Roll ON: Journaling, Creativity & Process—Plus Transformative Books, Thoughts on Regenerative Agriculture & Remembering Swimming's Greatest Coach

Mr. Adam Skolnick and I are back in the saddle for Roll On—ready to unpack all that’s transpired in our worlds and beyond! Specific topics include the creative anxieties of book publishing (Adam finished his novel!), a recent podcast kerfuffle (i.e., Ozempic), my trip to India and meeting with the Dalai Lama, heading to Paris for the Olympics, paying respect to legends lost, book recommendations, and wading into the Sage Bistro regenerative farming debate. Let’s make up for lost time, shall we? Put us in your earholes! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Peak Design: Get 20% OFF my favorite products 👉 PeakDesign.com/RICHROLL Inside Tracker: Enjoy 10% OFF the InsideTracker Subscription and any plan 👉 insidetracker.com/richroll On: Enter RichRoll10 at the checkout to get 10% OFF your first order 👉on.com/richroll Eight Sleep: Use code RICHROLL to get $350 OFF Pod 4 Ultra 👉eightsleep.com/richroll Squarespace: Use code RichRoll for a FREE trial + 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain 👉BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL AG1: REE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange 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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• 1:09Adam Skolnick?

  I think February. It's like we're quarterly now, man.

• 1:11Rich Roll?

  I guess.

• 1:12Adam Skolnick?

  I could live with that.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  We'll see how this one goes.

• 1:14Adam Skolnick?

  So, I'm auditioning right now?

• 1:21Rich Roll?

  You just wrote a novel, and that's being kind of pitched right now around

• 1:25Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  around publishing houses.

• 1:27Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 1:28Rich Roll?

  And you're in that weird, kind of liminal space where you're awaiting responses.

• 1:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right. It's, we're still out to like 20 different editors at different houses. And you know how it works? There's like, what is it, four big houses? And then like, all these different imprints.

• 1:44Rich Roll?

  All the imprints. There's so many imprints, but there's really only... It's sort of like when you go to the grocery store and you think there's all these brands, but there's only like, two or three companies that own all of them. It's similar in publishing.

• 1:55Adam Skolnick?

  It's like that.

• 1:56Rich Roll?

  Isn't it just one big thing?

• 1:57Adam Skolnick?

  It is. It's like, well, and what's strange is, like, I've been doing this for so long, and I still don't... I mean, I've had, I've had a book published by major publishers. I've gotten a second deal through David. David got the deal. But working with David got a deal with David Goggins. Got that another deal, and we didn't end up going with it. Because he's self-published. And since that, I've been completely on the fringes of the publishing industry. Do what I do. But like, I don't really know anybody or know anything.

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  You're not interfacing with editors and all the like, like the biz.

• 2:28Adam Skolnick?

  So I get the whole submission list and I'm like Googling everybody and I realize I don't know anybody and it doesn't matter. And I thought I'd get, in the past, Bird has sent through like passes more frequently. And I think this time they keep it all away from me. Like, I've gotten some thoughts back from editors like, but we still have the vast majority haven't gotten to that made their decision yet. So I'm gonna take that as good news. I feel really good about it. Here's the best part is I've been working on it since 2000, since the pandemic. And on and off.

• 3:01Rich Roll?

  2020.

• 3:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because we had to, we wrote Never Finished in there. So it wasn't like all my soul focused the whole time, but I did 20 drafts of this thing. And I do believe it's my best work. I love it very much and it's going to, it's going to happen.

• 3:18Adam Skolnick?

  Whether through a major publishing house in Indy or through under my own thing that if I have to do it, I will do it. It's gonna happen. It's gonna be out. And.

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  Well, you've done the work.

• 3:27Adam Skolnick?

  Done the work.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  The book is done. I mean, this is the difference between other types of books and novels. Usually you prepare a proposal, the proposal gets solicited, you know, spread around. And you get feedback and responses pretty quickly.

• 3:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 3:42Rich Roll?

  Whereas a novel, they actually have to read the whole thing.

• 3:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  So to me, the longer, the more time that goes by and the longer you're waiting, it feels like that might be a good sign.

• 3:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Rich Roll?

  Because if somebody got two chapters in and thought, no, you know, they would let you know right away.

• 3:58Adam Skolnick?

  I would think so. But you know, you just don't know. It's like, it's, and, and so the first week that we went out, I slept really well. Because I've always thought, this, this book has been on a journey and hopefully when it comes out, I'll, if I remember everything that happened, there's probably gonna be 10 other things to talk about. But I'll go through the whole thing. But it was, my, my feeling was, once we got out to the publishers, it's going to happen. I never thought it wouldn't. And I still feel that way. I still am very positive. And I would like it to be under a major publisher because I feel like you can get into more stores. I don't have the social media engine that some people have where you, you can do an indie thing and. And, and know that you're gonna reach certain benchmarks in sales.

• 4:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Adam Skolnick?

  Um, but like I said, you know, it's, it's not up to me. And so all I can do is be, be in the gratitude space. And for the first week, I was able to do that. And the second week, the second week I was like checking my email five times an hour.

• 4:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Adam Skolnick?

  Is that normal?

• 4:56Rich Roll?

  I know what that feels like.

• 4:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  You know, when there's an anticipation.

• 4:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  Uh, and, and the response can be something that could change your life in a, in a, in a pretty significant way.

• 5:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Rich Roll?

  Like, of course, you know, you're gonna wanna, I mean, it's not good. It's not healthy to be doing that all the time, but I can understand it.

• 5:14Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 5:14Rich Roll?

  Certainly. I've certainly been that person.

• 5:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And so now I've kind of reached a happy medium where I've got a little bit of that, but I'm able to kind of detach. One thing I can't do is sit at my desk and like work for any long period of time. I'm just like, I think it's just too much. And, um, for me, so until there's, I'm gonna give it a little more time. I don't think the resolution's gonna come before I have to get back to work. So I'm gonna have to get over it. But, uh,

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  Well, now you're, you're a member of the anxious generation.

• 5:40Adam Skolnick?

  I am totally. I mean, I think I've always been. I've always been. I've always been. Uh, no, I'm looking forward to talking about that. You know that I love that show, so I can't wait to talk about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  Cool, man.

• 5:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 5:50Rich Roll?

  So Adam, while you're awaiting a response from publishers on your novel.

• 5:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:56Rich Roll?

  Uh, I just signed a contract for my next book.

• 5:59Adam Skolnick?

  Ah.

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  So I'm steeped in trying to, you know, figure out how I'm gonna turn these ideas into reality. And it's been such a long time since I've written a book.

• 6:09Adam Skolnick?

  The Pony Express finally arrived with the contract, huh?

• 6:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it did. Yeah, it did. That's a whole other thing. But it is signed. It's official. Uh, and I'm curious. I thought we could have an interesting conversation around, uh, creative expression, because one of the things that's been really helpful in getting me settled into a mode of being creative is A, meditation. Like, I've gone, not that I've strayed from meditation, but I've just been much more diligent about it. Like, to the point where it's like, I don't miss a day. Like, I'm doing it no matter what. And returning to a very diligent journaling practice, but not journaling in the sense of, of morning pages, like journaling with intentionality. And I'm doing that because

• 6:57Rich Roll?

  I have this dilemma, which is that when I'm writing on a laptop, it's very hard to separate the sort of flow state, creative dump mind that you need from the perfectionist editorial brain. Like, those things start to merge because you can so easily, like, copy, paste, delete and start again.

• 7:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  And so I end up tinkering forever and I don't make as much progress. So for this project, the mornings are longhand journaling on a specific thing that I'm trying to work on for this book. And then I use later periods or afternoons for taking that and then doing the editing part. Or I set it aside and I do that part later. And that's been really helpful because it lowers the bar, like, especially before you have a ton of momentum and you're entering into a new project. It's such a heavy lift and there's so much pressure. And I just had to, like, lower that cost and just make it as easy a lift as possible. And so, hey, I'm just gonna sit down. I'm gonna write whatever comes out.

• 8:05Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna edit it. I'm not gonna judge it. I'm not gonna, you know, it could be total garbage and that's totally fine. No one's gonna see this. And that's been really good at getting me kind of into a rhythm.

• 8:16Adam Skolnick?

  Awesome.

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  So I guess I'm curious around how you approach your writing and these books that you're doing, whether they're nonfiction or fiction, and whether maybe there's a difference in between those two things.

• 8:27Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you hit on something that is definitely consistent across anything I do. And that is what you need to do as a writer in order to get your brain to not be terrified of the thing you signed up for, is reduce the amount of blank space you have to deal with at a time. And so you can do that through outlining. You can do that through just getting your research set up and your interviews set up if it's a nonfiction piece. You can do it through just opening up and doing longhand in a book where the page is smaller. You know, you could do it with intentionality with journaling because you know you're writing about something. So you don't have to wonder, what is this gonna be about? Or where do I start?

• 9:10Adam Skolnick?

  Because journaling allows you to start anywhere and then eventually you get into it because the flow is built into it and you have a lot of experience with that. So it's a comfortable kind of setting for you. So reducing the amount of blank space you have to deal with it to me is, is the best way to deal with, with what people call writer's block or some sort of, any sort of impediment to getting some words down on page. But for my process, it's grown over the years. When I first started, I was very ritualistic about everything. I would be like, I'd light a candle, I would do this, I would have everything set up and now, and then through time-

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  But that feels like it creates pressure because it's like you've done all this and now the magic has to happen.

• 9:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 9:46Rich Roll?

  For me, that's paralyzing.

• 9:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  Like I have to get rid of all of that-

• 9:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 9:50Rich Roll?

  So that it's like, hey, it's no big deal.

• 9:51Adam Skolnick?

  Totally, same.

• 9:52Rich Roll?

  I don't have to like, you know-

• 9:53Adam Skolnick?

  Same.

• 9:54Rich Roll?

  Create this insane environment.

• 9:55Adam Skolnick?

  Well, when, when I was doing it that way, I wasn't making a lot of money doing it. So I think what happened was the more I did it, the, the less sacred it became and to the point where I wrote part of One Breath in the backseat of a car on my way to Point Doom to swim. And I would do that several times a week sometimes. Sometimes I've, I've written stories off the side of a freeway because that's when I had to have the rewrite in. I've, I've done it every kind of different way. But what, to me, that's the big consistent thing is, is try to reduce the blank space. So with, with fiction, fiction is a lot harder. That's what I've learned. It's a lot harder. It's harder to be great in fiction. It's harder to be great at fiction. With nonfiction, you know what you're dealing with, so you can't really stray from that.

• 10:37Adam Skolnick?

  But the difference is you can always just decide to change something and, and suit yourself in fiction, whereas in nonfiction you can't. So you're kind of tied to it. So they both have their advantages, but, but fiction's just harder to be great. But my process is, is, is basically at this point, I try to write a certain number of words per day, knowing that the beginning of the day is going to suck. It's very rare that you get up, you get right to it and you're just boom. Sometimes it happens, it's very rare. And so if my goal is 2,000 words a day- And it might take me five hours to get down 500 words and then I might do the last 1500 words in 30 minutes.

• 11:17Rich Roll?

  And are you able to do the writing part and do the editing later? Or are you trying to edit while you're writing?

• 11:23Adam Skolnick?

  Well, what I will do-

• 11:23Rich Roll?

  Or is that dependent on the deadline?

• 11:25Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes to get back into the flow, if like you're in the middle of a chapter or in the middle of a thought, you have to go back to the day before and just look at it. And so then you are gonna probably rewrite and tinker because you're gonna see things that should change. So I'm not, I don't have like this process, no. This lump of clay will be fixed. I'm not going back to fix anything yet, no, no. If my brain wants to go there and you know, any time you look at it can get better. So I'll start there and sometimes that will make it harder to get to the 2000 words. It might be you won't get there because you actually, the last thing you thought that was so great that you did in 45 minutes actually sucked. And the thing that you thought sucked, because it took you two hours to write 400 words, actually is good.

• 12:07Adam Skolnick?

  You know, the thing you have to separate is the feeling of the experience does not mean it's better writing. That's the one thing that I think a lot of people confuse. It felt so good, this must be great. Because it did feel that way at the time and you're rereading it, you're like, yeah, this is it. Actually, no, sometimes that stuff's crap. You know, and sometimes the stuff that barely comes out is good. And so there's, and there's no, and sometimes it's the opposite. And there's no rule to it. So the only rule really that there is, is reduce the amount of blank space and just consistently be there. So that you can just get it done because it's like building, it's just building a house. It's like, it's like, you know-

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  My version of that is this delusion that unless I'm like bleeding out of my eyeballs and suffering, you know, that it could be better, you know what I mean? And then, and then I'll proceed to make it worse, you know, because I was like, I have to make my, it's because it's like, oh, in the pool or like, you know, it's like you gotta push yourself.

• 13:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  What is the, you know, creative version of that? And that's really kind of a lie. But the other, the other challenge I face is sometimes, like it's one thing if you have an outline, you know exactly what you're gonna say. It's different when you're grappling with an idea and you're trying to get clarity around-

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  What you actually think and how to express it. And sometimes bringing the editor into that initial creative process is important because you're kind of pushing yourself to get clearer and clearer and clearer. It's like, I don't know, who's the person who said, if you don't know what you think about something, like start writing. Like in the writing, you start to figure out how you feel about certain things. And for me, bringing the editor into that process creates the tension that actually drives a certain amount of clarity that can make the rest of the writing easier. And so sometimes it's like, I need to bring that in. Because otherwise, if I'm just vomiting out, like it's so disorganized

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  that it takes me longer later to like, well, what am I actually trying to say here? I don't know.

• 14:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right. It's interesting, and you're also dealing with first person, right? You're dealing in a first person space, whether it's your memoir, whether it's kind of, I believe, first person kind of essay stuff that you're working on now. And that's different because I get, even my novel's third person. So it's like, I can be the detached narrator and I could be the detached, whether it's ghostwriting or whether it's even reporting for the New York Times, I am the observer. And so it's different. It's a different approach. But listen, man, if you're getting, like, to me, it's like, just get words down. And some people like to write books all longhand. I mean, there's plenty of writers that have made a living doing that.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  The problem is that then you have these journals and you're going through them and you're like, you can't just like copy and paste paragraphs.

• 15:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, there's always connective tissue.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  So that's a bit of an issue. But I did want to, like, we can kind of pivot into books a little bit. I found these journals that I thought were cool that I would share.

• 15:10Adam Skolnick?

  These are your older journals?

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  It doesn't matter. No, these are new journals. It doesn't matter what kind of journal you're using. I'm not somebody like, you have to have this kind of pen. None of that matters, but I did think that these journals are fun. They're called Lecterum.

• 15:24Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 15:25Rich Roll?

  The Lecterum 1917 Bauhaus Edition.

• 15:29Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  What's cool about them, they come in different sizes and stuff like that. But when you buy them, and they're not expensive.

• 15:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Rich Roll?

  They're just like, you know, whatever, average. When you buy them online, you can get a little inscription. So you can get, I have like my name on there and the year.

• 15:44Adam Skolnick?

  1917 Bauhaus?

• 15:46Rich Roll?

  They're called, yeah, like here, like look on the inside of that.

• 15:49Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool.

• 15:49Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a new one. I haven't even written in that. And this is like a larger one.

• 15:53Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 15:53Rich Roll?

  And I like the ones that are dotted instead of lined. And those Bauhaus ones are dotted with red dots, which I don't know. It's just sort of like.

• 16:01Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that's cool. I love Kandinsky.

• 16:03Rich Roll?

  Aesthetically sort of groovy. Anyway, they're fun.

• 16:07Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool.

• 16:08Rich Roll?

  But I thought we could spend a couple of minutes talking about books.

• 16:13Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  We had kind of gone back and forth about.

• 16:15Adam Skolnick?

  Did you have the inscription made or did they do that for you?

• 16:18Rich Roll?

  No, that's what I'm saying. When you, when you, when you order it online, it's like, do you want to think? And you can like, I don't know, it's only a couple bucks more and you can like have it say embossed with like whatever you want.

• 16:27Adam Skolnick?

  Dude, this is clean. I love this.

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  They're cool, right?

• 16:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they're very cool.

• 16:29Rich Roll?

  Anyway.

• 16:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:30Rich Roll?

  Um, we talked about like sharing some books.

• 16:37Rich Roll?

  I think you brought like some of your all time faves.

• 16:40Adam Skolnick?

  I brought, you suggested bringing five, the best books I read this year. And then five all time faves. And I don't have all, I think I'm missing a couple, but I brought, I did bring the five best books I've read this year. And then I brought a couple others that mean a lot to me, yeah.

• 17:00Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, how do we do this? I don't want to do like a book report on every book.

• 17:04Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no.

• 17:05Rich Roll?

  But maybe just rifle off the best books that you've read this year.

• 17:10Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. So I read, uh, this is the most recent book I finished. It's called the NASA Archives. I posted about it in a story, but not in a post.

• 17:20Rich Roll?

  Does it talk about how they faked the moon landing and Stanley Cooper filmed it?

• 17:24Adam Skolnick?

  It does. It talks all about how they faked the moon landing. And then that the earth is really flat. That's the whole point of NASA. I don't know if they've told you that. I found this book. In Toto Santos in Baja at like this cool art bookshop and it's a Tashin. Tashin and Tash, you know, Tashin usually has these big oversized books. This is like, I think this is kinda like one of those big ones that they've repurposed so you could actually read it. And you know, you don't really read.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  No, those are for like putting on the coffee table.

• 17:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 17:56Rich Roll?

  Looking cool, but you don't actually end up reading them.

• 17:59Adam Skolnick?

  Like, like, I mean.

• 18:00Rich Roll?

  That is pretty cool.

• 18:01Adam Skolnick?

  The photos that they have this like photos from the moon.

• 18:04Rich Roll?

  Cause Cooper did such a good job.

• 18:07Adam Skolnick?

  Cooper's amazing. But I'm not like a super space guy or I never was. I love the idea of exploration, but I was never like, like the space nerd growing up. I do remember where I was when the Challenger blew up. Anyway, this book is archive material, some speeches, letters from all the names you think of, and then some deeply reported essays all about NASA from its inception all the way up to the Hubble telescope launch. And so it's very cool.

• 18:38Adam Skolnick?

  There you go. Mercury, from Mercury to the Mars rovers.

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  Do you think that NASA has the coolest logo that was ever created?

• 18:49Adam Skolnick?

  I think NASA, not only that, I think NASA is the coolest governmental organization ever created.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Adam Skolnick?

  And I think it's amazing.

• 18:57Rich Roll?

  It would return to its, you know, kind of heyday of absolute cooldom.

• 19:02Adam Skolnick?

  I, I, I wish, we're just too, we're just too grumpy to like be astonished.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  What if other, what if like, like, uh, you know, HUD or like Health and Human Services all had like super cool logos?

• 19:15Adam Skolnick?

  TSA?

• 19:16Rich Roll?

  Hoodies and stuff like that.

• 19:18Adam Skolnick?

  What if TSA guys just looked like spacemen?

• 19:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, just, you know, that iconic logo that they had.

• 19:24Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing. Amazing. And not only that, but like it goes through like. How they decided to be a Conaveral? Where they, how they started, ended up in Houston. Like, it goes into all that and like the early leaders and how, you know, and even just like Kennedy and the Russians and everything that was happening. It took some very big bets from people in government to put a lot of money. And people were saying at the time, you know, we have a lot of problems here on earth. Why would we spend this money? And people, that's why NASA was curtailed to the point it is now. Cause people stopped having the diet to put that money out into space. But we are supposedly gonna go to the moon again. I mean, what had, what is it like? I forget the number 24 people or something like that, 27 people have been to the moon?

• 20:10Adam Skolnick?

  And they were all one after another in those Apollo missions. And then they stopped, we stopped going to the moon. So it's, it's very interesting to, to me, to, to, to dive into that. So I love that. I, this is not the book, but Philip Kerr wrote a series of novels. They're called the Bernie Gunther novels. And it's basically noir, Berlin noir, pre-World War II and then through World War II. This is the first in the series. The book that I loved the most was the last in the series and he wrote it while dying of a terminal illness. And it came out, I believe, after he died. And it's the, it was a prequel to this series. And it, that one's, that one is in 1920s in Berlin.

• 20:52Adam Skolnick?

  When the Nazi party is starting to make inroads into the, into the, it's like the Nazis versus the socialist. And then this, it's in the twenties when that started. And it's really super interesting. It's, it felt very current to our time and place now.

• 21:08Adam Skolnick?

  And it's just literature disguised as, as genre fiction. You know, it's like, it's really Philip Kerr, if you like detective stories. This one got some attention when it came out by Alvaro Enrique. It's called You Dreamed of Empires. I got it cause Dwight Garner in the New York Times wrote a great, uh, he's a, he's a

• 21:29Adam Skolnick?

  book critic for the Times and he's my favorite read in the New York Times. And basically it's about when Cortez.

• 21:37Adam Skolnick?

  Met, uh, Met, uh, Monizuma. And, and then they ended up like taking, taking psychedelics together. But it's, it's like, it's a re, it's kind of real, it's, it's kind of like. It's like an alternative universe. Alternative history, but that's what it's about. It's about the Spaniards.

• 21:54Adam Skolnick?

  Like fanfiction? No, it's more like Spaniards coming in, when the Spaniards arrived in T O T Wakon, basically, and, and Monizuma being there and all that. And that's like, that's the whole, it takes place over a, a short period of time. And what happened in that time? And it's, uh, it's kind of brutal and funny and hilar, you know, it's hilarious, obviously. It's, it's farcical. But, but really great. Um, and then the best book I've read, two, two kind of old timers. One, I read Brown Dog. It's a novella. Uh, Jim. This is a collection of Jim Harrison novellas and the first one's called Brown Dog. Michigan Guy. Michigan Guy and Montana and Arizona.

• 22:35Adam Skolnick?

  Um, one of the greats, uh, to ever do it, Jim Harrison. And then. Like hard boiled. Yeah, kind of hard boiled, but like, but like. Not as hard boiled as Cormac McCarthy. No, no, no, no. Much more heart, much more heart, you know, like a lot of heart and, um, much more of like earthy, kind of earthy energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Annie Prow. I don't even know how to pronounce her last name. I think it's Prow. Um, she wrote, she's famous for two books. Or more than two books, but this one, The Shipping News, won the National Book Award. I believe, and the Pulitzer Prize. I think it won both. Um, and she, this is, this is magnificent.

• 23:16Adam Skolnick?

  And it was a, it was a kind of a iffy movie with Kevin Spacey and Cate Blanchett and some other. But, um, but the book is magnificent. Uh, it's, this is art. And, uh, loved reading it. If you love the ocean, it's like, it's not like a lot of books, I think, a lot of art that we see these days.

• 23:35Adam Skolnick?

  Is curated to the point where it doesn't offend you, that it like, it's trying to meet you where you are. This has, this is brilliant and beautiful, but has an edge. You know, like, I want more edge in, in the media.

• 23:48Rich Roll?

  That's the whole, that's the whole point of art.

• 23:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I thought so. So that's what we try to do, right? We try to, try to, try to tell stories with an edge. In terms of like, that's what the best books I've read so far.

• 24:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's good. That's plenty. I know you got more there, but like, that's, that's cool.

• 24:04Adam Skolnick?

  Let's wrap it up.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  We're only a semi-literary podcast.

• 24:09Adam Skolnick?

  Listen, uh, yes, you're in the movie. I didn't ask you about the book you wrote, okay? It's good. You can, you can go, there's other stands here.

• 24:15Rich Roll?

  Enough. We've got enough skull nick.

• 24:17Adam Skolnick?

  There's apples over there. You want an apple?

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  There's an appropriate amount of skull nick, and then there's too much skull nick. The books that I chose, the books that I chose are gonna come as no surprise to anybody who, who, who follows me. And because we were talking about writing and your process and, and, you know, I have creativity very much on my mind, because I'm trying to channel it. Uh, the books that I, that I chose, um, are all about unlocking creativity. Uh, so, the ultimate one, and the starting place for me, is The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which is, I mean, the subtitle is A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. And it's just an incredible book that's also like a program with very actionable things

• 25:02Rich Roll?

  to do over the course of a number of weeks to help you connect with your creativity. Um, and there are practices like the morning pages, which we referenced earlier, which is this practice of just first thing in the morning, opening up a journal, longhanding, just doing a dump, you know, to clear out whatever's in your brain, um, so that you can kind of get to a point of clarity before you actually do your creative work like that. Those journals are not meant to be seen by anyone, they're not meant to be reread, they're not meant to be insightful, they're really meant to connect your hand to the paper and, and to kind of clear the cobwebs out. Um, and there's all kinds of cool stuff in here, like the artist date, like, once a week, you take yourself on an artist date, meaning...

• 25:44Rich Roll?

  You have some creative thing that you'd like to do. Maybe you want to take Polaroids or you want to whatever and like you indulge that, you know, which is something that ordinarily we're busy and you're just not going to make time for it or whatever. And I love this book. This is the original copy that I got. I think I got this book in 1999, 1998.

• 26:10Adam Skolnick?

  That is well-used. I love it.

• 26:12Rich Roll?

  This is, this book is like, you know, coming up. It's like over 25 years old.

• 26:16Adam Skolnick?

  That's been in some trunks of cars. It's been under beds. It's been in beds.

• 26:19Rich Roll?

  I know. It's like fraying here and, and I return to it time and time again.

• 26:25Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome. Did you return to it to begin this project you're on now?

• 26:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Like a variation on it. Like I don't do it super rigorously, exactly the way it's lined out because I've done it many times over. But Cameron also is sober. And so there's a, there's sort of a 12-step veneer to this also. Like it's a spiritual program in the way that, in the way that Alcoholics Anonymous is. And so there's an overlap. And it was introduced to me by my friend Sasha, who's been on the podcast, Sasha Gervasi. And I just love it and I recommend everybody check it out.

• 27:04Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 27:04Rich Roll?

  The other book that Sasha was the first person to introduce me to was, was The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. And that's another book that I read and read and read it, read again and again and again. And it's just like the ultimate kind of like primer for getting your head around the creative process and going to war with resistance. And I couldn't find my copy of that book. I don't know where it's hidden. But Steven, who's also been on the podcast twice and has, you know, become a little bit of a mentor to me. I mean, it's just like incredible, this guy. He just came out with this box set, The Daily Pressfield,

• 27:45Rich Roll?

  which I thought I would share. Comes in this beautiful box. And it's sort of like The Daily Stoic. Like every page has like a prompt.

• 27:57Rich Roll?

  That you can reflect on over the course of that day.

• 27:59Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful color.

• 28:00Rich Roll?

  And then, yeah, he's got like little journal in here and like these cards and I don't know, it's pretty cool.

• 28:05Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, there's the War of Art on the back and then there's Turning Pro.

• 28:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 28:10Rich Roll?

  These books are just instrumental.

• 28:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  And you don't have to be faced with the prospect of writing a book to gain value from these creative texts. I think we're all creative beings and we all have something that we want to say and express and perhaps struggle with finding a way to do that. And I just think they're manuals for living.

• 28:31Adam Skolnick?

  1999 is when you had the Art of Artist's Way, right? And that you weren't thinking about

• 28:36Rich Roll?

  No, not at all.

• 28:37Adam Skolnick?

  Becoming a creative.

• 28:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've been doing this forever.

• 28:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  A couple other texts that have been key and important to me, The Creative Act, Rick Rubin's book, which, you know, probably most people have read at this point. I think it's still on the New York Times Bestseller list.

• 28:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's on those.

• 28:51Rich Roll?

  It's crazy how well this book is doing and this book was like really pivotal to me. I just think it's a really beautiful book.

• 28:59Adam Skolnick?

  I have it teed up on Audible and I, you know, I just like, it's hard for me to get to my Audible books.

• 29:05Rich Roll?

  I haven't listened to it on Audible. This is a book you should, you should actually, I think you should actually read.

• 29:08Adam Skolnick?

  I should read that. So I've got it on Audible. I should also buy it.

• 29:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Adam Skolnick?

  So Rick and Neil can get some benefit.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 29:19Rich Roll?

  Creative Calling.

• 29:20Adam Skolnick?

  Shout out Neil Strauss.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, shout out to Neil, who was

• 29:24Adam Skolnick?

  Ghostwriters. Ghostwriters are people too.

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  The Ghostwriters need to unionize, I think.

• 29:29Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think Neil wants to unionize.

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  No, I'm just saying, you know, the unherald, they're sort of like, you know, this whole, this movie, The Fall Guy, that came out and part of that, part of the narrative there is like, we need to really appreciate these stuntmen. They, they're barely credited. Nobody knows who they are. They don't, there's no Oscar category for what they do and There was a real heartfelt sensibility by the director, who was a former stuntman, to raise, kind of like, to have us all, like, celebrate the work that they do.

• 30:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  I think there's something relevant to the ghostwriters out there, you know what I mean? Who toil in anonymity and do, you know, all this, you know, do God's work and just are, you know, sort of like, you know, they're the ones who are jumping off buildings and submerging themselves with masks on and nobody knows who they are.

• 30:21Adam Skolnick?

  Only writers want to, that, only writers want to, want to award writers.

• 30:25Rich Roll?

  The other book I would call out is Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis.

• 30:29Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know who he is.

• 30:30Rich Roll?

  He's been a guest on the podcast. This, this book is really great. I would highly recommend it.

• 30:36Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  It's about, like, very practical, actionable things that you can do to develop a daily practice around cultivating creativity. And in the same kind of canon, there's, there's a couple of books by a guy called Austin Kleon that I actually haven't read.

• 30:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  I think one is called Steal Like an Artist, something like that. I really should read those books.

• 30:56Adam Skolnick?

  Have you had him on?

• 30:57Rich Roll?

  No, I haven't, I haven't, I haven't.

• 30:58Adam Skolnick?

  I'm aware of those books.

• 30:59Rich Roll?

  Those books have been suggested to me and I don't know why I haven't read them, but I'm sure they're great and those are probably next on my reading list.

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  What else is going on? You're getting, you, you texted me the other day about bikes.

• 31:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  I was very happy to get this text. You're considering buying a bike.

• 31:23Adam Skolnick?

  So, my, like, I played baseball growing up. Baseball is my main sport, like, organized sport, growing up, and I reached a point where I just wasn't good enough anymore to keep playing in a, in a, the highest competitive league. So, in high school, I switched and I started to, I was like, early adopter of, of cycling and triathlon in America. And so, I was doing that stuff.

• 31:44Rich Roll?

  I didn't know this.

• 31:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I know, I never told you.

• 31:46Rich Roll?

  About you.

• 31:47Adam Skolnick?

  These front teeth? Were smashed in the asphalt in a bike race in the desert when I was 16 years old.

• 31:53Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 31:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, someone cut in the Peloton.

• 31:54Rich Roll?

  This is a whole new Skolnik that I know nothing about.

• 31:57Adam Skolnick?

  You remember those Dave Scott Ironman bikes?

• 31:59Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 31:59Adam Skolnick?

  I had one of those, the first Shimano 600s or whatever that was on the market or something. Yeah, I had that. And I was really good at hills. I was, I was really skinny and small and I didn't even really grow in height till I was 16 years old. And so I was really short at first and then I got, I was too short for that bike. Then I really grew into it and I was great in the hills. I mean, I was, it's my, of all these endurance sports, it's the one I'm best at and more naturally. And I think it's because I did it younger, right? So I had that experience. I was doing, I did, rode from Santa Barbara to LA. I used to ride down to Laguna. I did all that kind of stuff on this bike. And then I was in this bike race and someone just cut in the Peloton, just, they did, they made the wrong move and I hit his back wheel and just went down and I didn't, it happened

• 32:44Adam Skolnick?

  so quickly I couldn't move and smashed my teeth. And so, and not long after, I kind of lost my flavor for it.

• 32:52Rich Roll?

  That was it for you?

• 32:53Adam Skolnick?

  It's kind of like the Jack Johnson hitting his head in Pipeline or hitting, he smashed his teeth too. He hit, went headfirst into the reef. Of course, he kept surfing big waves. I kind of started partying or whatever I did.

• 33:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that metaphor, that, that example sort of falls apart.

• 33:08Adam Skolnick?

  It's not, not a good example.

• 33:09Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm excited for you to find a new bike because bike technology has come such a long way since then. I mean, the bikes that are now available, I mean, it's like night and day. They're so fun to ride.

• 33:18Adam Skolnick?

  So let me tell you, like I, I, when I was, I got diagnosed with this herniated disc. We've talked about this, right? And I couldn't run anymore. I haven't been able to run. And so I decided to get on this bike. I got, my back got better and I have the bike, this like fixed gear type bike. It's not a fixie because there's, it's like the new fixies where you can flip it around and there's like a freewheel so you can coast.

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:38Adam Skolnick?

  So it's a single speed with a big chain ring up front, small, and you can't go at top speed downhill, but you have to go hard uphill. And so like I've, I've got a couple of different rides I do between 12 and 20 something miles. And I get to pass all these people in Lycra and like high-end bikes going up Santa Because I have to go so hard to go to go up at all.

• 34:01Rich Roll?

  Right, otherwise you'll you'll.

• 34:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 34:03Rich Roll?

  You'll tip over.

• 34:04Adam Skolnick?

  But I can't do hills. I can't get on the trails. I can't so and then I've heard about these gravel bikes for years. I've always threatened to get one and then I rode your one of your canyons you have here for guests. And I'm like, I love this bike. Like, why aren't I on a on a better bike? So I've been looking at it. So I've been looking at the Canyon Grizz is one thing I've been looking at. I talked to my uh my one of my my cousin's son, Isaiah Goldstein. He's a great cyclist. He lives up in in Washington. He's more trails. Um, and and he's like, well, the thing about Canyon is you don't have a bike shop. And if you're a great, if you have all the gear, you know how to put things together, that's one thing. But so you should also consider while you make your selection, looking at a bike shop just to see what they offer. And so I looked at Specialized. I went down to Helen. So I've been looking at a few things.

• 34:49Adam Skolnick?

  And I think I've settled on a gravel bike with a slightly bigger chain ring, changing out the front, the front ring to like from a 42 to a 46. So you so I can use it in a triathlon scenario. But I could also ride it up to Sullivan from my house and get on a trail. And I could do all the things I want to do because I'm not that serious. But I am serious in the fact I'll be on the bike, you know, three times a week, two, three times a week.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Well, flexibility is important.

• 35:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Rich Roll?

  Uh, I think people tend to overspend on a very specific specialized type of bike before they've ridden enough to know what it is they are going to end up doing the most. And I so so I think a bike that allows you, uh, you know, the ability to ride it wherever you want and the way that you want is the more important thing. And then if you get totally hooked in, you can upgrade later. But I don't think that you should overpay now. And I think with a with that gravel bike setup, I mean, you can change the tires on it for road.

• 35:47Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  You can have, you know, there's certain things that you can do to make it um more of a universal uh type of situation for yourself. But I'm partial to Canyon. There is that idea that if you get a Canyon, it's a bike that bike shops are reluctant to service because they have such specific components, etc.

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  But I got a guy for you.

• 36:10Adam Skolnick?

  You do?

• 36:10Rich Roll?

  That shouldn't be a consideration.

• 36:12Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, okay.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  There's a great company called VeloFix and they basically do bike repairs mobile. And they have a van, you can book it online, they come to your house, they can build your bike. Because Canyon, they'll just ship you, you know, you need somebody to assemble it.

• 36:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 36:26Rich Roll?

  It's, there's, there's plenty of people who can do that.

• 36:29Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  And so I'll just introduce you to my guy. But I'm partial to Canyon and Canyon is a company that we work with. I love that company, I love the brand, I love the bikes.

• 36:38Adam Skolnick?

  I love that bike that I rode and that's why I was thinking, God, I should do. And it's, it is a better price point for what you're getting, isn't it? Like than a lot of these highly.

• 36:46Rich Roll?

  I think so. I think their, their bikes are really exceptional.

• 36:49Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, so Canyon, we'll talk about it. What do you think of digital shifters versus the mechanical? Like the, like the new SRAM, SRAM is it called?

• 36:58Rich Roll?

  SRAM, SRAM Red and, and DI2.

• 37:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think they're great. Electronic shifting is, is really fun, it's very precise. You have to charge them and there's differences between SRAM and DI2. But it's really kind of a personal preference thing. They're, you know, all of those components now are pretty exceptional. So I would, I would go with electronic shifting.

• 37:24Adam Skolnick?

  You would?

• 37:24Rich Roll?

  If you can and that's in your budget.

• 37:26Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll talk about budget. And you know, I know the listeners out there are going to have opinions. Please send me your opinions. Please at me. Please at me.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  You're gonna get a lot of opinions. It's a very, it's a very personal thing, you know what I mean?

• 37:39Adam Skolnick?

  It is, it is.

• 37:40Rich Roll?

  And, and as I said to you in the text, like just ride a bunch of bikes and, and, and you know, find the one that you enjoy the most, that feels the most comfortable. I mean, obviously you'll want to get a, a proper fit and all that kind of stuff. So some of that stuff, you know, you can adjust after you purchase.

• 37:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And these fellow VeloFix guys can help you with that, right? You can call them over to fit it.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  You want to be excited about the bike that, that you're getting. But anyway, well, this is going to be a whole journey for you.

• 38:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it should be fun. I, I want to be able to ride with you sometime.

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 38:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:10Rich Roll?

  What else is happening?

• 38:11Adam Skolnick?

  Uh, oh, what else is happening?

• 38:13Rich Roll?

  Deepest Breath won an Emmy.

• 38:14Adam Skolnick?

  Deepest Breath did win an Emmy. Isn't that quite today?

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Did they give you one?

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  Would they have won an Emmy without you appearing in that documentary?

• 38:25Adam Skolnick?

  Probably.

• 38:27Adam Skolnick?

  But, the thing about it is that, although they've been always very nice, you know, they had a cut of that movie done before they brought me in. I was like the last interview because they felt they needed something more. So, I mean, hopefully I gave something. Hopefully I did. But I did get, at the farmer's market today, the guys I see for like salad stuff and herbs. This guy's like, looks at me and he goes, "Are you in the movies?" And I'm like, "Me? No, man. I'm not in the movies." And he goes, "Are you sure you're not in that movie that, you know, the diving one?" And I'm like, "Oh, yeah."

• 39:05Adam Skolnick?

  And so what happened was, what usually happens when people approach me because they've seen something of mine, or usually it's Rich Roll Podcast, they talk to me about it and they're happy to meet me, and then I want to talk about them longer than they want to talk about me, or talk to me.

• 39:20Rich Roll?

  And then they start to recede into the background. They're trying to get away from you.

• 39:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'm like, and I also wrote a book about it. He's like, "All right, bro. You know, I didn't ask about your book, dude."

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  That's pretty funny. When we had Orlando Bloom in here recently, I invited you to come to watch because the episode of his series where he goes free diving was at, was it called Deep Blue?

• 39:48Adam Skolnick?

  No, the Blue Hole, Dean's Blue Hole.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the Blue Hole. And all of the people that are kind of schooling him, and it was in the middle of the competition.

• 39:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  And I knew that you would know all of those people and there would be like a shorthand for that experience. It was cool.

• 40:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was cool to be here for that. It was cool to see, you know, and to hear his whole, you know, as we get into the recent pods, he's one of them, to hear his whole journey through Buddhism. It's fascinating. And, you know, he's a beast. You know, he's like one of those undercover beasts you don't realize.

• 40:19Rich Roll?

  Who can just excel. Like, he's just an incredible athlete.

• 40:23Adam Skolnick?

  Incredible athlete.

• 40:24Rich Roll?

  He applies himself.

• 40:24Adam Skolnick?

  He's in a wingsuit.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  I know. After 35 jumps that were compressed into like a two-week period, basically.

• 40:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Do you think that comes from just being an actor? Like you have to learn how to ride a horse really fast. You have to learn how to do this really fast. You have to like, there's like this compressed time to learn to be good at something.

• 40:41Rich Roll?

  I have no idea. I mean, I think he's, you know, he's definitely like, uh, you know, an adrenaline adventure junkie, but I think he has like a base level of athletic talent also.

• 40:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  But anyway, that was fun to have you here for that.

• 40:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that was fun. It was fun to be here. And like, what have you been up to?

• 41:00Rich Roll?

  I'm doing good, man. We're, we're, we're, we have all the kids home for the summer, which is fantastic. We have one who just finished her first year in college. We have our youngest who just finished 10th grade at boarding school. I'm not going to say where, but, uh, I never thought I would send a kid to boarding school, but this school has just been phenomenal for our youngest. And she's now home and the boys who already lived with us. So we're just all together as a family and it just feels great. I'm so excited to be home.

• 41:30Adam Skolnick?

  Is she like?

• 41:31Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the thing. It's that maybe, you know, of anything I've done that, that, you know, I just am so grateful for and on some level, I guess, proud of that the kids want to be home. Like they, they're, they're off with their friends and doing all sorts of things, but, but they're happy to be home, you know? And it's nice to have dinners and, you know, connect together. So I just, you know, I love it. I'm so happy that they're here.

• 41:55Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome. I'm so happy to hear that, man. It's like, uh, you're my, you're my fatherhood, uh, my, my fatherhood example.

• 42:03Rich Roll?

  There's, there's a lot, you know, it's a roller coaster.

• 42:05Adam Skolnick?

  Of course.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  You know, you go through phases and there's plenty of ups and downs. And I always say, you know, when the kids are, are, are little and young, uh, the problems are many, but the problems and the solutions are relatively simple. And when they get older, um, there's a lot of problems, but the problems are more complicated, you know?

• 42:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 42:25Rich Roll?

  They get trickier and they're more fraught. Uh, and we've had, you know, every kind of, you know, color under the rainbow of stuff we've had to contend with as parents. So it's not easy, but I feel like everyone's in a really good place right now. And for that, like I just, you know, I couldn't be more grateful.

• 42:41Adam Skolnick?

  I'm happy to hear that. That's awesome. Are you guys traveling at all this summer?

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Well, we're gonna be going to Paris for the Olympics.

• 42:48Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right.

• 42:49Rich Roll?

  I'm doing some things with ON in conjunction with the big event that's happening there. And so we're all going over as a family. And we've rented a friend's flat in Paris for a couple of weeks. So that's gonna be good.

• 43:03Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  So I'm excited to... I've never been to the Olympics. I'm obsessed with the Olympics and I've never... I've never

• 43:09Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 43:10Rich Roll?

  witnessed one. I've never... I've never attended one. So it'll be my first experience doing that. And it's gonna be great. I'm gonna do some activations with ON and some of their athletes. They're track and field and marathon athletes. A couple panels, one of which I think is gonna be open to the public. Like, the schedule is all still getting worked out. So I'll make announcements about that as we near and that information becomes public. And hopefully, I'm gonna do some podcasts there. We'll see.

• 43:38Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 43:40Rich Roll?

  It's tricky

• 43:41Adam Skolnick?

  We'll see.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  because of the IOC and, you know, I mean, I'm gonna do it... Like, I'm gonna bring my gear or whatever and catch as catch can and see what happens. It's not like I have a whole agenda or I'm renting a studio or something like that. But just to kind of old-school it here and there. I just don't wanna be caught flat-footed if I'm there

• 43:58Adam Skolnick?

  You know what you need?

• 43:59Rich Roll?

  and I don't have my gear and I come, you know, I meet somebody who, you know, wants to do it. I wanna be able to do it.

• 44:05Adam Skolnick?

  You need is a reporter on the ground.

• 44:06Rich Roll?

  I do.

• 44:07Adam Skolnick?

  Who knows how to open some doors.

• 44:09Rich Roll?

  I could use a lot of things. All of which exceed the budget.

• 44:15Adam Skolnick?

  One with a blue blazer like this and a bicycle with a French bread holder.

• 44:21Rich Roll?

  Maybe.

• 44:21Adam Skolnick?

  That I can slide right in, no?

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  But on the swimming front,

• 44:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 44:25Rich Roll?

  I don't know if you've been following this. Apparently, the open water swimming and the swimming leg of the Olympic triathlon are meant to go down in the Seine.

• 44:36Adam Skolnick?

  I did. I did see that. I knew it was the open water. I didn't know it was the triathlon leg as well, but it made sense.

• 44:40Rich Roll?

  I believe so. And so, you know, going back, I don't know, two years ago, I started to see news about this and how they were gonna clean up the water and make it swimable. And I checked back in on that. I was like, is that still the case? Is that still happening?

• 44:52Adam Skolnick?

  Last I heard, it was... It wasn't ready. Last I heard, it wasn't ready.

• 44:57Rich Roll?

  I just read an article, I'll link it up, in the show notes that said that they've devised...

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  I'm sure going to mischaracterize this, but they've devised some workaround because the Seine has a lot of bacteria. It's not like safe for swimming.

• 45:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 45:14Rich Roll?

  But they've cordoned off a certain like section of it that's like the size of 10 Olympic sized swimming pools or something like that. And they have these underground tunnels where they're going to funnel the river water, like bypass it. It's like bypass surgery, right? And they're going to have this one area where the water will be clean. And they seem to believe that they're going to hit their target in terms of timing.

• 45:48Adam Skolnick?

  So they're building a pool in a river?

• 45:49Rich Roll?

  I think maybe, like, I don't know exactly.

• 45:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 45:53Rich Roll?

  I should probably read that article more in depth or do a little bit more research. But my sense was that this is still very much not only a possibility, but how it's going to go down. So we'll see.

• 46:05Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 46:06Rich Roll?

  It's like every Olympics, though.

• 46:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 46:09Rich Roll?

  You hear, "All the venues are almost done." And then they're like two weeks out and like, you know, there's all this stuff that has to happen in order for, you know, it to get pulled off.

• 46:17Adam Skolnick?

  And true marathon swimmers are like, "I swam in the Hudson and the East River and all around Manhattan." They tell me there's not gross water there.

• 46:26Rich Roll?

  They can't have like people getting sick and all kinds of stuff like that. So anyway, yeah, so that's going to be the big trip this summer. And I just, you know, I've been traveling a fair amount. I was in India. I was in Austin. And then I was in Bentonville, Arkansas. But I went to, we didn't do a roll-on after I got back from India.

• 46:44Adam Skolnick?

  I thought we were going to talk about, yeah, I want to hear all about that Dalai Lama trip. I mean, that is unbelievable.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  So I got invited by Arthur Brooks to join a small group of about 20 people to travel to Dharamshala to do a two-day thing with the Dalai Lama that was hosted by Arthur in conjunction with Harvard, where he teaches at the Business School and at the Kennedy School of Government. And so the group was, you know, there were people from his happiness lab at Harvard that were there. There were some social scientists, some interesting people. Rain Wilson came with his wife and Lisa Miller, who's a podcast guest who teaches the science of spirituality at Columbia was there also, but everyone else was new to me. But it was a really great group.

• 47:35Rich Roll?

  And basically, it was two separate days of sitting with the Dalai Lama in these two-hour sessions where Arthur kind of hosted and, you know, sort of conducted a series of questions and conversations with the Dalai Lama. And it was really cool. I mean, he's 89 years old. It took place in this sort of congregation room that is attached to the domicile that he lives in, that's adjacent to the actual monastery. And it was, I mean, it was amazing. I was sitting like this far, like as far as I am away from you, from him, two days in a row. And, you know, Arthur has a whole series of questions that he wants to ask him, and

• 48:20Rich Roll?

  he's got a whole arc and trajectory, this journey that he wants to, you know, take the Dalai Lama on and take us on. But he knows well, because he's been doing this for over a decade, that it basically doesn't matter what you ask the Dalai Lama, he's going to tell you what he's going to, he's going to assess the crowd and figure out what these people need to hear, and that's going to be his message. So, most of his responses to these questions, which had to do with love and transcendence and happiness and West versus East and the like, forgiveness, compassion, could all be boiled down to one core answer that was sort of like his refrain or his mantra that

• 49:02Rich Roll?

  he kept returning to, which is basically like, the answer is always love to everything, you know, which is, to the Western mind, somewhat infuriating in its reductiveness and simplicity, like, we came all the way here. Right, right, right. Let us pass the velvet rope, man, you know, like, this is it? Right. But when you reflect on it, you know, is there anything more profound than that? No. You know, that basically, you know, everything that ails us, all of the problems that we face and et cetera, the solution can all be found on, you know, developing a greater capacity to give and receive love. And what was interesting...

• 49:46Rich Roll?

  Was how he framed it repeatedly over these two days, which was if you don't know exactly what I'm talking about, or you feel challenged by how to conjure that emotion of love, look to the mother's love for the child, or look to nature, to the animal kingdom, and the mother animal's love for its offspring. And basically, you know, by really trying to internalize like that experience into your life is basically what I'm talking about.

• 50:24Rich Roll?

  And kind of behind it, he means that the love that he's referring to, and the love that you should be exuding in your life, should be that of that character, like the way that that unconditional love that a mother has for its child. And the idea behind it being like, love everyone as if you are their mother, or you are the child, right? Like, that is the love, that the sort of unconditional, most compassionate version of love.

• 50:58Adam Skolnick?

  You're the mother, and the other person's the child. That kind of love.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  I think it's more, you know, the mother's love is basically what he's talking about.

• 51:07Adam Skolnick?

  Not the child's needy love.

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  No, not that.

• 51:10Adam Skolnick?

  And not the father's love. I noticed the absence of father. Not the father's. Not the father's unconditional love. The mother's unconditional love.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  And he spoke in his native tongue, and he had a translator. So he didn't have to, you know, he speaks English, but he didn't have to like struggle with his words, or, you know, he could be more precise in his answers that way. And a couple of people had the opportunity to ask questions. I got that opportunity as well.

• 51:36Adam Skolnick?

  What'd you ask him?

• 51:36Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna hold off on that.

• 51:37Adam Skolnick?

  You're not gonna?

• 51:38Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna sit on that one. Yeah. I'm holding that one to myself.

• 51:41Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, I have a feeling where that might land.

• 51:44Rich Roll?

  So that was cool. It was great to do it with Julie, and to be there with my wife. And we got to spend a ton of time with a lot of monks. There was a whole bunch of monks that came up from southern India, who live in monasteries there, who are part of his community, many of which had... Advanced degrees from American universities in science and the like, like super interesting guys, really fun to hang out with, super fascinating. There's a monastery school like as part of the Dalai Lama's, you know, kind of compound. And there are all these kids, like little, little like little monk kids, you know, who are growing up in, you know, that in that.

• 52:28Adam Skolnick?

  Going to school there.

• 52:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, basically.

• 52:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Rich Roll?

  You know, Dharamshala is a trip. You fly to Delhi and then you, you get this like little plane that, that flies north to Dharamshala. And it's about a 45 minute drive from the airport and you go up this mountain. And it's sort of like the Topanga of India, you know, a lot of seekers, a lot of backpackers. And a lot of, a lot of, uh, yeah, a lot of cows in the road and that kind of thing. And, you know, India is my first visit to India. I mean, India is just like being on another planet.

• 52:58Adam Skolnick?

  Totally.

• 52:58Rich Roll?

  It's a trip.

• 52:59Adam Skolnick?

  Did you like it?

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was great. It was, it was really cool.

• 53:02Adam Skolnick?

  Pretty hectic, right? It's pretty, pretty wild.

• 53:03Rich Roll?

  It's hectic and look, it's a massive country. So in, in the aftermath of that experience, Julie and I went to Jaipur and spent a couple of days in that region in Rajasthan, went to some temples, went to that city, you know, Jaipur and got a sense of.

• 53:19Adam Skolnick?

  The red, the red city?

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Have you been there?

• 53:22Adam Skolnick?

  I have.

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, you have? Yeah. It's wild, man.

• 53:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  It's really cool. It's a place of extremes and.

• 53:31Adam Skolnick?

  Oh yeah, I mean, you know, like barbers and cows and everything on the street. It's like, like.

• 53:36Rich Roll?

  Peacocks everywhere.

• 53:37Adam Skolnick?

  Peacocks running around. It's, I mean, the, the video you posted from the taxi in Dharam, in Dharamshala was like, I mean, I was like, oh man, I want to be there. It felt like, you know, I, lately I've had this like pangs, like God, remember the travel, like those, those Lonely Planet type of travel days where you just get off, you get, get in a cab. You don't really know where you're going. It's like, we got a little bit of a flavor for that with the family when our, our little sabbatical thing, but not like India, nothing's like India.

• 54:04Rich Roll?

  There's nothing like it.

• 54:05Adam Skolnick?

  No, nothing's like.

• 54:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no comparison really.

• 54:08Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  So I loved it. It was fantastic. And again, it was great to do it with Julie, with my wife. We had an amazing time and. Yeah, I can't wait to go back.

• 54:18Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  I'm continuing to reflect on the experience. I'm doing a lot of writing on it.

• 54:22Adam Skolnick?

  Are you?

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome. I was like, uh, thinking what you were saying about love and what he was communicating. It's like, it is the mother's love, but it's actually, it's actually harder because it's the mother's love that you're trying to repurpose in a selfless way. Because it's hard to love someone when there's nothing back for you. You know what I'm saying? Even though there is something, you do get something back for you. And I don't mean that in a cynical way. I'm just kind of like philosophizing on it, but like.

• 54:52Rich Roll?

  What am I getting out of this? Is that what you're saying?

• 54:54Adam Skolnick?

  Well, most people, it's innate, right? When it's your child, you know, there's a reason that love is so strong. And when we love our family and our friends or love, uh, we have that love, but then we're confronted with some situation we couldn't have seen coming. And you're, you know, someone hits you in your car or someone, you know, some crazy.

• 55:12Rich Roll?

  Challenge.

• 55:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 55:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:13Adam Skolnick?

  Challenge.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, really what he's saying is it's speaking to the illusion of separation, right? And this idea of oneness where, you know, we truly are all one.

• 55:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:23Rich Roll?

  And if you could, you know, treat everybody the way that a mother treats a child, like, wouldn't that be, you know, like, wouldn't that be a better world?

• 55:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  And it is a selfless love.

• 55:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:32Rich Roll?

  So can you love another as if they, you know, in that mother's way, but also as if they are yourself?

• 55:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  Because of this oneness idea.

• 55:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Rich Roll?

  And it's about like breaking that denial or that delusion around separation.

• 55:49Adam Skolnick?

  It's simple, but it's like, it's like you can do it. But that's what life is, right? You wake up and you get another chance to do it again. You know, it's like, it's like Groundhog Day in a weird way. It's like, it's like, here's your next chance to try it again, to do it better. You know what I mean? To be more pure. Or not even pure, but like more open, more loving. You know, like every experience we have is our chance. So, you know, like, it really is. So that's how I feel. I know it sounds reductive and silly and trite, but I mean, it is the basis of spirituality, right?

• 56:20Rich Roll?

  Of course, and there's a museum dedicated to the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, where you can go in and you can see all of these incredible photographs and artifacts that he's collected over the course of his extraordinary life. Pictures of him, of course, with like every single world leader, including this insane black and white photograph of him talking to Chairman Mao. You know, it's like, he's like, he is, you know, he's in conversation with the guy who basically exiled him and the government and killed thousands and thousands of people in a situation that's still unresolved.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  And so if he can demonstrate compassion and love and an attempt to understand with somebody like that, like then, you know, the issues that we come across are obviously frivolous and trivial by comparison.

• 57:18Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. You know, when they say, like, when I interviewed someone from the Self-Realization Fellowship in Mount Washington in LA, they tried to get us to talk in some conference room, but it was like booked out. And so we had to sit on these couches. Maybe it stopped me if I've said this on the podcast before, but we had to sit in front of the fireplace, just in the main house. And as the guy who sat across from me, he was like, you know, this is where Yogananda would sit every night, because that was his main house. Every night he would sit and whatever guests were there and they'd have tea and he'd sit there and they say that after sitting here for a while, you might feel his presence in you as you leave here, whatever.

• 57:59Adam Skolnick?

  And the guy that said this to me was very polite, very nice, very kind of academic, almost. Like, I didn't feel like that amazing unconditional saintly love coming off this guy. So I can't necessarily pin it to him. And I didn't believe it when he told me that. I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. And we have this long interview for like, you know, an hour long interview. This is back for LA Yoga years and years ago. And as I left and I walked out of the garden, I felt like, it's almost like the sensation of coming on to psychedelics. It was like this.

• 58:36Adam Skolnick?

  expansiveness and this feeling of energy and obviously it's real, right? Curious if you had anything like that up there, if you felt the kind of the calmness or you felt anything energetically up there?

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, not, not in that kind of heightened, super heightened way. You know, I know lots of people who had some version of that experience and, you know, always talk about it. I can't say that I've had that myself, which was part of the question that I asked him.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  That I'm gonna leave hanging.

• 59:11Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 59:12Rich Roll?

  But let's take a quick break and we got much more to come.

• 59:24Adam Skolnick?

  You've had some amazing recent podcasts. I've really connected to the Jonathan Haidt one. I told you that, I texted you right away. Like, I wasn't even finished with a podcast and I just like, that to me, because I have, I have my, my, I always thought your first, your first David episode to me is my favorite personally, because it has meant so much to me, but also just, it did right away mean a lot to me. And then I thought the Huberman one, I mean, these, look at these two, met what they've gone on to become and in, in no small part because of, of starting here with you and getting, having it all unpacked. And then this Jonathan Haidt to me is on that level. It's like that good. It was, you know, he's one of those, he's, he's like the public intellectual you want

• 1:00:08Adam Skolnick?

  and need, really authoritative, but also thoughtful in his approach and a great writer, great communicator. So I thought, you know, that's, that's one of those that can really help a lot of people.

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  I think so. I mean, well, first of all, I appreciate that. I mean, he does tons of interviews and lots of media, so he's got his, you know, his points down, he knows what he wants to say. So in the case of having him on the podcast, like, it was an easy lift for me because I can just sort of tee him up to say all the things that, you know, he can talk about with such depth and experience. And, but I think his book, you know, Anxious Generation, I mean, it's one of the more important books that's come out in recent years and it's definitely making a cultural impact. I think it was number one New York Times bestseller and it's, you know, it's alarming to read that book and I would imagine perhaps

• 1:01:02Rich Roll?

  more urgent for someone like you whose kids are younger. Like my kids are already, you know, they're, they're, they're older and, and so the parenting piece around that is sort of a ship that's already sailed. Whereas for you, you have to be thinking about this all the time.

• 1:01:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Rich Roll?

  And it's looming on the horizon for Zuma.

• 1:01:20Adam Skolnick?

  I thank, I thank him for this, you know, cause like now we know, you know, social, the social dilemma was kind of one of the first things to, that kind of clued us in that we're the, we're the crop, you know, we're, we're the, we're the crop, we're the harvest. And this, it, it, it, to me, this is like 10x in terms of the danger because that movie, even though it touched on adolescence, this is all about like, and really, and I think it's because their research has progressed, it, it takes apart how much childhood has been overwhelmed by it and, and what that means, which is suicide rates and depression. And so, you know, it's,

• 1:02:00Adam Skolnick?

  it's, it's weird because if it wasn't for social media, we wouldn't be sitting here right now in the same way. Like I wouldn't, you'd still have your podcast, but like, I mean, your podcast was

• 1:02:12Rich Roll?

  built off of it. Yeah, I've built an entire career upon it. So it's not a, it's not a, it's not a black or white thing.

• 1:02:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:19Rich Roll?

  It's a tool. It's about your relationship with the tool.

• 1:02:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Rich Roll?

  But it's not as easy as saying, use it to create things and not to consume things when it's so powerful, it overrides your neural circuitry to, you know, addict you to do things and it's driven by algorithms that are bespoke to what interests you and agitates you.

• 1:02:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  And that's what's, you know, driving not only poor mental health outcomes, but also in large part, so much of the divisiveness and division and acrimony right now that we're seeing culturally.

• 1:02:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, 100%. And so it's great that he's out there doing this work and a lot of it like you can get on his web. If you don't want to buy the book or for whatever reason, you can get on his website. He's got stuff. He's got old articles. He's got archived research. It's really, you've talked about this on the, on the podcast, but I just encourage people who haven't listened to that one yet to really dive in and, and the book is just as good, you know, it really is.

• 1:03:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 1:03:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:19Rich Roll?

  So you told me you wanted to talk a little bit about the Johann Hari episode.

• 1:03:23Adam Skolnick?

  Oh yeah, that's another brilliant episode. Johann. I mean, I hadn't caught the last two, so I didn't really have an understanding for his London charm and his gift for gab.

• 1:03:36Rich Roll?

  He's, he's quite charming.

• 1:03:37Adam Skolnick?

  And a hell of a, I mean, he is a gifted communicator too, like the two of you. It's like there's, you had something, I felt, I think I've told you this, I felt that there was like a brotherly thing, almost like, like you, you were the big brother and he, I'm not saying it's true, but that's how I, that's how it came across to me. It's like, it's like there was, um, there was like a creative tension that I really liked in it. Not that it was tense, it wasn't tense, but there was a tension in point of view, which I thought really made it interesting to listen to and it was riveting.

• 1:04:11Rich Roll?

  Well, it's his third time on the show and, and as a result of the other two experiences where at least on the second one, I think I pushed back on some of his ideas around addiction. Um, we developed a bit of a rapport, like I like Johann, he's friendly, he's super fun to hang out with. He's, um, you know, obviously like a good conversationalist and he comes ready, like he's got all his talking points and all the stories that he wants to tell. And my whole thing with him also, because he does lots of media and he's been on lots of podcasts, is understanding and knowing that Johann has all these stories that he wants to tell. And they're fine because they illustrate, you know, his thesis and the points that he's trying to make and the, in the books that he's written. But I try

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  to get him off his, I try to get him off that, you know, I was like, okay, cool. But like, how can I, you know, throw a curve ball at him and, and get him off his game a little bit. Um, and

• 1:05:08Rich Roll?

  For whatever reason, like the energy between us, like it's friendly, it's good. Like, I feel like I can push back on him and we can have a good time and he, and do it in a respectful way.

• 1:05:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Rich Roll?

  And so, and so obviously that's what happened in that episode. But I felt like, it's interesting because when the conversation was over, I was like, that was great. It was super fun and, you know, we, I, we definitely have that kind of a rapport. But the response to it has been super interesting.

• 1:05:35Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:05:35Rich Roll?

  There were a certain number of people who found it to be much more contentious than I felt like it was.

• 1:05:43Rich Roll?

  Some people, and also because weight loss and Ozempic is a very, you know, heightened kind of

• 1:05:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:05:48Rich Roll?

  topic or issue for, for many people. People have strongly held opinions about it.

• 1:05:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, both, both of those things separately and then together.

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  It's pushing buttons.

• 1:05:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Rich Roll?

  And I felt like we did a good job of canvassing not only the benefits and his, you know, firsthand experience on this drug, but also, you know, highlighting the risks and the dangers and, and the things we don't know about what's happening. And I felt like I was pretty balanced in that regard, but there also has been, you know, plenty of comments from people who are, are upset and felt like I was too hard on him and that I was, you know, biased and contemptuous of, of people that struggle to lose weight. And I felt like I was

• 1:06:31Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:06:32Rich Roll?

  rather compassionate about that. Like, I called myself out. Like, there's the one time where I said something like, you know, you know, part of my brain is like, get it together. But I said that in the context of also saying like, I understand that that is a wrong-headed, wrong-headed notion. Like, it's more difficult for other people than for other, for certain people than it is for other people.

• 1:06:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  And I can't begin to presume what that experience is like or the intensity of one person's cravings, you know, in contrast to whatever I experience. And I was very clear to say that for certain people who are tremendously overweight and have tried and tried and tried to lose weight or sustain some kind of weight loss unsuccessfully, that there is a real viable reason to explore this medication.

• 1:07:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:07:22Rich Roll?

  While also saying, we don't actually know, you know, anyway.

• 1:07:25Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I mean, I think.

• 1:07:26Rich Roll?

  It hit a nerve. I mean, the episode's doing really well. It's created like a discourse and a dialogue.

• 1:07:31Adam Skolnick?

  Good.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  And I stand by it. And I have to say also that Johan was a great sport. Like, I was able to push back on him and we had fun with it and he didn't take it personally.

• 1:07:41Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:07:41Rich Roll?

  It was kind of fun to jostle him and when he's like, you're still going to KFC or you had M and M's for breakfast? Like, come on, dude, you know? And I do feel like a chapter in the book is missing, which is what happens when he decides to go off it. And I did get a lot of messages and comments from people who have taken Ozempic and are now, you know, I don't know how long, like, you know, who've been taking it for a long time, and have had that thing that happens with most drugs, which is that the efficacy starts to wear off and you start to need to either take more, like, the hunger starts to return, like the, you know, like.

• 1:08:19Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting. Really?

• 1:08:20Rich Roll?

  And so they're starting to gain weight back while also still being on the medication.

• 1:08:25Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:08:25Rich Roll?

  And I don't know if that's a, and again, like, I'm not a doctor.

• 1:08:28Adam Skolnick?

  Is that anecdotal or is that?

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know if that's a universal thing.

• 1:08:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:08:32Rich Roll?

  That's something that only a few people are experiencing and only, and only time will tell. And then the other criticism I got was that if I was going to have a conversation about Ozempic, why am I having it with this journalist? Why aren't I having it with an expert in the field? And I can hear that and maybe I will, you know? But Johan's the one who wrote a book about it. He's having this experience and he's a great person to have a conversation with and I enjoyed it. And it seems like, you know, a lot of other people did as well.

• 1:09:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I was left with a, well, just hearing you talk, I wonder if like, kind of like, your own weight loss journey led to. A life change that was so significant that it's it's almost incalculable like you you rediscovered your athlete that you're the athlete inside you you changed everything you got a new career it's led to this and without the pain and having the hard the hard work would you you know if you just could have taken Ozempic and that would have muted your desire for alcohol and food would you have become who you are today?

• 1:09:39Rich Roll?

  I mean probably not but I can't project that expectation of experience on another human being.

• 1:09:45Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, but that could have that could be some subconscious feeding your own skepticism of it. I was left with kind of the interesting impression because at the end it got kind of science fictiony where you guys were talking about like imagine a drug it does X, Y, and Z and he saw he brought up soma from Brave New World and and I loved it I loved especially the end and I thought I first of all for the record I don't think contentious is the word I thought I thought you brought healthy skepticism and you there was some sparring but it was all good natured and and he was open to it because he likes intellectual discussions so like it was kind of like.

• 1:10:17Rich Roll?

  And not for nothing he's very aware of all of these risks.

• 1:10:22Adam Skolnick?

  He agrees with you.

• 1:10:23Rich Roll?

  They're all detailed in the book.

• 1:10:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:10:26Rich Roll?

  You know at length, right? So he's not sounding you know some kind of siren call that everybody should be on Ozempic far from far from it, you know, and I felt like his frankness around like just being open like I'm taking it and here's what happened and and and not trying to you know say that it's changes eating like he's very honest like I still he still eats like shit or whatever you know like you know he's he could have like been less honest about those things so I appreciated that.

• 1:10:52Adam Skolnick?

  He's very transparent I guess the the only thing I would say was what I was left with was this it's kind of a two parter but the one thing is it's very American right to have a pill like he brought up you guys got into the alcoholism and a pill to stop alcoholism or addiction and and his response was well there's plenty of scientists who actually think Ozempic is that. And which I the first I've heard of that. And so we got you guys got into a a long thread about that. You both kind of spoke at length and both said some really interesting and wise points. And and what I was left he he described Portugal as this place where they took all the enforcement and and punishment for um drug use and and drug sales and put it all into addiction legalized

• 1:11:37Adam Skolnick?

  drugs, put all into into addiction treatment and housing and this in this thing. And, you know, we, you know, and at work, you know, their addiction fell, but but, you know, that won't apply here because we are so individualistic as a country and always have been. We bet that that I I just don't see that ever happening here, not saying it can't. I shouldn't say that. I don't see it ever happening here because of the way we function is the individual must do. That's how this that's why these people came here back in the, you know, hundreds of years ago was to have opportunity they couldn't have at home and they were going to do what they wanted to do. Now, not everybody had equal opportunity. We know that that's not the story I'm telling.

• 1:12:18Adam Skolnick?

  But the point I'm trying to make is we're so individualistic that um two things come from that. One is um you have to do it on your own because there won't be some systemic fix. And and some people need something they can some people will need to press the button, right? Some people will need to because they can't you can't actually do it on your own, right? You have to find some way to do it like you have to plug in, whether it's in your case, a 12 step system that helped kind of you along or whether it's therapy or whether it's support groups or whatever it is, you can't, you know, Noom, you can't do it really actually do it alone. So you need to figure out what that is. But Ozempic actually kind of lets you do it alone, right? So there's something uniquely American about it.

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  That's an interesting, yeah, that's an interesting. Interesting thought. I want to think a little bit more deeply about that, but I think you're right. When you say individualistic, you're not saying everybody's different. You're saying individualism, like the whole premise of this country is based upon self-efficacy. And the, you know, the, we celebrate, you know, the individual at often, or, you know, probably at the cost of the collective whole.

• 1:13:31Adam Skolnick?

  We do.

• 1:13:31Rich Roll?

  Like, that scale is off, and that's driving a lot of the problems that we have.

• 1:13:35Adam Skolnick?

  But it also, it also feeds the stories we like, right? Like even-

• 1:13:38Rich Roll?

  Right, because every, because they're self-made.

• 1:13:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right, we love a self-made.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  You go against all the obstacles, and you overcome them, and you did it yourself.

• 1:13:45Adam Skolnick?

  Right. The suffering feeds your, your, it teaches you something, and that you can use that to actually become a better, and evolution, and I agree with you on it, because you said that, and I totally agree with you. The thing is, is that there's this general skepticism about, we all have skepticism, right? We all are rightfully skeptical. Someone rightfully skeptical about a journalist telling you about a zempic, or, you know, you rightfully skeptical about, you know, what's going to happen to your brain over time, and your bone density, and like, that's so right. But, you know, we, what I, what I kind of came out of it is, how many of us are, we're all so skeptical, we're selectively skeptical. We're all selectively skeptical.

• 1:14:27Rich Roll?

  Based upon our inherent biases.

• 1:14:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, and, and the stuff we consume.

• 1:14:31Rich Roll?

  We're not skeptical of the things we want to hear.

• 1:14:33Adam Skolnick?

  No, you know what, we're not-

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  We're only skeptical of the things that challenge what we want to hear.

• 1:14:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right, and we're not skeptical of the way we think. Almost nobody is, is, is automatically skeptical of the way we're thinking.

• 1:14:45Rich Roll?

  Well, because we all think we have the best opinions, because if we didn't think they were the best opinions, we would change them.

• 1:14:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right. The version of skepticism for, for, that we tell ourselves, isn't really skepticism, it's self-flagellation. It's like, it's like whipping you. It's like, it's like a whipping, excuse me. But, um, uh, yeah, so, anyway, that's what came out of it for me, is this individualistic, uh, kind of feeling that comes with evolution, that comes through the American kind of upbringing, um, and this kind of plays right into it. It's, it's, it's no- No surprise that it's a big hit. You know, as Zempic, and I think that what you brought up was, all your points were so valid. And there's got to be a balance. And the scary part is when you put a medicine out into the world, or a chemical, and you don't know what's going to happen.

• 1:15:35Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, you don't have to, he brought up those kind of 1970s diet pills. But like DDT is another great example. People thought, we're going to feed the world with DDT. We're going to feed the world. And then now there's vats of it in the ocean.

• 1:15:50Rich Roll?

  Sure, there's always, there's always unexpected negative consequences that were unforeseeable at the time. And so we will see, we will see here, you know? But I think the point I was trying to make, and I hope came across, is that it isn't a black or white thing. It's a nuanced thing. And I tried to bring some nuance to that experience. And Johan was a great sparring partner, and I'm grateful that, you know, he was game for the conversation we had.

• 1:16:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was awesome, man. It was awesome.

• 1:16:18Rich Roll?

  I want to do a little, shifting gears, I want to do a little in memoriam.

• 1:16:21Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  We're recording this on May 29. And one week ago, May 21, was the four-year anniversary of our friend David Clarke's passing.

• 1:16:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  David Clarke was an ultra athlete, a plant-based person who had lost hundreds of pounds. I think he was 320 pounds at one point. Changed his life around, you know, was, has an insane sobriety story. Like his drinking career was off the rails and was an inspiration to a lot of people. He was really a unique and amazing soul, and he died too soon from complications from a lower back surgery, I believe, right?

• 1:17:05Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:17:05Rich Roll?

  It wasn't like he, you know.

• 1:17:06Adam Skolnick?

  No, it was a herniated disc he was trying to have fixed.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, basically.

• 1:17:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  That probably influences whether or not you're going to think about surgery.

• 1:17:14Adam Skolnick?

  I never, that ended that.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  He was an amazing human being. He changed a lot of lives, and I just wanted to honor him today. He's been on the podcast twice, and we'll link up Jason Coop's reflections on him in the show notes. Jason is an ultra runner and a coach, wrote like kind of a beautiful reflection on David's impact on his life and others.

• 1:17:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. We are Superman.

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  We are Superman. That was his thing, right? That was his, yeah, like, we're, we are all Superman.

• 1:17:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 1:17:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the other person I wanted to talk about today is, is John Erbancheck, who, you know, in my opinion, in my personal opinion,

• 1:17:57Rich Roll?

  was the greatest swim coach of our generation. And he died on May 9th at 87 from complications related to Parkinson's. He was a beautiful human being who impacted the hearts and minds of so many young athletes over many, many years. I had the good fortune to know him a little bit, and he will be, you know, just really missed. I mean, John was my favorite swim coach. I know for a fact that if I had swum for him in college, I would have been a much better swimmer. He was just beautifully touched and had the right amount of push to positive energy.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  Like, he really invested in people. Like, he, you know, loved the kids that he taught. He believed in them. He was very invested in their lives and knew how to get the best performances out of them through positive encouragement as opposed to, you know, being kind of a hard ass. I mean, he knew how to be a hard ass, but he just had this touch with people. And everybody who was blessed to swim for him just adored him. And the outpouring of love and support in the wake of his passing on Instagram from so many Olympic swimmers over the years was, was really quite something. So John was the coach at the University of Michigan from 1982 to 2004 for a long time.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  He coached that team to 13 Big Ten championships, one national championship. Over the course of his career, he coached 44 Olympians, 21 medalists, 21 Olympic medalists. He was a coach on six different Olympic teams. He was a coach to Michael Phelps when he was at the University of Michigan. Also, Katie Ledecky, Mike Barrowman, who was my peer. I grew up swimming with Mike in Washington DC, who got, got the gold medal in 1992 in the 200 meter breaststroke. He was a world record holder. Tom Dolan, who swam for my club team and was a young kid when I was in high school. So I didn't really know him. I just knew him as this little youngster. But he went on to, you know, great acclaim as a swimmer. Tom Malcho, many, many others.

• 1:20:09Adam Skolnick?

  Was he who Michael Phelps would go back to Michigan between Olympiads and when he first started to get like get in shape again?

• 1:20:17Rich Roll?

  Bowman was Phelps' primary coach from North Baltimore and so you know that was really Michael's guy but Michael did attend the University of Michigan and when he was there he swam for John. Later in his career, John was coaching in Southern California and he coached the crew of post grads who were training at USC for the Olympics. So it was like Ryan Lochte and like Connor Dwyer and like a whole bunch of people who were out of college but you know quote unquote professional swimmers. And I had the opportunity to swim a couple workouts under him there, which was really fun. Because I met, so I met John in 1985 when I went on a recruiting trip to the University of Michigan.

• 1:21:02Rich Roll?

  And it's a story I've told many times, I've told it in Finding Ultra. University of Michigan and their swimming program has sort of a family legacy piece for me because my grandfather, Dick Spindel, who died before I was born, was captain of the University of Michigan team in like the late 1920s. He had an American record in the 150-yard backstroke, which was an event back then. He was an Olympic hopeful. I believe that he just missed the Olympic team by one place at Olympic trials and they took three in each event at the time and I believe he got fourth in his event. So he didn't make the Olympics but he was one of the, you know, he was, he was one

• 1:21:42Rich Roll?

  of the top performers of his era and his coach was a guy called Matt Mann. And the natatorium at University of Michigan is the Matt Mann Natatorium, like it's named after the guy that my grandfather coached. And so also like, you know, my mother went to University of Michigan, my, you know, my dad went to law school there, all my, you know, a bunch of my cousins went there. My cousin Bill was editor of the Michigan Daily. So like, and I'm from Michigan originally, so.

• 1:22:09Adam Skolnick?

  Does Oz Perlman know this?

• 1:22:11Rich Roll?

  I think I talked to Oz.

• 1:22:12Adam Skolnick?

  He must have come up.

• 1:22:13Rich Roll?

  Maybe, I don't, I don't know if I talked about it. Oz is a big Michigan guy.

• 1:22:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:17Rich Roll?

  And like, people who are into Michigan, they're into Michigan. Like, it is, it's like, going to a Michigan football game is like a, it's a whole experience, man. And the stadium there, I mean, it's like, it's a hundred thousand person stadium.

• 1:22:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's amazing looking. I've never been. I'd love to go.

• 1:22:34Rich Roll?

  So I went on a recruiting trip, and that's where I met John for the first time. That was also one of my early experiences with, with alcohol. There was a dual meet, and I ended up going to this house party after the meet where all the swimmers were. And there was a keg, and, you know, I think I drunk, you know, I drank a couple of times prior to that. But I was still like, maybe only one or two times before that. And I vividly recall being handed, you know, a solo cup full, full of beer by this guy who, when I looked at him, I realized immediately who he was. He was Bruce Kimball, who was, other than Greg Louganis,

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  like, the, the greatest American diver who had gotten the silver medal on the 10-meter platform at the 1984 Olympics, the year prior, and whose father, Dick Kimball, was the diving coach at the University of Michigan. And in 1981, Bruce was hit, he was, he was in a hit-and-run where he was hit by a drunk driver. And he had facial, you know, sort of reconstruction. You could tell his face had to, sort of, like, it had to be, like, rebuilt. It was a very serious accident.

• 1:23:45Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 1:23:46Rich Roll?

  It was a life-threatening accident. But in 1982, he came back from that and made the world championship team in, in diving. And so he was like this comeback kid. He was called a comeback kid. It was like this amazing story where he came back from this accident to basically get back to where he was as an athlete. And so for me, as this kid who's in high school, you know, I was like, I knew this whole story. I knew who this guy was, and here he was handing me a beer. And I was like, of course I'm gonna drink that beer.

• 1:24:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:24:16Rich Roll?

  And, and again, forgive me, because I've told this story many times, but...

• 1:24:22Rich Roll?

  He then proceeded to perform the greatest party trick of all time. Have I told you this? No. So he's holding his cup of beer and then he launches himself off the ground and performs an absolutely perfect 10 out of 10 backflip where he just plants his feet perfectly and he's and he doesn't spill a drop of the beer. Wow. He holds it so steady like it's like it's like his hand is a Steadicam. So his hand doesn't move and his whole body moves? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still don't know how he did it. And I just remember thinking like, whatever that guy has, like, I want that. I'm gonna hang out with this dude. Of course. Little did I know that this was sort of a foreshadowing because I was like, oh my God, like, so I just partied with that guy all night. I bet.

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  But but what would happen was that a handful of years later, in 1988, Bruce was drunk and he plowed his car, driving, they say between 70 and 90 miles an hour, into a crowd of teenagers. He killed two teen boys, injured four, was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and ultimately served five. And I believe now he's he's sober, he has kids, a family. I think he might still coach diving, but I mean, one of the most tragic things that you could imagine. So he came full circle.

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so he had his own, you know, journey with alcoholism and tragic consequences as a result of that. Heavy. And I think about that a lot. In any event, that's all in the context of meeting meeting John Urbanshak for the first time. Oh, and at that same party, I met Jim Harbaugh, too.

• 1:26:14Rich Roll?

  He was the quarterback.

• 1:26:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:16Rich Roll?

  He was at this party. We were, it was snowing and I remember we were outside this house and um and he pulled like, so it had a low awning and there were icicles hanging from the awning and he pulled this huge icicle off and he'd use it to like stir his beer. That is my memory. Of course, memory plays tricks.

• 1:26:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:26:38Rich Roll?

  You know, if I could rewind the tape, I think, is that exactly how that went down? But I know that I, I know that I met him there and we had, there was a moment where I was like talking to him. Anyway, um, here's an interesting uh story that I haven't told though. So, I didn't end up going to Michigan.

• 1:26:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:26:55Rich Roll?

  I think often of what would have happened had I gone and swam for John at Michigan uh instead. And as I said, I think I would have been a better swimmer. And I know this because that summer, the summer of 1985, I graduated from high school. And I made the team for something that was called the National Sports Festival. This is something that no longer exists, that I wish did because it was such a cool thing. This summer, um, summer of 1985, the, the United States put on what was essentially an Olympics, but only for American athletes. Where everybody went to uh Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

• 1:27:36Rich Roll?

  And it was like a summer Olympiad, all the sports of the Summer Olympics. And the teams divided into north, south, east and west. So I made the swimming team.

• 1:27:48Adam Skolnick?

  For the east?

• 1:27:48Rich Roll?

  For, for the east, yeah. And uh, and John Urbanshak was the coach of that team. So I, you know, we went, you go early and you train and whatever. And so I, I had the experience of like, kind of having him um, coach me for a couple of weeks over the course of that experience.

• 1:28:05Adam Skolnick?

  How'd you do?

• 1:28:05Rich Roll?

  Um, I did get, that was like one of my best performances.

• 1:28:08Adam Skolnick?

  Were you on?

• 1:28:08Rich Roll?

  I was leading the 200 fly and then I got, I got touched out by a guy called Jeff Olson. So I got, I got the silver.

• 1:28:14Adam Skolnick?

  So you, that's almost like you were basically Olympic trials um track.

• 1:28:18Rich Roll?

  I never, I never, yeah, I didn't, I wasn't, I never could get over. See then, so then I show up at Stanford and I had all this promise.

• 1:28:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:28:26Rich Roll?

  But I went on to squander that promise and so I never really, you know. Realize my potential is not.

• 1:28:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:28:33Rich Roll?

  I don't know that I was never gonna make the Olympic. I wasn't that good.

• 1:28:36Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:28:37Rich Roll?

  I was like, good.

• 1:28:38Adam Skolnick?

  The times weren't on that track?

• 1:28:39Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:42Adam Skolnick?

  It's hard to know, though. You never know.

• 1:28:43Rich Roll?

  And then John, you know, I would, I would stay in touch with him over the, over time. And I remember I went to one of those USC workouts, like, right after I did Otilo. So I was super fit and he was like, very kind. I was like, trying to keep up.

• 1:28:55Adam Skolnick?

  And Lochte was there?

• 1:28:57Rich Roll?

  Lochte was there. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:58Adam Skolnick?

  Does he still have the sign from Brazil?

• 1:29:00Rich Roll?

  Connor Dwyer invited me. Dylan Efron is there, who's sort of like, who's sort of like Orlando Bloom. He's Zach Efron's brother, but he's this incredible athlete. He can do like, any sport.

• 1:29:09Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:29:10Rich Roll?

  He's like, super fit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I met, I, I, I was invited to go to the Olympic Training Center a number of years ago by a coach called Jack Roach.

• 1:29:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  And Jack is, like, was best friends with, um, with John. They had this beautiful, incredible, close-knit friendship. And they're very, they're very alike in their sensibility and their philosophy around coaching. Both of them just love these kids. And Jack, for many years, was the coach of the National Junior Development Team. So, and he, he'd been on Olympic staffs and stuff like that as well.

• 1:29:48Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard the name.

• 1:29:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's great. And so, there's a New York Times article, obituary, around John Urbanscheck that I'll link up in the show notes where Jack is quoted in that. But anyway, this is a long way of saying that John will be missed. And also, and I shared this on Instagram, like, coaches, take note. Like, if you want to be a great coach, like, study the ways of John Urbanscheck and Jack Roach. Like, these guys are like whisperers for Olympic athletes because they understand how young people work. They know how to motivate them. And they do that through this really heartfelt investment in them as people. And I just think that is, you know, a beautiful testament.

• 1:30:30Rich Roll?

  To the power of a great coach and you know, kind of the legacy that that has on on lives, you know, many, many, many years and decades later.

• 1:30:39Adam Skolnick?

  Well.

• 1:30:39Rich Roll?

  Because it's weird, like, I was very moved, it's like if I count the number of times that I was in the presence of John or Banshee, it's not that much, you know, but he made a profound impact on my life and I think about him often and, and you know, I didn't even have nearly the kind of experience that, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of other of other athletes have had with him.

• 1:31:01Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful.

• 1:31:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. I think there's only one more thing that I wanted to cover with you today, which is recently.

• 1:31:09Adam Skolnick?

  Should we clear the books off the table?

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe if they're in the way.

• 1:31:13Adam Skolnick?

  Let's clear off the books. All right.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  So recently, in in Los Angeles, there's a small chain of restaurants called Sage, Sage Bistro. They have been vegan restaurants and they're of the same family that is behind Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre, which are like, you know, these beautiful legendary plant-based restaurants in Los Angeles and I mean Cafe Gratitude started in San Francisco. Ryan Engelhardt, who's a member of that family, has been a guest on the podcast, he's a big proponent of regenerative agriculture, he's one of the guys behind the Kiss the Ground nonprofit and documentary and the follow-up to that documentary, which is called Common Ground.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  And Sage was or is run by Ryland's sister, Molly. And the big news is that Sage, which has always been a plant-based restaurant, is now serving meat.

• 1:32:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:32:13Rich Roll?

  And this tracks back to the farm that Ryland and Molly's family owned, for which they were using to, you know, provide the produce for these restaurants many years ago. They went from that farm being totally, you know, just agriculture to actually harvesting animals there as well, and that was a big kerfuffle in the vegan movement. And now the latest sort of kerfuffle is that, you know, this legendary plant-based restaurant is now going to serve meat. So this has kicked up, you know, a bit of a controversy in the plant-based community. And I thought it was worth kind of exploring some of the issues that have that have come out of this and to talk a little bit maybe about the regenerative agriculture movement.

• 1:32:59Rich Roll?

  At large.

• 1:33:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right, because that's the idea is that they're going to serve meat that they say is cultivated.

• 1:33:05Rich Roll?

  From this regenerative farm.

• 1:33:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Rich Roll?

  Which is part of the solution to economic degradation.

• 1:33:13Adam Skolnick?

  Environmental, environmental.

• 1:33:14Rich Roll?

  Environmental degradation.

• 1:33:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. So, let's talk a little bit about it.

• 1:33:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think, to be sure and certainly, regenerative farming is, there's a lot of amazing things about this. You know, I wish that all CAFOs and, you know, kind of factory farms could transition into regenerative practices. It's a topic I've explored many times on the podcast. Remember the Biggest Little Farm and, you know, that couple that runs that farm, they've been guests on the podcast. So, certainly, there are things to be learned and, and many benefits to moving away from monocropping to a more kind of sustainable, wild grasses, rotating, you know, kind of agriculture, you know, contained environment that's restoring the soil and, at the same

• 1:34:03Rich Roll?

  time, you know, pulling the CO2 out of the atmosphere and putting it in the soil, right?

• 1:34:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Rich Roll?

  But I also think it's worth talking about the fact that this isn't necessarily a panacea. I don't think that this is the way forward in terms of how we're going to feed the planet. To raise animals on a regenerative farm or to raise grass-fed beef requires a tremendous amount of land. These animals are alive longer than the factory-farmed animals. Like, if there's one thing factory farm does well, it's, it's basically conserve as much, you know, basically conserve as much resources as possible to blow an animal up as quickly as possible.

• 1:34:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  So that they can slaughter it. They do it on as least amount of land possible in the least number of days.

• 1:34:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  If they're going to raise cattle, grass-fed, on these regenerative farms, they're going to be alive longer, they're going to be consuming more, they're going to be drinking more water, and they're going to be kind of pooping and belching more. So, there's an argument that they're actually producing more. Each particular cow. Methane as a result. But there's fewer cows, though. And they require, you know, a lot more land and more, and the longer they're alive, obviously, they have to be, you know, fed longer. Right. So when you look at it from that perspective, understanding that producing a carbon neutral or carbon positive effect of a so-called regenerative farm requires 2.5 times more

• 1:35:37Rich Roll?

  grazing land than standard animal agriculture. You quickly realize that this is not a realistic path forward in terms of providing meat for the world. Right. Like, it can provide a small amount of meat at a higher price point for those who can afford it, and certainly, that's a better option. But in terms of meeting worldwide and growing demand for meat, as of right now, more than 50% of the planet's ice-free land is already being used for livestock grazing and for livestock feed production. So even if we continue to use conventional agriculture methods, much less 2.5 times more

• 1:36:21Rich Roll?

  land, there's going to be little to no arable land left if we want to continue producing animal-based foods for the expected population of, you know, 9 to, you know, upwards of 9.7 billion as we approach 2050. And I think part of the issue that maybe I'm having is that there's an implicit sort of greenwashing aspect to this, in the sense that you can, you can go to one of these restaurants, or you can purchase your grass-fed whatever, and you can convince yourself that you're doing what's in the best interest of the planet, or you're making a choice that is,

• 1:37:02Rich Roll?

  you know, serving, you know, planetary repair. When in truth, look, beef just requires a tremendous amount of resources, and right in front of you, you have the choice to just not eat beef. Right. You know, it's like, eating this beef is not really helpful, and I say that with the caveat that, again, like, regenerative farming practices that are, you know, doing a lot towards restoring the soil is a good thing, just don't. Be under the delusion that by eating these animal products that you're, you know, solving this problem.

• 1:37:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right, that you're on the good side of climate change or any number of issues, you're saying.

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're still participating also in this cycle of unnecessary suffering. And when you look at plant products, like for example, 100 grams of tofu requires 74 times less land use compared to 100 grams of beef. And that's not to say that that's an argument for monocropping, but at the same time, you know, I think there's a lot of hand wringing over certain crops that are very water intensive at the cost of not understanding that most plant crops and foods that we can eat as humans are just far less intensive than, you know, the ultimate intensive food product, which is beef.

• 1:38:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Rich Roll?

  So I'm just saying, why not more plant-based? And I think there's an argument with Sage, like, oh, we're, we're kind of moving forward into this, into this way of serving food for a reason. But I have to think, like, if it was thriving economically as a plant-based restaurant, would they have made that move? And I think we're seeing the closure of a lot of plant-based restaurants right now. And I don't know what's going on with that, but, but I think if Sage had been, you know, killing it, they would not have been making this.

• 1:38:53Adam Skolnick?

  Clearly.

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  You know, they, they're trying to survive as a commercial enterprise.

• 1:38:57Adam Skolnick?

  As a business. That's, that's it. They, you can, in the letter, I think, or in, I forget, in the announcement, I think Molly said that her husband kind of grew up on a farm, eating animals as well as vegetables, and always found it less authentic to be serving kind of vegan comfort food.

• 1:39:18Rich Roll?

  Well, I think Molly is still vegetarian.

• 1:39:20Adam Skolnick?

  Right. But I think that, but, so they're kind of dressing it up as a choice, kind of beyond economics, but it seems to me, considering all the vegan places that seem to be going out, Nyx, you know, the, what's it called? The, Monty's Good Burger went huge and then retracted quite a bit.

• 1:39:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but Monty's is still, is still.

• 1:39:41Adam Skolnick?

  It's still around, but it went, it went really big and then it retracted quite a bit. They closed a lot of, a lot of their restaurants.

• 1:39:47Rich Roll?

  Running a restaurant is hard. Yeah. Under the best circumstances, to make a restaurant successful commercially is incredibly difficult. So I'm sympathetic to anybody who's trying to, you know, keep the, keep the lights on and COVID, you know, as we all know, like resulted in, you know, just a, I don't know what percentage of restaurants closed, but a lot of them. So even in the wake of that, then this long tail before people started returning to restaurants. So I understand why diversifying a menu might be the best way forward. I'm just saying, like, don't be confused. Yeah, like, don't, don't be confused. And, and it's, it's just a more, you know, it's a nuanced, difficult thing. I'm not an environmental scientist, but there are people

• 1:40:30Rich Roll?

  who spend a lot of time studying this and looking at it. And I'm going to link some stuff up into the show notes if you want to learn more about this. Simon Hill, our friend over at The Proof Podcast, has done a lot of reporting on this. He did a really, he's done a number of interesting podcasts on this specific topic. So if you go to theproof.com, you can just search regenerative, you know, whatever, and there's plenty of, plenty of episodes for you to listen to. He's had George Monbiot on, who Right. is very outspoken about this. George, of course, who writes for The Guardian. George, you know, George has basically said, the only thing worse than feedlot beef is grass fed beef. Like, he's, he does not mince his words. He's against it. Yeah, he's very against it, but, you know,

• 1:41:14Rich Roll?

  he'll go through all of his arguments. I'll link up some other articles as well. There was a recent interesting study that came out in 2023 that basically looked at the difference between pasture finished cattle farms and, and these regenerative farms. And, and basically determined that pasture finished cattle farms had 20% higher production emissions than grain finished farms, a figure that matched those from previous research. But the most novel part of the finding was that when both the soil sequestration and the carbon opportunity cost of the converted pasture land use was factored in, that carbon footprint figure rose to a striking 42%. Just super interesting. That is interesting.

• 1:41:59Rich Roll?

  So anyway, this is a very, you know, hotly debated topic. There are, you know, passionate people on both sides of it.

• 1:42:08Rich Roll?

  And so I'm not saying that I have all of the answers, but I think it's important to look at both sides of this. And, and that's all I'm saying.

• 1:42:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  You have anything else you want to say on that?

• 1:42:19Adam Skolnick?

  Well, there was a great book by a guy named James Rebanks, who was a legacy farmer. His, his father and grandfather were basically, we'd call them ranchers, but they're farmers in UK, Northern England, I believe it is. And he inherited a farm that was, they, they were renting their land and it had lots of problems. It had soil that was degraded. It had, there were bills to pay, fences to rebuild. And he kind of took it over and decided to make it more regener- like went the regenerative route. And he wrote a really beautiful memoir about it. And what you're left with after that book is that, isn't, isn't the, that regenerative farming is the holy grail to

• 1:43:03Adam Skolnick?

  our food system. Cause I, I agree with you. I don't think it is. But what, what, what you're left with is it's, it's communicating with the land again. It's, it's reinvesting in the soil. It's, it's, birds come back. It's building, it's building topography back. I mean, when we, remember when we went to, if you go out to the Surf Ranch, I went with Rich to the Surf Ranch, we shredded.

• 1:43:26Rich Roll?

  It was amazing.

• 1:43:28Adam Skolnick?

  We were amazing.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  Kai Lenny is still talking about it.

• 1:43:30Adam Skolnick?

  Kai Lenny can't stop talking about it. But when you go out there, it's in the middle of this kind of decaying agricultural town, like near, and it's on an Indian reservation, but there's also this kind of once vibrant agriculture town that's down on its heels because there's so few farmers needed now. It's just all monoculture.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  It's super monocrop city.

• 1:43:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right. It is. And maybe that's the way you can make a living. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not judging anyone, but this is another way. It did feel like you're not communicating with the land. You're imposing on the land.

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  I get that, that piece. Yeah.

• 1:44:05Adam Skolnick?

  And so.

• 1:44:05Rich Roll?

  To reconnect us with the land and to understand, you know, it's, it's seasonality and, and the importance of diversity. Like all the lessons that we need to learn for ourselves can be learned through the process of that reconnection.

• 1:44:18Adam Skolnick?

  And just having that happen.

• 1:44:19Rich Roll?

  And there's something really beautiful and spiritual about that. Like I don't, I don't discount that at all. And I think if you're, if you were to go to the Central Valley in California and take over some of those plots of land and do that very thing where you're restoring the soil to create something beautiful and diverse and amazing, I think that that's a laudable. Project, but what I don't think is a great idea would be to deforest a plot of land so that you could build a regenerative farm.

• 1:44:47Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:44:47Rich Roll?

  Because the deforestation is doing more for the environment than whatever you're going to do on that regenerative farm. So it's the conversion of plots of land that are contributing to the decline and converting them into a net positive, I think is great.

• 1:45:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right, it's great environmentally, but from a food system perspective.

• 1:45:07Rich Roll?

  But how important is it to have cows on these, like, can't, my whole thing is like, can't you do this without the cows? And there's a lot of talk, well, the cows and they, you know, they mash the soil and I was like, yeah, but like, like, there's other ways of doing that.

• 1:45:21Adam Skolnick?

  I know, but you're not, you're.

• 1:45:23Rich Roll?

  But I'm not a farmer either. I'm just talking out of my ass.

• 1:45:27Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you're also.

• 1:45:28Rich Roll?

  My bias.

• 1:45:29Adam Skolnick?

  You're against killing animals. That's great.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  Right. But then it's like, well, if you, you know, yeah, but if you're growing these plants on these farms, like lots of animals have to die for them to, you know, I, like, I understand.

• 1:45:40Adam Skolnick?

  I've had, I've had this conversation with April just to goosier because I'm, I don't, I don't eat beef, but I mean, but we, we talk about it like, you know, if you love animals, you know, if there's no, if people aren't eating meat, there ain't going to be no cows around anymore. You know what I mean? Like, all the, all the farm animals won't be there anymore. That's not a reason to eat them. I'm not saying eat them. I'm just saying like, we live in this.

• 1:46:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but we breed them.

• 1:46:06Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  They're not there because they were wandering around and we, we like corralled them into some farm.

• 1:46:12Adam Skolnick?

  It would be a fundamentally different experience, you know, to have this world where the food system, I agree, I take the Dan Buettner, shout out Dan Buettner, I take the Dan Buettner kind of, how I stopped eating meat was the Blue Zones. I started to only eat, and that meant chicken and beef, anything meat, three times a month. Because in his mind, that's what the Blue Zones, that's what they did back in the day in a lot of these Blue Zones. It was a special occasion thing, it was expensive, and they use it in a special occasion. And by doing that, my taste buds changed, I lost the taste for it. I don't want chicken, I don't want beef, I don't want any of that, because I lost the taste buds for it. And so then I started to just eat plants. And so.

• 1:46:57Rich Roll?

  But what happened with this argument with April?

• 1:46:59Adam Skolnick?

  She doesn't like that. She doesn't like hearing. She thinks I'm just making an excuse to eat meat, which I'm not doing. Like, like, people who have this, who are, I was never a passionate vegan. I just happened to go this route because I thought I was, because I liked it and it felt better. And also, yes, I don't want to kill a bunch of animals. Like, I don't want to do that. But I'm not like, you wouldn't put me, I wouldn't be out, like, if you made me a climate activist, I wouldn't be throwing tomato soup at Mona.

• 1:47:23Rich Roll?

  You're not, you're not, you know, gonna go throw blood on, you know,

• 1:47:27Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not throwing blood on.

• 1:47:28Rich Roll?

  On the Tom Ford storefront or whatever.

• 1:47:31Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not doing, I'm not, I'm not one of those people who's gonna get outraged like that. But, um, probably because I ate meat so, so long, right? Um, and so I understand why people do it. But the problem is the food system, right? Which brings us back to Yohann, actually, and what we were talking about before. The problem is this food system is broken. And so, you know, to, in order to get to the point where we can talk about getting rid of animal farming, it's like a much bigger conversation, um, about changing the food system fundamentally from this extractive, impositional, kind of dominator culture way, and going back to a more communicative, integrative way of being.

• 1:48:15Adam Skolnick?

  So in that sense, regeneration sounds great. It is great. But is it, and maybe it's the only thing that's gonna save your restaurant. But I take your point. Let's not tell stories here. Let's not, like, marijuana is legal now. There was a time when it was only legal as a medical, but it was never medical. It was all bullshit. It was always bullshit. I, I was at the time, couldn't wait for it to be legal medically. I was all about it. I covered it as a journalist. I, I was in some of the first medical marijuana shops, um, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, too. I thought it was awesome as a person who liked to enjoy it. But, um, I never thought it was for patients. But that's what was said, right?

• 1:48:57Adam Skolnick?

  And so this kind of idea that regenerative farming is good for the environment, I agree with you. There's a lot of dishonesty in that. It's not telling the whole story. And I wish that more people told the whole story and weren't trying to pass a line. And I'm not saying Sage is doing that. I'm just saying in general, as you see people marketing something and saying it's for one thing, when really it never was for that thing, it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And now we have, I don't know how I got in this tangent, but now you can go to the farmer's market in the morning with your kid and someone's going to be getting high like on the street. And is that good? You know, is that an improvement? You know, so like these kinds of things, when you don't, when you're not honest about it, you can't really grapple with it. And then all of a sudden it's here.

• 1:49:40Adam Skolnick?

  And back to Jonathan Haidt, back to Johan, the same is true when we're talking about Ozempic. The same is true with these social media companies. They say one, you know, anyone who's saying something but not telling you the whole truth, I think you're contributing to the confusion and the chaos that we're all living with today. And that's why there's so many outraged people, because people aren't being honest.

• 1:50:01Rich Roll?

  That was a pretty good monologue.

• 1:50:03Adam Skolnick?

  It doesn't, was it just, I felt like it was-

• 1:50:04Rich Roll?

  No, it's good. And I like how you called things back and you just wrapped it all up in a nice bow. I don't even know what to say to that. I think you're right. Like, I think, yes, when you look at regenerative farms, like our food system is broken. Part of what's broken is our total disconnect from the cycle of nature in our food system and even beyond that, right? And to the extent that the regenerative movement is a way to repair that lost connection, it's certainly a good thing. We do need to repair our soils. We do need to understand that resilience comes through cultivating diversity. Like, there's so many lessons that are applicable, not just with, you know,

• 1:50:45Rich Roll?

  what we plant and what we harvest, but how that applies to how we as humans interact with each other and create the cultures and the future of our aspiration for future generations. Like, there's beauty in that, for sure. But again, yeah, just- Like, let's not be deluded or confused about, you know, standing or like sort of moral grandstanding on, on, on, you know, some kind of misplaced justification around like eating beef when it's unnecessary. And that's part of what's contributing to the problem. That's all I'm saying.

• 1:51:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, less moral grandstanding.

• 1:51:20Rich Roll?

  And I like Ryland, you know, I like him a lot. He's a beautiful guy and I always enjoy his company and I love the podcast conversation that we have. So it's not, it's not about a slight on anybody. And I think the work that he's done and the advocacy that he's done around this movement is really laudable. Like Kiss the Ground and these movies that he's put out, like they've really struck a chord. And for a lot of people, it's their first, it's like light bulb moment of like, of course, this is what we need to do. And you are seeing young people who are interested in getting into farming and want to, you know, learn more about like agriculture. And, and the more that this matures, the more economic kind of resources get poured into it and the more jobs there are for people,

• 1:52:05Rich Roll?

  like learning how to transition factory farms into regenerative, like there's so much good there. So I'm not, I guess what I'm saying is like, I don't want to, I don't, I'm not, I'm not being like a angry vegan poo-pooer, you know, I'm trying to see all sides of this.

• 1:52:20Adam Skolnick?

  Well, also, also, it is sad to lose another bespoke vegan restaurant. Like Sage is awesome. I ate there many times. I've eaten at Cafe Gratitude many times, Gracias Madre every time, many times. I remember the old Real Food Daily, like, these are restaurants that we grow to love because we can only go to a few restaurants, right? And so then we grow to love them. And so then when they change, especially in this way, it's kind of a bummer, right? And then as a

• 1:52:43Rich Roll?

  And then, you know, then there's a, there's a segment of the vegan community that's very loud and aggressive about these things.

• 1:52:50Adam Skolnick?

  They want to kill you.

• 1:52:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like they get really mad. And that's not helping anybody either, you know, so.

• 1:52:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right. The tone, like there was the, there was something in this Eater article, I don't know if you're going to post it, but about Ryland and Molly's father. Kind of launched Caffey Gratitude, right? And Gracias Madre. And then when it became out that he was doing this agriculture and the animal agriculture and he ate meat, he was given death threats.

• 1:53:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember when that, when that all came out.

• 1:53:15Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, that's crazy.

• 1:53:16Rich Roll?

  Because I think people were responding to a sense of duplicity. Like, there was this idea that it was, you know, this idea like Utopia where they had this cyclical thing between the farm and the restaurant. And there was an integrity to that, that when, I don't know that they were ever hiding whatever they were doing, but when it came out, like, oh, yeah, I eat meat, that, that's, I think, for certain people, that was, like, difficult for them. But that's not a justification for, like, that kind of spiteful anger.

• 1:53:46Adam Skolnick?

  No, right, that's the point.

• 1:53:47Rich Roll?

  It's just a person's choice in their life.

• 1:53:48Adam Skolnick?

  That tone.

• 1:53:49Rich Roll?

  You can be, you can disagree with it, but you're not winning hearts and minds when you're, like, launching death threats at people, I guess is what I'm saying.

• 1:53:57Adam Skolnick?

  No, and for some reason, vegans haven't won hearts and minds. I don't know why.

• 1:54:00Rich Roll?

  They really haven't. They really haven't.

• 1:54:02Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know. You do, you do, you manage to do it.

• 1:54:05Rich Roll?

  I don't know, man.

• 1:54:06Adam Skolnick?

  You do. But I will say, before we stop all the doom and gloom, we do have Planta now here in LA.

• 1:54:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 1:54:12Adam Skolnick?

  There's multiple locations.

• 1:54:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and everyone is different. They're all over the country now, too.

• 1:54:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:16Rich Roll?

  I went to the one in Marina Del Rey, and the owner, like, the owner of all of them happened to be there and got to meet him briefly. And, yeah, they're doing a good job.

• 1:54:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they are awesome.

• 1:54:25Rich Roll?

  I like that place.

• 1:54:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:54:27Rich Roll?

  So, in the meantime, eat a salad, treat yourself right.

• 1:54:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:31Rich Roll?

  And we'll be back here at some point in the future.

• 1:54:33Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:54:34Rich Roll?

  All right, that was fun, dude. I appreciate it.

• 1:54:36Adam Skolnick?

  Me, too, man.

• 1:54:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Can I ask you a question before I, before we get out of here? How's the, how's the network going, man?

• 1:54:42Rich Roll?

  It's good.

• 1:54:43Adam Skolnick?

  How do you enjoy being the head of a network?

• 1:54:44Rich Roll?

  Uh, it's, you know, we're, it's baby steps, but we're out of the gate and it's going well. I'm really enjoying, like, working with other creators and supporting them and, you know, figuring out who we want to work with and all of that. Like, it's, it's been really fun and rewarding. And we're just, we're at the very, you know, beginning of what I think is going to be a cool journey.

• 1:55:03Adam Skolnick?

  Awesome.

• 1:55:04Rich Roll?

  So I have more to share about that later.

• 1:55:05Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:55:06Rich Roll?

  But, yeah. It's been great, and keep us posted on the novel.

• 1:55:10Adam Skolnick?

  Will do, will do. I can't, I can't wait to see what happens.

• 1:55:13Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:55:14Adam Skolnick?

  I like, I like coming here because I can't check my email while I'm talking to you.

• 1:55:19Rich Roll?

  You sure you didn't do that? I didn't. Okay, well, you can do it now. All right, buddy. Love you. Cheers. You too, bud. Namaste.

• 1:55:42Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep

• 1:56:26Rich Roll?

  this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiello. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management.

• 1:57:11Rich Roll?

  And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support, see you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

• 1:57:42Adam Skolnick?

  Here, here.