Sanjay Gupta, MD On Chasing Health, Work-Life Balance & Responsible Journalism

“Human existence is but the blink of an eye. It doesn’t take much research to think about how we evolved and why we evolve the way that we do.” Dr. Sanjay Gupta Western medicine is extraordinary. Over the last several decades, scientific advances in the diagnosis and treatment of previously thought incurable diseases has utterly transformed how we live. But with these breakthroughs comes an arrogance — a hubris that modalities outside the very narrow rubric of our dominant paradigm are without value — archaic, outdated legacies of less developed cultures. But is this always the case? Or do lessons remain to be learned by taking a critical but objective look at how other societies approach health and well-being? This question nagged at Sanjay Gupta, MD. So he decided to find answers for himself. For those unfamiliar, Sanjay is the associate chief of neurosurgery at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Emory University School of Medicine. But most people know him as the multiple Emmy-award winning chief medical correspondent for CNN. In his tenure as a journalist he has spent decades covering everything from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the Haiti earthquake in 2010, where he performed surgery on a 12-year-old girl earthquake victim along with Henri Ford and two U. S. Navy doctors. If that's not enough, this dad, husband, and novelist was named among “The Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine and in 2009 was selected for the position of Surgeon General by President Barack Obama — a job he declined. To answer the aforementioned question, Sanjay spent the last year traveling the world, finding where people live longer, happier and more functional lives than anywhere else on the planet. The result of his quest is the recently-aired CNN Original Series Chasing Life — must-see TV if you haven't caught it already. Today we cover his origin story and incredible career. We discuss the responsibility of journalism in the era of alternative facts — and the role storytelling has played in his personal brand of reporting. We talk about his time in the White House, what it's like covering overseas conflict zones overseas, and how he manages his work- life balance. In addition, we canvass the current state of health care in America, what he learned about health, happiness and longevity in the course of producing Chasing Life, and the not to be overstated incredible impact Sanjay has had on my own life. Over the years Sanjay has become a good friend, as well as a mentor to me. He is someone I have wanted to get on the show from day one. I love this guy, and I’m delighted to help share his story with you today. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/sanjaygupta446 (please subscribe!) 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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• 1:04Speaker 01

  I love our healthcare system in this country. I'm a member of it, and I practice in it. But I also recognize that we spend $3.5 trillion on healthcare, and we don't get in return what we should for that. We have dropping life expectancy three years in a row. We're 23rd in the world with regard to life expectancy, behind Cyprus and Chile and Costa Rica. They're all ahead of us. We're expected to drop even further over the next 20 years. So there must be places around the world where people are living happier, healthier, better lives than we are. And I want to know what they're doing.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I want to know how they're doing it, and to understand what really works, prove it, and bring those stories back to the viewers.

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  That's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:08Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. I think we can all agree that Western medicine is a good thing, an extraordinary thing. The progress, the scientific advances that we've made when it comes to everything from the diagnosis, the treatment, and the curing of acute conditions, previously thought incurable diseases, is absolutely staggering. But I also think that with these breakthroughs comes a sort of arrogance, an arrogance that we have it all figured out, that systems and modalities that exist outside the very

• 2:47Rich Roll?

  narrow rubric of our Western medicine paradigm are of no value, that they are archaic or anachronistic, outdated legacies of less developed cultures and minds. But is this always the case? Or do lessons remain to be learned from taking an objective look at how other cultures approach health and well-being? My name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast. And today, I field that question with our guest. His name is Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Sanjay Gupta, M.D. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because it probably is.

• 3:28Rich Roll?

  In addition to being a practicing neurosurgeon, Sanjay has a habit of showing up on television screens around the world as the multiple Emmy Award-winning chief medical correspondent for CNN, something he's been doing for many years. And to answer this question, Sanjay travels around the world. He looks for people who live longer, live happier, live more functional lives than anyone else on the planet, kind of like my buddy Dan Buettner did with all the work he's done with the Blue Zones, but also a little bit different. And Sanjay pulled all of this together for this really cool CNN original series that aired recently called Chasing Life. It's really great.

• 4:12Rich Roll?

  It's a must-watch if you haven't seen it already. And it's just a part of what we're going to cover with this man today.

• 4:27Rich Roll?

  Okay, Sanjay Gupta. Oh, he's a beautiful man of many talents. Neurosurgeon, bestselling author, television show creator, investigative journalist, war correspondent, husband, father. I mean, I don't know if there's anything this guy can't do. And if that's not enough, in 2009, President Barack Obama offered him the position of U.S. Surgeon General, which he declined. We talk about that today. And today, we cover it all. We cover his origin story, his incredible career, the importance of storytelling in journalism, what it was like to work in the White House, what it was like covering conflict zones overseas, how he manages his work-life balance, the current state of healthcare in

• 5:12Rich Roll?

  America, what he learned traveling the world to study health, happiness, and longevity doing his Chasing Life show, and the not-to-be-overstated incredible impact that he has had on my own life. So, I love this man. Sanjay is a friend. He is a mentor. He's somebody I've wanted to get on the show from the get-go. And I'm delighted to help share his story with you guys today. I do want to mention one final little weird thingy I feel like I need to address. During the conversation, about 55 minutes in or so, right when I felt like we were finally just getting warmed up and hitting our stride, Blake, my video guy, slips me

• 5:56Rich Roll?

  this note that I guess was from Sanjay's publicist that said Sanjay had a hard out and that I had five minutes to wrap up the whole thing. So, needless to say, this was news to me. I was pretty sure that I cleared a good two-hour window for this conversation. So, suddenly, I found myself in a pickle, in a bit of a predicament, what to do in this moment. And I opted to just relent, which meant having to bring this whole thing to a rather inelegant close, which was less than ideal.

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  So there was just lots of stuff that I wanted to talk to him about that was left on the table, stuff that I planned to talk to him about that I just couldn't get to. And so that's why the whole thing might sound a little bit awkward and rushed in the final minutes, which is kind of a bummer. One hour conversations aren't really what I do. But I do want to make sure you know that none of this was Sanjay's fault. He was totally good to go as long as I wanted to talk. I don't think he had any idea about any of this. And the irony here is that I don't actually think there was a hard out. That's the odd thing. I'm pretty sure it was a publicist thing. So I'm just gonna leave

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  it at that. Nonetheless, like I said, Sanjay is awesome. I really do love this man and there's plenty here to enjoy. So that's it. This is me and the great Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Who came up with the three meals a day anyway?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  The food industry.

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, the vested interests, you just start channeling it further and further back. And yeah, I mean, you know, and then I think it got sustained by our own emotional needs, you know, as a substitute for, you know, the comfort foods, so to speak.

• 7:48Rich Roll?

  And then it became entrenched conventional wisdom that breakfast is the most important meal of the day forever. And now that's sort of out the window. It's interesting how these things change, as they should, as we learn more, right?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, and it's funny when you're, when you're a TV doc doing this stuff, because you know, you always get accused of flip flopping, right? That's the thing. One study today, another study tomorrow, and you can sort of see why people get a little annoyed by that. And breakfast was a good example. Because I've always said that, I think, and I think you and I even had this kind of conversation, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a peasant, you know, front load your calories. That made the most sense. And, and there were studies that I read said, well, you will eat fewer calories than throughout the day, you won't have as many cravings, all this sort of stuff, you'll be more productive earlier in the day. And then the study comes out that says, actually, if you eat a big

• 8:43Speaker 01

  breakfast, you're not likely to lose weight. And everybody's like, are you kidding me? And first of all, they blame me.

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  I based my whole life on this idea. Yeah. And somehow it's your fault.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Right. But you know, the thing about it is that those studies are just really hard to do. Almost all of them, they they count on people recalling their meals really well. They count on people being honest about what they

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, super unreliable.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Super unreliable. And then if you actually looked at the data, the the difference in weight was about 1.6 pounds. Now, it's not nothing, but you know, it it's not, you know, sort of earth shattering either. Yeah, but but the but the sort of binary responses, breakfast no longer good.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  You know, that that ends up being the headline. And you know, if you if people want to dig just a just another layer under the surface, they get a more complete picture of things. So I still think breakfast is the most important meal.

• 9:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  You know, and

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  Have you experimented with intermittent fasting?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I in fact, I did Walter Longo's program where I did the five days. And I ate the sort of, you know, the meal replacements, which I guess was probably under 500 calories a day. And the one thing he said to me, and I experienced it was sort of by end of day two. You think you're hungry day one, end of day two, I felt great.

• 10:03Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  I actually felt like I probably had more energy than a guy who'd just eaten 500 calories for the entire day. And he says it's because all of a sudden your body is forced into this production of new stem cells.

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  And it gives you this jolt of energy and I anecdotally, I felt it.

• 10:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  I I

• 10:21Rich Roll?

  How about on day five, day six? How long did you do it for?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  You know, it's I did. I did five days and I'll tell you by day five, I sort of thought to myself, I had a fleeting thought that if this was the rest of my life. I could probably do it.

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I could. I could do it. I I'd probably have days where I splurge from time to time. But for the most part, eating, you know, a low calorie diet like that. Um, I, you know, once I got past the first day and a half, I found it not that not that challenging.

• 10:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. I mean, I've been doing intermittent fasting where I just eat dinner. You know, like, and I I've kind of acclimated to that, like even when I'm training, I find that unless I'm training really hard. And it's not something I would recommend doing all the time, but to kind of tap into that once in a while.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  It's empowering too, because you realize like, I don't, you don't have to be dependent on These things that you think you can't go more than a couple hours without.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:15Rich Roll?

  And I always, people must ask you all the time, like, oh, you travel all the time. How do you, what do you do on airplanes? You're on airplanes constantly. It's like, well, at the most, you're looking, unless you're going intercontinental, you're looking at five or six hours.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  It's not that big of a deal, really.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  True.

• 11:30Rich Roll?

  Bring some nuts, some bananas, or something like that, and you can get by.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Don't get sucked into the bad snacks and all that kind of stuff. You won't, you will regret that decision. Stay hydrated, you know, try and get some sleep, you know, the basics sort of apply for sure. But I think that not, not sort of saying, well, I deserve to, to be able to break a bad, break a habit and, you know, do something, a cheat food or whatever. You don't, you don't necessarily deserve that, you know, that's the thing. Just because you're traveling. So I try and be good about it, you know, even if I'm on the road.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  You're on the road all the time now, aren't you?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, I'm on the road a lot.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  In some ways, I find that I can be more disciplined on the road. I'm, the only person that I'm accountable to on the road is me.

• 12:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  When I'm home, I have my wife and I have three kids and, you know, I gotta be a team player. So, you know, if, if a meal may involve something that I otherwise would not eat, am I gonna be obstinate and say, you know, I refuse to eat, you know, or make everyone else eat what I want to eat, you know? And so, you know, it's just, it's, it's, it's living. Luckily, you know, my wife, who you've, you've met is, is, she's interested in the same things that I am. And our kids have developed really good palates. We used to stick all kinds of food on their high chair tray when they were babies and let them just try different things. And I think they developed good, interesting palates as a result. They like all, all different foods.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's good. That's encouraging. I mean, it's hard to get kids eating healthy.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Although, like you've always said, and you even, you said it last night, is that I think that our default position probably is to want to eat food out of the ground. It's, it's, it's very, it's very natural. It's, you know, if left to our own devices and no, no exposure to all the other things around us, advertising and all these other choices, we probably would eat, you know, as humans, a very specific way, which would be a good way to eat.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  But that exposure is a problem. And when you have kids, they are exposed to those things and you're not always controlling their environment. And so it becomes a, a bit of a dance, trying to guard that, you know?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  Well, um. I'm really excited to have you here.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  It means a lot that you would take time out of your busy schedule to sit with me. And there's just a couple of things I want to say and publicly. One is that since I started this podcast, you've been at the top of my list as somebody I wanted to

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  have this conversation with. And just to kind of create a little context, you have played a massive role, whether you're aware of it or not, in my own personal story. You know, back in 2008, 2009, when I started doing these Ultra events and trying to figure out how I was going to change my life and having made certain progress in that regard. I was still practicing law and very unhappy in that and trying to, you know, sort of read the tarot cards about what would come next. And you unbeknownst to me had taken an interest in my story and came out here. We did a story. I wrote a little blog post for CNN. And it really changed the trajectory of my life.

• 14:37Rich Roll?

  I mean, that was, you know, perhaps from your perspective, you know, just an interesting small gesture, but it was one that really kind of moved the tectonic plates on how I thought about what I do and the possibilities for what it could become. And you really catalyzed an energy in me and have encouraged me from afar and sort of mentored me from afar to kind of blaze this path that I'm on. So I just wanted to thank you for that and acknowledge that. It's been super meaningful to me.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Rich, thank you. I mean, that's, that's, it means a lot to me. I want to, we have these mics in front of us, so I lean across the table and give you a hug. I, I, that means a lot that you, that you tell that story. And, you know, we don't know sometimes about, you know, how life's going to unfold or the people that we're going to meet. And I definitely felt like when we met and, and I was super inspired by your, your story, you know, just, just what you had overcome. And, and I think we're all trying to overcome something. And even in my own life at the time, I was trying to overcome things. So selfish in a way because I draw off your energy. But man, you, you've, I'm so proud of you and I think everyone's so proud of you and looks at you as a beacon of inspiration.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  When I'm, when I'm working out and I'm digging deep and I feel like I cannot dig any deeper, I think of you. I think of Rich Roll. I think of that picture on the cover of Finding Ultra. No, seriously, you really, you really are. I mean, and you, there's you, the majority of people that you've inspired are people you will never meet, you know, there's just all these people out there who, who you, you touch and I mention your name, I say, I'm going to see you and you know, they, they, they know you, they, they're inspired by you, you've, you've changed their lives. So I, I appreciate that I've done something small for you because you've done so, so much for so many people.

• 16:23Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate that. And, and you're a big reason of, you know, why I started this podcast and kind of wanted to propagate and spread this message of health and wellness and longevity and fitness and all the things, you know, that we, that we both love. So let's get into it a little bit. I mean, the first, you know, you, you have a really interesting story and trajectory of how you became, you know, I'm always interested in the superhero origin story. You do so many things. In addition to being the chief medical correspondent for CNN, I mean, you're doing docu series, you're, you do 60 minutes, are you still doing 60 minutes?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Right now, that's on hold. I gotta, you know, you gotta make decisions in terms of.

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Writing books and you had a television show for a while, Monday mornings. Like, how do you balance all of this?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Um, I think you need to be realistic at any given time in terms of what you're, you're taking on. Uh, you know, there's, there's, it's, it's a full life, but I think for me, all these various things fit together in some way. I don't think of the, of them as independent things. I, I think, you know, if you're, if you're doing a lot of things in life, no matter what, what they are, finding time to really figure out what the connective tissue is between these things makes a big difference. Um, it makes it easier for you to organize your time, to prioritize things, to figure out how you can get, uh, multiple sort of use out of something. Like if you're working on something and you think, well, that could also be beneficial to another project or to somebody else who's working on something to make sure that you're constantly

• 17:52Speaker 01

  collaborating that way and sharing. I mean, for me, you know, medicine and health and wellness has always been the common denominator. I continue to practice medicine, you know, which is my first and truest love. That kind of pulls everything together. But the idea that, you know, when I see patients in the office, 90% of them don't need an operation, they just need to be educated about something.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Through television, we're sort of doing the same thing. You know, the docu-series to me was based on the realization that, that when I teach people things, stories are what matter. Stories are what really force something into the brain, make it memorable, and make it more likely to be shared. So it's still teaching. It's still educating my patients or potential patients, but just in different ways. So I learned something one place, I apply it somewhere else, and it's busy, but it's really good. Really good.

• 18:45Rich Roll?

  How often are you practicing medicine? What does that aspect of your schedule look like?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  You know, on, on paper, it's, it's sort of like a 50/50 split. I mean, I operate every Monday.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Every other Friday, I see patients in the office on Thursdays.

• 18:59Rich Roll?

  I think people would be really surprised to hear that. I, I would imagine most people don't realize that you're actually still a practicing doctor.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I know. It's, it's funny, and it's, it's, it's funny for me, because that, that is still very much how I see myself, you know? I mean, I, I started thinking about medicine when I was 16 years old, and I finished medical school 26 years ago now. And I've been practicing neurosurgery, you know, for, for a good 20 years. And so it's, it's, um, it's a big part of my life, and, and I, you know, I think I see everything through that lens still. Um, uh, through medicine, through neuroscience, through, you know, my interest in the brain and the spinal cord and all that. But, but I've, in some ways, kept those parts of my life a little separated. I never wanted, and the people at CNN are, are so good at, I operate on Mondays, they, they know that.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  They, they leave me alone.

• 19:51Rich Roll?

  Ronnie's not like texting you.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Ben is not, typically not. But, um, you know, it's, but it's, it's gonna be busy. Sometimes you'll get breaking news and things that, uh, but, you know, they, they all say, and, and I say that, you know, obviously my hospital life and hospital world comes first.

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  And I'm, I see myself as a doctor first, and, and luckily, they see the world that way as well, and they're very respectful of it. So 18 years now, I've been doing this, and it's, that sort of blended life has sort of worked out.

• 20:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. So you grew up in Michigan?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:25Rich Roll?

  A precocious, smart kid born to Indian immigrants.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  First, first generation, your parents are first generation?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  First generation, yeah, yeah. Mom was born in what is now Lahore, Pakistan. People know of maybe this partition that happened in forty seven led to the greatest, largest, I should say, human migration really in history all through South Asia. My mom was one of those people, was a five year old kid who then lived as a refugee for the first dozen or so years of her life. My dad was from northern India, you know, they, they ended up meeting in the States, which is very unusual for people, for Indians who got married at that time. It was almost all arranged marriages. It's kind of a funny story. My mom is, is, goes to school in Oklahoma. She comes here to go to engineering school.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  She wants to become the first woman engineer in the automotive industry. So drives from Oklahoma to Detroit. That's, you know, that's where the cars are being made. And ironically enough, her car breaks down in Ann Arbor. So she's immigrant from the other side of the world. On this, this mission to become the first woman engineer in the automotive industry. She has no friends, no money, broken down car. And what do you do, right? You're in a strange town. So you go to the phone book and you look for Indian sounding names. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was like, right? So you go to an actual phone booth and you pick up an actual phone book and, and you look up names. And so most common Indian name Patel, right?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  So goes and finds a Patel, calls Patel.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Cold calls.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Cold calls and, but you know, when you're, when you're living in such a small, you know, community of people at that point, nothing's a cold call because everybody, everybody is so, they want to take care of each other and they want, they want, they're really invested in everyone's success. So calls this Patel guy, but he's not home. His roommate is, whose last name is Gupta.

• 22:25Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Hmm, her future husband.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. So what is this like late fifty, fifty's or early sixty's or something?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's late sixties, it's sixty six, sixty seven, that timeframe.

• 22:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  And so they, they, they get married and. It's a, it's a love marriage, which is again, it's all arranged marriages at that time, but a love marriage, you know, unbelievable that it could happen and it did. And, uh, you know, so that was what 50, 51 years ago.

• 22:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You come out three years later, basically. They didn't waste any time.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  That was quicker than that.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  It was a real love marriage.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  And did she become an engineer in the automotive industry?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  She became an engineer in the automotive industry and she was the first woman ever hired as an engineer, which is, which is kind of incredible, right? She, she, for a woman who was a refugee on the other side of the world for the first 12 years of her life, sees some book about Henry Ford when she's in a library sometime and says, that, that's it. That's absolutely what I have to do. And you know, there's, this is India. I mean, girls didn't even go to school, let alone go to college, go to grad school, talk about becoming an engineer. And so she did. We're very proud of her, you know, that, that, that was a-

• 23:39Rich Roll?

  Coming from being a refugee, for seven years, you said?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  12.

• 23:43Rich Roll?

  12. Oh my word.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  12 years. And it's, it's interesting. I, I, um, you know, she's the only person I, I know, obviously that lived that life. And you know, it's, it's, it's interesting because her way of dealing with people, her way of navigating herself through situations, her way of not taking no for an answer, you know, just being so, so, so steadfast in, in how she approaches things. I think in some ways comes from her life as a refugee. You know, a little girl in a refugee camp, you've got to figure things out. And that's, I think, it's, she's tough. She's a tough lady. If you met her, you'd love her, but you'd also see that, you know, someone who's, who's clearly been toughened by that. But yeah, she, um, she got the job as the first woman engineer and, uh,

• 24:31Speaker 01

  and, um, you know, that's, I think in a lot of ways opened up that path for a lot of other future women engineers.

• 24:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So did that make her a taskmaster as a mother?

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:39Rich Roll?

  I would imagine that you're very, uh, up, you know, sort of education focused.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Very, very education focused and very, um,

• 24:48Speaker 01

  You can't do that? I'm sorry, is that what you said? You can't do that? If I ever said, I can't do that, Mom. I'm sorry, I don't understand. You can't do that? Or you won't? You know, it's just, it was very, it was, there was always this sort of feeling like, she never, she never held it over us that, let me show you what my life was like, although we all knew the story. But the idea that we would think of something as too challenging or too hard, or you know, whatever, was probably never gonna be an acceptable excuse for her. So, "I can't" was not something that was said. Yeah. And you know, and my dad's different. You know, my dad is much more easygoing, much more lackadaisical in this regard. So, that was always an interesting tension as well in the house. You know, going to the dad instead of the mom for things. Knowing who to go to for what. Exactly.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  So, what kind of kid were you? Um, I grew up in a really small town, right? Very homogeneous, small town. The only Indian family living there. Very, um, very middle-class, you know, sort of, a lot of people who are neighbors, um, also worked in the auto industry, but mostly on the line. You know, more, more blue collar workers. My parents were young, really young when they had me, early twenties. So, um, I, I was, I think it was a, it was a, it was a good childhood because my parents were, were very invested in, in me. And, you know, my dad, you know, was a student of mathematics and taught mathematics. And he wanted to spend a lot of time with me, just teaching me things. So, it, it was good in that regard.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  But it was a tough time, I think, as well, being, um, you know, uh, Indian, living in a, in a town like that, that where I was the only person who looked like I did. Had that sense of otherness. Yeah, that sense, and it was everything, right? It was the, the type of name you had, the food that you ate, the, the religion, the cultural beliefs. In the middle of it, the Iran hostage crisis happens, and suddenly, anyone who's darker skinned is, is, is really ostracized. You know, even, even people didn't make any distinctions. You, you were either, you know, American, or you weren't. And so, there was, there was that part of it. But, but I think overall, I think it was, it was a good, it was a good childhood. I mean, I, I, because of my parents, I was allowed to like, think about things and dream about things.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And my mom was a big dreamer, you know, so she encouraged that. When was the, the doctor dream born? You know, um, it was, it was, it was interesting for me because neither one of my parents are physicians. Like a lot of my friends who, who went into medicine and who are my, you know, sort of medical colleagues now were sort of came from generational families of doctors. In some ways it was just that was their, their fate, no matter what. Uh, my parents were not doctors and, and medicine, you know, going to medical school and all that was a pretty audacious thing in terms of cost and time and all that. So there wasn't like a lot of Indian families, I think, you know, who want our son or daughter to be a doctor. That was, that wasn't necessarily the thinking in my house.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  My grandfather, uh, my, my mom's father got sick, uh, when I was young, 12 or 13 years old. And, um, was in the hospital and I, you know, he and I were very close. So we spent a lot of time together. And I think it was the first time I really got exposed to hospitals and doctors and in this case neurosurgeons because of his, he had a stroke and he ended up having to have a procedure to open up his artery, his carotid artery. And, um, I think it was the first time that I started thinking about medicine. Um, I wasn't necessarily thinking about neurosurgery at that point, but just thinking about medicine as a career. I like science. I like the idea that you could be a doctor in the healthcare world and help people as a, as a job. I thought that sounded really interesting.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  So it was around that time and it sort of, sort of grew from there.

• 28:30Rich Roll?

  Right. Uh, you end up going to University of Michigan.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  And you were part of the, the Interflex program, right? Which is this, this fast track to becoming a doctor. They combine medical school and undergrad, right? To get you like, get your degree as quickly as possible.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've done your homework.

• 28:48Rich Roll?

  I know a couple of other people that have done, they've discontinued that program.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  They discontinued it. Yeah. It's really, so it was a program that was basically designed to, to, to anticipate what they thought was going to be this, this primary care doctor shortage in the United States. So they wanted to, to basically from a young age, get people interested in, in primary care. And the way that they did that was they accepted you into medical school out of high school. Um, you just, you had to do two years of college and then you started your, your medical school classes. So it was much shorter. Um, and my parents liked it because it was much cheaper. You're saving two years of tuition.

• 29:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  But I think part of the reason that it got discontinued ultimately was that the idea that people would go into primary care fields only, it didn't, it just didn't necessarily pan out that way. And I went into neurosurgery, specialized field. Friends of mine went to ophthalmology or other, other specialized fields. So, but it was a great opportunity if you were certain you wanted to be a doctor. And I made that decision at 16 years old, that I wanted to be a doctor, which is, you know, my kid's 13. I can't imagine her making that decision, which is, you know, really not positioned.

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  I think, was it Eric Erickson? I think, you know, the, the evolutionary psychologist, he talks about the fact that really not until our mid 30s should we be making any important decisions about job, about marriage, about whatever, you know?

• 30:06Rich Roll?

  I mean, listen, I didn't start figuring it out until my mid 40s. So I don't, I don't know how somebody is supposed to know what they're, they're supposed to be doing at that age. It's crazy.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I know.

• 30:17Rich Roll?

  But our system is set up to, for that. We're supposed to know.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. You, you, you, you, you need to develop that, those decisions and have that inertia that sort of carries you in that direction early on. Otherwise you feel like you're behind.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You've missed the boat. Your life is over. It's never gonna happen. It's crazy. So where does a, where do you begin your practice then?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  So, you know, the way the neurosurgery works, after you finish med school, you do, you train and training for neurosurgery is seven years long. So it's very, it's the longest, which again wasn't something that my parents appreciated too much because you're still going into debt during that time. You're making some money, but you still have a lot of debt from med school. Then I did a fellowship on top of that. So it was like eight years long, seven and a half, eight years long. And then I stayed on at the University of Michigan for a while. I had trained there, went and did my fellowship elsewhere, came back and stayed on faculty there. And then a few years after that, moved to Atlanta and the Emory Clinic. And Emory Clinic has sort of been home for 18 years.

• 31:18Rich Roll?

  Right. So how does the whole media career begin? Somebody knock on your door and say, hey, you got a face for television?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Face for radio.

• 31:27Rich Roll?

  How's this happen?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  The, um,

• 31:30Speaker 01

  It's really serendipitous and, you know, there's no strategy here. And so like people, when I'm trying to give people advice on blending their lives with something else, I have to remind them that sometimes you've just gotta accept things that are serendipitous. So for me, you know, in the midst of this, when I was in my training, I got really interested in healthcare policy and writing about it. And I worked at the White House for a while, mostly writing about healthcare policy, working as a White House Fellow.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  It's like early 2000s when you were doing that?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  This is late 90s, 97, 98. So Clinton administration. And, you know, as a White House Fellow, and then very interested in healthcare and wrote speeches on healthcare for First Lady and the President. And what's interesting is that there was a guy who was running CNN at the time, named Tom Johnson, who would oftentimes come around the White House. And there's sort of a porous border, I think, between public service and White House work and media. You see it a lot nowadays, right? People sort of going from White House work, then they're becoming analysts or pundits on television. It was happening back then as well. And Tom wanted to build a medical unit. That was his desire. He had been a newspaper guy at the LA Times, ran the LA Times, now was doing television,

• 32:44Speaker 01

  knew that medical and health and wellness was just a really important thing that he didn't think was getting enough coverage. He wanted to build a medical unit. And this was in 97. He was talking to me about this. And I frankly didn't know what that meant. It was, there was no context for it. You know, there was occasionally medical reports on television, but like an entire medical unit. You know, what would that do? What would it be doing when it wasn't actively doing television? You know, all that sort of stuff. So I kind of, I kind of, you know, we kept in touch, but I didn't really understand what that sort of work would entail. Four years later, five years later, I moved to Atlanta to take this job at the Emory Clinic. And I run into Tom, physically, physically run into him in the airport.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  And he's this big guy and he's got this booming, deep voice, you know. So Andre Gupta, Tom Johnson. Good to see you. You remember me? You should come by CNN. And I said, sure, you know, I'm living here now. Love to see CNN. I'm a news junkie. And I, and I go to the CNN newsroom in Atlanta and it just blew my mind. It was this amazing place where you get all these people in the middle of this newsroom who are basically taking in. Whatever news is happening anywhere in the world and they're hearing it and they're trying to determine if it's something that should be reported and if it's going to be reported, how would they do it? Do they send people to go to the area where the news is happening and all this stuff? Just curious people who somehow had their fingers on the

• 34:12Speaker 01

  pulse of the world's news. And I thought that'd be really interesting.

• 34:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  I'd love to be a part of that.

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  And so prior to this, there was no sort of health department at CNN of any formal nature.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Right. It, it, there was, there were people who sort of had niche interests in medical and health and wellness stories and, but not, now you have an entire unit where that's, that's what they, they're medical producers and they work in this particular unit. That is their, that is the, the types of stories that they're always interested in pursuing and looking at. So it's, it's totally different, I think, in some ways because of Tom over the last 20 years.

• 34:49Rich Roll?

  Right. So he says, come on board. You say, okay. And then?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, so, so now just keep in mind, the timing here is really interesting because it was August of 2001 and, and you know, it's first term, first year of George W. Bush's presidency and I'm a healthcare policy guy, right? Besides practicing neurosurgery, healthcare policy is kind of how he knows me from the White House stuff. And he's like, you can talk about, you know, the president's new healthcare plan, because there was a healthcare plan back then as well. And then, you know, not even a month, three and a half weeks after I started, nine 11 happens.

• 35:24Rich Roll?

  Nine 11.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  And the world changes, you know, everybody's world changed and my world, your world, everybody. And they said to me, hey, look, you know, we're probably not going to be doing health policy for a while on television. I mean, this is, this is, you know, one of the biggest stories in the world. What do you think about covering this story instead? You know, being in New York, doing, doing reports on people who, who, who didn't die, but didn't really survive either, you know, the sort of badly injured, wounded in hospitals. There was the anthrax attacks that October. And then, you know, the, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been ongoing stories for my entire career here. And I

• 36:07Speaker 01

  was always interested in, in how people take care of each other in, in battlefield situations. So all of a sudden, like within a month, my, my world, again, everybody's world, but my world really, really changed.

• 36:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so you think you're gonna be this talking head on

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 36:30Rich Roll?

  On political policy.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  And then you end up becoming embedded over in Iraq, right?

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I watched the Gulf War on television in 91 and I was riveted. I remember I was in college and I just remember the greenish screen on TV and seeing the bright lights and like, what is that? Is that those missiles going up or those bombs falling? You know, what am I looking at? And but you knew that people were getting injured and that there were people who were rushing in to help them, which I just, it still gives me chills when I think about it, you know, just total strangers and you're going in and risking your life to to help them. It just felt like the most human of all stories. And I was just curious how it even happened. Like, where were the nurses and doctors stationed? How do they get in? What do they have with them?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  What sorts of injuries were they seeing? You know, all that stuff. So when, you know, the possibility of me going into Iraq as an embedded reporter with the first Marine Expeditionary Force and a group of doctors known as the Devil Docs, I really wanted to go. I wanted, you know, I'd never done anything like that before in my life, but I knew that I wanted to be there and

• 37:44Rich Roll?

  What was the reality of that experience in the context of what you imagined it to be, or what perhaps we think, you know, just from seeing it on television?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I think, I think one of the, maybe not surprising to people in the military world, but you know, as somebody who lives a pretty fast-paced life, what you find in a, in a conflict situation like that is that 90, 95% of the time, it is, it is just totally quiet. There's just nothing happening. You know, it's still, it's almost deafeningly quiet in the middle of the desert and you're sitting there and, you know, you pitch your tent and it's, it's like sheer boredom, you know, and you end up having conversations with people and having these really Deep conversations with people because first of all, you have the time and second of all,

• 38:37Speaker 01

  there's this sort of overlying veneer that something really bad could happen at any moment. You just don't know when and that kind of makes forces these deeper sort of conversations and relationships about things that you otherwise wouldn't talk about. And then you have this whiplash, right? Going from just sheer boredom to to utter terror, you know, back and forth. And I think that that's that's was one of the surprising things to me. I just imagined it was always going to be sort of like hustle bustle and constantly strategic, like you always knew where the enemy was and they knew where you were. And, you know, you were constantly sort of strategizing, you know, like I think of Vietnam or Korea, like you fight a war across a line.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Here it was hopscotching around the desert, nobody really knowing for certain what was about to happen. You could be riding along on a convoy ride on a beautiful day, just staring at the sky and all of a sudden you're you come under fire and you think, oh, my God, I could die, you know, right now. And I was just fine looking at the sky a second ago. So things like

• 39:40Rich Roll?

  that. Wait, I'm a neurosurgeon. Why am I not back at the hospital? There's a surreal aspect of your life and your career. There must be moments in which you're like, how did I end up here?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, in no doubt. And you and I think what's what's really important, and I think it's true for anybody in any any field or anything they do is you constantly have to remind yourself of why you're doing what you're doing, you know? I mean, like covering a war and you know, I got young kids at home and my wife, obviously, you know, there was times when when things were really looking pretty bleak, when I thought, God, I am stupid, you know, I'm just

• 40:19Rich Roll?

  stupid. Why am I doing?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  I'm gonna die out here. And and then, you know, you remind yourself that the stories that you tell and getting this this this information out there is important, you know, you've got to see it as important, otherwise you probably shouldn't do it because the the price is too high to pay, you know, otherwise so. And covering conflicts, I think, are a time when you really, really remind yourself of that. Like, I really understand the importance of what we do and why we do it.

• 40:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, there's also an excitement to it and an energy to it. I mean, this is something I've talked with Dan Harris about. Like, he got so into it that he couldn't stop becoming, you know, going overseas and being involved in conflict, to the point where it really eroded his health and he had PTSD and all these issues as a result of that.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, and Dan's obviously a great example of someone who's been able to find really effective ways to deal with that. But yeah, I think, I think you, there is an addictive quality to it. I mean, there is, I think it's probably physiologic, probably not different in some ways in what you experienced with all your, your exercise, but you get that adrenaline rush and it's, it's, it's feels really good. I mean, you get these spikes of adrenaline where you're like, oh my God, like, it's almost too much. And then when you come down from it, it's like, it's, it's, it's pretty appealing. You can see why people want that sort of feeling from time to time. And I, you know, I definitely, definitely have that, you know, when we, in, working in a place like CNN, when there is breaking

• 41:49Speaker 01

  news, when something big is breaking, there's nothing like it.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  I mean, the entire company just comes together. It's galvanized and as a, as a group that I have not seen anything quite like that. So, and so I, I, I see the allure to it.

• 42:04Rich Roll?

  I was in New York City, I can't even remember why, but I went over to CNN to go see Ronnie.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:12Rich Roll?

  Who runs your unit. What's her official job title?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  What is her official job title now? It's just executive producer.

• 42:20Rich Roll?

  Executive producer. And I'm sitting with her and we're catching up and right as we're talking, the Boston Marathon bombing happened. So I was actually right with her when that occurred and I got to see. The whole newsroom jump into action.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  And figure out like what's going on, how are we going to cover this? What do we know, what do we not know? It was amazing.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  It's, it's, you know, I mean, if there's things that sort of allow a organization to, to click on all cylinders, to really, you know, use their talents to the max. Obviously tragic situation, but in terms of breaking news, CNN, when, when that happens, it's, it's unlike anything I've ever seen. I mean, the closest thing I think would be when you're working in a trauma hospital and a, and a, a child comes in who's been the victim of trauma.

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, you know, you got people coming out of the woodwork who are just like there to help. People come in from home and, you know, it's just like everything, everybody comes together and takes care of this. And it's the same sort of thing with a big story like that. And by the way, you've got a lot of, you know, before we actually start broadcasting and on television, there's so many moving parts. There's the editorial judgment, like what are we seeing here exactly? What are we willing to say on television? You know, our, our families whose, whose loved ones been affected, do they know? Or are they going to hear about it the first on TV? You know, how do we make sure that doesn't happen? Because, you know, people should, should have the courtesy of hearing these things without the rest of the world hearing it at the same time.

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, balancing that responsibility against this increasing pressure to be first and to be fast.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  That's right. And, and, you know, I mean, that, that is a, that's an interesting thing as someone who came to television sort of more mid-career. I think if you, if you grew up with, with world of TV journalism, that becomes this really important metric. I need to beat the other guy by, you know, 15 seconds, you know? I never saw the, the, the real appeal in that because I felt like if you could wait the extra, you know, time and tell a much better, more complete story or picture, it was worth it. And I think in the medical, you know, we have the luxury of doing that, you know? We, we, there's, there's absolutely no, no benefit at all for us being early and even possibly being wrong. There's just no, it's, that's, you know, you, trust is the most important thing.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So how do you think about CNN and its responsibility in this kind of culture of, you know, fake news and fast news and, you know, all the kind of epithets that get through? Around, you know, now, I mean, how do you process that? Or what are your thoughts on?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's hard. It's, it's, it's hard because, um, you know, no one ever probably looks at anything in life and says, I have a hundred percent confidence in this. I mean, there's what things in our life are absolute honest brokers, are true north stars, very few things. I mean, you know, um, small businesses in your community, you know, mom and pop stores, those are the military, there are certain organizations that tend to be very, very high trust organizations, but just about everything else, government, media, even mainstream medicine, there's always a bit of suspicion or distrust. So anything that sort of opens up that, that, that crevasse even more, the president calling, you know,

• 45:44Speaker 01

  CNN fake news, gives voice to, you know, people's sometimes totally unsubstantiated suspicions, but, but just gives it voice all of a sudden. So you, you know, it, it makes it hard. You, you have to, in some ways, you don't do anything different than you normally do. You, you want to make sure that you're right, you're accurate, you're, uh, maintain that level of trust, that relationship with the audience. But yeah, it's hard. I think it's really hard probably for the political reporters, because in, in some ways, it may even be dangerous for them, because people, um, they get really angry. And, you know, they, they, people's, there's people who, who, you know, who worry about their own physical safety as a result of, of these, I think largely unfounded suspicions. But it's, it's, it's been challenging.

• 46:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the temperature is different than it was just a few years ago. And, you know, some of that, that, that, there, there can be a healthy mistrust, and that sort of puts the pressure on the media to maintain that level of integrity and honesty. But when it tips over into, you know, insanity world. I would imagine it makes your job more difficult, but yeah, I mean, you're not overtly reporting on politics. You're you're breaking news around health, but most of what you do are these long form, kind of heavily researched, long tail stories.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, that's, that's a real luxury, certainly in our world of television, to be able to, to really dig into topics, to have programming time, long enough to be able to tell these stories. And, you know, so you feel very lucky when you get to be able to do it. But yeah, you, you, you, you have everything really buttoned up. I mean, you, you spend most of the time producing something like this, a long form medical story is, is the research, is the background. And then, you know, telling the story part of it comes very naturally. But we, we, you know, the facts and the evidence and all that really kind of lead the way with these types of stories. I feel like I get to get a mini master's degree in, you know, thousand different topics, which is, which is a lot of fun.

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you're very deft at communicating. Your communication skills are amazing. And you have this, I sort of see you as somebody who is steeped in the science and has this, you know, history and experience in, in medicine and all its facets. But you know how to take that information and translate it in a way that the everyday American can actually not only understand it, but like digest it and then implement it into some kind of tangible behavior change.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. That means a lot coming from you.

• 48:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's hard. I mean, you get a lot of scientists, like, they can't communicate with the public. Like, they don't, you know what I mean? So it doesn't matter what they're saying, because it's not penetrating.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that, you know, it's, it's interesting, because I think there's sort of two aspects, I think, when it comes to health, medical science reporting. Part of it is, I think, just an intrigue, like, people are interested in science as a general thing. I just want to understand the science of this. How would that work in the body? But the vast majority of people, when they hear these stories, they, you immediately place yourself in that situation. How does this affect me, or how does this affect the people that I love? You know, this, this new thing, and whether it be some new breakthrough in an immunotherapy drug for cancer, or breakfast isn't necessarily the most important meal of the day, whatever it may be, um, true, like, truly, empathy takes on a different meaning here in the

• 49:13Speaker 01

  sense that I really want to put myself in the viewer or listener's position here. They're hearing this, and are they screaming at the TV going, well, what does that mean? Or, or wait, you said the exact opposite thing yesterday, or whatever they might be saying, truly sort of anticipating how they're going to react to something, and, and, you know, crafting a message that you think you would want to hear, you know, something that would be important to you, or relevant to you in your life. So, it's, it's, and, and there's times when you get scientific studies that are, you know, they're, they are scientific studies, they're in journals, you know, they're, they've been peer reviewed, but they still lack a certain common sense to the way that the conclusions were drawn.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Breakfast no longer important because people, on average, over a certain period of time, weighed a pound and a half more. You know, let's, let's look into that study, really. Do they, how do, how do they know what people ate? Were people honest about what they ate? You know, to really look at data and also apply, uh, a common sense filter to it, which, after doing this for, you know, 18 years, and turning 50 this year, you know, at some point in life, you figure, like, look, I've earned the ability to, to analyze this and not just regurgitate facts and data. I, I, I should be a, a, not just an antenna that's receiving information, then putting it out there, I should be able to actually process this and make it of value in some way.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  It's not to adulterate it, or add my own editorial spin to it, as much as it is to make it, um, accessible and relevant to viewers. Here's what I took away from this study. Here's why this is important. Uh, here's why it may not be as important as you think. Here's the headline you're going to read tomorrow, but let me, let me give you a couple caveats on that headline, you know, as you, as you read this. That, that sort of thing, um, I, I think it's how I've looked at the world, so being able to apply it to, to journalism, in some ways, it was a very natural fit.

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But you didn't go to journalism school, you went to medical school. They don't, they don't teach this skill in medical school. Like, how did you learn? Did you have mentors at CNN that helped you learn this kind of craft of storytelling?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, you know, you certainly learn from, uh, you know, there's people who I work with in television that are, I think, just like Ben Tinker, who's here, just a natural storyteller. You just got really great instincts on things in terms of what I'm talking about. But I, but I do think there, there are some parallels between medicine and media this way. My wife, Rebecca, who you know, and you, you, um, uh, she loves to tell the story because, uh, you know, she, she ends up looking really good in it, which she should, um, because, but the, I, when I first started doing television, you know, I, my natural speaking style was not to be enunciating my words very clearly necessarily, and I stutter a lot and I pause for periods of time that are maybe longer than seems normal, you know, and things like

• 52:02Speaker 01

  that. And, and it was just my sort of speaking style. She, she reminded me, like, when I'm talking to patients in the clinic, you know, in the office, like, what, what was it that I was trying to convey to these patients? First of all, um, they came in, in search of something, you know, so to really be empathetic to that, to, to not be dismissive of how people are approaching an issue or how they're thinking about an issue. Two is that I really want them to understand what I'm saying. So I need to make sure that what I'm telling them is factual, but I gotta, I gotta find language and find a way of communicating it that they're really gonna understand it. And then to, you know, to, to take the time to, you know, if there's questions around it, to be able to really answer those questions. And in some ways, television is the same thing.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  The lens became the patient in some ways. And I think that was a click moment for me when, when she told me that, and for the first time, I could look at a lens and not be totally freaked out by it. Right. I mean, I would literally, like, look away from it like I was in some sort of hostage, you know, protection program. Yeah, witness protection program. And, and now I can, you know, try and make a better connection, I think, than I used to be able to, and find the right words and, and not stammer and stutter and, you know, have these weird pauses as much. Yeah.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  One of the things that I've noticed with increasing regularity is the frequency with which a scientific paper or study will come out and there'll be a news cycle around it with crazy clickbait titles that have no bearing on what that study actually said and completely mischaracterizes it, characterizes it to the extent that it's all, it is, it becomes fake news, right? And this is what generates interest, this kind of hyperbole.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:59Rich Roll?

  And it's rampant and completely out of control. There's an irresponsibility out there with how we're reporting science and medicine.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think with science and medicine, I think the stakes and the bar have to be even higher than than other things because people make decisions in their life.

• 54:16Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Based on this, sometimes small decisions, sometimes big decisions, but always important decisions. I think that one thing is, there's a lot of, you know, I'll call them fly-by-night organizations, organizations that aren't really interested in being around for the long haul. They come in, they want to, they create a lot of content quickly, they use clickbait headlines, and their goal is to basically, you know, make, make as much money as they can by generating a certain readership and viewership. But they, they don't, they're not investing as much in the long-term relationship with the consumer. Because the consumers read the articles at a company, a clickbait headline, and they say, well, wait, hang on a second, these don't match up. The headline and what you've put in the article don't match up.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  And after a while, it just becomes a violation of trust. And so, but it can last long enough, a couple of years, for companies to, you know, have generated revenue, get acquired, do whatever, and then they're out. I mean, I think, you know, there is an advantage of working at a, at a company that has been around for a long time, has, has an interest in being around for a much longer time, because they, they take the sacred relationship between, you know, the producer of the content and the consumer. They take that very seriously and you know, we try and be careful about that. I'm sure that there's examples you could point to at CNN.com of that exact thing. But I would dare say, I think it's further and fewer between as compared to other places.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, the good news is we've never seen more interest in health and wellness. I mean, this is really, you know, something that people are keen about in a way that didn't exist in prior generations or even a decade ago. Like, people really want to know the kind of information that you're imparting. And I wonder, I'm interested in your thoughts on this. I wonder whether, like, if I, you know, I'm sure I live in a silo, in a bubble, where, you know, I'm reading about all kinds of new wellness tactics and strategies and things like that.

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  But is this really, is this trend penetrating the mainstream in a meaningful way? You know, like, I saw somebody tweeted the other day, "In my Twitter feed, I see people arguing that we should only eat plants, and then other people arguing that we should only eat meat, the carnivores, but I go out in the world and I just see people eating donuts."

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Right. So it's definitely not penetrating that guy. I think, I think, I think you sort of have said this, but this idea that wellness is taken on a bit of an elitist sheen, that it's become sort of a privilege of the more wealthy or the people who have more resources. And I think there's probably some degree of truth to that, you know, to simply practice healthy behaviors for some reason seems like much more of a luxury rather than a necessity or a basic right for people. Um, I think that the first part where people are very interested in this is, is, is true. Um, and that surprised me a bit. You know, you sort of, I sort of imagined people

• 57:30Speaker 01

  would go get their information about health and wellness, you know, from their doctors or from their nurses, from, from medical establishments. And when I started doing this work, I realized that there's a real appetite for this type of knowledge in other ways, television, magazines, internet and things like that. And keep in mind, this is 18 years ago that I started. So obviously now you see that, but 18 years ago even, there was a huge, huge appetite for medical content in these ways. But I think that, um, I think that the, the, uh, the idea of, of do I trust it? Right? I, I think, I think going back to the suspicion thing, people will get this knowledge, but part of the reason it may

• 58:12Speaker 01

  not always penetrate is because do I trust it? Is someone just trying to make a buck off of me or are they, are they, is there some vested interest that I'm missing here? Or if I'm looking up a new drug, is it just the pharma company? Or do I really trust the government's recommendations on diet? Whatever it might be like, who are, who are the honest brokers when it comes to health and wellness? Who are the people who I, I, I say they have no other vested interest in, other than giving me good reliable knowledge that will help my life in some way. And, you know, it's, it's hard to find. And, and what we see in the news cycle with what's happening in the pharmaceutical industry and even with certain government guidelines, you know, the, the, the diet plans that change

• 58:56Speaker 01

  year to year. Uh, I think that just makes that sort of, uh, that makes it worse. It makes it hard to find that honest broker.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The same, uh, the same trends that give rise to mistrust of the media, you know, provide mistrust, create mistrust in the medical establishment in general.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:16Rich Roll?

  Pharmaceutical industry, people are even questioning whether their doctors really know what they're talking about.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  And of, again, there's a seed of, you know, a seed of that is healthy, but at the same time, in this internet world that we live in, um, you know, this gives rise to the flat earthers and, you know, all kinds of crazy ideas and it makes it. Difficult and challenging for the well-intentioned consumer to just find reliable information that's bankable.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, and I'm curious. I don't know how you even approach this sort of thing. I mean, I have my own sort of strategies in terms of how I find my own, I'm calling them honest brokers, just as a metaphor, but you know, where are the, where are the places that really don't seem to have any sort of conflict? Right? Because if you have conflict, now look, there's no reason that a university shouldn't be able to raise money to help fund their research labs and, you know, keep the, keep the hospital, you know, afloat and all that sort of stuff. But if, if, if there's real conflicts here, if you may now make a decision that you otherwise wouldn't have made or reach a conclusion that you otherwise would not have reached

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  because of a financial relationship with, with something or someone or whatever, that's obviously a problem. And if it happens once, I think the, the trust is totally, totally violated. So it's, it's hard to find. I mean, I, I'm not, you know, I'd like to think that we in, in the world of journalism get to do that. I feel like I've had a chance to do that because I don't, you know, I don't take any money from anyone other than my employers, you know, I don't have any, any conflicts whatsoever, which sometimes people find hard to believe. They just assume everyone has vested interest in some way. But I've been, you know, really, really diligent about that because not only because it's, I don't think it's right, but also because once it gets in your headspace,

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  I think it's very hard then to be objective on things. You know, if you feel like even in the back of your mind, you may have some kind of conflict. I think it's really hard to be objective. But, but I think it's harder for people to find those honest brokers who are truly objective in their lives. And, you know, that, that makes it challenging for this stuff to penetrate.

• 1:01:29Rich Roll?

  So then how do you vet your information sources?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  It's so this is a it's a big process for me, you know, I it's first of all, even reading a medical journal article. So, you know, people will say, well, it's peer reviewed. It's a double blinded randomized controlled trial. Enough said, right? That's it. I I I think I have the ability now to to look at this stuff and and first of all, look at the methods of a study, really understand how they how they sort of progressed through this. What were they? What was their hypothesis in the first place? Did they have some sort of preordained, you know, sort of conclusion before they even started the study? How did that influence the findings? And and then to be able to take that and and analyze it

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  myself. So in some ways, I'm taking existing knowledge, but then applying, you know, two decades worth of analysis to it. I think one of the best examples for me, and this is something where I I I learned something personally, because I think I was wrong on this, was medicinal marijuana.

• 1:02:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  You know, it was it was not a a thing that I thought had, you know, frankly, much merit when I first looked at it. But after I was able to look at existing studies and apply my own my own analysis, my own common sense, my truly unconflicted, you know, objective opinion and and thoughts on this, I reached different conclusions. So so, you know, that that's just that's that's an example.

• 1:02:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  It's existing knowledge with with a healthy dose of of homework analysis and healthy skepticism.

• 1:03:06Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, the marijuana example was was a big deal when it happened. And you kind of made this formal apology, you know, said I I had said these things in the past. But now, after, you know, immersing myself in the science and and learning about all of this, I've changed my mind.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Rich Roll?

  And that made like headlines around the world, like, oh, my goodness, like, doctor changes his mind.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:03:29Rich Roll?

  It goes back to what we were talking about at the very outset of the conversation. It's like, science evolves.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:35Rich Roll?

  You learn as you go. And I worry about a culture in which we're not allowed to change our minds.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. I I 100% agree with you. I mean, you know, what kind of world would that be where we just figure that we already know it all?

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  We're not going to learn anything new. I I will say with with the with the medical marijuana and cannabis in general. With all due respect to the scientists that were out there, you know, really pounding the drums on this long before I changed my mind. I mean, for them, they look at me and they say, well, yeah, you know what? It wasn't that science evolved so much.

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  It's that, you know, the establishment, both medical, governmental, um, just bought into this idea that this was a substance that was, uh, had, was highly toxic, highly addictive, and had no medical benefit. And it was a Schedule I substance. And everyone, that's just the way it is.

• 1:04:26Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  And oftentimes, people don't do, do the extra digging. You know, a lot of the data that I ended up really looking at that, that informed my new, newly changed mind was data that existed. Um, it sometimes existed in labs outside the United States, existed in labs that were not federally funded. I mean, when you have a substance that is already, you know, preordained as having no medical benefit, it's very hard to do research on it. It's illegal, and the scientific community is already saying, you know, go look somewhere else. There's nothing to see here. Uh, and everyone bought into that.

• 1:05:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So there's the cultural barriers and the cognitive bias that

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:05:08Rich Roll?

  prevents that realization from occurring.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, you know, by the way, you, you, you write something like I write where, and I can't remember what the headline was, but I think it was like, Why I Changed My Mind. And I wrote this thing, and, you know, uh, I wasn't sure how it was gonna be taken. And I wasn't sure how it was gonna be taken by people who'd read it as a, as an op-ed piece, but I wasn't sure how it was gonna be taken by my colleagues in medicine. And, you know, I work in an academic university, uh, how the deans and, you know, the, the leadership was gonna take it. I mean, it was, it was, it was a little nerve-wracking in that regard. In the end, I was comfortable with it because, you know, we spent a long time doing this research. I mean, it was well cited and, you know, it had all the, all

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  the sources for why I was saying what I was saying. But, you know, people could still say, hey, look, you became a guy who's endorsing an illegal substance that doesn't have any medical benefit. We're not sure that you should be X, practicing medicine anymore, B, being a journalist anymore, whatever, you know? So it was, it was, it was, it was, it was tough.

• 1:06:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you stuck your neck out. My, my recollection of that moment was that it was a big media event, but it was

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  Something that was ultimately embraced. I'm sure you got some marginal blowback from some people, but overall, I think people were, you know, were kind of delighted.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Rich Roll?

  That you were coming out in a very public way to say this.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  I think so, you know, and, and I think people who were, who were knowledgeable about this topic, but maybe had never really dug into the science now had this, this, this article, you know, that had all these citations where you could spend a couple of hours reading this and looking at the sources and reading the studies and saying, wow, I kind of get it now. I understand why this could be medically beneficial. I understand what it does in the brain. I understand why it might help people with inflammatory bowel disease, with pain disorders, with epilepsy, whatever it might be. Like you could become knowledgeable about this. So it wasn't just a emotional argument that people were making based on, you know, on, on sort of the reefer madness of the mid 30s or early 40s, whenever that

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  was. So it, it, um, and that was, that was pretty, pretty gratifying. I got these calls from some calls that I, you know, to this day, stick with me from people in the medical world, um, who, who say, look, you can't talk about me publicly, but, and you know, there's sort of revered people in that world who came out and said, yeah. I mean, I, I gave this to my father when he was suffering with, with the side effects of chemotherapy and it really helped him. Or I saw how this helped a kid with, with refractory seizures, you know, who's having 300 seizures a week. Uh, I got a call from a judge in New York, someone who had actually been responsible for putting people away, you know, for the

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  real sort of, you know, criminal aspects of, of marijuana and, uh, who, who, who recognized that maybe there had been people who had been taking it for medical reasons, who, who had been, you know, treated as criminals and person was very upset and actually started weeping on the phone. So that, some of that was pretty powerful. It didn't seem to follow any particular political line, gender line, young, old. I mean, everyone, everyone in some ways had a story to tell. And, um, you know, that was, that was pretty amazing to me.

• 1:08:32Rich Roll?

  How do you make decisions about the stories that you want to pursue?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Um, you know, there's, there's always the news aspect of it. So things that are in the news, I think, drive, that that's the biggest driver of what we do, you know, things that are currently happening in the news. And we'll look at opportunities to, to educate people more about an issue because of something that's happening in the news. So like when, you know, Bill Clinton had his heart operation.

• 1:09:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Uh, people were very interested because he's president of the United States. Um, but here was an opportunity to educate people about heart disease, but also about a plant-based diet, something that he had adopted, uh, to try and control his own heart health. Um, you know, so that that's it. But the news really ends up being a big driver. When you're doing a docu-series or a series of, of, you know, longer form things, sometimes you have the, the, the luxury of being able to look into things that are totally, totally enterprise stories. They don't necessarily have any particular news value in the current news cycle, but they're so interesting. We think they're so relevant that they're going to make some sort of impact on people's lives that we still do it. And, uh, and so those are the two big ways.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  The news is the big tip of the spear, but the idea of being able to do enterprise reporting about things we find interesting is, um, is also something that we do quite a bit.

• 1:09:53Rich Roll?

  So what was the thought process that went into the newest series, Chasing Life, where you traipse all over the globe trying to unlock the secrets of health and longevity?

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Uh, you, you should, you would love going on these trips.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  I would. I'm jealous.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  I know. It's, it's, it's, it's wild. It's, it's, it's a lot of fun. It's, it's really super interesting. But the, but the basic thought process was, um, it was very simple in a way. Um, I love our healthcare system in this country. I'm a, I'm a member of it and I practice in it. But I also recognize that, uh, you know, we spend three and a half trillion dollars on healthcare and we don't get in return what we should for that. We, we, we have dropping life expectancy three years in a row. We're 23rd in the world with, with regard to life expectancy behind Cyprus and Chile. And Costa Rica, they're all ahead of us. Uh, we're expected to drop even further over the next 20 years. So there must be places around the world.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Where people are living happier, healthier, better lives than we are. And I want to know what they're doing. I want to know how they're doing it and to understand what really works. Uh, you know, prove it and, and bring those stories back to, to the viewers. That was, that was it. I think, you know, we live in a really global world now. I think when I first started practicing medicine, the idea of, you know, some far eastern tradition, well, that's, that's, that's something fringe and crazy and acupuncture and massage and all that. And now we have real data behind these things. Well, there's all sorts of thousands of practices like this around the world that we could learn from. That are easily incorporated into our lives and we could benefit.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it's exciting. You go to India, you go to Japan, Bolivia.

• 1:11:39Rich Roll?

  Turkey, yeah, all these cool places. Yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it was, it was, it was amazing. Yeah. You know, I got to live in the middle of the Amazon rainforest with an indigenous tribe in Bolivia. I spent time in mainland Japan, the most stressed country in the world, but also Okinawa, where people live over a hundred more than other places. Italy, you know, it's the healthy country. Despite their, their, their love of food and, and alcohol and all that sort of stuff. How do they stay so healthy? I, you know, it was, it was, it was an amazing experience for me. I would have done it if I didn't, you know, even if I didn't have a series to produce, I would have still done these trips just to learn.

• 1:12:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And what's interesting is that so many of these kind of quote unquote secrets. Are, you said it last night, they're like, well, it's kind of common sense and it's kind of obvious. Like they're just living more in alignment with the natural rhythms of, of the earth and the planet. And they're in environments that are conducive to community and eating well and sleep and a reduction in stress and all of these things that we have to combat our environment to master.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  I, that, that, that was probably the most surprising thing to me is like, even when we were writing, you know, and starting to tell the stories. I thought to myself several times, you know, This is gonna make sense to people, right? Because this is so obvious. Some of this is so obvious that we live the way humans should live. We move the way humans should move. We fuel our bodies the way humans, for most of our existence on this earth, have fueled their bodies. That's the way we evolved. Those are the receptors in our body. That's how we were designed. It sounded so obvious sometimes, and yet I would say these things and people would say, "Really? Wow, that's amazing. I would have never thought that."

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  It's like, well, you should have thought that because, you know, we are but the blink of an eye in our human existence, and it doesn't take much research to think about how we evolved and why we evolved the way that we do. I mean, even going back to the cannabis thing, we have cannabis receptors in our body. Why are they there? How did we interact with our environment in a way that would have evolved us to have cannabis receptors in our body? What do they do? How do we stimulate them, you know? And there's countless examples like that. So, I got in some ways to tell people something that was so basic and so fundamental, but needs constant reminding.

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and profound.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and profound. I mean, I love the discussion around it because I feel like it's totally defensible. Like, whatever we're talking about, I can explain really well, not in terms of just how it works, why it works, but the fact that this is the way it should work. This is how we humans evolved, and it feels big. You know, I feel humbled by it in some ways.

• 1:14:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, my friend, you have a heart out, and I'm gonna have to let you go. Before I do that, if you can indulge me with one last question. Do we have time?

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  Really quick?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Rich Roll? Healthiest man in the world.

• 1:14:43Rich Roll?

  This is, I've asked this question to a number of doctors that have been on the program.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Was that the question? I'm gonna yell a piece of paper?

• 1:14:50Rich Roll?

  No, this is saying that you gotta go.

• 1:14:54Rich Roll?

  I don't have to go, do this all day.

• 1:14:58Rich Roll?

  If you, if you suddenly became Surgeon General of the United States, which was actually a very real possibility for you, you were very close. Obama wanted you to become the Surgeon General. You ended up declining that amazing opportunity. But had you taken advantage of that? Or should that ever become your reality in the future? What would be the first order of business? I know it's a two hour answer to that, but.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  There's so many, there's so many big, important issues, I think, that, you know, we're dealing with in this country. And I think, you know, most of the diseases that people are taking care of in hospitals are totally preventable due to lifestyle issues and, and the types of foods that we eat. I would certainly work on our food policy, which I think would change a lot of the way that we look at medicine and health and wellness overall. I would really beat the drum on our energy policy and its impact on human health. Some of the regulatory or deregulatory policies that are happening now are frightening and, and totally unnecessary and will have a long-term impact on human health. Those things, the opioid crisis, there's all these things that, you know, I'd want

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  to dig into, but I'll tell you one thing that has surprised me and that I've learned. And that is the, the, the real toxic impact of, of social isolation on our, on our emotional health, our, our, our mental health. And I think in, in terms of our outlook on the world. I mean, we are dying in this country, deaths of desperation, higher than any other developed country in the world. Self-inflicted deaths, essentially, suicide, overdose, liver cirrhosis due to alcoholism. And, and I think a lot of it has to do with this sort of psychic stress that we're dealing with in this country. And I think social isolation, loneliness, lack of community, lack of social fabric is a, is a big part of that.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  And I, and I always, I hesitate a little bit when I say this because I know it sounds sort of hard to define around the edges. Fuzzy like what does that mean exactly? How would you invest in in creating a social fabric? Well, I have all sorts of ideas on that. But one thing I would start off by saying is that most countries around the world do invest heavily in social fabric, making people feel like they have a true safety net, that they're not forgotten, that they're a part of something larger than themselves. And I think the impact on physical health is something that we have learned so much about. When you live a life where you feel some sort of predictability, some sort of security, everything else follows from that. Like the bigger problems, we'll figure we'll figure out the the big ones that we're talking about.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  But you want to treat the root cause versus just the symptoms? That's one that I would focus on for our generation and certainly for the next generation as well.

• 1:17:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a solid answer, my friend.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:17:51Rich Roll?

  All right, I have to release you to your life. Thank you so much for doing this. I just want to again acknowledge you for the amazing work that you do. You're an inspiration to not only me, but millions of people all over the world. And you know, I just love watching your career from afar. And it's an honor and a privilege to to know you and talk with you here today. So thank you.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Thank you. Love you, brother.

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  All right. Love you too. Chasing Life on CNN.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Rich Roll?

  What's next?

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Let's chase life.

• 1:18:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, all right. Come back and talk to me again, please.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  Peace. Let's.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  All right. What do you guys think? I think we can all agree that Sanjay is the best. He's super cool. But I think I'm referring more to how I tried to like wrap the whole thing up gracefully. Oh, what I could have done with another hour. But hey, I did my best. And again, Sanjay was amazing. So please let Sanjay know what you thought of today's conversation. You can hit him up on Instagram or Twitter at Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And don't forget to check out the CNN original series, Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Set your DVR to record it. If you are struggling with your diet, if you are really desiring of mastering your plate, but feel like you don't really know what to do in the kitchen, or you don't have the skills or the time.

• 1:19:15Rich Roll?

  I cannot tell you how much I think our Plant Power Meal Planner can help you. We basically created this.

• 1:19:23Rich Roll?

  Product to solve a very basic problem. How do you make nutritious, delicious eating convenient? And I think we did that, and I'm really proud of this product. It's helping a lot of people out there. To check it out, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website, and there you will get access to thousands of plant-based recipes that are delicious, easy to prepare, and completely customized based on your personal preferences. You get unlimited grocery lists, you get grocery delivery integrated into the product in most metropolitan areas, and you get access to an incredibly experienced team of nutrition coaches who are available to you seven days a week to answer all your questions. And you get all of this for just $1.90 a week, basically nothing, literally a cup of coffee.

• 1:20:08Rich Roll?

  So again, to learn more and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you would like to support the work we do here on the podcast, I would appreciate that, and there's a couple of simple ways to do it. Just tell your friends about the show or your favorite episode. It's that one-on-one communication that I think really is the key. So that's my favorite way for you to support the show. Share it on social media, take a screen grab, or talk about your favorite conversation. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, which is important, Spotify, YouTube, Google Podcasts, wherever you listen to the show. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I do want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. I do not do this alone.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of other behind-the-scenes stuff. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing today's show. Jessica Miranda for graphics that I share on social media and on the website. DK for advertiser relationships. And the music, as always, by Analemma. Appreciate the love, you guys. I'll see you back here in a couple of days with an amazing conversation that I've been looking forward to for a very long time with author, professor Cal Newport. It's all about digital minimalism. Until then, chase your life, people. Get after it. You only have the now. All right. Peace, plants. Namaste.