying to work and also homeschool kids. It's tough, you know? I don't know that I have the ultimate answer to that.

• 1:23:18Adam Skolnick?

  You do. You're a container. You can lock yourself in a container.

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  I have a shipping container, and I lock myself in it like a womb, and I say, "Don't bother me." Seems to work pretty well. At the same time, Julie and I have spent some time homeschooling our kids, and we both have worked from home for quite a while, so we have some experience in this. So, the first thing is maintaining your sanity. And I think now that everybody is, or a lot of people are working from home now, and that's a new thing, I think it's important to have boundaries around what is work time and what is homeschooling time or leisure time, right? Because when you're working from home, it can all bleed into, they all bleed into each other. And then you're kind of always working and never

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  really working, and a lot of times, you're not 100% present in whatever you're doing because these things are overlapping. So, rule number one is establish your work hours, and during those times, that's when you're focused on your... Profession, right? And that also requires you to communicate adequately with everybody in your family, your kids and your partner or whatever, so that everybody understands these are the hours when you're doing this thing and here are the hours where we're going to be doing these other things. And also, I think it's important to still create a little bit of structure around this beyond just the scheduling. Like, don't just sit in your pajamas all day.

• 1:24:46Rich Roll?

  Like, you know, it's easy to fall into a kind of depressive melancholy when you're at home all the time. And just getting dressed like you would for a normal workday or just maintaining some of those practices, I think are important in maintaining your sanity as well. In terms of homeschooling resources, look, education is shifting. As Professor Galloway will tell you, coronavirus is an accelerant on online learning, right? Like, a lot of the traditional structures around education, I don't think are going to come back. I think there's gonna, we're gonna see a lot of mid-tier colleges go out of business.

• 1:25:28Rich Roll?

  I think we're gonna see this push towards more and more online learning and we're gonna see a maturation of the technological platforms that are conducive to that. And people are starting to realize that a lot of the cost that goes into education isn't really paying dividends. Like, are you really gonna pay, you know, $80,000 a year to send your kid to USC when it's basically Zoom calls? Right. Like, that's gonna, you know, that's gonna really upend the paradigm here. So, this is being exacerbated and accelerated by coronavirus and we're not gonna just pivot back to the normal that we knew before. Like, these changes are only going to accelerate. So, what I'm saying by that is that online learning is gonna become more the norm than

• 1:26:13Rich Roll?

  the abnormality. That doesn't mean that kids aren't gonna eventually go back to the classroom. They will, of course, at some point. I don't think it's gonna be this fall for very many people. So we're in this for the long haul. In terms of homeschooling resources, I mean, Julie and I, our paradigm with our kids when they were younger was very much an unschooling methodology. So it wasn't a lot of, you know, Kumon and all kinds of online learning courses. We have tutors, and we still do for Jaya, who's homeschooled. We have a couple tutors that she spends time with every week and works on projects.

• 1:26:54Rich Roll?

  And she has some online stuff that she does through those tutors, but I don't have like a list of, you know, these are the websites that you go to.

• 1:27:02Adam Skolnick?

  Has Jaya been homeschooled this whole time?

• 1:27:05Rich Roll?

  She has been. Yeah. Well, she was at a school, she was at Muse for a while, and now she's been homeschooled now for like the last two years.

• 1:27:12Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:27:13Rich Roll?

  Mathis goes to an art high school in downtown, but now that's all on Zoom. And it's been very difficult because the appeal of this art school was all the studio time and the darkroom time and all the practical, you know, art-based education that she was receiving there that was her lifeblood. And now it's just Zoom from, you know, 8:30 in the morning to four o'clock at night, and it's making her insane. And I don't blame her. You know, kids are not wired for that. So to the extent that we're trying to mimic that classroom experience by dint of a screen, I think is a mistake. I think what we need to do is leverage the unique opportunities that are available to us to do something a little bit more creative and unique with our children's education.

• 1:27:58Rich Roll?

  One of the opportunities I think we have is to create a more experiential-based learning experience for kids where we look at what they're, and this is particular, especially to younger kids, like, look at what they're naturally interested in. Like, what are they inclined towards when they're not being told they have to learn something? Like, what are they, what are the things that they're into? Is it comic books? Is it, you know, drawing pictures? Is it, you know, making beats on, you know, GarageBand? Like, what do they do when no one's looking? And then try to figure out how to create some kind of learning experience curriculum that involves that avenue, that involves that discipline, right? And use that to...

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  Teach everything from math to English, right? Like if somebody wants to make beats, well, there's an opportunity to teach them math. Music is math, right? Create compositions, learn about musical notes and how they relate to math and, you know, figure out a way to, you know, translate the emotional experience of making music and listening music into words that can become an essay. Like I, I really believe in, in moving towards their natural interests and trying to figure out, um, how do you, how to platform that into a greater understanding that involves other disciplines. It's a multidisciplinary approach. It requires a lot of attention and time on behalf of the parents, but I think that's

• 1:29:27Rich Roll?

  how you get kids engaged in learning by focusing on what they're already interested in rather than trying to compel them to be interested in something that they're not.

• 1:29:38Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you mean like the American ethic of freedom?

• 1:29:42Rich Roll?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:29:43Adam Skolnick?

  You have to, at least an hour a day, I want them to be indoctrinated on how freedom is so vital.

• 1:29:49Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:29:50Adam Skolnick?

  That's important. No, but I think it's really interesting. It reminds me of an old Outside magazine article that I read. It was like about unschooling his kids. Like he, he moved out to the woods with his wife and his two young kids. And the whole idea was they weren't going to homeschool, they were going to unschool.

• 1:30:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:06Adam Skolnick?

  And they were just going to live off the land and do the best they could.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  It was like a movie about that with Viggo Mortensen.

• 1:30:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, well, yeah, but Captain Fantastic, that's different. I mean, Captain Fantastic, he ran a real school.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:17Adam Skolnick?

  Those kids were smart.

• 1:30:18Rich Roll?

  More like that movie Hannah.

• 1:30:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  It's like survival school.

• 1:30:23Adam Skolnick?

  That was, it was different. That was like.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  Very specific type of homeschooling.

• 1:30:28Adam Skolnick?

  Captain Fantastic meets like the girl with the dragon tattoo. But, uh, I think that's really interesting, not mimicking normal school. What, what you, what you pointed to there, that's liberating for parents because I think a lot of people want to do that because they think, and it's also, that goes for don't mimic the normal workday. Like you, like you said, you need to be able to be okay with working four or five hours maybe instead of eight and do it in a really concentrated fashion and then do the same thing with the schooling. You know, maybe a morning session and afternoon session and just like move the. These are all moving parts. They don't have to look the same way that they did.

• 1:31:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and there's a lot of fear with that. I've experienced this myself because I'm a product of a very traditional education. And I'm a successful product of that system, right? I went to prep school and I went to fancy colleges and I went to law school. And so when I look at my kids, I think, well, they need to have that experience or, you know, I need to make sure that the value that I experienced is part of their upbringing. And for me, it's been a process of letting go of a lot of that. Because in truth, the educational system is ripe for a reboot. I mean, we're dealing with the legacy of a system that was created, you know, at the dawn of the industrial age to basically create productive,

• 1:31:49Rich Roll?

  create a productive workforce that was capable. And it really hasn't evolved much past that in any real tangible way. Now, we have this moment, this interruptive moment, in which we have the opportunity to really evaluate the validity of this system and reimagine and reinvent it. And I think, you know, the hurdle for me has always been, well, if we're doing this unschooling method, or if we're doing, you know, pursuing this in a relatively untraditional way, like, are they going to know how to do math? Are they going to, I had these fears like, well, they're not going to learn about, you know, like, pick any subject math.

• 1:32:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  But when I really thought about it, I thought, well, education doesn't really appreciate the value of the technological tools that are at our behest now. Everybody's got a supercomputer in their pocket that has the answer to every question they ever want asked and answered. So this modality of read and memorize seems completely ludicrous in light of that.

• 1:32:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:59Rich Roll?

  And what we need to do is, is focus more on critical thinking skills, life skills, leadership skills. Like, how do we produce a well-rounded, self-sustaining individual with solid self-esteem and leadership skills and the ability to listen and the ability to learn and a love of learning? Like, what you want to do is create somebody who will become a lifelong learner. If somebody's enthusiastic about learning, And you have a phone or a laptop, your education doesn't have a start point and an end point.

• 1:33:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Rich Roll?

  This is something you will have your entire life. So, how can we instill that in young people? How can we get them excited about learning? And again, it goes back to what I said at the outset, which is focus on the things that they're interested in and demonstrate to them that no matter what that interest is, it's like a seed that can then blossom or flourish into learning about many different aspects.

• 1:34:01Adam Skolnick?

  Anything, because it could intersect with all these other disciplines.

• 1:34:02Rich Roll?

  Right, of course. Because everything intersects with everything else.

• 1:34:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right, it's one big web. I like that, that's really good. And I like what you said about mid-level universities, because I always knew that Trump University, it wasn't the university, it was the time. It was, if he launched it now, it would be a huge hit. It would be a huge hit.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  Maybe.

• 1:34:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. Julie from Southern Minnesota, let's hear from Julie. This is a good question.

• 1:34:28Speaker 04

  Hi, my name is Julie from Southern Minnesota. My question is, what advice do you have for a person who's on fixed income, about 40 pounds overweight, though nobody ever guesses me at my current weight of 180, and with a knee that's been giving me problems, because I'm now 51, and arthritis has decided to take up residence in my knee. So, any suggestions? Obviously, I don't want to be an elite athlete, but I do want to take up running. That is one of my dreams and goals.

• 1:35:13Speaker 04

  And so, I'm just wondering, can you give me a Cliff Notes version of how I work up to that? Otherwise, I'm in good health, just chubby with a bad knee. Thank you.

• 1:35:28Rich Roll?

  Hi Julie, thank you for your question. That's a good question. A dream of becoming a runner. I like it. And I appreciate and applaud your honesty. First of all, I'd say I'm not a doctor, so I'm not in a position to give you medical advice with respect to your arthritis and your knee, so I don't know exactly what's going on with your knee, and I'm reluctant to, you know...

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  Say anything that's gonna exacerbate whatever's going on there. So the first thing is, I would go to the doctor and figure out exactly what's going on there, what you can and you can't do, so that whatever activity you do take up isn't going to make that knee problem worse. To the extent that it's manageable, my best suggestion for you is to get out and go for a walk. These things start with that, right? You're on a fixed income, doesn't cost anything to go out and walk. You don't need to buy fancy shoes. You don't need to buy anything. All you need to do is put one foot in front of the other. And if you ask any of the people that I've had on the podcast who have gone from being

• 1:36:37Rich Roll?

  severely overweight to becoming ultra runners, people like Josh L. Johnny, it started with a walk around the block, right? And you just build very gradually upon that. So that's my only and best suggestion is to just begin. Whatever excuses you're telling yourself about what you can and you can't do are keeping you paralyzed and stuck on the couch. And it really doesn't have to be anything that scary or onerous than that initial walk. And then after you've been doing that a little bit, and you walk a little bit further, and you walk a little bit farther, maybe try to jog for 10 or 15 yards and see how that feels.

• 1:37:20Rich Roll?

  And then the next day, you go a little bit longer, and you stay on top of that knee, and you ice it, and you go to the doctor, and you eat foods that are healing, that are anti-inflammatory, that are high in antioxidants. And the weight will start to drop gradually. This isn't like a crash diet thing, or a situation where you're gonna snap your fingers and your life's gonna change overnight. This is a lifestyle shift. The idea is you want to make this shift that has staying power that helps you fall in love with movement, that brings joy into your life by virtue of exercising your body, so that it becomes an embedded habit and the easy choice rather

• 1:38:02Rich Roll?

  than the hard choice. So, walk out the door, walk around the block, celebrate the small wins, start to make tweaks, small tweaks in your diet. And as you start to see very gradual results, you'll experience what we talked about at the beginning of this podcast with respect to goals. You'll start to feel more emotionally attached to this journey, more invested in it. You'll develop that momentum and before you know it, it will become a self-perpetuating motion machine that's going to take you on an amazing journey.

• 1:38:35Adam Skolnick?

  I like it. And, physical therapy can also help with a knee sometimes.

• 1:38:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:40Adam Skolnick?

  And to get advice from a physical therapist.

• 1:38:41Rich Roll?

  Absolutely.

• 1:38:42Adam Skolnick?

  Would be something I'd recommend. Help me, I had a really bad foot for a long, long time. And if you, so if you haven't explored physical therapy, you can usually get that, even on a fixed income, you can usually get that with your health coverage, whatever that may be.

• 1:38:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if your, if your, if your insurance covers that, great. Beyond the physical therapy and, and going to the doctor about your knee, the grand total cost of this experiment is $0.

• 1:39:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I love it. And, I remember when I was first getting back into running after being on the shelf with that foot problem for a year, I started with five minutes, running five-minute walks. You know, you, like a fartlek type thing, but not at a high intensity. Is that something you recommend to?

• 1:39:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a big believer in that.

• 1:39:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. Run walks. Cool. We've got one more for you. This one is from Cleveland, Ohio, from Ally.

• 1:39:41Speaker 05

  Hi, Rich and Adam. My name's Ally. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, and it's certainly okay for you to put this on the air. My question for you is what your relationship is to money? And I know that you briefly touched on this in the last episode, but I graduated college a little over a year ago, and I actually decided to pursue a career in finance because I know that it can be, A, lucrative, I have student loans to pay off and goals of my own, but B, I understand that it's really important for people to have a solid financial plan backing them so that they can actually reach their goals. But at what point is it

• 1:40:23Speaker 05

  too much to be saving, you know, too much for retirement, or caring too much about what you have in the bank? You can do things in the future and, you know, choosing to live your life now because I feel like I'm very, very frugal right now with the hope that in the next few years I can do more of what I want to do. But it certainly takes away from the sort of purpose I want to have in my life right now because I'm so focused on saving and acquiring money for the future. Thanks, Rich and Adam. Love you guys.

• 1:40:57Rich Roll?

  Thanks for your question. You sound like a very responsible person.

• 1:41:00Adam Skolnick?

  Totally.

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  Much more responsible than I was.

• 1:41:02Adam Skolnick?

  She would have had nothing to do with me when I was 20.

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's a great question. I think that it's important to be fiscally responsible as a young person and to develop healthy habits around money at a young age and a healthy respect for what it can and can't do.

• 1:41:26Adam Skolnick?

  I respect that she paid her way through college.

• 1:41:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's incredible, right? Anybody who does that, like...

• 1:41:33Rich Roll?

  Celebrate that person right there. And I think it's perfectly acceptable and laudable to pursue a career path that will provide you with financial stability. Like, I suspect if she paid for her own college, that she might be coming from a background in which it wasn't as financially stable as she would have liked. And people who who come from that background are going to be the people who are more likely to pursue a conventional career path that's going to provide them with the financial stability that they lacked. I'm just I'm just projecting, but it sounds like that might be the case here. Hundred percent understandable that she would want that and need that because that if that's the case, that was lacking beforehand.

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:18Rich Roll?

  I think what she's getting at and what's important to reckon with here is this idea, well, I'm going to get, I'm going to create financial stability for myself and I'm going to defer those things that I really want to do for the sake of creating that foundation. The idea behind that is is perfectly fine, like I said, but the fear is that you never get to the purpose part, right? Because what happens, and I've seen this a million times, I saw it in law school with people who are like, I'm going to go into, you know, I'm going to go work. A lot of people go to law school because they want to help humans in certain ways, like in a nonprofit context. But then you accumulate all this debt.

• 1:43:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:43:02Rich Roll?

  And these law firms come along and they're dangling six-figure starting salaries. And people say, well, I'm just going to go do the corporate law thing for a couple of years, pay off my debt, and then I'm going to go do the thing. And what happens more often than not is you you acclimate to that salary and you start to create a lifestyle. That only that salary will afford. And there's a keeping up with the Joneses thing that starts to occur. And before you know it, you're leasing a car that you can't quite afford and you're in a mortgage. And all these things then make you stuck in a career path. And it makes it more and more difficult to then shift gears and pursue that passion.

• 1:43:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:47Rich Roll?

  Purposeful life that you had aspirations for as a young person. So the good news is you're super young, your whole life is ahead of you. Pursue that career path in finance, create that foundation of financial stability. But I would strongly suggest, not that you're not doing this already, but that you live as minimally as possible and refrain from any of those expenses that later on can prevent you from being nimble with your career. You know, it sounds like you're good at saving money, which is fantastic. And also to remember that it's important to, to invest in experience, right?

• 1:44:31Rich Roll?

  If you keep your overhead low, you create choices for yourself and flexibility with your career path and you have the ability to invest in experiences, whether those are trips or learning things that you want to learn in your life, career, other hobbies, things like that. As long as you can do that, then you then have the freedom to make those changes later, later on in life.

• 1:44:54Adam Skolnick?

  It's really great advice. The only thing I'd add to that is-

• 1:44:57Rich Roll?

  I didn't do any of those things as a young person.

• 1:44:59Adam Skolnick?

  Me?

• 1:45:00Rich Roll?

  I didn't.

• 1:45:00Adam Skolnick?

  You didn't?

• 1:45:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:01Adam Skolnick?

  No. Well, you were a dashing swimmer at Stanford.

• 1:45:05Rich Roll?

  No, but I made a lot of mistakes that I wish I could change. So my, my message to young people is always like, live lean.

• 1:45:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:45:11Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and, and try to protect that. Ability to be flexible and nimble.

• 1:45:17Adam Skolnick?

  I think that's right, and I think that's great advice, and it seems like she's on that path. It doesn't seem like she's acquiring a whole lot at this point.

• 1:45:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:25Adam Skolnick?

  But I would say that this craving for purpose is real, and FOMO is real. And sometimes we're so attached back to the consumption, but so attached to our phones, and we see people living lives of so-called purpose, or having these experiences that are like, you know, bucket list type experiences, and she's like grinding it out, saving money. First of all, a lot of that is false. It's not as great or ideal as it looks like. So you gotta make sure to check yourself. I'm not saying that she is indulging or subject to FOMO. We all are at some level. But the other thing I would say is purpose doesn't have to be sensible career or purpose.

• 1:46:07Adam Skolnick?

  It can be both, and your purpose doesn't have to be your sensible career. And in the interim, I think purpose is going to be really important for you to be able to get through kind of grinding weeks that are harder to get through. And one way of doing that is volunteering, or finding some way to connect with something that you do care about. So I would say that there are ways to mitigate that in the interim before you kind of make that nimble jump to.

• 1:46:34Rich Roll?

  I think that's a really important point. And we think of like, purpose in this binary context. Like you're either in this financially secure career, or you're living this purpose-driven.

• 1:46:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:46:46Rich Roll?

  It doesn't have to be that way, and it's not that way. You can find purpose in anything that you're doing, in any pursuit. And if you feel bereft of that in your particular career choice, you can find purpose in just trying to be of maximum service to the people that you report to.

• 1:47:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:47:04Rich Roll?

  Or just doing the best job that you can.

• 1:47:07Adam Skolnick?

  Absolutely. You can like zen in on the actions you're taking at work. You can, you know, volunteer as a literacy coach or something like that, or, or help people with finances that might need help, or people in trouble with their mortgages, whatever it might be. Yeah. And, uh, but yeah, thanks for the question. It's a good one.

• 1:47:26Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:47:27Adam Skolnick?

  That's what we have, man.

• 1:47:28Rich Roll?

  We did it.

• 1:47:29Adam Skolnick?

  We wrapped it.

• 1:47:30Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:47:31Adam Skolnick?

  I feel good. I like that we're, we're shaping this thing into something.

• 1:47:35Rich Roll?

  Well, I told you at the outset, we could create a structure for it, but ultimately it's going to tell us what it wants to be. And I think we're slowly finding that.

• 1:47:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:43Rich Roll?

  But I think we're hitting a good stride with this.

• 1:47:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And, uh, it's always good to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

• 1:47:49Rich Roll?

  Of course, man. My pleasure. We'll be back in another two weeks. Uh, in the meantime, you can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. I'm easy to find at Rich Roll everywhere. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify. As always, you can find links to everything we discussed today in the show notes, on the episode page on my website, at richroll.com. You can submit your questions on the Facebook group or on the voicemail, 424-235-4626. At some point I'll, uh, I'll memorize that.

• 1:48:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And tell me how you feel about wearing a ma- no, don't. But, but wear a mask. And don't tell me anything about your feelings about it, but just wear one.

• 1:48:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Um, all right. Thanks you guys. I appreciate you. Uh, don't take your attention for granted. It means a lot that you spend this time with me and with Adam every, every couple of weeks. So appreciate it. Thanks to everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis to my left here for videoing today's show and creating all the clips that we share on social media. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Uh, Ally Rogers and Davey Greenberg, who generally do portraits, but no one's here today. Uh, Georgia Whala for copywriting. DK, my man right over here for advertiser relationships and so much more.

• 1:49:03Adam Skolnick?

  DK?

• 1:49:04Rich Roll?

  Including taste testing, the Beyond KFC.

• 1:49:08Adam Skolnick?

  DK says it like three of them.

• 1:49:09Rich Roll?

  I know. And theme music by Tyler Trapper and Hari. Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. Thanks a lot, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another amazing episode. Until then, what do you want to sign off with?

• 1:49:23Adam Skolnick?

  Don't you do your signature? I put you on the spot. Me? Yeah. Be cool, be kind. There you go. Peace. Plants. Namaste.