Superfoods For Superlife: Traipsing the Globe In Search of Optimal Nutrition & Longevity With Darin Olien

What's it like to traipse the far outreaches of the globe in search of the the world’s greatest edible food sources for optimal health? Meet the Indiana Jones of Superfoods. This week my friend Darin Olien joins me to share insights and wisdom from his extraordinary adventure-based experiences as a widely recognized exotic superfoods hunter, wellness advocate & environmental activist. Darin's passion was seeded early. Attending his father’s lectures on agricultural business at the University of Minnesota birthed an early appreciation of whole food nutrition. But it wasn't until a football injury sidelined a frustrated young Darin that his curiosity in the relationship between food and health begin to truly take root. A curiosity that began with a simple question: There must be a better way to heal myself. The intrigue that evolved from that initial query has been an ongoing, twenty-year plus quest for better, more natural pathways to ultimate wellness. A journey that led Darin to study exotic, indigenous herbs and superfoods from every imaginable port of call across the developing world. Communing with thousands of rural farmers, growers and manufacturers in remote communities across Peru, Bhutan, the Amazon, the Himalayas, the South Pacific, Latin America and Asia, Darin now shepherds high-quality, fair-trade superfoods and herbal commodities to market through his company, Darin’s Naturals. Perhaps best known for his work with fitness company Beachbody, Darin was instrumental in the development and ongoing formulation of the wildly successful whole-food supplement, Shakeology. He chronicles his experience in his new book Superlife: The 5 Forces That Will Make You healthy, Fit & Eternally Awesome – as well as on his website Superlife.com – where he demystifies health, fitness, nutrition, and longevity into simple daily actions designed to promote life-long wellness. What is most intriguing to me isn’t just that Darin is a respected authority on the healing potential of food. And it isn't just that he has been instrumental in introducing these so called superfoods to western consumers. What is most interesting is his commitment to do it right. A deep rooted responsibility to fairly, sustainably and transparently support the grower communities and their long-term interests. Ripped and Malibu sun kissed, Darin more than resembles a plant-based version of his friend and workout buddy Laird Hamilton. So it would be natural to presume he has always been a model of health and fitness. But that presumption would be misplaced. Because for Darin it wasn't always this way. Like all of us, Darin has faced many challenging and relatable life obstacles on his path to living what I think is fair to characterize as his best, most authentic superlife. At the same time, the term superfoods is prone to cavalier overuse. Are these foods truly “super” or is it all just exaggerated marketing hype? This is a conversation that explores that issue and so much more. I sincerely hope you enjoy this exchange with a man who exudes positive energy, passion and enthusiasm for health. I look forward to your thoughts in the comments section below. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Darin Olien?

  So why do we use these adaptogenic herbs and medicinal plants and cordyceps and reishi's and ashwagandha's and makhas? And why? It's not just a novelty. It's because they have been used for thousands of years. And the medicinal nutrient density that they are providing has not only provided those people from where they came from, but it's a delivery system that we're using so that they can help those bodies out, because those bodies are stressed.

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  That's Darren O'Leary. And this week on the Rich Roll Podcast, it's all about superfoods for your super life.

• 1:55Rich Roll?

  Hey, what's up, people? What's going on? How are you? What's the news? Welcome. Rich Roll here, fulfilling host duties on my little show where each week I probe the mind, the experience, the spirit of the best and the brightest in health, wellness, excellence, and pretty much every other subject that piques my interest as a means to help all of us live and be better, to perhaps provide a key to unlock and unleash our collective best, most authentic versions of ourselves. So, anyway, thanks for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for spreading the word, and for always clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Why don't you go ahead and bookmark that link from the banner ad on my site and make it easy? That's a win-win for all of us.

• 2:40Rich Roll?

  So, I'm still here in New York City, wrapping up a pretty incredible two-week visit. As I mentioned last week, still reeling in gratitude for the opportunity to speak at Carnegie Hall, and that was followed up by an amazing book release party at Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and did a super fun, fun run at Jack Rabbit Sports on the Upper West Side. And then, I spoke at The Seed, this really cool event yesterday in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. I love that part of town, super cool. And I've been banging out a bunch of pretty epic podcasts with some pretty extraordinary people that will be coming your way soon. So, I just want to thank everybody who came out to all the events, everyone who took

• 3:22Rich Roll?

  a moment to introduce yourself to me, to Julie, to my kids. And also, everybody who stopped me on the street to say hi, or give me a high-five or a shout-out on my morning runs. I mean, that's just, that blows my mind. It just never fails to amaze me when I get recognized for the podcast. Super cool. And I love New York City for that and many other reasons. In fact, I think I could stay here all summer long. In fact, I'd love to be able to someday split my time pretty evenly between the coasts, and that's kind of my goal, to make that possible for my family. But, anyway. I got a treat for you guys today. The Indiana Jones of superfoods, my buddy Darren Olien.

• 4:04Rich Roll?

  He joins us today and welcomes us into his pretty cool adventure-based life and his travels and his experience as a widely-recognized exotic superfoods hunter and supplement formula and basically just life as a wellness and environmental activist. And this is a guy who has been around the world and back again on numerous remote field missions. In fact, he just got back from Peru. What is he doing? Well, he's discovering new and underutilized medicinal plants to source, formulate, and research the world's greatest edible food sources for optimal health. He's a great guy. He's got a really cool story. More on that in a second, but first...

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  All right. So how did Darren get involved in superfoods? Well, it happened after a football injury unlocked a desire to search for better ways to heal himself, basically. And what evolved from this initial desire has been 20 years of tracing the globe, researching, and questing for better, more natural pathways to ultimate health. And what's cool about Darren isn't just that he's become a renowned authority on nutrition, hydration, and the potency of foods and herbs, but how he's worked closely and successfully with thousands of international farmers and growers and manufacturers and all kinds of remote indigenous communities across the planet in places like Peru, Bhutan, the Amazon,

• 5:33Rich Roll?

  the Himalayas, the South Pacific, Latin America, and Asia, all to get high-quality, fair-trade, and that's important, fair-trade, superfood and herbal commodities out into the market that also, most importantly, fairly and sustainably support the grower communities. And Darren's perhaps best known for working with the fitness company Beachbody, you've probably heard of that, to formulate the wildly-successful whole-food supplement called Shakeology. I'm sure you've heard of Shakeology. Well, he's the guy behind that. He's the formulator. And he chronicles his experiences in his new book. It's called Superlife: The Five Forces That Will Make You Healthy, Fit, and Eternally Awesome, as well as on his website, superlife.com, where he demystifies health, fitness, nutrition,

• 6:18Rich Roll?

  and longevity into simple daily actions, simple rules of healthy eating and living to create lifelong wellness. And it's funny because... When you experience Darren, he's this super fit, like, super ripped guy who more than resembles a plant-based version of his buddy Laird Hamilton, with whom he works out regularly. And you'd presume that he's always been this model of health and fitness, but it wasn't always that way for Darren. And like all of us, he had to face and overcome a lot of challenging and really relatable life obstacles on his path to living what I think is fair to characterize as his authentic life. So, this is a guy who is definitely doing what

• 7:01Rich Roll?

  he was meant to do, and has created and continues to create a body of work that is making the world a better place. He's got great energy, passion, and enthusiasm for what he does, and I think it comes across in this conversation. And it's a conversation that explores overcoming a childhood raised by alcoholic parents, the mind-body and spiritual journey to discovering the healing power of food, the dark side of the supplement industry, superfoods in combination with a healthy lifestyle, common myths surrounding diet and nutrition, and the five life forces to optimal health. I'm not going to tell you what those five life forces are, you're gonna have to listen to the interview to hear those. So, without further ado, let's check out Darren and find out what he's all about.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  So I was thinking back, like, when I ran into you at Erawan the other day, I was like, "Oh yeah, Compton was trying to hook us up."

• 7:57Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Rich Roll?

  That must have been five or six years ago.

• 7:59Darin Olien?

  I think so, yeah.

• 8:00Rich Roll?

  A while ago, and he was singing your praises, "You gotta hook up with Darren, he's the real deal."

• 8:04Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  He knows what's going on with the superfoods.

• 8:06Darin Olien?

  Yeah, cuz he was at my house, and then he was going to yours, and he says, "Yeah, I'm going to Rich Rolls," and I was like, "I know that guy, I've heard of that guy." And then, so he was singing your praises to me, and he's like, "You guys have to meet."

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think we, there was like an email, we had a couple emails, and then, I don't know, we both got busy, or whatever, it didn't happen. So, anyway, yeah, but, you know, and now here we are. How did you, how did you meet Compton?

• 8:33Darin Olien?

  I think just through the circles, you know, most of my career was behind the scenes, because I was in the fields, I was in the countries, I was finding the stuff, and so, that was...

• 8:47Darin Olien?

  And then I, I don't know originally, I think someone just said, this guy's really smart. He's really cool. And, and I think because, yeah, this is how it happened. I, I, I reached out because I was looking for some new microbiological probiotics. And was playing around with some formulas. So then I got him on the phone and.

• 9:15Rich Roll?

  He just broke it down. Like he can just go all the way to the wall with that.

• 9:18Darin Olien?

  And then I was just like.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your hair is blowing back.

• 9:21Darin Olien?

  Yeah. And, and because that world, that microbial world is just so mysteriously celestial that and evolutionarily sparked that is just, anyone who studies it knows that there's just something going on.

• 9:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:40Darin Olien?

  That's humbling. And so, so that got us going. And then he was like, hey, I've got this connection in Cambodia. And, you know, you're traveling everywhere.

• 9:51Rich Roll?

  Queen or something like that.

• 9:52Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  It's like some, like the royal, somebody in the royal family had decreed him some land where they were growing these amazing, I mean, his stories go on forever.

• 10:01Darin Olien?

  Well, it was, it was, uh, yeah, this guy Dina, who was actually, it's an amazing story because his, his family's father was killed in the killing fields and his mother and him left Thailand because he was from there. They left and of a certain amount of, the royal family adopted like 10 people and, and for whatever reason, they adopted him. And so he essentially became royal, just by the, the sheer adoption essentially of

• 10:44Darin Olien?

  the royal family of Cambodia. So, so anyway, I don't know, even know how Compton got to know him.

• 10:51Rich Roll?

  I don't either. Yeah.

• 10:52Darin Olien?

  Who knows?

• 10:52Rich Roll?

  He's just, I mean, that's, that's just Compton.

• 10:55Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Rich Roll?

  He finds his way to interesting people.

• 10:58Darin Olien?

  For sure. Absolutely. And so next thing you know. He's like, you're traveling everywhere. You've got that experience. Let's go see what. And of course, for me, I'm like Cambodia's got an ecosystem and they've got an infrastructure that's horrible, but that's exciting because then you can kind of move through. So I just went with a clean slate and.

• 11:20Rich Roll?

  So you went with him to Cambodia?

• 11:22Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that. I mean, I remember when he went, I didn't know that you went with him.

• 11:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah. So we, we went with Dina and it's like, it's funny because I've been to several countries and, and when I got off the plane, there was a guy meeting me at the airport and they just take your passport and you just walk through everything.

• 11:41Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 11:42Darin Olien?

  And you're like, oh, okay. So there is a connection here. It's real. And, and so then the long story short, there was a, we were running around and the, the, one of the heads of the government was trying to meet up with me and he wanted to see what we could do, but then the floods were happening. So he was jumping on helicopters going, he you know, stood us up basically three times. And he said, hey, go check out my field where I'm growing this particular wood that's super expensive. And then I have mangosteen and durian. I have all these other interesting things. And so we went there and, and then he had these rescued wild exotic animals.

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:24Darin Olien?

  That's just randomly amongst this.

• 12:26Rich Roll?

  How much land are we talking about?

• 12:27Darin Olien?

  We're talking like, uh, it had to be at least 25 hectares, you know?

• 12:35Rich Roll?

  But just like incredibly fertile soil.

• 12:36Darin Olien?

  Yeah. And just like randomly, there's a caged camel. There's some lions. There's a boar and oh, and by the time I had gotten done, um, I saw, uh, Compton was over at this orangutan. These two orangutans are in this.

• 12:55Darin Olien?

  You know, this cage. And so I was like, oh shit, I've never seen orangutan. And this is so bizarre. So let's go check it out. And like a tourist, which I'm totally not, right? And I, I just picked up my phone and I'm like, oh my God, this is an orangutan. And there was a fence with maybe a little distance and then the actual cage.

• 13:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:14Darin Olien?

  And so I picked this up and this male orangutan then swung over it. Not soon after I had lifted my phone up to take pictures, he reached his seven foot arm length out and slapped my

• 13:30Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 13:31Darin Olien?

  my phone away. And I realized in that split second, I'm like, that fucker's going after it.

• 13:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:36Darin Olien?

  And he grabbed my phone. It was in between the fence and me.

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 13:40Darin Olien?

  He grabbed it. I grabbed his hand. The orangutan pulled it in and then started

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  And he started eating it?

• 13:46Darin Olien?

  Chewing it. So, so we made all of these noises and eventually one of the guys who was looking after the land jumped in there and wrestled the little thing.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 13:57Darin Olien?

  Not little, but um, he eventually got it out. And I, I looked at him and I said, why did you go in there just for my phone? He says, well, he's done that to other people and I just figured you're American and you have a more expensive phone.

• 14:11Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:12Darin Olien?

  And so at that point, I took every bit of money I had in my pocket and just gave it to him.

• 14:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:19Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 14:20Darin Olien?

  But Compton was laughing the entire

• 14:22Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right, right. That's cool. So what, I mean, what came out of that?

• 14:27Darin Olien?

  Not too much. It was, the infrastructure was so incredibly challenging. I mean, you have, you have some, you have some rare rice and you have some, the problem is, is that most of what was going on in Cambodia was controlled by Thailand.

• 14:41Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:41Darin Olien?

  So if you were to do anything, there were starting to be too many hands in the pot anyway. Um, so we were looking at different levels of dried durian and mangosteen and um, things like that. And we met some companies then in Thailand to maybe see if there was a relationship to utilize Cambodia. Cause Cambodia was just, you know, because of its history, it was just so desperate to, to get some sort of economy. And I've seen this so many times that if you go to a situation indigenous people that And if you do that right with them directly, then it can change their world, just like that.

• 15:22Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Well, I mean, just a little bit of commerce there can be such a massive, yeah, basically substantive change in their lifestyle.

• 15:29Darin Olien?

  Yeah, because they're gonna do something that may be, to them, not such a big deal, but to the world, a big deal. And for example, it happens in the Amazon all the time. So, you know, I know we were doing some acai looking, we were looking at these acai growers around the Amazon, and this guy was, the fact that you guys are buying acai is, then I don't have to cut down these 500-year-old trees that the illegal loggers come in, because I don't need the five bucks anymore, because now I have, now I have income from this.

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  Right, and it's more sustainable.

• 16:06Darin Olien?

  Wild. It's just right there, anyway. And, you know, so, those things are powerful, and ultimately, why I traveled.

• 16:13Rich Roll?

  Right, so this, this, this trip to Cambodia, I mean, this is just one episode in an ongoing, you know, saga of you traipsing across the world in search of superfoods. It's given you this moniker of being the Indiana Jones of superfoods. I think it's more like the Anthony Bourdain, you know, kind of a representation of superfoods. I mean, what's that, how does this all start? I mean, where does this, where does this begin for you?

• 16:42Darin Olien?

  Where did it begin?

• 16:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, your interest in this, this lifestyle, this pursuit of, you know, health and fitness, and exotic locations, and these types of foods, and all of that, like...

• 16:52Darin Olien?

  Yeah, you know, it was a, it was a really, I hate to go all the way back, but it really, because it sets the tone of what I learned later about myself, and because my father, kind of before he passed away, he reflected back to me, things that I might not have been aware of as a kid. And, you know, first off, I was, I was premature. I was born two months early in 1970, and so I was three and a half pounds, and, you know, my messaging... For the first parts of my life was this is gnarly, this is, I'm fragile and there's some stuff going on.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  On this, like just deep in your unconscious mind.

• 17:34Darin Olien?

  Deep, and so that-

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  You do like a little regressive therapy on that.

• 17:39Darin Olien?

  For sure. And by the way, that's happened spontaneously.

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  Like hypnotic?

• 17:44Darin Olien?

  It wasn't even actually that. In my graduate degree, the psychology, we did this regression stuff. And I had an event where, when we said like, hey, what's happening at, I know, I think we did something like, what are your memories of 12 years old? And then successively, we'd go back to, okay, zero. And consciously, you don't, like, I don't know what's going on, but if you let yourself go there and just kind of go in. I had, you know, I had a counselor technically there that was a colleague.

• 18:22Darin Olien?

  And, and this, this energy, when she said to me, she said, what's going on at zero? I, I just closed my eyes and all of a sudden I started seeing and feeling the room of my birth. And, and there was no part of me that was consciously making that up. I wasn't, I wasn't there. I wasn't going to do that. I'm not that kind of guy, right? So this was happening and as it was happening, I felt a warm sensation from basically my anus, all the way in the base of my spine, and I couldn't even stop it if I wanted to.

• 19:06Darin Olien?

  And a surge of energy exploded through my spine and I snot came flying out of my nose. I started crying. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. And so I felt I-

• 19:20Rich Roll?

  You had this like rebirthing experience?

• 19:22Darin Olien?

  Totally.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  That's wild, man.

• 19:23Darin Olien?

  It's totally wild. I would have never, if someone would have said, hey, we're gonna do this rebirthing, I would have said, I'm good. I'm good.

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  I think I'll go surfing instead.

• 19:35Darin Olien?

  I think I'll surf and because I feel like I'm born again every time I get on a wave. And but it happened and some energy released out of me that was dare I say trapped because of the trauma of you know when you're three and a half pounds and you're born into a place there are people don't know if you're gonna live and I had a 50 50 chance of surviving.

• 19:59Rich Roll?

  So there's a lot of fear in your immediate environment?

• 20:02Darin Olien?

  A lot of fear. I mean, that was a how much more fragile can you be when my father could put me end to end in his hand and that was the that was me. And so that that sent you know that my wasn't sure if my brain was gonna be developed, my lungs certainly, central nervous system. So cut to they watched me quite quite a lot. And and so when I was in early grade school, I had eye problems, I wore patches, I had water on my knees.

• 20:37Rich Roll?

  I had a patch too.

• 20:38Darin Olien?

  Did you?

• 20:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Darin Olien?

  Oh, my God. It was so bad.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  That's a recipe for popularity.

• 20:41Darin Olien?

  Oh, my God. It was so bad.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  And did it work?

• 20:46Darin Olien?

  No, of course not.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Didn't work at all, right?

• 20:48Darin Olien?

  Didn't work at all.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm still cross eyed. Still pissed off about it.

• 20:51Darin Olien?

  No, I still have the weaker side. And it's just didn't just didn't work. And I had like weird immune system. I was reacting to had allergies. I couldn't, you know, I'd get kicked out of class, all this stuff. I was probably had a resting heart rate of 120 beats per minute.

• 21:08Rich Roll?

  Whoa.

• 21:09Darin Olien?

  Upon waking.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  Every every day, your whole life?

• 21:12Darin Olien?

  Like a frickin' hummingbird when I was young, when I was young. And so there was this thing that it was reinforcing the idea that this is my body's.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  You could go at any moment.

• 21:23Darin Olien?

  Yeah, like this is a fragile thing. I'm not okay. And so cut to, you know, I was very active, was running around, I was on BMX bikes, I was, you know, luckily, back then, we were just gone all day and doing something.

• 21:40Rich Roll?

  You're like an ADD kid?

• 21:42Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  Like hyperactive?

• 21:43Darin Olien?

  For sure. I mean, with the resting heart rate of 120, like, it goes.

• 21:48Rich Roll?

  Not a lot of sitting down in class focusing on the blackboard.

• 21:51Darin Olien?

  No, it's like, let's let's make some fun and get kicked out kind of thing. So that cut to at 13, I'm this is a Midwestern kid.

• 22:02Darin Olien?

  Growing up in a small town in Minnesota. Yeah, surrounded by cornfields and um hundred people in my class, that kind of thing.

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  Like GTOs and guys with cool cars and stuff.

• 22:16Darin Olien?

  For sure. Brother had many Chevels.

• 22:20Darin Olien?

  So, you know, it wasn't like I was being influenced that way. My parents were regular parents, you know, they were uh middle class. Dad was a professor of agriculture at the University of Minnesota.

• 22:34Darin Olien?

  Unbeknownst to me, I was influenced by that.

• 22:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so that's where part of that farming must have.

• 22:38Darin Olien?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:41Darin Olien?

  So, uh the story goes that at thirteen, then uh I saw this article on a grapefruit cleanse. And uh and and this was, and by the way, I was doing my own Ritalin. But, you know, I was drinking about five to six bottles of the old classic Coke every day. Just like really amping it up, um and in some way probably sedated me.

• 23:07Darin Olien?

  But at thirteen, I saw this article and I just said, hey, Mom, can you get me like a dozen grapefruits? And she didn't ask, she just did it. And so I just, at thirteen, just started doing this grapefruit cleanse. And it was the first time that I then realized the power of food, like experience, like. Oh, wow, I have clarity and I'm not like jittery all the time.

• 23:30Rich Roll?

  So what'd you do? You just ate grapefruits for a couple of days or something like that?

• 23:33Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I think it was like at least two, two and a half days.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  How old were you?

• 23:36Darin Olien?

  Thirteen.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  Thirteen, yeah.

• 23:38Darin Olien?

  And so then I was.

• 23:39Rich Roll?

  Thinking now, now we got a kid with an eating disorder too.

• 23:43Darin Olien?

  Exactly. I don't even think my parents noticed it. If I were to tell my.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  Do you have a bunch of brothers and sisters or?

• 23:47Darin Olien?

  I have an older brother, yeah, uh two years old.

• 23:50Rich Roll?

  It's not like you were lost in the midst of a whole bunch of kids.

• 23:52Darin Olien?

  No, no. I mean, you know, a alcoholic father and uh some horrible. Horrible like relationship between my mom and my father. I mean, he got sober at, when I was four and and after he did that to my chin. But uh in the, in long story short, this comes back to play again and I'll, I'll, I'll tell you. So then after that cleanse, I was like, oh my God, I feel better. But then I'm a regular kid and I continue on eating crappy and just eating like pizzas and.

• 24:27Rich Roll?

  Right. But you have that little seed like.

• 24:30Darin Olien?

  I have a seed.

• 24:30Rich Roll?

  Like food impacts how you feel.

• 24:32Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  This is not a prevalent mainstream concept in whatever it was, nineteen seventy eight.

• 24:37Darin Olien?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:38Rich Roll?

  But I remember the grapefruit diet.

• 24:40Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Rich Roll?

  That was a thing.

• 24:41Darin Olien?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 24:42Rich Roll?

  It was like a housewives thing.

• 24:43Darin Olien?

  Absolutely, absolutely. And probably mom tore it and never did it, but it was probably sitting there. And then the next kind of series of events was at sixteen, you know, I was five nine, a hundred and thirty pounds, nothing much, a little, little kid and, and I picked up my first dumbbell. And some of my dad's students in college were, you know, working at the gym. And so they kind of, you know, was there and supported me and mentored me. And I just was like, holy shit, this is another really powerful thing.

• 25:22Darin Olien?

  I can actually, I'm not a victim to just the skinny, frail, weak body. And I, all of a sudden, from sixteen to eighteen, I gained like fifty pounds and played football and did all the sports and, and funny, kind of wrapping it into, I did my first triathlon when I was, I think it was eighty two.

• 25:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:45Darin Olien?

  And because I had this kind of BMX bike and fast like metabolism and just, and, and funny because, because they originally thought my lungs were underdeveloped. So I kind of in a weird way kind of proved them wrong. And then I end up cycling when I was like twelve and I won this a hundred and ten mile race.

• 26:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. A hundred and ten miles on a bike when you were how old, twelve?

• 26:13Darin Olien?

  Yeah, twelve, yeah.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  Holy shit, man.

• 26:15Darin Olien?

  And, and my dad was like, and that was at the Greg Lamond time. And my dad was like, you're the next Greg Lamond.

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  He's a Minnesota guy.

• 26:24Darin Olien?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and so, and of course I watched all those tours and Bernardino and him and.

• 26:31Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting too, this idea of the, you know, the grapefruit cleanse and then, and then the weightlifting, they're both attempts to exercise some control in your life, you know, which is common with somebody who's a child of an alcoholic to like trying to find some way of, of, you know, in a, like a household of chaos to have a little bit of, uh, you know, say over how you feel and what's going on with your own self.

• 26:58Darin Olien?

  Absolutely. I found, you know, I became a gym rat. I just, that sanctuary of this is what I can control and I can influence this. And, and so, you know, that, that cut to the gaining of weight and I just bailed on the bike thing.

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was like, you, your dad's got this vision of you being in the Tour de France.

• 27:18Darin Olien?

  And then I'm, all of a sudden, I'm just like.

• 27:21Rich Roll?

  You're a little too big up top for that.

• 27:23Darin Olien?

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm, I'm getting a lot of response from the women now and, and the peer pressure, there's no one that.

• 27:30Rich Roll?

  Screw cycling.

• 27:30Darin Olien?

  Yeah, there was no one at 12 who was gonna ride with me. And there was maybe, uh, three guys in my hometown that were older and, uh, proficient at cycling. And I was like riding with a 30-year-old. Like it just.

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  Do you ever think though, like what would have happened if you'd gone in that other direction?

• 27:49Darin Olien?

  For sure. Like.

• 27:50Rich Roll?

  Cause I don't know, too many 12-year-old kids who can ride their bike 100 miles.

• 27:55Darin Olien?

  Yeah, no, I, that's why my dad was freaking out. Like, but he never pushed. He just was like, he just emphasized like, you know, this is a probably a pretty good area to, and I loved it. It was the first understanding of kind of being out amongst the fields by myself and kind of, you know, that first understanding of being one with yourself. And, and again, the chaotic home and the peace of being out on a road was just intoxicating.

• 28:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:25Darin Olien?

  But then, you know, coming back to football training camp and running circles around everyone, cause my capacity was just through the roof. I just then said, I, I'm gonna. My peer pressure was just like, I gotta get stronger and big. And so I ended up playing college football in Minneapolis. And then the next series of events, my sophomore year, I was starting fullback. And I got a career-ending back injury. And then I was like, there's that signaling again. Life is fragile, blah, blah, blah. So I said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this on. I have to get stronger because allopathic, PTs, all of that stuff ripped my dream away.

• 29:09Darin Olien?

  They can't, they can't get me back. So I, I decided to then switch my majors, change universities, and study exercise, phys, and nutrition. And, and then, once I started realizing, learning about the miracle that this body is, I mean, really, come on, this is unbelievable what's going on. I just was, the insatiable curiosity of, of this and, and the foods we eat. And so now, all of these things are kind of linking up. At the same time, the pulling, pulling back the power of me healing myself just created that strength.

• 29:53Rich Roll?

  So you were able to heal your back?

• 29:54Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  And what was the, kind of, what was the methodology that you pursued to do that?

• 30:00Darin Olien?

  Well, you know, I listened to the PTs and at the end of the day, I just went back in the gym. And I started eating better and looking at foods that were more, more healing. And, and then just went back in the gym and just dissected what was, what was going on. And, and then just kind of worked it from the inside out. And, you know, isolated the, you know, the core area of my body that, that wasn't, you know, I tore a bunch of ligaments, basically. And so I just kind of.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  Did they want you to have surgery, or?

• 30:35Darin Olien?

  No, they, there was a potential for it. But since, since there was no structural damage and there was no impinging of nerves, it just didn't make sense. It's just a matter of getting it strong again. So anyway, that was when I got the education, coupled with healing myself, that was it. Like, it was now off to the races. And once I graduated, then that's when I moved to Boulder and started working independently. I did a lot of rehab stuff because I could appreciate that. And I got hooked up with this guy Dale Greenwald and this active therapy professionals.

• 31:18Darin Olien?

  And we'd work with a lot of accident people and athletes with injuries and stuff like that and understanding mechanics and biomechanics and kinesiology. And at the same time, I'm studying foods. I'm looking at nutritional stuff. I had doctors that, old retired doctor that used to come and just privately lecture me because he was like, nutrition is where we need to be. That's the new doctor. You need to keep doing this. And at the time, I was like, okay. And he'd go to the medical library and give me stacks of papers and again, planting that seed of just learning.

• 31:59Rich Roll?

  Well, Boulder is a great place for that, too. There's an open mindedness to this idea of alternative healing modalities and holistic medicine and whether it's Ayurveda or just basically eating more alkaline forming foods or whatever it is, there's a sensibility that embraces that in that geographic location for whatever reason. So to be immersed in that environment allowed you to kind of maybe expand your openness to something like that.

• 32:28Darin Olien?

  Absolutely. I mean, Boulder was just this place where I just felt I wanted to go because of that intersection between this intelligent group of people and this active lifestyle. And it was wonderful through my twenties there. And then I kind of felt like... I was hitting the ceiling of what was possible.

• 32:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, basically, you're employed like in a facility in which you're seeing clients one-on-one and kind of doing mostly physical rehabilitation.

• 33:02Darin Olien?

  Yeah, kinda, and then I got licensed to touch people with massage and stuff. So I used neuromuscular rehab techniques to kind of light the muscles back up that are shut down because of injuries and stuff. So it was really fun. But then this intersection of the mind and body was very interesting to me because I could prescribe something. It was really a few clients that I would work together with, and one, they kind of had similar goals, and they were friends, so I just worked together with them. And one was getting extremely upset at the other ones just taking off with the same

• 33:45Darin Olien?

  kind of prescription. And so I kept seeing the anomaly of this, the attitude affecting how someone performed. And so then I was like, there's a lot going on. And so I started at the University of Santa Monica, psychology program, where really the intersection of mind, body, and spirit was such a big part of everything we do.

• 34:25Rich Roll?

  The program at USM is completely unique. There's no, explain a little bit about that. I have some friends that have done that, who've gotten degrees there. It's a pretty remarkable, amazing situation.

• 34:37Darin Olien?

  It's taking the idea that this mental straightforward psychological approach may be not the only.

• 34:49Darin Olien?

  Aspect of it now, you're not, you're not completely pushing that away. But you're bringing in this other element that is regardless of your belief system. Belief is one of the most powerful entities we have. If you believe you can do something, there's and the power of prayer. I mean, all this is scientifically proven. There's no debate in that anymore. And so it's, it's coming into like really learning how to listen to someone and, and really just being there for them because ultimately it's taken the stance that we're all infinite beings.

• 35:27Darin Olien?

  We all have the power to access and, and take care of our life and be the custodian for everything that they, you might be going through, but also be an advocate for what you want to create in the world yourself. But at the same time, having that supportive structure and, and learning how to just be there with another human being was really at the basis of, of the learning because we're doing, we're doing essentially these clinicals every, it's not really clinical, but you're in this trio, you're having one observer and then you're working through

• 36:08Darin Olien?

  a process and it could be like, hey, the first thing is just listen, don't even say a word and the person just brings up whatever they're feeling or their, their issues and 99.9% of the time, the person who brings up their stuff figures some stuff out without you even just actively listening. So it was a really wonderful program for that because I didn't want to go down the traditional route because the experiences I was having in the real world was not traditional. There was no, what's the end result of psychology, usually a drug. That wasn't the avenue that I wanted to go down. I didn't believe in that for one, and I believe that we all have the power to choose

• 36:52Darin Olien?

  and to change virtually anything in our life, at least in how we react to everything, which is a massive.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  Well, that's, that's been, that was your life experience to date, right? Being this frail child and then overcoming that to becoming this great athlete and then healing yourself when the doctors told you this isn't going to happen or, you know, sort of taking matters into your own hands and pursuing alternative, you know, routes of. Healing.

• 37:19Darin Olien?

  Exactly, and that's the, if there's any thing I want to pass on to people is I get it. I get that like things can be gnarly and hard and, but there's always a way. There's always, you can always support yourself. There's, you know, whether it be your health, whether it be your, your point of view, because really we shape our world based on how we view it. And, and you know, if I, all intents and purposes, you know, I would be still in Minnesota. Not that that's bad, but you know, a victim to an alcoholic father, a victim to eating

• 38:02Darin Olien?

  like horrible food growing up and, and really staying in that, that, that message that I learned. Weak, scared, and this is a fragile world. And, and that, that was not the choice I was gonna make, but, but I'm grateful for whatever wisdom came through at those intersections in my life that, that, man, we can, we can do a lot to affect our life. And, and you know, that picking up that grapefruit cleanse was that first like, oh wow, I'm not just a victim to this genetics. Our DNA is not just set.

• 38:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:45Darin Olien?

  Right? It's.

• 38:46Rich Roll?

  I feel like a lot of people say that, like they're like, well, it's in my genes, you know, or like, you know, it's such a, I mean, maybe that's true, who knows? But like, why would you just take that at face value? It's such a cop out and it, and it, it's like this excuse for just, you know, perpetuating unhealthy habits or like a refusal to embrace that you really might be able to exert some control over your, your health and wellbeing.

• 39:11Darin Olien?

  Well, they now know that. They now absolutely fundamentally, even our lifetime in 2000, last year, a Nobel Prize was given to the telomeres research, right? So now the, now the end of the chromosomes, they know that, oh wow, if you take care of yourself, if you exercise, drink a lot of water, eat whole foods, that, oh wow, your biological age that we can actually measure.

• 39:36Darin Olien?

  Is is supported and being suppressed. You actually, we can measure your biological age and and the chromosomes, the DNA, the genetics are actually listening always, all the time to thoughts, feelings, emotions, and our environment at all times.

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  Right. Just because you have a genetic predisposition to something, or whether you may or may not have that, doesn't mean that those genes need be expressed.

• 40:00Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 40:01Rich Roll?

  And you have control over the extent to which those genes are expressed.

• 40:04Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  You know, I love the whole telomere thing. I want to find like an expert in that to come on the podcast. And Compton talks about this all the time. I mean, I remember, like right now, it's all like, here's my prediction. Right. You know how it's like all about the gut biome right now? Like, everyone's talking about the gut biome. In like, two to three years, it's going to be all about telomeres.

• 40:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Rich Roll?

  Like, I don't think mainstream America is really, like, tapped into that yet, but that's what's next, I think.

• 40:32Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  And Compton is the guy who's always on, like, he was the one in 2007 who's talking to me about the microbiome like crazy. Not that it's a new idea, but it certainly wasn't what mainstream America was talking about. And now every other book is about

• 40:48Darin Olien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  gut health, you know?

• 40:50Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 40:50Rich Roll?

  And so you can see how these trends sort of pick up steam. And I think, I think telomeres is going to be the next one.

• 40:56Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's really, if you really think about it, we, we can actually prove what we're doing is either speeding up or slowing down our biology.

• 41:05Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:05Darin Olien?

  Right? Instead of just this being passed down as like, make sure you eat your veggies and drink your water, and it's good, pretty good to exercise every day, we can actually prove that that is actually affecting our genetics and essentially affecting how that is being expressed. And so it's for the victims of the world, that's not a good thing.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That doesn't fit their worldview.

• 41:29Darin Olien?

  No.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  But I don't, I mean, I'm going to butcher it if I try to explain it. You could explain it much better. So can you, can you give like the, just the general lowdown on telomeres? It has to do with like, the tails of the DNA strands and how they, when they, they shorten, that has some impact on aging, right?

• 41:46Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 41:46Rich Roll?

  If you can extend the length of those telomeres, then you can extend cell life.

• 41:51Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 41:51Rich Roll?

  Is that essentially correct?

• 41:52Darin Olien?

  Yeah. So every cell, every time it multiplies, you're losing, because the genetic code is embedded in the ends of the telomeres through telomerase, right? And so every time that a cell expands, it loses a part of that length, just as a natural part of us living.

• 42:15Rich Roll?

  Like making a Xerox copy of something.

• 42:17Darin Olien?

  Yeah, you lose.

• 42:18Rich Roll?

  You lose the quality.

• 42:20Darin Olien?

  You lose just a little bit. And so that's part of, you know, our genetic potential is 140 years old, right? That's our, literally our human genetic potential. What will accelerate that or slow it down is the, is the things that will support or not support that, that length being shortened a lot faster. And we know that without a shadow of a doubt now because the Nobel Prize was given to the researchers and that if you are stressed, if you don't get sleep, if you don't, if you're chronically dehydrated, if you don't exercise, what that does is that gives, gives

• 43:04Darin Olien?

  up a little more of that length than it would if you were actually doing all those things. So, and there is now some research to, to start showing that through some, not only having taken care of all of those aspects of, of just a healthy life, that there is some supplementation through some extractions of, I think it's, some of the best is extractions of Stragyllis and Ashwagandha, I believe, that are actually now proving, at least in rats, that it, that the telomeres are actually gaining length and not losing.

• 43:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 43:46Darin Olien?

  And that's reverse, that's literally reversing aging. And so there's been some research to prove that that is actually then giving back, which is.

• 43:56Rich Roll?

  That's a mind blower.

• 43:57Darin Olien?

  Yeah, it's a mind blower. So, so it goes to, to show that if you do these things and take care of yourself, that they can prove, and right now, we can do a DNA test and I have friends that do these tests right now, you and I can, in a week's time, we can know exactly how much, how old we actually are in our biology.

• 44:17Rich Roll?

  So what does yours say?

• 44:19Darin Olien?

  I don't know, I haven't done it yet.

• 44:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, come on!

• 44:22Darin Olien?

  But I got my, my wife's doing it and I just wanted to focus on her first.

• 44:26Rich Roll?

  So you're like, you were born in 70, so what, you're 44?

• 44:29Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Rich Roll?

  Okay, yeah.

• 44:30Darin Olien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:31Rich Roll?

  You gotta get that test.

• 44:33Darin Olien?

  Yeah, man.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  Alright, so let's get to the Indiana Jones part. Where does the wanderlust, like, the adventure aspect of this whole story start to come into play?

• 44:43Darin Olien?

  Well, in 2005 was a big part of my life because that's when my father picked up the bottle again.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, okay.

• 44:53Darin Olien?

  And I, I lost him and, and so, and we were super close because a lot of things of his adventure, of who he was, was actually, was actually in me. Like, we really shared a, a, a view of the world that was larger than where we came from. And so, he passed away, I was very close to him, very open with him in his last struggles of in and out of rehabs and...

• 45:22Rich Roll?

  So, he, he was sober for 30 years and then he went out?

• 45:24Darin Olien?

  Bingo.

• 45:25Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 45:26Darin Olien?

  Yeah, he got sober when I was four and then, and then he was sober for over 30 years. And he had another family and, and a couple of new kids and he was suffering because his, his liver and stuff wasn't able to process, so he had chemical sensitivity to a high degree, anything, any exposure, so he couldn't, he was then a counselor at the University of Minnesota and couldn't really do the things that he really, really loved anymore. And so that was the grand excuse and I kept saying, "Dad, your liver's bad, you gotta do a cleanse, man, you gotta..." And so, you know, when I, my, my brother and I went to see his apartment, it was this struggle, this duality of, here's superfoods that sent him next to a, a beer bottle

• 46:11Darin Olien?

  and here's his big book next to a, a pint of Jack Daniels. Like, it was this duality that was everywhere.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  I, I mean, as somebody who's in recovery though, like, I, I get that, you know? Because it's either, it's one or the other, you know what I mean? You're not like, living a balanced life. You're either like, full in superfood guy or you're like, you know, passing out. You know, it's, there's no middle ground with that, so.

• 46:38Darin Olien?

  Luckily...

• 46:38Rich Roll?

  It's heartbreaking.

• 46:39Darin Olien?

  It, it is and it was, you know, and so much of my life now I would love to share with him because he would just... He would dig it, big time. So that was a very powerful time. And I said to myself, and at that point I'd been traveling. I was looking into foods and I kept finding foods that I was like, why are people making those things? Because they're, they're doing so good and they're taking left turns on, on putting some horrible ingredients. And so I was like, oh wow.

• 47:07Rich Roll?

  I mean, foods that are, that are sort of, people think are healthy, that they're just misinformed.

• 47:12Darin Olien?

  Yeah, some of the, you know, superfood stuff, some of the regular supplements, hell, most of the foods on the shelves. I was just, the more I knew, the more I was exposing my own view of how these foods just weren't great. And, and so I started digging into some research and, and then if I really want to know about these superfoods medicinal plants around the world, I gotta show up. Because for me, I was a tactile learner and I, I really needed to see the people, to experience the culture and to understand from them how these things were used for the last 10, 20,000 years. So that's where I started getting traveling. I was playing around with that.

• 47:54Darin Olien?

  And when my father died, I then asked myself, okay, what legacy now do I want to lead? No more playing around. So I-

• 48:04Rich Roll?

  This was after you'd finished at USM?

• 48:06Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Rich Roll?

  What are you doing professionally at this point?

• 48:09Darin Olien?

  I was, I was, you know, I left my practice in Boulder and I came out here and I was like, do I want to act? Everyone acts here. I'm like, no, I don't. And so I was, you know, helping people on the side. I was doing a little coaching, training some people, looking at some diets for people, professionally helping people. And just kind of like, what am I-

• 48:39Rich Roll?

  You were just kind, yeah, like not really sure where all this energy needs to get to you.

• 48:43Darin Olien?

  Yeah, yeah. And I, and then I started looking and I was just, went to India and started traveling around there and I was like, oh my God, there's some- Interesting. So then I had this idea of a project of filming like this Michael Jordan's of spirituality, like really finding the guys, not, not the guys on paper or the guys that are necessarily known. I want to go find.

• 49:06Rich Roll?

  Just up in the caves.

• 49:08Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  The dudes that are just up there for years.

• 49:10Darin Olien?

  Totally.

• 49:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:11Darin Olien?

  Like.

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  I like that. Somebody should make that documentary.

• 49:13Darin Olien?

  I know.

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  I'd watch that.

• 49:14Darin Olien?

  I know. It might, it might come online again. Um, now that I have some money that I could do it myself, but I, I ended up going there with a producer and, um, and, and, you know, I got, I got invited, saw the Dalai Lama's oracle. Um, so, you know, funny story of how to get there and, uh, meeting a guy who stood on one leg for 15 years and met him at midnight in the middle of nowhere, turned the camera on, started asking questions. Ultimately, that was wonderful and experience and crack. I mean, India is going to crack you open regardless. And, but there was this thing in me of, you know, I started looking

• 49:59Darin Olien?

  Himalayan salt when I was there and, and so this, this very grounded passion of food and supplements and the massive, I, I was, you know, from college on, I was formulating stuff. So I was, I very clearly go, okay, six weeks in India, you gotta go. Get back. Start doing some stuff. And so, you know, that was 2003. So dad was struggling. Be there for him. Try to, you know, you know, support that as much as I can. And, and then 2005 hit. And then I was like, okay, now what am I going to do with this legacy? Started my own company, had some formulas. I was in the 11th hour of that, like meaning I

• 50:41Darin Olien?

  was had, had a superfood bar that I was had, I had products that no one's, uh, superfoods no one's ever heard of and packaged and ready to go. And then I got approached by a company Beachbody.

• 50:55Rich Roll?

  Were you friends with Tony Horton or like, how did that come about?

• 50:58Darin Olien?

  No. So this was a serendipitous thing. I hired the, uh, this indigenous guy, this Native American Mexican that was running, uh, the vitamin bar in Malibu.

• 51:08Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 51:09Darin Olien?

  And, uh, we just connected.

• 51:11Rich Roll?

  It's closed down by the way, which is a bummer, right?

• 51:13Darin Olien?

  Come on, did they?

• 51:13Rich Roll?

  Isn't it there?

• 51:14Darin Olien?

  No.

• 51:14Rich Roll?

  No, the place where you could go and get the green drinks?

• 51:16Darin Olien?

  Yeah. Yeah, by Coogies and all of that.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Darin Olien?

  It closed down.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  I don't think it's there anymore.

• 51:21Darin Olien?

  Come on.

• 51:22Rich Roll?

  Maybe I'm wrong. You live in Malibu.

• 51:24Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I never go there anymore.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it's not there anymore.

• 51:27Darin Olien?

  I get all my supplements direct now.

• 51:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Rich Roll?

  Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

• 51:32Darin Olien?

  So he was managing that thing and I hired him, but he was still working there because I was, you know, we were getting things going and he ran into this lady Isabel. And Isabel had all this supplements, really smart. And she's, he was, he clearly saw that she knew what she was doing and he said, what are you doing? And she goes, well, my boyfriend at the time, Carl Deickler, wants to take, make a supplement to support the strength of their exercise programs, but make a really good one and the superfoods and all that stuff. And Miguel's like, you gotta talk to Darren. And they just had moved to Malibu. So she called me up, we connected and it was like a kindred spirit of how we viewed health and nutrition.

• 52:16Darin Olien?

  And next thing I know, I sat down across from Carl and he said, hey, I want to affect the lives of millions of people and I want to match our, our supplements with the strength of our exercise video. The P90X, the T25s, the, all of these things that they had. And I didn't even know who they were, but I believed him. And he looked me straight in the eye and he goes, we're not going to compromise. So I'm going to let you, with no cap of a price structure right now, just go make a superfood blend of what you know and, and go for it. And I was like, seriously? Okay, you're going to pay me to do that? Because I've been doing that for a long time.

• 52:58Darin Olien?

  And, and so I was like, okay, let me just put my stuff on hold and A, I need the money and this would be fun. So I found a lab, I did some research, did some testing and put my head down and ended up creating this product called Shakeology. It's got 50 plus superfoods in it and we have a whey version and a vegan version, of course. And, and then cut to that's half a billion dollars a year right now.

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  It's insane.

• 53:27Darin Olien?

  It's insane.

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  Because the guy at the vitamin barn was like, you gotta talk to Darren.

• 53:31Darin Olien?

  It's serendipity, man.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 53:33Darin Olien?

  Serendipity and.

• 53:34Rich Roll?

  So how does that work? So, so, so how does that, so are you still involved with that or you just get like a royalty or like, you're like an owner?

• 53:42Darin Olien?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  Tell me, like, divulge confidential information.

• 53:47Darin Olien?

  No, no, no.

• 53:48Rich Roll?

  I'm just curious how it, how it comes together.

• 53:51Darin Olien?

  Yeah, so I was hired independently to do it. They paid me to do it and then they gave me a little capped royalty in the beginning.

• 53:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:59Darin Olien?

  But once it came out and they were, it's a gamble. It's a very expensive product.

• 54:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because they gotta put a lot of money in it. They don't know, they're like, who's this guy Darren who we met at Vitamin Barn put together?

• 54:08Darin Olien?

  I'm throwing stuff in that weren't, that some of those materials weren't even on the market at the time. No one knew about them. Hell, in these.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  Like what?

• 54:16Darin Olien?

  Well, like Sash Inchi, which Brendan.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  Now Brendan uses that in Vega, but that was like, that's only kind of come onto the scene in the last couple of years.

• 54:24Darin Olien?

  Yeah, and I.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  Before that, no one was using.

• 54:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah, and I learned about it in 2006. And you couldn't even Google search it. It didn't exist. And, and so I was diving into that going, oh, my God, this stuff's amazing. And originally, I loved the oil because it was a perfect vegan, balanced oil of omega-3, 6, and 9. Unmatched.

• 54:46Rich Roll?

  High in amino acids, like it's like, it sounds like a perfect food.

• 54:50Darin Olien?

  It's amazing. And so I was like, okay, let's fling that into this formula and, and work with that. And essentially that helped resurrect that ingredient endemic to that, that region. That was a.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  It's in Peru?

• 55:06Darin Olien?

  Yeah, in Peru. That was revered by the Incans. They use that in their staves, like the, it's a really beautiful plant.

• 55:16Darin Olien?

  And, and they, the Incan warriors had these on their staffs, like the bulb of the Sash Inchi. So.

• 55:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like a green, almost like star-like.

• 55:27Darin Olien?

  Yeah, it's green when it's young and then it turns brown and, and then it's mature at that point. And then you harvest it. And, and then another Yocan, which was another one that I flung in there, which was another Incan.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  But how did you know about these?

• 55:42Darin Olien?

  Well, I was.

• 55:43Rich Roll?

  You went down to that region?

• 55:44Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I was there.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 55:45Darin Olien?

  So I was there working with the International Potato Center, which is the international potato capital of the planet. Right? So they've had researchers and in the field, working with them and working with farmers. And I was like, no one knows about this stuff. And this is incredible. So that coupled with, you know, many other things. It was an opportunity because again, like I told you before, like for me, it's got to be a win win situation. And so if I'm looking at the people that can grow this and it can change their life and it can change the life of the people ingesting it. And we do it correctly in the process thing.

• 56:25Darin Olien?

  I mean, that's a no brainer.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it has to support the population that's growing it and and sort of give back to that community in a way that can,

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  you know, foster like progressive growth without overwhelming them too. Like I would imagine like the supply chains are tricky. Like if you find like this thing growing and you're like, yeah, but what happens when Shakeology blows up? And we need like shitloads of this stuff.

• 56:48Darin Olien?

  Yeah, and some of it doesn't work anymore because in the early stages that, you know, we weren't selling that much. And I could, I could fling like a, you know, a lesser known ingredient because the supply wasn't. But now if there is something, we have to go deep into to the supply chain to make sure that they can ramp at, at, at certain levels. And so, so, you know, there was a lot of that going on and then.

• 57:16Rich Roll?

  But you're like, all right, so this guy wants me to do this thing and like, all right, you know, did you, did you like, understand the opportunity or was, I mean, what was going on with that company at that point in time? Did you see like, oh, this could be huge or is this like, oh, I'm just doing this thing, you know?

• 57:31Darin Olien?

  Of course, you always think, you always hope that it is, but my contract was, you know, pay me until I'm done formulating. Then a, you know, a moderate, moderate little royalty. And then it was capped and then a certain, a certain point I was done.

• 57:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:48Darin Olien?

  But what was great about the company was, once it was out and was doing successfully, like, I think you're probably the best person to talk about it. So we're going to keep you around. So we're going to redo the contract. They came to me to, to unleash.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because they could have just kicked you to the curb. I mean, you probably reached that cap pretty quickly and that was it, right? They could have washed their hands of you.

• 58:09Darin Olien?

  Of course, and then, you know, the amount of blue collar work that I would do in order for those things to be done right. Because supply chain, superfoods, listen, I've spent.

• 58:20Darin Olien?

  Ten years behind the veil of what actually goes on and it's astonishing. It's Wild West. It's a whole nother conversation of how horrible a lot of the products out there are. And what you're getting is not what you're getting. And so.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  I want to talk about that, but continue.

• 58:38Darin Olien?

  It's a big, big conversation, but passionately, I'd love to talk about it. So, you know, I spent the next year and a half formulating this thing, working on the alchemy of it, making sure that it was safe and effective. And I asked myself one question, what do people require right here, right now? The middle America people, what do they need at this day and age? Why would we get materials from around the world and have this in a pretty package? And give it, because people need it. That's why. Because we are getting stressed beyond our belief. We don't even know it. Brendan talks about nutritional stress. I mean, look at any processed foods nutritional stress. We don't even know it.

• 59:22Darin Olien?

  So cortisol levels, immune system responses are attacking the food that we're supposed to, it's supposed to be good for us, but we're not choosing that. So then you have 70,000 to 80,000 new toxins being emitted in our atmosphere every year, untested. Our home environments, from the glues to the plastics, to the, you know, the shampoos, to the deodorants, we're just getting annihilated. So why do we use these adaptogenic herbs and medicinal plants and cordyceps and reishis and ashwagandas and moccasins? Why? It's not just a novelty. It's because they have been used for thousands of years. And the medicinal nutrient density that they are providing has not only provided those

• 1:00:07Darin Olien?

  people from where they came from, but it's a delivery system that we're using so that they can help those bodies out, because those bodies are stressed. So that's really the genesis of how I.

• 1:00:21Darin Olien?

  Started the formula and what the, I wasn't formulating it for myself. I was formulating for the people that require it. So, year and a half later, formula came out and, you know, the engine. It was a big risk. It's a big risk for them. It was a very, you know, to not have a ceiling on a formula and just let the formula be what it's supposed to be. And then, charge what you need to to have a sustainable business was, was a risk. And no one at Beachbody believed it was gonna happen, except maybe Isabel and Carl. And they just, you know, they have an amazing, one of the best, if not the best, marketing histories in a company.

• 1:01:05Rich Roll?

  Well, they know what's up when it comes to that kind of stuff, for sure. It's crazy how they can launch these products and it goes bonkers.

• 1:01:13Darin Olien?

  Crazy, and I, and listen, we've all seen, you know, marketing companies and products. You're trying to market a crappy product, but somehow they still make money. And I was like, well, why don't you just make a fantastic, amazing, powerful product? Marketing becomes easy, because people will want to drink it, because they're actually getting some results from it. So that was the, and from there, I'm still around and consult and still, still work formulas, still contribute to that. Still speak to the, to the quality and what that product is all the time.

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  Right, and they can put you in front of the camera. They're like, this guy kinda looks like Laird Hamilton. He knows what he's talking about. He's the real deal. He should stick around, let's, let's make it worth his while.

• 1:02:00Darin Olien?

  Exactly, so, yeah.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about superfoods in general. I mean, I think that, you know, it's all very trendy now, and you know, what kind of superfoods are you eating? And what's in vogue at the moment? And I think that the term has been kind of blown out a little bit. It's, it's definitely prone to cavalier over, you know, overuse. And gets its, gets attached to things that maybe it shouldn't get attached to. And this kind of dovetails back into what you had mentioned earlier about, you know, products purporting to be superfoods. And, and, you know, consumers kind of unsuspectingly, you know, purchasing products that they think they're good for you without any idea about what's truly in it and what these ingredients really are. So.

• 1:02:45Rich Roll?

  You know, what's the difference between the kind of superfoods that you're talking about? And what, you know, somebody might kind of think is a superfood when they're at the grocery store?

• 1:02:55Darin Olien?

  Yeah, it's, you know, I don't even have an easy answer because, you know, superfoods, I, because I've been out in that world for so long, I pretty much know every company, where they're getting it, if it's, you know, worth anything, or if they're even testing it. The reality is that the whole supplement world is, is regulated, yes. But let me just say, has been given a rule sheet by the FDA, right? Follow these rules.

• 1:03:31Rich Roll?

  Self-regulate.

• 1:03:32Darin Olien?

  Yeah, and, and we're gonna expect you to follow them. There's no governing body to check. So it's the Wild West, people just flinging themselves into a $50 billion industry. And, and usually just looking at a piece of white paper, the certificate of analysis going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's Maka. Okay, cool." So we'll go to the manufacturer, we'll say, "Hey, can we make a Maka green supplement, protein blend, whatever?" And the manufacturer says, "Yeah, yeah, no problem. We have brokers that we get all of our ingredients from." And, "No, no, no, here's, here's the proof, here's the piece of paper. No, don't worry about it, we've tested it, blah, blah, blah."

• 1:04:17Darin Olien?

  So the company itself is kind of removed from the real situation. Do they actually even know what the compounds in that food are?

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  Right, you can, you can, you can be Joe Schmo, and you can actually find some guy who calls himself a formulator, who will put together a product for you. And you can go to one of these manufacturers and say, "This is what we want our thing to be." And they take care of sourcing everything, and you don't even have to have any idea what's going on. They'll make it for you, and then you can sell it.

• 1:04:49Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:50Rich Roll?

  So it is, it is pretty crazy that that is...

• 1:04:54Darin Olien?

  It's scary crazy. I mean, I spent many of the years in the middle of that. Several companies that you'd know of that were trying to, they knew what I had. I had relationships with 10, 20,000 farmers and direct sources. You want to know what the helps your bottom line? Having a direct source of some of these amazing foods. And so I was, had all, a bunch of these companies trying to get me to be a part of their company. And ultimately, it was just, it wasn't going to be worth it to me because it was too sketchy. People were too willing to, to, to not live up to the integrity.

• 1:05:35Darin Olien?

  So, so it is, it is a very scary thing because, you know, we all can kind of live in that denial and not, you know, not see what our food is actually like. And that, and, and, you know, my thing is know, know the people, know how they're growing it, support them in how they naturally grow it. Make sure that we're testing for the bioactive compounds that are supposed to be there because they are going to be the, the, the genesis for doing what they've been doing for 10, 20,000 years.

• 1:06:15Darin Olien?

  Process it correctly so that that's not denatured or changed to the best of our ability. Make sure that it's blended and put together properly and test it again and test it again and test it again. And actually have our eyes, our quality assurance teams going to every country, every manufacturer, every process to make sure that that is, everything that's in that bag is supposed to be in that bag and everything is supposed to be at the, at the levels that it's, that it's there. And that's, that's only done based on because we're, we are, we are in the integrity of what we're saying. And it's astonishing to me that most companies out there.

• 1:06:59Darin Olien?

  Have no idea.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  So that's you, though, like for the average consumer who's just like, you know what? I heard, you know, that Reishi is good, or my acupuncturist told me that I should get this, or whatever it is.

• 1:07:12Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  And they're just going to the, whether it's the, you know, natural food market, or what, and there's a panoply of choices.

• 1:07:20Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  So how are you, how can you make the right choice? Like, how do you discern the snake oil salesman from a product that's good when there's so much lack of oversight and regulation in this field?

• 1:07:31Darin Olien?

  That's a tricky one, and I think the best one is you ask your friends, your colleagues, your people who may have had that experience of the product itself. You know, because this tool that we have, the body, is, will always give us feedback if we're willing to receive it. And is one of the best testers that we can have. And I'm not suggesting people go out and just, you know, consume a bunch of products that they don't know about. But, you know, you ask as much as you can with the, with the companies themselves, and try to get some transparency, but also just, you know, ask, ask your friends and ask the people that are there what products are selling the most.

• 1:08:15Darin Olien?

  And, you know, aside from that, if you have the time and resources to test it yourself, I mean, it's just, it's just a tricky, it's a tricky thing. And hopefully, someone has someone like me in their own company that can speak to,

• 1:08:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:32Darin Olien?

  to their quality assurance, their research and development, and be transparent.

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  Right. Every company's got a Darren walking around.

• 1:08:41Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Rich Roll?

  Well, this idea that you were talking about with how we're exposed to so many toxins in like the, you know, all the kind of consumer products that we use, and the foods and the air we breathe and all of this, I can see the appeal of superfoods as sort of a, you know, like to use the word adaptogenic, adapted, adaptogenic, kind of healing modality. But I think that the tricky part is that...

• 1:09:13Rich Roll?

  You can't treat, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm interested in your opinion of this, but my feeling is you can't use superfoods as this sort of panacea if you're not taking care of other aspects of your life.

• 1:09:27Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  So if you're going to McDonald's, you know, five times a week, you can eat as much superfoods as you want.

• 1:09:35Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  But your body is so polluted that you're not even going to be able to discern whether this is a quality superfood or not, because you're messed up. So you gotta clean house first, right? Like, you gotta, you gotta make sure that you're attending to, you know, your health in this sort of, you know, you have these five life forces that you talk about in your book, and I think it pertains to that. We could talk about that. But, you know, you gotta be eating clean, you gotta be exercising, you gotta be hydrating, you gotta be doing all these other things. Then you can begin to talk about superfoods. It's sort of like the cherry on top of the sundae.

• 1:10:10Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  You know, but, but if you start with superfoods and think this is gonna be the solution to all of your problems, when you're not addressing, you know, negative behavior patterns and unhealthy lifestyle habits, like, you can just spend all your money on superfoods all day long, ain't gonna do a thing.

• 1:10:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah, it's the, I have a chapter of, of kind of poking at that, too, the big fix syndrome that we're all into. And, and, you know, Dr. Oz got in trouble for that, too. Using those words and those kind of, that kind of cultural marketing ploy, which is, you know, listen, when, when Harper Collins came to me and said, "Write a book," the first thing is, "Well, what do you want to write it on?" The obvious one was superfoods. But I didn't want to, because of your very point. I said, "Listen, there is a place for it, because an unhealthy person having some nutrient-dense superfoods can be absolutely great for them, because it can also spark them to then want more."

• 1:11:06Rich Roll?

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:07Darin Olien?

  Because when you feel better, you want more, you feel better, you wanna move, and all of that stuff. So I've seen it both ways. But to your point, if you're healthier, and speaking of microbiome, if your microbes are used to breaking down processed foods, then you, they're... Not even close. Your digestive system is not even close to being able to actually receive all of, say, you know, adaptogen, or maca, or ashwagandha, or whatever. It's, you know, it's getting a percentage of what it could normally. So, you know, it is. And, and so, so I definitely focused on that lifestyle aspect because it's, it's like, you know, a good muscle car.

• 1:11:50Darin Olien?

  You know, you got all the engine and the, and the tires and everything. You got it all tuned up and then you hit that nitrous oxide. And now all of a sudden, you're, you're boogying. And that's kind of what superfoods can be. It can be that extra performance. Light up the brain. It can get rid of stress. It can help you recover that much more. I mean, one of my favorite things I do when I meet kind of a cool athlete or celebrity, he's getting ready for something is just, I can't help it. I meet him and I talk to him and then, and then I ended up making him some sort of concoction that just comes to me and I send it off to him and they're like, holy shit, what is that? And, and that's kind of a fun part of it.

• 1:12:34Darin Olien?

  And then that's kind of, you know, they're already living fairly healthy, so you can kind of really hit them.

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:41Darin Olien?

  With, with that. So, yeah, it's a, it's a, there's a, there's a place in our lifetime for these superfoods. And, and I think it is used quite a bit in terms of just the marketing side of it, but...

• 1:12:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's money to be made. I mean, and, and people are, you know, we want to believe, you know? So it's, it's, it's, it can be an easy sell. And these, the thing is, like, these are expensive. You know, most of these superfoods are pretty expensive. So I think it's incumbent upon everyone to kind of be as educated as possible about them.

• 1:13:13Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 1:13:14Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I attest to their effectiveness and I use quite a few quite frequently. And I just call them foods.

• 1:13:20Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  You know, like, I, I think...

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  I think that there is wisdom in that other point that you made too, which I probably haven't thought through enough, which is that idea of sparking somebody, you know, because that's kind of how the journey began for me. You have to trust people to go on their own journey, you know, and if you can kind of light a match for them, or give them that experience that kind of that grapefruit had for you, that grapefruit cleanse, that sends them on their own path of exploration, then that's a beautiful thing. Because that's really all you can hope for, because you can't instill willingness in somebody to want to change their habits. That has to be self-generated.

• 1:13:59Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:07Rich Roll?

  So let's talk a little bit about myths around diet and nutrition. What are some of your favorite myths that are being propagated right now?

• 1:14:17Darin Olien?

  Oh, I know. I know you'll probably love this one, the protein myth.

• 1:14:20Rich Roll?

  The protein myth. I've written extensively on this.

• 1:14:23Darin Olien?

  I tee it up and...

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  You talk about it now for a change, instead of me. I want to hear what you have to say about it.

• 1:14:30Darin Olien?

  Well, there's so, there's so many, but you know, this, and I dive into it in the book, you know, the whole, the whole idea that some protein is some sort of badge of courage, of health, is just insane to me. And, and subsequent to that, you have this now fear of carbohydrates, right? So there's this weird paleo world that is morphing into whatever pseudo-marketing someone wants. And so it creates this fear and ketogenic gets thrown in there. And, you know, proteins are...

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  Is that all becoming like one thing? You know, it's weird how it's, those, those different areas are kind of merging into one concept.

• 1:15:10Darin Olien?

  Yeah, now kind of this paleo thing is, is, I have nothing against paleo, because the caveat to that is there's, there's more I agree with it than I don't. And that's something I've, I've been on Brian McKenzie's podcast, and he's a, he's a, you know, you know Brian?

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. He was on my, I had him on my podcast.

• 1:15:31Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I know Brian really well.

• 1:15:33Rich Roll?

  He's a firebrand.

• 1:15:34Darin Olien?

  Yeah. And he actually told me, I think he came from that. And I think he was doing the pool workout with us. By the way, you gotta come and try that at Laird's House.

• 1:15:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. I would like to. We gotta talk about that. Hold on. All right. So like little caveat here, and we'll talk about protein.

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  You're probably part of that like crew on Point Doom that gets together, the workout crew with the, who's the old guy who owned the gym? The guy who owned?

• 1:16:00Darin Olien?

  Oh, Don Wildman.

• 1:16:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're part of that, aren't you? I knew it. How do I get in on that?

• 1:16:07Darin Olien?

  Anytime.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Come on, man. Yeah, but it's like super secret, only like people like you and Laird get to go.

• 1:16:13Darin Olien?

  Well, by the way, conveniently, I'm two ho-

• 1:16:16Rich Roll?

  Are you on Point Doom?

• 1:16:17Darin Olien?

  I'm two houses down from Laird.

• 1:16:19Rich Roll?

  You are?

• 1:16:20Darin Olien?

  So I walk over and, and get into the mayhem.

• 1:16:23Rich Roll?

  Alright, gotcha.

• 1:16:24Darin Olien?

  And we're doing this, this whole other tangent right now. I'm doing the Wilhelm Hoff method.

• 1:16:29Rich Roll?

  What is that?

• 1:16:30Darin Olien?

  Breathing, Iceman training. It's, it's a whole nother conversation, but it's, it's pretty gnar. 10 week training of some thermogenic.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, okay, cool.

• 1:16:42Darin Olien?

  Yeah, and some oxygen stuff, which is, so-

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  Have you done the cryotherapy?

• 1:16:47Darin Olien?

  No, I haven't. No, we just jump in, we do pool-

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  We should go, there's a place in LA where you can go into that like nitrogen gas tank or whatever, and it's like 200 degrees below Fahrenheit.

• 1:16:58Darin Olien?

  Oh my god.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but for some reason, you know, I don't know, it's weird. I'm trying to find the guy for the podcast.

• 1:17:03Darin Olien?

  We have at Laird's house, we just have a, we have a tank with a ice machine that we all bought for him, and we just, old school, jump in a bath up to our, up to our necks and hang it.

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  Is he, is he back from Kauai? Is he here now?

• 1:17:18Darin Olien?

  He'll be in April, in April. He was here just a couple of weeks ago for a little bit, but-

• 1:17:22Rich Roll?

  Cool. Alright, protein.

• 1:17:24Darin Olien?

  Protein, yeah, so, you know, protein, people have to understand, the, the foundation of protein is, it's the most sustainable, one of the most sustainable elements in our body, meaning that in, in, in the regular kind of evolution-

• 1:17:42Darin Olien?

  Amino acids were, there wasn't abundance of amino acids. You know, it was a high energy cost to go kill animals all the time, right? And, and so the body got really, really good at, at keeping amino acids. Cause once, by the way, taking flesh from another animal and eating it and, and dairy and is very, very taxing for the body. You have to break it down and it's essential elements, which is amino acids. So because of that, evolution speaks and says that, okay, well, I don't want to get rid of my amino acids. I want to keep as much as I can. So there's even a theory that says that a lot of our amino acids, even after we break

• 1:18:27Darin Olien?

  them down, gets recycled in our body. So keeping that in mind, I go, go to the thing, which is one of the cornerstones of my book, in that we eat for ourselves. And if you look at most of the cells, they're between five and 15% protein. And then there's essential fatty acids for membranes. There's electrolyzed, structured water for osmosis diffusion. You have glucose for glycolysis. All of that stuff's right there. And I was taught early on, eat for your cells. If your cells are healthy, you're healthy. If you go outside of that, there's going to be checks and balances that are going to have to take in, take into place, right?

• 1:19:09Darin Olien?

  So, so if you take in these high amounts of protein all the time, the one element that the carbs don't have and the fats don't have is nitrogen. Because of nitrogen, you have then the acid ash that's left behind. And then of course, now you have the buffering challenge that your body has to deal with this extra acid. So then it, it robs calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, all the buffering elements away from their other job to then buffer. And you know, there's some reports that people say, okay, well, there was even proven

• 1:19:52Darin Olien?

  there's some studies that people ate meat and they're, they're, they didn't actually lose calcium. But in fact, by, by eating meat.

• 1:20:02Darin Olien?

  Naturally sparks the osteoblasts of your bones because it already knows that you're taking in this acidifying element. It's a brilliant mechanism.

• 1:20:11Rich Roll?

  So it already starts like, like pushing calcium back into the bloodstream from the bones?

• 1:20:16Darin Olien?

  It already starts making more.

• 1:20:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, making more.

• 1:20:19Darin Olien?

  Yeah, so it kicks on the osteoblast to make more because it, it now all of a sudden it's hitting your mouth, the body starts registering, the body's, there's no separation in the body, it communicates everywhere. And so, so you know, you have this very acidifying action of protein and you know, this idea that, that you need 100, 200, 300 grams of protein is just...

• 1:20:46Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. I mean, with that, with that sort of acidification, I mean, there's an immune system response to that as well.

• 1:20:53Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  Like there's an inflammatory response.

• 1:20:55Darin Olien?

  100%.

• 1:20:55Rich Roll?

  There's all these sorts of, I mean, the whole thing is crazy to me. All I have to do is look at like my friend, Michael Aronstein, who was like the fifth fastest American at the New York City Marathon a couple of years ago, and the dude's fruitarian. Like he basically just eats bananas, you know? And he's like, he looks fit and healthy and happy and he's been doing it for years. And you know, not to say that, you know, everybody's gonna just immediately become a fruitarian, but you cannot look at that and not try to rethink like, well, what is really going on with this obsession that we have with protein? Not just for performance in athletes, but this message that's being pushed that the

• 1:21:35Rich Roll?

  average consumer must be, you know, taking in these extreme amounts of protein just to be able to climb out of bed in the morning.

• 1:21:43Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  All you have to do is go to the grocery store and look at the food labeling and it's complete insanity.

• 1:21:47Darin Olien?

  Exactly. And there's so many just misunderstandings of culturally with meat and high protein is that some sort of... Red-blooded testosterone American, you know, we'll lose our testosterone if we don't, if we don't increase our protein intake, when in fact, it's completely the opposite. All of the studies go that if you wipe out the protein and the meat specifically, that your testosterone, we even did a study in-house, and the guys, we took them through 21 days, and the first week, we weaned them off all meat and dairy, and the last two weeks, kind of like two and a half weeks, their testosterone went up by over 33%.

• 1:22:31Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:22:32Darin Olien?

  And that's also peer-reviewed, so that's matched in peer-reviewed studies.

• 1:22:35Rich Roll?

  What is the catalyst for that? Like, what is the causal factor?

• 1:22:39Darin Olien?

  Well, there's not just one linear factor. I mean, there's, you know, health is achieved in two ways. Eliminating the estrogen effect of some of the processed foods, that's gonna increase a lot. And also, that acidification, that onslaught that you're getting from all that meat and dairy is severely affecting, not to mention, of course, probably some of that meat that they're consuming is riddled with hormones and pesticides and all that stuff, which is completely endocrine destroying for the person. So, if you eliminate that kind of food that your body's really attacking rather than receiving, which is crazy, then

• 1:23:22Darin Olien?

  your body then regulates itself, because your body's innately designed to thrive. If we get out of the way and give it what it needs, it's gonna thrive. And so, anyway, that whole idea of protein is just a cultural...

• 1:23:41Rich Roll?

  It's cultural, yeah. This deeply ingrained idea that somehow, sort of, you know...

• 1:23:47Rich Roll?

  Exerting domination over an animal has to is is is equates to what it means to be a man in our society.

• 1:23:55Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  Which is so ridiculous because, you know, we just go to the grocery store and buy it in a prepackaged thing. It has nothing to do with me. And it and it's along the lines of thinking like, well, if I eat brain, it's gonna make me smarter.

• 1:24:07Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  You know, it's it's silly. So how do we, you know, what are we doing here? Like, how are we how are we overcoming this?

• 1:24:13Darin Olien?

  Yeah, well, I think just the continual education of the pseudoscience, getting rid of the pseudoscience that that is kind of propagating the cultural idea of it. And, you know, a lot of this, the science just doesn't make any sense. And, you know, you know, and, you know, even even going with your buddy of like, you know, subsequent to that, when you have this high protein, then you have, seems to me that people get this fear of carbs then, right? So then you have your your buddy eating nothing but, nothing but bananas and like, he's not fat.

• 1:24:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:24:50Darin Olien?

  And and all of that research.

• 1:24:52Rich Roll?

  You need glycogen to

• 1:24:53Darin Olien?

  Of course.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  Function.

• 1:24:55Darin Olien?

  Of course you do. Absolutely. And that's how the cell works. You spark it through through oxygen and then normal metabolism is using using that glycogen and and, you know, all of the science, and this is gonna probably fire a lot of people up, that did you know that the whole insulin thing with sugar is completely backwards? It doesn't make sense because when you look at calories for calories, if you eliminate any of the macro, if you, let's say, eliminate carbohydrates and you have proteins and fats and people just consume that, do you know that insulin goes up, matches?

• 1:25:41Darin Olien?

  The amount of insulin that's that people supposedly are being spiked with the with the carbohydrates, it not only matches and sometimes even goes up. Insulin is not just left for sugar. Insulin regulates protein, regulates fat, all of it. In consuming any of that, insulin is involved. So the whole theory of insulin is the kind of the fat creator of is completely wrong.

• 1:26:10Rich Roll?

  Well, that's interesting. I've never heard that before. So if you're eating like this low carb, high fat, high protein diet, you're saying that's still going to trigger this insulin spike. So what is insulin pulling out of the the the circulatory system then if it's not glucose? I mean, it's still pulling glucose out?

• 1:26:29Darin Olien?

  It's it's still the gate. It's it's.

• 1:26:31Rich Roll?

  If you're not ingesting that, then what is it removing?

• 1:26:34Darin Olien?

  It's not. What do you mean removing?

• 1:26:36Rich Roll?

  Well, so insulin is when you have this insulin response, right? So that's there to pull the pull the sugar out of the bloodstream.

• 1:26:43Darin Olien?

  Regulate it. But it's it's it's not a matter of too much. It's like you too much protein, it's doing the same thing with protein. Not in the same biochemical way, but the insulin is there for the protein and it's also there for the fat. When it when calories are calories, there's no difference between someone taking out the carbs or someone taking out the protein. There's no significant fat loss. The fat loss comes when someone changes their eating program. And it really comes down to the amount of calories they're taking in or not taking in.

• 1:27:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, part of the argument that fuels this kind of low carb movement, high fat movement, is this idea that the dietary guidelines that have been in place for however long that have been promoting a low fat diet don't work? Like, well, that was a big disaster because we're fatter than ever. And look, you know, we've been telling people that they should be eating a low fat diet. But that presupposes that people were actually doing it.

• 1:27:41Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:27:42Rich Roll?

  They weren't, you know?

• 1:27:43Darin Olien?

  They weren't.

• 1:27:43Rich Roll?

  They're going to McDonald's.

• 1:27:44Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:27:45Rich Roll?

  They're not eating a low-fat diet.

• 1:27:46Darin Olien?

  Did you realize?

• 1:27:47Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:27:48Darin Olien?

  When, when, before that, we're eating about 12% fat. During our low-fat phase, guess how much we're eating fat?

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  20%.

• 1:27:55Darin Olien?

  12%.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  20.

• 1:27:57Darin Olien?

  So the same amount. So that the, the theory is completely wrong to say, well, hey, everyone, we tried the low-fat thing and we got fatter. No, there's this other thing called reward and palatability. We increase the reward and palatability food, i.e. processed food, that bypasses your, your biological stopping point of eating. Right? So you're consuming all of these empty calories and you're just, all of a sudden, now I've just increased my calorie consumption. It has nothing to do with the, the macro breakdown of everything. It has to do with the, you've simply not even changed your fat and now you've increased

• 1:28:40Darin Olien?

  your calories based on kind of these, these made-up manufactured foods.

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  So much of this boils down to the, the inherent flaws in our reductionist scientific method. You know, when we're talking about macronutrients, protein, carbs and fats, no one of these is the enemy and no one of these should be overly celebrated. And I think that's where we get into all these problems.

• 1:29:03Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:29:04Rich Roll?

  It's like, you know, whether it's butter is back and, you know, carbs are the enemy or fat's the enemy or whatever it is, you know, pick your poison or pick your, you know, pick your king.

• 1:29:14Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Rich Roll?

  These are flawed approaches.

• 1:29:16Darin Olien?

  Yeah, you've already, once you've decided that, you've already, you're already off. You're already, you know, again, I always go back to like, eat for yourselves, because if your cells are healthy, you're healthy. And eventually, um, and I get into some of this in the book, like, you know, even if you don't drink enough water, guess what? You don't really even notice it. Because your body's so great at adapting and making sure that you just keep going on. The problem is that degeneration happens. A week, a month, a year, 10 years, a decade, all of a sudden, I have a chronic issue. That was a, a bunch of things that I did over a long period of time that created this situation.

• 1:29:57Darin Olien?

  So my whole idea is I want to educate people, get back to your instincts. Throw away this idea that that these fads are gonna get you anywhere except dysfunction. And certainly, eating disorders, you know, and and I'm not talking about anorexia and bulimia. I'm talking about, look around. This is a massive eating disorder that we're all kind of living in. And, you know, if we go back to, if you survey everyone and say like, do you know what to eat? If you really, really think about it, do you know what to eat? Most people will. They're like, you know, it probably makes sense. I should eat some, I should eat some.

• 1:30:37Rich Roll?

  More vegetables.

• 1:30:38Darin Olien?

  More vegetables. No one's gonna argue that eating more vegetables, no, no, no fad person can argue that eating more vegetables is bad.

• 1:30:48Rich Roll?

  I would have never thought that anybody would seriously contend that eating fruit is bad. But suddenly, that's what's happening. So I would not put anything past anybody.

• 1:30:59Darin Olien?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:30:59Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:31:00Darin Olien?

  That's true.

• 1:31:00Rich Roll?

  But of course, you're right. It's like, look, this is not rocket science, you know, like, and let's not overcomplicate it. There's money to be made in complicating it. But it doesn't need to be that way.

• 1:31:11Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Most people know what to do. The problem is much more about the psychology of eating, the emotional aspects of eating, and implementation.

• 1:31:22Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Rich Roll?

  You know, and that's tricky because we're humans.

• 1:31:26Darin Olien?

  True.

• 1:31:26Rich Roll?

  And we like to be flawed.

• 1:31:29Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  In that approach.

• 1:31:30Darin Olien?

  And we like that hit. We like that you can, you can, you know, down a row of Oreos and feel great in that moment. And if you start doing that kind of behavior every day, you're gonna pay the debt. And that's the thing. And, you know, one of the things I stress is that you can have whatever point of view you have in your mind. Your body has to deal with the effect of that. And you'll pay the debt. It's guaranteed. Whether it shows up right away and you have great genetics and it just keeps it at bay. But one moment, next thing you know, you're, how did this cancer show up? How did, how did this diabetes? How did my, how did heart condition? How did I just, how did my father just drop dead? Like, it's, it, it happens.

• 1:32:14Darin Olien?

  And let's not live in delusion. Let's live in a. In a way that we can kind of thrive.

• 1:32:21Rich Roll?

  Well, let's live in the embrace of the five life forces, shall we?

• 1:32:26Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 1:32:27Rich Roll?

  So let's get into that a little bit. I mean, the new book, Super Life, The Five Forces That Will Make You Healthy, Fit, and Eternally Awesome. I like that part. So yeah, you kind of boil these principles down into these five life forces: nutrition, hydration, oxygenation, alkalization, and detox. And I would say that the first two are kind of elementary, like nobody's going to kind of take you to task for saying you need good nutrition and you should hydrate. But when we get into oxygenation, then you're starting to get a little bit out on a limb, and then we start talking about alkalization, and now you're talking

• 1:33:07Rich Roll?

  crazy talk. Nobody can prove that. And now we're talking about detoxing? What are these toxins that we're talking about, Darren?

• 1:33:15Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  Now you're getting, you know, you sound like somebody who went to USM.

• 1:33:19Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  So let's go through it. I mean, you know, let's legitimize these concepts and their approaches.

• 1:33:29Darin Olien?

  Yeah. Yeah, so obviously, the whole food nutrition is a... The funny thing is all this, and you talk about reductionism, and I love that, because even in writing this book, all of these things, if you undercut one of these life forces, you undercut them all. So that's the important thing to keep in mind. If you undercut your cell, you undercut your whole body. So that's the idea. And it's always interesting to kind of like, how do I write and communicate in a way that can make sense? So I broke them down in these five kind of governing principles.

• 1:34:03Rich Roll?

  You're not just kind of always saying, "Yeah, but, you know, like, but if you do that, then..."

• 1:34:07Darin Olien?

  Exactly. And so, you know, whole food nutrition supports when you're fresh, organic, wild food, mostly plants, will support your alkaline balance, right? Will keep acidities low, will support the high oxygen levels, because if you get so acidic, then oxygen...

• 1:34:41Darin Olien?

  There's a direct relationship between alkalinity and oxygen, okay? High oxygen can help increase alkalization in the body. When you have high acidity, oxygen can't survive very well, right? So you have environments in your body and it all comes down to the environments. You have, you know, the problem with, for example, alkalinity and pH is that people say, "Well, the blood doesn't, doesn't change much." And it's absolutely true because your body's gonna lie, steal, and cheat its way to make sure that that 7.365 to 7.4 can't get outside that window.

• 1:35:23Darin Olien?

  And that's not what I'm talking about, cuz, cuz your body's not gonna let that change because you would die.

• 1:35:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's the misconception. So your, your, your body has to work very hard to maintain that homeostasis in pH, right? And that, and that is influenced by the air you breathe, the foods you eat, the stress in your life, the amount of sleep, uh, you know, what the potions that you lather on your skin, your shampoo, all of these sorts of things, impact that. And so your body is always trying to regulate. So if you're eating acidic foods and breathing polluted air and you're in some state of chronic acidosis, well, how is the body gonna counterbalance that? Well, it has to find, uh, it has to find minerals in the body that can counteract that and bring it back into a more, uh, neutral state of pH.

• 1:36:12Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:36:13Rich Roll?

  So it pulls calcium from the bones, et cetera, all these sorts of things.

• 1:36:16Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:36:17Rich Roll?

  Is that accurate?

• 1:36:18Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Rich Roll?

  So this is kind of a, I believe this, you talk about this, Brendan talks about this, um, you know, I eat very alkaline for the, for these reasons. I've experienced what this means in the context of being an athlete and, and reducing your recovery time. But I would say that this idea is open for criticism in mainstream culture. Like, there are people who say, "Well, this is, that whole alkaline thing is nonsense."

• 1:36:44Darin Olien?

  Yeah, well, of course, and, and it's easy to just blow that off. It's easy to also blow off water and like, water's water, right? And any, any credible scientist will look at that, for example, and say... I have no idea what's going on with this water. It's more celestial than it is kind of this H2O element. So even alkalinity, I mean, you can look at it. This is very pragmatic. You have alkalinity in every layer of your body. You know, your first layer is your skin. You have a certain acidic, but not too acidic, level to keep out bacteria on the level of your skin. And then you have the alkalinity of your central nervous system, right?

• 1:37:29Darin Olien?

  You have the alkalinity of each cell. You have the alkalinity of your digestive system. You have the alkalinity of your digestive system going into your duodenum. And your duodenum has to have exact alkalinity or else enzymes don't work. And if your gut is not acidic enough to break down the proteins, then you have a digestive system that's compromised. And then you can't actually break down the food, which then goes into gut problems and microbiome problems and all of these things. And so it's this cascade effect that that's why it's tricky. That we're not talking about this one system. We're talking about multiple layers.

• 1:38:12Darin Olien?

  If you continuously acidify yourself from the outside in, from bad water that you're showering in, to lotions, to all of that. And then on top of it, you're stressed, which psychological stress 100% physiologically acidifies you, right? Thoughts, words, deeds absolutely affect you. Then you're creating an environment. And I always like to break it down in terms of the environment because I go back to something very, very, and I'm just gonna, a little tangent right now because I want to give a context to the environment. Because all of our...

• 1:38:53Darin Olien?

  Healers up until the time where the AMA was created, American Medical Association, which was instigated essentially by Louis Pasteur, by the finding of this panacea of penicillin. That is the end, right? It was the title, "The End of All Disease." "We found this thing that cures all the bugs and the viruses." And there was this other guy alongside of it that wasn't as well spoken by the name of Anton Bicamp, a French chemist and scientist and researcher, that said, "Well, wait a minute. That's not true." Because all of the time before that until now

• 1:39:36Darin Olien?

  and the research that I show is that we are not catching colds. We're not catching viruses. You're creating an environment that either hosts it or it doesn't. So he was one of the first people, at least in this modern age, that were saying, "Wait. By what you're doing and the environment you're creating inside your body is either saying to the intelligence, by the way, of the bacteria and virus, because they want to survive too, no?" So if that bacteria and virus, which we're getting hit every second right now, cancer is moving in and out of us, MRSA, all E. coli, all of it's happening right now,

• 1:40:21Darin Olien?

  that all of those bacterias coming in and out of us. Now, if it deems that environment, you, wherever it is, if it deems that I can survive in that as a bacteria or a virus, I am going to stay here, thrive here and continue to live, right? Are you a hospitable host or not? Absolutely. So it was, and that was, you know, 50,000-plus years of how we viewed health up until this point where Louis Pasteur had a, you know, was more robust in his story. And then the American Medical Association created the foundation that this almost fear-based,

• 1:41:06Darin Olien?

  "I'm gonna catch something."

• 1:41:10Darin Olien?

  Model was then created and our culture accepted it. And that's where we massively took a really bad turn. Because we then, like you and I have spoke, this victim place came in and now, what's a better defense? Being fearful of something or promoting the good of something? So I take a strong stand and don't worry about catching anything. Promote the good and know that the body is gonna have its amazing defense systems. The microbiome that it actually has on its skin that's protecting you and getting rid of all of the unwanted, keeping that intimate balance.

• 1:41:54Darin Olien?

  But if you take some antibacterial rub on there, you're wiping out all the good bacteria. Now you're keeping yourself open to the MRSA

• 1:42:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:02Darin Olien?

  coming on and the staff and all of that stuff. So, you know, go to hospital. It's one of the worst places to go to open yourself up to receive all that stuff. Cause you're wiping it all out.

• 1:42:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're in this Purell world, right? Which is not doing anybody any good, by the way. Robin Shucan, do you know who Robin Shucan is? She's a doctor who specializes in the microbiome. But she has a saying, it goes something like, eat clean, live dirty. She like doesn't take showers. Like she's a beautiful woman, right? Professional, successful doctor. And she's like, you should never use soap. You know, she's like, yeah, like because your body knows how to do this stuff, right? And we're putting all these, all these products that we're told that we need that are gonna keep us healthy are actually ultimately in the long run, making us sick. And I think when you talk about Pasteur and the AMA and the kind of the birth of penicillin,

• 1:42:57Rich Roll?

  implicit in that is this idea of prophylactically, you know, preventing you from getting this bug. But behind that is be very afraid of getting this. And you have no control over whether you're gonna get it or not. So, you know, you better take this because you're a victim, right?

• 1:43:14Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:14Rich Roll?

  And this is infusing people with this fear-based kind of idea about disease and health.

• 1:43:22Rich Roll?

  But I think that it is, what that reveals, if you pop the hood and look at it, it's like, it's very clear, this is emblematic of our symptom-based medicine system, right? Where we're not about preventing people from getting sick, having your approach, which is like, "Look, you can make yourself an inhospitable host to this."

• 1:43:41Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42Rich Roll?

  Right? "If you make these certain decisions and adopt these certain behaviors and diet and lifestyle patterns." "No, no, no. We don't have to deal with behavior modification. Let's just have this drug, and we will treat the symptom with this drug." Right? And that cascades, or this domino effect, to basically every single chronic disease that we're dealing with, everything from erectile dysfunction to, you know, what have you, your inability to sleep. All of these things are reflections of what we're eating and how we're behaving and how we're living our lives.

• 1:44:13Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  And we're not dealing with what's causing them. We're just popping a pill and then perpetuating the unhealthy behavior. And then we're shocked when we wake up and the doctor says, "You have diabetes, or you have this disease or that disease."

• 1:44:26Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:44:27Rich Roll?

  And like, "Look where we are. It's insane."

• 1:44:29Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:29Rich Roll?

  You know, so we're in this weird mashup time where there's guys like you walking around, and people are listening, and they're like into it. "I want superfoods. I want to be healthy. I want to control, you know, my health. And I want to be somebody who's an inhospitable host to all of these diseases out there." And yet you look around at most of Americans, and we're the sickest we've ever been.

• 1:44:53Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  The statistics are horrific.

• 1:44:55Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Rich Roll?

  Right now.

• 1:44:57Darin Olien?

  Yeah, it's, we've bought into this, and it's time to take our power back. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I'll double down on the miracle that we are. I mean, this whole ecosystem of a body and us getting to inhabit it is unbelievable. And I will double down on that over a lab coat and a guy who's really smart.

• 1:45:23Darin Olien?

  But doesn't know much about how the body works and nutrition and all of that stuff. So that's my stand. I know that there's a place for drugs and stuff, but there's no place in drugs for true healthcare. It's not, it will never get you there. And by the way, all drugs are so acidifying, they undermine, they undermine these life force principles so intimately that, you know, some of these things, some of these drugs are like two, three negative acidities on the pH scale. And it, so it undermines everything. It undermines your immune system.

• 1:46:02Rich Roll?

  And, and, and of course, you know, in certain situations, they have their place.

• 1:46:08Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 1:46:08Rich Roll?

  Like I'm not, I'm not like a, you know, somebody who's like a denier of Western medicine. And you look at penicillin and what it did, it's extraordinary. But I think that we need to be educated and we need to understand what we're getting into every time that we decide to take a drug. And I don't think that we should be this culture of people that just takes antibiotics on a knee jerk because you, you got a sniffle. You know, I know people that have serious, serious, potentially irrevocable problems with their gastrointestinal tract because their microbiome has been so raped by taking too many antibiotics over the course of their life that they can't even replenish

• 1:46:49Rich Roll?

  the gut flora that is crucial toward, to keeping us alive and functioning properly. So we need to really think hard before we make that decision. Is this the right thing to do in this situation?

• 1:47:01Darin Olien?

  Exactly. And, and you know, and, and you know, when you're in an acute situation, then those things are very appropriate.

• 1:47:08Rich Roll?

  Western medicine is the best when it comes to anything acute, for sure.

• 1:47:11Darin Olien?

  And what we're talking about is the, the other, the other 99.9% of the time that you live is make those choices that support this intelligence that we have and, and let this body thrive. Because, you know, going back to, I had no signal that told me, starting this life, that this was going to be an easy run. And, and it was really only through the experience of really food as medicine, that it changed everything for me. And, and so it's, it's really that humble message of just, you know,

• 1:47:50Darin Olien?

  Take back your power and there's so much choice that we still have here that we don't have to just succumb to this, I don't feel that good, I am depressed, I don't have any energy, like, all of that is absolutely changeable.

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  And we abdicate that power and that decision-making authority to purported experts, you know, people with degrees behind their names, and we implicitly trust these people and assume that they have a background in what they're prescribing.

• 1:48:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:26Rich Roll?

  That's not always the case. Often it is, I'm not saying, but I'm saying that like, you know, doctors, they don't, if you listen to this podcast, you've heard this mantra repeated many, many times from many doctors who have sat in that chair, who are like, yeah, we didn't really, they didn't teach us about nutrition in medical school. But we assume that they have all the answers when it comes to that, but they're getting their information in the same places that you and I are getting it.

• 1:48:49Darin Olien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:48:50Rich Roll?

  So, you know, what does that say about that abdication of control? And I think, you know, the good news is, we're in the internet age. Well, I guess that's good news and bad news. You can go on the internet and be woefully misled, but, you know, the world of information is available to you. And I think that that has an incredibly powerful democratic impact on people's ability to navigate the world in a more, kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Self-sovereign way.

• 1:49:22Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Rich Roll?

  I look at my 19-year-old, Tyler, who you met.

• 1:49:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Rich Roll?

  And he, like, the way he takes care of himself and the way he researches things on the internet, like, it's incredible. Like, I compare myself to what I was doing, to what, to the way he kind of, like, sort of, you know, curiously researches things in his own time at night and implements them in his life, and I'm like, wow, you know, that's amazing. And that gives me hope and optimism.

• 1:49:50Darin Olien?

  Absolutely. I mean, it allows this whole information thing, allows us to at least... You know, ask more questions and get curious and find out on your own. I mean, I, I think the point of view about having, just having a body is like, don't you wanna?

• 1:50:06Rich Roll?

  You're already winning.

• 1:50:07Darin Olien?

  Yeah. I mean, don't you wanna know how this, this works and experiment a little bit? I mean, at the end of the day, I've spent 20 years in this field and it's really just a little bit of education that sparked the interest and the rest is, is flinging myself in the middle of situations and experimenting myself and, and, you know, to thine own self be true. And we're all biochemically individuals and we all have different requirements and, you know, the closer we are to ourselves and to really the minutia of all of the little signs and signals that our bodies telling us. Because like you said, from heart disease

• 1:50:48Darin Olien?

  to erectile dysfunction, all this stuff, we're just, we're just bypassing all of the feedback mechanisms. It's the bodies just giving us feedback.

• 1:50:58Rich Roll?

  They're telling us.

• 1:50:59Darin Olien?

  Yeah. So what do we do with that feedback? Just slapping on another, you know, mask is just never gonna get us there and just gonna lead the last, you know, last half of our life, just kind of getting by instead of actually thriving and being able to react to life. And really from, you know, that's why I wrote the title of the book, Superlife. Let's, we all can have a super life, no, whatever you want it to be, but you have to take back your power and, and, you know, and get through some of the pseudoscience and the craziness that people wanna sell you on something.

• 1:51:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. I love that. And I think that's a beautiful place to close it down, but I can't let you go until you impart a few kind of tips, I think, for people that are listening. I mean, if somebody's listening to this and they're like, I like, I like this guy. I think, I mean, I think I can trust this guy. What he's saying. You know, what are some things that are people who are at the kind of beginning of their journey that they could explore and, you know, maybe implement to start making that shift, that transition into kind of a higher vibrating, healthier way of living?

• 1:52:15Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't not kind of go into the water thing. I mean, I think the chronic dehydration is so behind everything else that's happening. And fatigue, depression, organs actually reacting to dehydration and then wondering why we have specialists going after our organs and in fact, a lot of it's dehydration. So I would say something to implement would be wake up every day, the first thing you do before you slam your coffee or before you, you know, scarf down your breakfast, drink a half a liter to a liter of water. And, and, and let that process start to happen and try to get a half an ounce of water

• 1:52:59Darin Olien?

  per pound of body weight, trying to make yourself even get an ounce of, of water per pound of body weight. And, you know, you know, the easy way to get at least structured water and water quality is a, a week-long lecture.

• 1:53:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what my, I had two follow-up questions to this. The first is, should I be spending my money on alkaline water or structured water? Like, is that hoo-ha or is that worth doing? Like, you go to the, if you go to the Whole Foods or the Arowan or whatever your version of a, a healthy market is in your area, you see, you're starting to see more and more brands and they'll say like pH 10 or pH 9.5 or structured water.

• 1:53:39Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:40Rich Roll?

  And it's way more, it's like, you know, three bucks a liter or something like that. And, and I bought it.

• 1:53:46Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:46Rich Roll?

  Is this, should I be doing this or is this a waste?

• 1:53:49Darin Olien?

  Well, I mean, if you're, if you can't control your own water and you're out somewhere, then some of these waters can be better than, than others. And, and, you know, structured water is, again, I go back to the cell. Structured water has high IP, which is high ionic potential. It's actually excited water. Water rotates down from glaciers and it doesn't run in a straight line. It rotates, right? So it, it twists down and it excite, gets excited through the magnetic field of the planet and also the solar radiation. It hits it and it comes off the minerals and it creates this high IP. What that means basically is a high IP water, and I'm not talking pH yet.

• 1:54:35Darin Olien?

  Because it's a different thing. High IP, high-energy water is like having water, like when you boil water, right, and you put a teabag in it. The teabag doesn't disperse when it's cold, right? The hot water has high IP. It's got higher energy potential. So when you have structured, properly structured water, and it could be done through a fortator, you can run it through a fortator, and I have some of that stuff on my website. Or you can anode and a cathode, and you can create some energy that way. Then you're mimicking that which is in the cell. So, in theory, not answering for each of these bottled waters,

• 1:55:20Darin Olien?

  because a lot of that can be marketing. In theory, structured water is fantastic, important, and important for proper hydration.

• 1:55:29Rich Roll?

  Is there like one brand that you think is good?

• 1:55:32Darin Olien?

  I'm not sure about the structured side, because it can be destructured by just being in the plastic bottle. It's really hard to keep that. One brand, Smart Water, actually tests really well for TDS. Total dissolved solids are really low, which is a good thing. And pH is pretty stable. I am not a fan of high pH anything, right? You want to match your pH. So that pH of just-

• 1:56:04Rich Roll?

  But what if you're so acidic? That could be a good, you know, like the idea of like-

• 1:56:10Darin Olien?

  Yeah, but-

• 1:56:11Rich Roll?

  -counterbalancing it with something super alkaline.

• 1:56:13Darin Olien?

  Yeah, but that doesn't, it doesn't really... Because again, if you take in something naturally being just what the cells need, 7.365 pH, the pH that's positive for the body, your body doesn't have to balance it. Because as soon as you take in even alkaline water, your body has to balance that, because it's actually not, it's actually too alkaline for that. Now, there's certain applications. Healthcare practitioners could prescribe that stuff, but for the normal person- I don't think it's a good thing to always, always bring in because the same thing happens if it's acidic as if it's too alkaline. Your body has to balance it so that it becomes the balance for what the body can use it for.

• 1:56:57Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Here's one for you. So when you eat something, all right, this drives me crazy, but hopefully you can answer this. When you eat something, whether it's acidic or alkaline naturally, you're passing it through your gastrointestinal system. Your stomach is full of stomach acids, like it's a highly acidic environment. So if you drink alkaline water, as soon as it hits your stomach, it's not, there's no, there's nothing alkaline anymore happening.

• 1:57:25Darin Olien?

  Yeah, but the hydration is happening, you know, from the start of your mouth to all the way down there and, and you're, you're, yes, there is some acidity, but your body is also, when you're not combined with food, the acid levels aren't even close to being what they would normally if there was, and so the, the hydration, it's not like they're mixing necessarily. They're just being absorbed straight through the membranes.

• 1:57:54Rich Roll?

  I see. Okay. And the other follow-up question, and then we'll move along here, is, you know, one thing I do in the morning is I'll have, I'll have that water, but I'll put like a two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in it. And then people always email me because I talk about this, they're like, yeah, but that vinegar is acidic, but it has an alkalizing effect on the body.

• 1:58:16Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:58:16Rich Roll?

  Right? So how's that work?

• 1:58:18Darin Olien?

  It's, it's a couple of elements that, that called pleomorphism. They're acidic out, but the alkaline effect and, and fresh lemon's the same way.

• 1:58:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, lemon's the same.

• 1:58:29Darin Olien?

  Lemon lime or whatever, but, but that creates the alkalining effect in the body. And it's, it's kind of this, it's, it's this.

• 1:58:40Darin Olien?

  This chemistry that happens in the body that is more of an anomaly than anything else, but it's called pleomorphism and it's what one thing is outside is another thing inside.

• 1:58:53Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:58:53Darin Olien?

  Yeah, but not all vinegars are the same, by the way. It's only apple cider vinegar that does that.

• 1:58:58Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right, right. Alright, so hydrating early in the morning, this is the one key thing. What's another?

• 1:59:06Darin Olien?

  You know, one easy way to kind of eliminate some of the acid load and some of the toxic detoxification increase and toxic load is just eat a salad a day. You know, try to at least, you know, hit your lunch with a big, diverse, colorful salad and, you know, and try not to put or don't put the crazy dressings on.

• 1:59:31Rich Roll?

  Too much ranch dressing.

• 1:59:33Darin Olien?

  Exactly. Exactly. Make your own or, you know, apple cider vinegar, splash of lemon and some olive oil, fantastic.

• 1:59:40Rich Roll?

  Start to shift those microbiome.

• 1:59:44Darin Olien?

  Exactly.

• 1:59:45Rich Roll?

  Change the microbes, change your cravings.

• 1:59:47Darin Olien?

  Change your microbes, change your life.

• 1:59:49Rich Roll?

  That's right, you know. Compton, to bring it full circle, he was the first one that started talking to me about how microbes can affect your cravings and I didn't believe him, you know, and I started looking at the studies though, but that's crazy stuff.

• 2:00:02Darin Olien?

  Crazy.

• 2:00:03Rich Roll?

  Where it like literally hijacks your nervous system and impacts the food that you crave.

• 2:00:08Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 2:00:09Rich Roll?

  And it starts to make you think or second guess the level to which your ascension being, making decisions for yourself.

• 2:00:16Darin Olien?

  Totally. Yeah, it's not your cravings. You go back to the environment. If you're creating an environment where you're eating processed foods and everything, then your microbes are gonna be out of balance for your own hosted self, but in balance for the foods that it's reacting to to balance out what is more beneficial for them to feed on. So after a while of doing that, if you starve yourself of that thing, the intelligence which they also communicate by bio-photonics, which is light, right? Not even as sophisticated as our cells through electricity, right?

• 2:00:57Darin Olien?

  It's literally the microbes are communicating through light and one argues that it is not your cravings, that the...

• 2:01:08Darin Olien?

  The hundred times more microbes than you have cells in your body are more intelligent, been around here a lot longer than human forms have.

• 2:01:20Rich Roll?

  They gotta live, man.

• 2:01:21Darin Olien?

  They gotta live.

• 2:01:22Rich Roll?

  They need more of that McDonald's in there if they wanna stick around.

• 2:01:24Darin Olien?

  So you change the, you change the gradient of your microbes and that's what, that's the beauty of microbes. So they can train, train to almost eat anything. In the world, you know, Compton was talking about the, some of those microbes, you know, the, the Gulf of Mexico and the, the oil went. He's like, you can train those microbes to eat that oil and over time, it's a much better situation to clean up that oil. So it's, it's those kind of things that it happens, you know, in the world and also in our gut. And, yeah.

• 2:01:59Rich Roll?

  All right. So eat a salad, drink a lot of water.

• 2:02:03Darin Olien?

  Eat a salad.

• 2:02:04Rich Roll?

  One more.

• 2:02:07Darin Olien?

  You know, certainly a couple more. I would say just find activities that you love to do and, and go play.

• 2:02:17Darin Olien?

  You know, or play and, and double down on that and play with, you know, find groups of guys, groups of girls, women that you can enjoy that time with. Cause you know, call it what you want, misery loves company or, or, or people enjoy fun together. So find ways to move and play with friends and then get a bunch of sleep. Sleep's so big and you can't override sleep by a cup of coffee. So make sure you get your seven, eight hours of sleep.

• 2:02:46Rich Roll?

  So let me make sure I understand here, Darren.

• 2:02:50Rich Roll?

  You want me to drink a lot of water?

• 2:02:53Darin Olien?

  I do.

• 2:02:53Rich Roll?

  Eat salad?

• 2:02:54Darin Olien?

  For sure.

• 2:02:55Rich Roll?

  Play and move my body and get sleep, get, get, get a good night's sleep.

• 2:02:59Darin Olien?

  I do. That's the.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  You're, you're way off the reservation here.

• 2:03:02Darin Olien?

  That's the starter package for sure.

• 2:03:07Rich Roll?

  You're so controversial.

• 2:03:09Darin Olien?

  I know.

• 2:03:09Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 2:03:10Darin Olien?

  It's, I'm asking so much.

• 2:03:11Rich Roll?

  Well, it goes back to the thing, like, it's, it's, this is not rocket science, you know? Like, exercise these few pillars of self-care and, and to be clear, like, it's not that simplistic, but these are things that you can do that are gonna shift your consciousness and shift your physical health, and that will like, sort of, like, create a new trajectory for you, right? And then there's, there's an unlimited amount of exploration that you can do within that, but like, if you can master, or at least begin to, you know, grapple with those things, then you're in a position where you have created a foundation to then make some significant changes in your life.

• 2:03:48Darin Olien?

  Well, I mean, little things added up over a long period of time create results. And if, I always give this example, if I, if I set a course for Australia from here, and I'm off one degree, I'm not gonna hit that continent.

• 2:04:03Rich Roll?

  You might hit the moon.

• 2:04:04Darin Olien?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna make it. So habit is health, or habit is disease. What's our trajectory? So if I just come off of this call and say, okay, I'm gonna drink, uh, four liters of water a day, and that's all I'm gonna focus on, your life will change. You're gonna feel amazing, and I guarantee you're gonna feel the effect of that in a good way. And that is changing that trajectory. And so, all of this comes down to those lifestyle choices of adding up these subtle, but yet very powerful things that you can do to reverse all of this stuff and not buy into this, um, miracle pill or miracle thing, that it's, it's all, that, you know, the

• 2:04:49Darin Olien?

  guy behind the curtain is, is just you, man, and, and, you know, there is no magic thing. It's, it's just adding up a bunch of these things to help you really then have magic in your life, and, cause you only know what you know. And if you all of a sudden have more energy, cause you're sleeping better, eating a salad a day, and, and drinking a lot of water, now you have a different view.

• 2:05:14Rich Roll?

  Oh, it affects everything, how you interact. With other people, you know, the thoughts that you entertain, the ideas that you harbor, the productivity level. I mean, there's nothing that is, there's no stone unturned with that.

• 2:05:26Darin Olien?

  Absolutely.

• 2:05:27Rich Roll?

  You know, and it's about consistency. It's not big, huge things. It's little things. Like you said, like if you drank water, but you do it every day. You know what I mean? It's not like once a week.

• 2:05:37Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:37Rich Roll?

  It's about consistent actions taken.

• 2:05:40Darin Olien?

  Absolutely. And that's, that's the keys of the castle right there. That, that's where it all resides.

• 2:05:46Rich Roll?

  All right, man. I think we did the podcast.

• 2:05:48Darin Olien?

  Yeah, we did it.

• 2:05:49Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 2:05:50Darin Olien?

  Feel good.

• 2:05:51Rich Roll?

  Good?

• 2:05:52Darin Olien?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Rich Roll?

  All right. We should, I feel bad now that I didn't have tons of water here on the table.

• 2:05:56Darin Olien?

  Oh, man, I'm totally dehydrated.

• 2:05:59Rich Roll?

  I gotta go to the bathroom, so I would have had to take a break in the middle if we'd done that anyway. But anyway, man, thanks for coming by. This was very informative. It would be cool to have you

• 2:06:10Rich Roll?

  come back and we could be real specific on like one thing, you know, like, hey, let's talk about, you know, like, like you said, you could do, you know, weeks on, you know, alkalinity or whatever. Like, we could just pick one subject and kind of go down the rabbit hole.

• 2:06:23Darin Olien?

  Well, this is kind of the meeting slash inevitability, kind of getting to know each other and having a podcast all at the same time.

• 2:06:31Rich Roll?

  I know. It's good, right? See, if we went out to lunch, we wouldn't, see, now we're bonded, right?

• 2:06:35Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 2:06:36Rich Roll?

  It's different, right?

• 2:06:37Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 2:06:38Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. So, thanks for doing it. If you want to dig on Darren and learn more about him, the best place to go is superlife.com, right?

• 2:06:47Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 2:06:47Rich Roll?

  That's where it's all going down for you. How'd you get that URL? That's a pretty sweet URL.

• 2:06:51Darin Olien?

  Good one, you know, just pay the, pay the cabbage.

• 2:06:54Rich Roll?

  Somebody, somebody, you had to buy that from someone, right? That wasn't just sitting around.

• 2:06:58Darin Olien?

  No, I had to go, okay. Am I committed to my own?

• 2:07:02Rich Roll?

  Put some of that Shakeology money to work, buddy, for that one, right?

• 2:07:06Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 2:07:06Rich Roll?

  No, that's cool. And, and you're online, you're at, at Darren, is it Olien or Olien?

• 2:07:11Darin Olien?

  Olien.

• 2:07:12Rich Roll?

  Olien, right, on Twitter and Superlife Living on Instagram?

• 2:07:16Darin Olien?

  Yeah, Superlife Living is across all, all social media, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And, and then you can get the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

• 2:07:25Rich Roll?

  That's right. Superlife, The Five Forces That Will Make You Healthy Fit. And my favorite part, Eternally Awesome. Yeah, man.

• 2:07:32Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 2:07:33Rich Roll?

  All right. So, am I going to get to go down to Point Doom and get my ass kicked by that, by the elder statesman?

• 2:07:40Darin Olien?

  It's tomorrow, too soon.

• 2:07:41Rich Roll?

  Don Wildman?

• 2:07:42Darin Olien?

  Well, Don's

• 2:07:43Rich Roll?

  How old is he now?

• 2:07:44Darin Olien?

  Don's 82.

• 2:07:45Rich Roll?

  82, but he's still killing it, right?

• 2:07:46Darin Olien?

  He's, he's a machine.

• 2:07:48Rich Roll?

  This guy, alright, tell a quick story.

• 2:07:51Darin Olien?

  Well, he's 82 and he will still pretty much destroy many 20-year-olds going up any mountain on, on a, on a mountain bike or a cycle. And he's just, you know, he's, it's that whole thing of like, there's no part of him that's gonna slow down. And, you know, he's, he's, he's naturally the, one of those people that you just look up to, cause he's just lives, I mean, he's still hella, hella boards, I think 50 to 80 times a year.

• 2:08:26Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 2:08:27Darin Olien?

  I mean, and he'll still do the Senior Olympics and the, the cycling, he was leading and then a guy ran into him and he broke five ribs and two weeks later, he's on the bike again. Like, he just doesn't, two knee replacements last year and within a few weeks, he's on the bike again. Like, he's just, he's just a marvel.

• 2:08:49Rich Roll?

  A machine.

• 2:08:50Darin Olien?

  Unbelievable.

• 2:08:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a lot to be learned from that.

• 2:08:52Darin Olien?

  Yeah. I mean, he just doesn't take, take age as a factor.

• 2:08:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I gotta meet this guy.

• 2:09:00Rich Roll?

  Alright, man, thanks.

• 2:09:01Darin Olien?

  You're welcome.

• 2:09:02Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:09:02Darin Olien?

  Peace.

• 2:09:03Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 2:09:04Darin Olien?

  That's right.

• 2:09:05Rich Roll?

  Superfoods.

• 2:09:15Rich Roll?

  Alright, I hope you guys enjoyed that. One of these days, I promise, I'm gonna work up the courage to go work out with Darren and Laird and their crew of super fit people. I gotta admit, I'm a little bit intimidated. I might have to pre-train a little bit in preparation for that, but I'm committed to making it happen and I will report back to you. I also wanted to mention that since we recorded this interview, which actually took place a couple of months ago, Darren went off with a research team to Peru, they just got back, and they went there to explore new superfoods and work on sustainable supply chain management to create greater transparency between the farmers. And the suppliers and ultimately the consumer. But what's really interesting about this recent sojourn of his is that he also went

• 2:09:59Rich Roll?

  there to fight something called biopiracy. So what is biopiracy? Well, biopiracy is essentially taking knowledge and genetic resources, in other words seeds, from indigenous farmers and then in turn seeking illegal control, often through patent protection or IP, of the resource for profit without approval from the country of origin. So what's happening is there is this huge increase in demand for certain superfoods because, you know, superfoods are all the rage right now. And this increase in demand has led to shortages. And these shortages have led to biopiracy. In other words, illegal export of some of the superfoods.

• 2:10:41Rich Roll?

  So for example, the popular superfood maca, which is something that I use regularly and enjoy and find great benefit in using. Well, maca was originally domesticated in central Peru. Yet its health benefits and the global demand for maca have tempted other countries like China to illegally obtain the seeds and then begin growing the product in their countries without the Peruvian government's permission. And testing has shown these products to be inferior medicinally and chemically and often laced with pesticides and other environmental toxins. So what Darren is doing is assisting the Peruvian government in its fight against biopiracy

• 2:11:22Rich Roll?

  to preserve the indigenous crops and the farmers that are growing this in the manner in which it is meant to be grown, including maca, in their native lands. So it's good stuff. If you want to know more about that journey, you can go to his website. And also I would check out his Instagram, SuperLifeLiving, for some pretty epic chronicling of that adventure. What's cool also is that Darren's going to be traveling to Mongolia and Siberia in 2015, continuing his pursuit to make ethically sourced quality superfoods and herbs available to everyone. So, anyway, that's it. Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments section on the episode page at richroll.com. Thanks for all the love. Thanks for sharing the podcast and for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for

• 2:12:06Rich Roll?

  all your Amazon purchases. If you haven't checked out my books, Finding Ultra or The Plant Power Way, click on that Amazon banner ad and check it out. It's good stuff. And for all your plant power needs, visit richroll.com as well. We've got nutritional products, books, education products, 100% organic cotton garments, meditation programs. We just released a new tech tee running shirt, a white tech tee with the plant power leaf on it. That's been a popular product. Everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. If you're into online courses, I've got two of those at mindbodygreen.com, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, which is like three and a half hours of streaming video content. Everything you need to get more plant-powered.

• 2:12:51Rich Roll?

  It's a pretty good, sort of, piece to go with The Plant Power Way, actually, to help you get more plants into your plate, into your life, into your body. What can I say? The other course is called The Art of Living with Purpose, and that's about goal-setting and kind of the internal work to help reset your life trajectory. And I think that's about two and a half hours of streaming content. I'm really proud of those courses. They're easy to find. Just go to mindbodygreen.com and click on video courses. Anyway, thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for telling a friend. Thank you for sharing it on social media. I'm going to see you guys in a few days. Make it a great week. And I'm back to LA tomorrow for more podcasting fun. I'll see you guys soon. Thanks so much. Peace. Plants. [music]