Endurance Poet Tommy Rivs Rages On: Surviving Cancer, The Gift of Pain & The Healing Power of Gratitude

At any moment, your could life could turn upside down. When tragedy strikes, what do you do? How you navigate events beyond your control reveals character. And character is something today’s guest possesses in abundance. Faced with a rare form of deadly cancer, Tommy Rivers Puzey—affectionately revered across the world as ‘Tommy Rivs’—refused pity. Instead, he doubled down on gratitude. He chose to learn from his suffering, expand his capacity to love, and more than anything, see the pain he endured as a teacher. A poet of endurance and philosopher of the human spirit, Tommy is a highly credentialed elite marathoner and ultrarunner with many victories and accolades to his name. He’s also an anthropologist, linguist, doctorate of physical therapy, and massage therapist who has worked with some of the best endurance athletes in the world. But more than anything, he’s a man who is universally beloved for his kindness, generosity, and soulful grace. In the summer of 2020, Tommy fell gravely ill with an extremely rare and advanced form of lung cancer that very nearly killed him—and most likely would have killed anyone else. But Rivs isn’t just anyone. Rivs is Rivs. He survived. Today Tommy shares his potent story, beautiful perspective, and copious wisdom in a beautifully vulnerable and heart-centered conversation for the ages. Without mincing words, this is an extremely real conversation about what it’s like to approach death. It’s soulful, at times emotional, and overall, a celebration of the human spirit in all its boundlessness. It’s a reminder that life itself is an absolute miracle. And it’s a powerful testament that gratitude, positivity, service, community, and love—mostly love—are what life is all about. To read more click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Note: This conversation was recorded on October 13th, 2021, and thus prior to Tommy’s most recent and perhaps most courageous and astonishing endurance feat to date. A mere year from having to relearn how to even walk, Tommy completed the NYC marathon. It took him over nine agonizing hours—7 hours longer than his 2:18 PR—but that nine hours was globally celebrated all over the world, including a must-read profile in the New York Times entitled, Cancer Nearly Took His Life. But the New York Marathon Awaited. Tommy is an exemplary human. A quiet and introspective mentor to many, he’s someone I aspire to emulate, a man who comports himself with an admirable degree of dignity, grace, humility, and generosity of spirit. It’s an honor to help share his powerful and inspiring story. 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.

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• 1:04Tommy Rivs?

  I remember being very aware that it was serious. And anytime you have something that's going on with your respiratory system, you really quickly lose your ego. I mean, there's not much bartering, and you can't really tough your way through it. You know, you take away somebody's oxygen, and it's just a matter of minutes, and you're begging for something, anything, to save you. You know, you become desperate. I guess the key is to not waste that suffering. When it comes, see it as a gift, see it as an opportunity to open our eyes and to be able to really value a normal day. You know, just realizing how incredible that is. And the tragedy is that we don't recognize it until after the fact. But you have the ability, as a human being,

• 1:46Tommy Rivs?

  to positively or negatively affect the people around you based off of the way that you choose to interact. And our purpose for being here is to serve each other, to try to make the life of another individual easier. There is no idealistic future, you know, where it's just gonna all be right, and we're just gonna be happy. We're not a victim of it. It doesn't just happen to us. It's happening all the time, and it's our ability to see it and recognize it.

• 2:28Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Tommy Rivers-Puzey, or as he is known to his friends, to his family, and his many fans across the world, Tommy Rives. Tommy is a poet of endurance, he's a philosopher of the human spirit, as well as a highly credentialed elite marathoner and ultra runner with many victories and accolades to his name. He's also a man universally beloved for his kindness and for his generosity of spirit. Tommy is also an anthropologist, a linguist, a husband, a father of three girls, a doctorate of physical therapy, and a massage therapist who has worked on some of the best endurance athletes in the world.

• 3:13Rich Roll?

  As some of you may know, in the summer of 2020, Tommy fell gravely ill with an extremely rare and advanced form of lung cancer that very nearly killed him, and most likely would have killed almost anybody else. But Rives isn't just anyone, Rives is Rives. He did survive, and I'm delighted to say he's here today to share his perspective, to share his wisdom, his experience. And it's quite a moving experience, and it's coming right up. But first, before we get into that, a few words from the sponsors that make this show impossible.

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  Okay, Tommy Rivers-Puzey. So, yeah, man, what can I possibly tell you about this one, this conversation to come? Well, I can tell you that it's nothing if not soulful, it's heavy, it's at times emotional, but ultimately, it is this beautiful celebration of the human spirit in all its boundlessness. It's a reminder that life itself is an absolute miracle, and a powerful testament that things like gratitude, like positivity, service, community, and love, mostly love, are what are most important. Rives is an exemplary human. He is a quiet and introspective mentor to many.

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  He's an example to many, many more. Personally, he's a human I aspire to emulate, who comports himself with just this admirable degree of dignity, of grace, of humility, and this outpouring of generosity, this generosity of spirit. And it's just an honor to help share his story with all of you today, a story I think will prove impactful. Quick note before we get into it. This conversation was actually recorded a couple of months ago, on October 13th, and thus prior to Tommy's most recent and perhaps most courageous and astonishing endurance feat to date. A mere year from having to relearn how to even walk,

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  Tommy just completed the New York City Marathon. It took him over nine agonizing hours, which is seven hours longer than his 218 marathon PR. But that nine hours was globally celebrated the world over. It introduced this humble and extraordinary man to many new people across the world and included this wonderful must-read profile in The New York Times that I will link up in the show notes that you gotta check out. Okay, let us carry on no longer. This is me having a conversation with Tommy Rives.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  We're so delighted you're here. Everybody here is so happy to see you. And

• 6:11Tommy Rivs?

  Thanks, man.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  I'm excited to talk to you, man. I mean, I guess the first thing is, is like, how are you, like, how do you feel today? Like, how are you doing? I'm sure you get that question constantly.

• 6:21Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's good. Gosh, I'm, I'm stoked to be here. I'm, I mean, just.

• 6:33Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, just stoked that I'm just still around, you know?

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:36Tommy Rivs?

  I really am. Like, it's a good question because it's a good reminder

• 6:43Tommy Rivs?

  to me, you know, just to re-center myself and

• 6:49Tommy Rivs?

  and help me realize that, you know, that it's like, this is,

• 6:55Tommy Rivs?

  couldn't be better than this, you know? There's no way that it could be any better. I mean, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I think about that a lot. And it's, um, it's as good as I could possibly ever hope

• 7:12Tommy Rivs?

  that life would be, you know? And, uh, and just being able to see that right now and recognize it. Yeah, that's, I guess that's just kind of where I'm at, you know, just.

• 7:23Rich Roll?

  You, you, you seem like somebody who's always had a firm grip on gratitude. You know, when I think about you, I think about grace and humility and somebody who's always more concerned with how other people are doing than yourself. But to be able to kind of hold on to that or capture that sense of gratitude with everything that you've endured and continue to endure, I mean, that's really remarkable. Like, how do you, how do you account for that? Is it your natural disposition? Is it a practice? You must have your dark moments with all of this, of course.

• 8:01Tommy Rivs?

  The last year and a half or so, getting sick and everything, yeah. Yeah, there's definitely been some, some hard times, you know, to say the least.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  A few.

• 8:10Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, you know, I see it, I guess, as a, it goes back to just these basic,

• 8:17Tommy Rivs?

  I guess, these basic ideas that we learn in endurance athletics, you know, that you focus on what you can control, that you have a certain amount of energy, you know? Emotional energy, physical energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. It all comes from the same will, you know? And, uh, you know, you can only control a certain amount of that. And I guess focusing and allocating those resources towards something that I actually have the ability to affect, you know? And, you know, you can affect your work ethic and you can affect your attitude, you know? Those are kind of the only things you can control. Yeah, exactly. And, and so I guess there's a sense of.

• 8:59Tommy Rivs?

  I think about how often you you waste energy by by wishing things were, you know, a certain way when they when they aren't.

• 9:12Tommy Rivs?

  And I guess gratitude just comes as a natural.

• 9:17Tommy Rivs?

  I guess a natural response to just recognizing that you do have control over certain things, you know?

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, that's a.

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  I know that that at some point, I don't know whether you wrote it or your wife Steph wrote it, but she conveyed to you this idea when you were kind of in the in the thick of, you know, going through what you've endured. This idea of of applying what you learned through your lifestyle and your training to navigating like this next chapter, like this is what endurance sports is. It's about endurance for life, right? Like you just kind of mentioned that. The idea that, you know, you're out there testing yourself, putting yourself in difficult situations, trying to, you know, figure out where the edge of that envelope is. And this is just a more macro version of that, like as a means of kind of reframing

• 10:16Rich Roll?

  your relationship with the illness to help kind of give you or like buttress you your kind of emotional approach to how you deal with it.

• 10:27Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I feel like.

• 10:32Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, like everything that, I mean, I think that the reason that we're drawn to endurance athletics is is because it serves as a

• 10:43Tommy Rivs?

  almost as a skill building experience so that we can then take what we learn, the skills and the strengths, and then apply it to actual real life.

• 10:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:53Tommy Rivs?

  And and we're constantly reminding ourselves, you know, day after day after day that

• 11:00Tommy Rivs?

  that we're in charge, you know, that we're not just this miserable creature that's just going to stay in bed and just

• 11:07Tommy Rivs?

  just constantly seek comfort, you know, that we can rise up above.

• 11:14Tommy Rivs?

  And, you know, kind of remind ourselves that like we're we're capable of

• 11:22Tommy Rivs?

  getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, you know, before the sun comes up and putting in the work day after day after day. And.

• 11:29Tommy Rivs?

  And then when you're faced with challenges in personal life or daily life, it just becomes second nature, you know, those habits that you create, those skills that you develop and those strengths. Gosh, and you know, I'd like to say that, you know, I was prepared for all of this and that there was some greater, deeper meaning behind all of it, you know. But man, when you're in it, and I'm still in it, you're just trying to, just trying to keep your head above water.

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  How could you possibly be prepared for it? I mean, you know, it's the unimaginable thing. It's the thing that you could have never predicted. And I think as far as, you know, endurance sports, preparing you for other life challenges, certainly that's true. But when it's just you and the road or you and the trail, there's kind of a limited number of variables, right? And you do have control over how you comport yourself. You're focused on the breath. You're trying to get from A to B. And there is an experiential aspect to that. But there's also a result oriented aspect. Like I'm trying to get to this destination or I'm working towards a certain goal. And life's just messy, you know, compared to that, right? There's other people involved.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  There's personalities, there's expectations. It's infinitely more complicated.

• 12:51Tommy Rivs?

  Right. Yeah, it's, I mean, to be, you know, to be completely candid with all of it, it's all been just a blur, you know, honestly, all of it. And Steph, my wife Steph, she's done, she's helped me out in a way that, well, she's helped me out in so many ways. And part of it is that she's been the one that shouldered all of the knowledge about all of this, you know. You know, she's been there with me from the very beginning, you know, as often as she was allowed to be there.

• 13:33Tommy Rivs?

  And I think about, she balanced these two, these two simultaneous truths that that might seem as though they're contradictory. And the one truth was she held on to all of the, you know,

• 13:57Tommy Rivs?

  The diagnostic, you know, prognosis type scientific medical information. She understood, you know, what the research said, what the data said, what the likelihood of, you know, outcome and survival and all of that was. At the same time, she held what would seem like an opposing truth, which was that this was, it was possible to survive this. And, um, and she was able to communicate both of those to me in a way that, um, that she carried the weight of all of it.

• 14:41Tommy Rivs?

  But was able to communicate to me, yes, this is serious, but, um, but you're going to get through it, you know? There's, there's a process. There's, um, there are some things that you're going to have to do, that we're going to have to do to be able to get to the other side of this. But it's just simply a matter of checking these boxes and doing it. And then when you're done, you know, you'll, you'll be over this, you'll survive this and you'll be, you'll be whole, you'll be well again. And, um, I think that because of that, there, there's never been a time throughout this that I didn't actually believe that I would survive, you know?

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  So she, she was somewhat circumspect with you in terms of like the, the, the dire details of what you were facing?

• 15:28Tommy Rivs?

  Absolutely. Yeah, she held all that. I mean, she, she didn't, she didn't actually share much of that with me. And, and I actually, I've done my best to try to, to not find out.

• 15:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:39Tommy Rivs?

  Those types of, um, I guess the statistics and things like that. Somebody that was just a passive observer of, of, um,

• 15:52Tommy Rivs?

  You know, the things that she wrote and the things that were made public knows more about the details of all of this than than I think I even do. And and I a lot of what I've learned is just stuff that I've stumbled upon accidentally. And you know, I'll start to read it. I'll start to see it. And I'll think, oh, gosh.

• 16:10Rich Roll?

  Because you were unconscious through the, you know, great majority of a lot of this. So it was Steph and Jacob who made this decision to be very transparent about everything that was going on. And because so many people love you, everybody was hanging on the edge of their seat, wanting to know the details and, you know, eager to learn how you were doing on a daily basis. And, you know, they were like, every single day, like, I would log in and see how you were doing. And they would have reports and prognoses and all the like. Meanwhile, you're, you know, you're the one who's enduring it. But you're not conscious to really have to deal with the, you know, the emotional, you know, pressure of what that entails.

• 16:52Tommy Rivs?

  Sure. Yeah. I, yeah, I haven't read any of it. Yeah, I really haven't. Yeah. I mean, I've seen some of it and I've read enough to realize I don't, I don't want to read this yet. And, you know, and Steph is, the whole time she's, she's asked, well, you know, I'll just have questions. How to get the scar, how to get the scar, the scar, the scar, the scar, you know, where these scars come from. And she's like, well, you want me to tell you? And I'm like, actually, no, I'd rather not know right now.

• 17:20Rich Roll?

  And you're, you're daughter, you have three daughters, right?

• 17:23Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, three girls.

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, they're old enough to go online and read this stuff, right? I mean, what is their awareness around?

• 17:29Tommy Rivs?

  Um, I mean, the oldest one, I guess she could be, she's way more into like, bugs and frogs and stuff like that than than getting online and reading about stuff.

• 17:39Rich Roll?

  Keep it that way.

• 17:39Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, she's, I, I, I don't think that, I think that if,

• 17:49Tommy Rivs?

  Well, one thing that I think that hopefully we've done right with all this is try to shield them from just the spectacle of it, you know, and not let it become something that their identity is reduced to, you know, at school or with, Flagstaff's a small town. And trying to, you know, help them understand like the the seriousness of the situation, but not have it become a it's just not a spectacle, you know, and a lot of it is still to be determined, you know? This is a

• 18:30Tommy Rivs?

  I've got to be, you know, grateful for each each day that I have to be here, but at the same time, you know, recognizing that this is still this is still an ongoing thing.

• 18:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so you're in remission right now, but there's this looming threat that it could come back at any time.

• 18:52Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  But if you get through a certain period of time, like a year or so, then that risk reduces significantly.

• 18:58Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, for sure. It definitely reduces it. It's a this particular type typically comes back, you know, and until there's been until there's been a bone marrow transplant and it's kind of this tricky holding pattern where you're not given permission to land, but you're running out of fuel, you know? And

• 19:21Rich Roll?

  So are you waiting on that right now? Are you waiting on a?

• 19:23Tommy Rivs?

  So it's tricky. It's there are so few cases of this particular type of cancer that there's not a ton known about it, but but typically it comes back until unless there's been a bone marrow transplant. And you have to be in remission in order to have a bone marrow transplant. And when, when I first went into remission, I think it was last January, this January, I weighed about 95 pounds.

• 19:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:54Tommy Rivs?

  My lungs were so scarred up. I think it was about 20% lung function and

• 20:01Tommy Rivs?

  And one of my oncologists, she said, you know, she sat down and had a conversation with Steph and I and said, you know, we're not gonna, we can't treat you anymore, you know, we're not going to continue. We can't do any more chemo and we also can't, we can't give you a bone marrow transplant because you won't, you won't survive it, you know, you have to be able to, you have to have certain, I guess, physical markers to be able to even be a candidate for it, just because they're, they're not going to give you something that they know is just a death sentence. And, you know, the chemo necessary to, to destroy all of your bone marrow so that then you can receive the transplant,

• 20:42Tommy Rivs?

  that's so, you know, so toxic that that in and of itself, a lot of times, you know, can be fatal. And so, they said, all right, this is something that we can't do right now because this'll, this'll for sure 100% kill you. And so what we gotta do is, basically, you don't have cancer right now, you're in remission right now. That was the greatest risk at the time, you know. A lot of this is just, just a process of looking at what is the greatest possible risk and trying to eliminate that, you know, one, one, one step at a time. And so, the cancer was no longer the risk and, and the greatest risk

• 21:23Tommy Rivs?

  was, you know, lack of lung function and technically starvation. My body was in a state of, it's called cancer cachexia, where it's muscle wasting and your, your body's unable to absorb enough nutrients to be able to put on weight, even though it's, you know, being pumped through your stomach. And so, you know, you're in this state that's completely, basically starved, you know, you're starving to death.

• 21:51Rich Roll?

  Your, your body's just cannibalizing itself.

• 21:53Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly, yeah. And so you're, you know, that was the greatest risk at the time. And, you know, so they said, okay, let's, let's just wait and see. And You know, if and when this comes back, we'll set up a plan, we'll go through, you know, set up a treatment plan that would consist of more rounds of chemo and to get me back into remission again, and then, you know, to be able to destroy my bone marrow, and then, you know, set me up to be able to have a transplant, and then, and at that time, hopefully, my lungs were stronger and, and my, you know, weight was up to where I'd be able to actually survive it, so.

• 22:31Rich Roll?

  And so, right now, the goal I would, I would imagine is to just try to be as healthy as you can.

• 22:37Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  So that you'll be, if, if and when that occurs, you can withstand what gets thrown at you.

• 22:42Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 22:43Rich Roll?

  And are your lungs currently at 20% still?

• 22:47Tommy Rivs?

  I don't know what they're at.

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Is that improving at all?

• 22:48Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, it's definitely improved. It, it improves slowly, though, you know, it, lungs don't regenerate like, like a liver would, you know, and, and so, there's, there's a lot of scar tissue, you know, at, at like a, at a really cellular level, at the, at the level where the gas exchange takes place. And so, it's difficult to get enough oxygen in, and then it's difficult to get enough CO2 back out.

• 23:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Tommy Rivs?

  And I can feel it, you know, I, I can sense, um, kind of where I'm at just by, you know, you become really in tune with it, and it's like when you're, when you're running at elevation, or you're, you're swimming and, and doing, you know, hypoxic breathing, you can, you can feel, you know, you're like, okay, I got five more seconds before the lights go out.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  But coming down from flag to here to sea level, can you feel the difference?

• 23:38Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, absolutely, yeah, no, it feels great, yeah, yeah. Part of, part of what I was so stoked about to come here was like, oh, I'll be able to actually breathe for a couple of days, you know?

• 23:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Rich Roll?

  So you breathe in LA air, so it's pretty clear out today, but.

• 23:52Tommy Rivs?

  No, it's good, yeah, oxygen's, oxygen's a great thing, you know?

• 23:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So. Certainly, a lot of people listening or watching are familiar with the story, but there's going to be, you know, a significant percentage of people who perhaps you're new to them. So can we walk through kind of what happened?

• 24:12Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, as well as I can remember.

• 24:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, we'll go, we'll walk it up to the, until you, until you're in this induced coma.

• 24:21Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  I mean, essentially, as I understand it, you were coming off an injury that you had sustained trying to qualify for Olympic trials, where you put your foot in a pothole, right? Was that at Boston? Which marathon was that?

• 24:36Tommy Rivs?

  Let me think. When was that? Houston.

• 24:38Rich Roll?

  Houston. That's right. Houston, right? And, and you were like on pace to run 216 at the time or something like that?

• 24:44Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, we were running 216 pace.

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  Tore your meniscus, you're out, you're injured. And as you start to kind of, you know, repair yourself and wrap your head around, perhaps beginning to train again, you go out to the Grand Canyon. So why don't we just pick it up there?

• 25:03Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. Um, let's see, that was probably in, okay, Houston was in January. And yeah, it was a torn meniscus.

• 25:13Rich Roll?

  Summer of 2020.

• 25:14Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Rich Roll?

  Well, the, the marathon was some months prior to that.

• 25:17Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. January of 2020. And then, so I was out for a few months. I tore my meniscus and I also tore my, the short head of my biceps more, some of my hamstring. And that, I think, was what, what really was holding me back. And so that takes a long time, you know, to, to heal from that stuff. And I was in a funk. I mean, it was a hard, it was a really hard time. And it's just as the pandemic was starting. And so this kind of collective sense of discontent, you know? It was, it was a strange time. And yeah, and I was just trying to.

• 25:56Tommy Rivs?

  Trying to put my head back together. I mean, that, that, that was something that I'd been working for really the greater part of my entire, you know, my adult life. And um, in my head, it was like, okay, this is probably the last chance I have um, to get there. I mean, not that you can't do it when you're 40, but in my head, I was, my window was-

• 26:18Rich Roll?

  You're 36 at the time.

• 26:19Tommy Rivs?

  36, yeah. So I was running out of time, it seemed. And um, and you know, my thought was like, okay, I'll, I'll do this, running the Olympic trials. That'll be just kind of a lifelong goal that I've had. And then after that, I can, I can now get serious about running in the mountains, you know, doing trails and ultras and stuff like that. And uh, so I was down in the canyon. I'd been there a couple of times, you know, and, and it really is just a place to, that places, that's a place is special to me. And um, it was a, it's always just been a chance to go down

• 26:55Tommy Rivs?

  and just kind of reconnect with myself and with um, just that space. And, and it's always been a place that, rather than going there to hurt, it's been a place that I'd go to not hurt, if that makes sense. And um, so I wanted to see, uh, kind of just test my durability, you know, see how I was doing. And so I went down there with a friend, Derek Lidle. And he's a, he's a, an accomplished um, ultra runner, um, videographer, photographer. And he's, he's tough. I mean, he, um, I think a few years before that, he was doing, he was

• 27:40Tommy Rivs?

  attempting the, the FKT fastest known time on the Arizona trail, you know, from Utah down to, um, self-supported, you know, so he's carrying all of his stuff. And um, he got in a bad situation, got caught in rain, you know, like three days in a row. And um, so I drove out and met him and brought him a Subway sub and a Coke, you know, and sat there and, and he moped for a little bit. And then, you know, I drove him in and, and helped him DNF, basically. And so, um, and you know, I'd spent some time doing some work with him before. And um, he, he's a, a good dude, somebody that you want to have, um, have your back when you're in a bad situation, you know, so. Our plan was just to run across the canyon and back and it was it was in June,

• 28:25Tommy Rivs?

  which is really hot, you know, down in the canyon. So we were gonna go down Bright Angel Trail, across and then up North Kaibab and then back.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  Rim to rim.

• 28:34Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:35Rich Roll?

  The inverted mountain.

• 28:36Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's so hot that time of year. The only way to really do it is is through the middle of the night. So we left at sunset and started our way down. And I had a I kind of had a lingering headache for a couple of days. And prior to that, you know, and I'd been in the canyon, oh, maybe three days before that. And I figured I just wasn't hydrated well enough. And that, you know, I didn't feel great about it. But I thought, well, this is fine. I've got a long time. I can I can focus on hydration and nutrition on the way down and it'll be all right.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  Well, you left out the part about being in the canyon. I don't know if it was the day before, or a couple of days before, where you were down in there and you encountered a woman at the base.

• 29:25Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Rich Roll?

  Who had who was having problems and you gave her all your food and your hydration.

• 29:30Tommy Rivs?

  Well, yeah.

• 29:30Rich Roll?

  And then you had to get out of there without any of that.

• 29:32Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Not knowing that you're harboring this illness the whole time.

• 29:36Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, that was a weird thing is that I think that was a I think it was a Wednesday, actually, that I was down there by myself. And and I met a lady that was with some friends and she, gosh, she was in a bad, bad situation. And it's incredible, you know, there because the pandemic was going on, there weren't there weren't Rangers down there. There weren't people down there. And there's this sense of, there's this false sense of security that we have, I feel, you know, in in the US in a lot of situations, that that somebody will always bail you out, you know, that if something goes wrong, well, you've got insurance, somebody will always make it right, you know. And Man, in some of these places, um, and dead is dead, you know, and there's nobody, nobody

• 30:20Tommy Rivs?

  that's gonna come and bail you out. There's not a mule train that's gonna pick you up and take you back. And, um, you know, they were out of water and arguing with me about the GPS that, you know, Phantom Ranch was supposed to be a half mile away according to the GPS. And, you know, I had just been there and I was on my way back and, you know, had to tell her, it's like, well, it's actually like three miles. And, you know, they argued with me like, oh, but it says on the GPS that it's a quarter mile. I'm like, that's fine if it says that. Look, I've been here a million times. I promise you, it's three miles. And, um, and there's no water between here and there. And it was, oh gosh, I mean, down there at the bottom, it gets like, it's not an exaggeration to, you know, 120 or 130 degrees in the summer. And just because it,

• 31:02Tommy Rivs?

  it reflects off the rock walls and it's just, it's just so hot. And, um, she was shaky and her face was purple. And, um, and I'm talking to her and trying to explain how to get there. And, and she, she passed out, like she lost consciousness and trying to hold her there, trying to figure out where I can set her on these rocks so that I can do CPR if I need to. But the rocks are so jagged that it's like, okay, if I, if I compress on her chest, I'm for sure gonna break her back because there's no, everything is just so rugged right there. Um, anyway, her friends come around the corner and it takes a lot of persuading, you know, for them to just finally believe me that it's actually, you know, a few more miles down the trail. And, um, anyway, I got out of

• 31:46Tommy Rivs?

  there and they were, I don't know, actually, I don't know what ended up happening to them. But, um, so, you know, I got pretty dehydrated on my way back out and, um, and figured that's what it was, you know? So a couple of days later, I'm in there and have this headache. And, um, I'm thinking that's the same, you know, that, that it's related to that, um, just overdoing it a few days before. So we get down to the bottom of the canyon where Phantom Ranch and we fill up and, um, eating and drinking and we continue on and we get to, uh, there's a place called Cottonwood. It's the, the next place to fill up the water bottles. And we keep going from there. And then I, you know, I finally told Derek,

• 32:27Tommy Rivs?

  I was like, you know, something doesn't feel right. I can't, I can't cool down. I could tell my heart rate was, um, was way too high, you know, for where we were.

• 32:39Tommy Rivs?

  I was like, I don't know if I can, if I can do this. I don't know if this is a good idea to do this. And, you know, he was really cool about it. He's like, yeah, that's, that's smart. And, and he, you know, he's well enough, um, has enough experience in that kind of thing to know that if you don't have a great feeling about something, you should probably listen to it in a situation like that. Um, but then you don't want to let your friend down, you know? And, um, so we flipped around and went back to Phantom Ranch and was laying there and, um, just staring up at the stars and it was midnight, right around, you know, between, between midnight and one in the morning. And, um, and I couldn't get my heart rate down and I couldn't get my breathing under control.

• 33:23Tommy Rivs?

  And I couldn't, I couldn't cool my body down. And, and then I finally cooled down, but then I couldn't warm back up. And that's never a good sign, you know, if you can't, um, regulate your body's temperature, that's, that's never good. And I remember thinking that was it, like that was, that was where I was gonna die. I was like, I'm gonna die on a, on a picnic table in Phantom Ranch. And, um, because I didn't hydrate properly. And I remember thinking that was just-

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  You were chalking it all up to hydration.

• 33:54Tommy Rivs?

  I thought that's what it was, yeah. Just because everything, you know, you assess different things. It's like, okay, have I eaten enough? Have I drank enough? Um, are my electrolytes okay? And if it's not water or food or electrolytes or oxygen, you know, it's like, well, what could it possibly be? And it's not that complicated typically, you know? And you troubleshoot and try to figure out, okay, where am I deficient? And, um, just didn't make any sense. And so reluctantly, you know, we just start trudging our way back out. And it took, it usually takes about two hours to get back out. And it took- Like 12, I think. And it was bad. I mean, by the time I got up to the top,

• 34:37Tommy Rivs?

  my breathing was so shallow, you know, I was really just wheezing. And got back to his truck and I, I just blacked out like as soon as he got back to the truck. And, you know, he drove back to Flag and he was cool through all of it. You know, it was just like, oh, this, this happens. He just overdid it. And I knew I'd probably get shit for it, you know, later that it was like,

• 35:01Rich Roll?

  Did you feel it? Were you having respiratory like distress though? Were you like coughing up blood and stuff like that?

• 35:07Tommy Rivs?

  A little bit, yeah. But, but, but that also is not that uncommon. You know, if you start to cough a lot, it's like, okay, am I, is that blood coming from my lungs? Or is that blood coming from, you know, just, just my throat? You know, if you cough too much, that just, that can just happen sometimes. And so there was a little bit of that. And then in the days after that, I got home and I, I just assumed I had COVID. I mean, all my, all my symptoms just, just seemed like, you know, it was still early on, not a lot was known. And,

• 35:39Tommy Rivs?

  you know, this dry, nonproductive cough.

• 35:45Tommy Rivs?

  And, you know, chills and night sweats and

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  Of course it's COVID.

• 35:51Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 35:51Rich Roll?

  I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic. You're having this respiratory thing. Like, how could it not be COVID?

• 35:57Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, and that's what I thought.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  And it was irregular. Like, it was unlike anything that you'd kind of experienced before. So,

• 36:03Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  Everybody would have assumed that.

• 36:05Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. It was a different kind of cough, you know, and it really, I mean, it was so bad that I'd cough and cough and cough. And then, and you're so irritated that, that then there's a lot of blood, you know, you're coughing up a lot of blood. And, and then you aspirate that blood and I remember in the evenings when I would fall asleep, it was more like I would lose consciousness rather than like actually falling asleep. You know, you'd cough and cough and cough until you start to see stars and, and then, you know, you start to choke on that and, and then you just wake up and there's blood all over your pillow and it's like, oh dang, that was, that wasn't good. And, you know, it's, it was a situation that was delicate too, because I went in and tried to

• 36:48Tommy Rivs?

  get tested a few times. Well, I went in and got tested a couple of times and, and it came back negative. And I, I remember arguing with the lady. I was like, how, how is it negative? Like, how, how, you know, you did your test wrong? Cause like,

• 37:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's, it's summer 2020. So there was a lot of, I mean, these tests were not great.

• 37:05Tommy Rivs?

  Right. And it also was, as strange as it sounds, um, it was political too. And physicians were afraid to treat, you know, certain ways because if you acknowledge something, then you were taking a political stance. And, and it just, it just became messy, you know? And trying to, in my head, trying to figure out, okay, what's the best way that I can receive treatment? And also, how can I not take up resources? How can I not take up a hospital bed that, that there's a shortage already, you know, specifically in Flagstaff? There was,

• 37:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You were very resistant about going to the hospital.

• 37:42Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. Yep. And, and I thought it was because, okay, if this, if this is COVID, well then I can just treat this at home. You know, like, that's what you're supposed to do is self-isolate. And you have, I mean, you remember there were, it's like, okay, for the first five days and then the next five days and the next five days. And, you know, there was this graph that, that, um, you know, we kind of knew how it was supposed to respond. And, um, you feel better and then you feel worse and then you feel better and then you're, then you're good. And strangely, this was following a really similar arc. And anyway, so I figured that if I had, you know, a nice home and I had a place where I could isolate from my family, I had food, I had water, I had air

• 38:25Tommy Rivs?

  conditioning, I had everything I needed. And then there were people, um, hundreds of people on the Navajo Res and the Hopi Res.

• 38:37Tommy Rivs?

  That don't have that, don't have, don't have running water, don't have plumbing, don't have climate control in their houses, don't have a separate apartment that they can, you know,

• 38:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Tommy Rivs?

  um, sequester themselves. It just, it seemed so unfair to go to the hospital and take a, a bed. Um, and so I thought, and maybe there was some hubris in this, but I thought I, you know, I studied, I've dabbled in the healthcare profession for, you know, quite a few years. I, I feel like I understand how to triage.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  Um, yeah, well, you have a doctorate

• 39:15Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 39:15Rich Roll?

  in physical therapy.

• 39:16Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  You're also one of the fittest people on the planet. Like you're just an absolute beast, like a specimen. If anybody's going to have the constitution to kind of get through this,

• 39:25Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 39:25Rich Roll?

  you would be that guy. So on some level, it makes sense. You're also not one to, you're, you're always thinking about everyone else. Like your mind immediately goes to the Navajo Nation when you're in a desperate need of, of attention yourself. But, um, the smart piece of this is in retrospect, looking back, if it turns out you don't have COVID and then you go to the ER and you're surrounded by people with COVID

• 39:53Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 39:54Rich Roll?

  in a very compromised situation. I mean, that could be cataclysmic.

• 39:58Tommy Rivs?

  Right. And that was the thinking. It was like, okay, if this isn't COVID, it, it had turned into, um, again, this is self-diagnosis, but it felt like, um, bacterial pneumonia at that point. And, you know, based off of the stuff I was coughing up and, um, the symptoms. And so my thought process was, well, I, I just need the medication to, to be able to get through this. And, um, I need an antibiotic. I need some specific, uh, you know, medication to be able to, um, to treat it. And if this isn't COVID, and if I go to the hospital, I 100% get COVID. And if I get COVID with bacterial pneumonia,

• 40:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:42Tommy Rivs?

  the, you know, prognosis is not great for something like that. And so I, I was really stubborn, you know? And, um, luckily Steph was more stubborn.

• 40:52Tommy Rivs?

  And she was able to, I guess, speak some sense into me and

• 40:56Rich Roll?

  Well, she discovered you lying on the floor, passed out in a pool of blood is what happened, right? And it's like enough is enough. You're going to the hospital.

• 41:03Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, I think the way that she did it finally was that she came home and put a pulse ox, like a pulse oximeter on my finger and showed me my, um, my oxygen saturation and it was, it was bad. I think maybe 72, which is not good. And, um, so I was like, okay, really reluctantly, I stopped arguing with her about it. And, um, in my defense, um, typically when you're, when your CO2 is that high and your oxygen is that low, it causes you to become really delirious and really belligerent, actually. And, and so looking back, um, I'd like to think that some of that stubbornness was, was just because I was in an altered, an altered state of consciousness, but.

• 41:55Rich Roll?

  So you get into the hospital, but then the next ordeal is trying to figure out, you know, what the heck is going on here?

• 42:01Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Rich Roll?

  Like they couldn't diagnose this for quite a long period of time. I mean, it went from, maybe it is COVID, maybe it's a fungal infection, maybe it's pneumonia, maybe it's the bubonic plague. Like that was considered right at some point?

• 42:15Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Rich Roll?

  And you're a guy who's traveled all over the world. Like you've been in all these crazy places. Like it's not farfetched that you could have contracted some kind of parasite or something along the way.

• 42:25Tommy Rivs?

  Sure. Yeah, that was a, we had some really lengthy, I remember having lengthy conversations with the infectious disease specialist and, you know, he'd ask me these questions and, um, he was really adamant about it being the plague though, you know, and, and that makes sense. I mean, that, that, that happens sometimes in, in northern Arizona, the, the rock chucks and the prairie dogs can get it in their lungs.

• 42:46Rich Roll?

  Right. You get it from rodents.

• 42:47Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly. And, and it has to be, it's, it's similar to how COVID has spread is that the,

• 42:55Tommy Rivs?

  the particles from, um, from their chest or respiratory particles essentially.

• 43:02Tommy Rivs?

  If you breathe them in, then you can, you can contract it. And so the questioning was like, okay, have you, in the last month, have you had contact? If you had contact with a prairie dog or a rock chuck,

• 43:15Tommy Rivs?

  I don't think so. And then I remember thinking, I was like, oh, no, I did chase one in the Grand Canyon. I followed it, you know, just, just looking at it and watched it go into its hole. And I remember looking into the hole and I remember thinking, I was like, it clicked. I was like, oh, that's it.

• 43:31Rich Roll?

  All right. Couldn't a dead rodent get into the water supply where you're refilling your bottles down in the canyon?

• 43:36Tommy Rivs?

  Maybe. I think that's pretty, it's pretty, well, I like to think that it's pretty clean down there, you know, that it's filtered pretty well. But, you know, I guess that was a possibility. The way that he explained it is it had to be breathed in, you know? And so I remember thinking, oh, that was it. That was the rock chuck that I saw. And that was the one that did it to me. And I told him, I was like, yeah, I did. I saw one, actually took a picture of it, you know? And, and then he asked, okay, well, if it wasn't that, did you potentially step on a rock chuck or a prairie dog?

• 44:08Tommy Rivs?

  I was like, I'm pretty sure I didn't. He said, well, did anybody that you've run with in the last month potentially step on a rock chuck or a prairie dog? And you breathed in, you know, whatever was squeezed out of its lungs? I was like, I don't think so. And he said, you need to, you need to find out. And so I was like, gosh, this is like, you know, contact tracing to the next level. Contact anybody that may have, may have stepped on a prairie dog.

• 44:31Rich Roll?

  In the middle of the night in the Grand Canyon, when you can't see anything. I mean, anything's possible.

• 44:36Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. So, you know, we, we eventually ruled that out and it wasn't the plague. And, and then I remember they started talking about a couple of other different diagnoses. And lymphoma was one that they brought up and I, I really just kind of laughed at that. It was like, that's like, how, why, you know, how, how would I have lymphoma?

• 44:58Tommy Rivs?

  And then I just assumed it was just, I still thought it was COVID or something that had to be related to COVID that just maybe wasn't detectable at the time. And, and that the testing just hadn't gotten that sensitive enough. And, and then I, I think they, I got to a point, things started to get really blurry at that point. Got to a point where they said they were going to need to put me on a ventilator because I couldn't keep my oxygen level high enough.

• 45:27Tommy Rivs?

  And I remember just talking to Steph and leaving messages for the girls, you know, that I had to go to sleep for a couple of days and that I'd be back soon. And, you know, just not amused by all of it, but just really curious, just kind of like, I wonder what, I wonder what actually is going on. And it'll be interesting when I wake up to find out what actually had happened, you know?

• 45:53Rich Roll?

  Did the, did the prospect of going on the ventilator scare you a little bit? Because I just remember that was the period of time when if you did have COVID and you're still thinking you might have COVID, you go on that ventilator, a lot of people aren't coming off that ventilator.

• 46:08Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. And I, I think I, I don't think I knew enough about it to be that freaked out. Because in my, in my head, I was like, I'm not gonna die of COVID. Like, it's, it's, it's people with pre-existing conditions that die of this. It's, it's people that have, or are at an advanced age and, and have, you know, comorbidities. And, you know, I remember being very aware that it was serious. And any, anytime you have something that's going on with your respiratory system, you, you really quickly lose your ego. I mean, you, there's not much bartering and you can't, you can't really tough your way through

• 46:49Tommy Rivs?

  that. You know, you take away somebody's oxygen and it's just a matter of minutes and you're, you're begging for somebody, something, anything to, to save you. I mean, that's why, it's like being waterboarded, you know? And, and there's a reason why, gosh, that's so effective. Because there's this, there's this fear that, that comes over you when everything protective within your body is telling you, you're, you're gonna die. Like, you've got seconds, you know, unless you change something. And, you know, you become desperate. And, and whatever it is, you know, whatever it is that, that needs

• 47:34Tommy Rivs?

  to be done to, to be able to make you stop feeling that, you're willing to, you're willing to do it, you're willing to concede. And

• 47:44Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, and yeah, that was kinda, it's kinda where things started to just go blurry for me because after that, it was, that was in July.

• 47:59Tommy Rivs?

  I think it was probably November before I

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  Like your next memory?

• 48:06Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, before I finally

• 48:07Rich Roll?

  Were you in and out of consciousness? Or you were, you just don't have

• 48:11Tommy Rivs?

  Well, that's

• 48:12Rich Roll?

  Recollection of that?

• 48:13Tommy Rivs?

  That I do, that's where things get really, really difficult to decipher.

• 48:23Tommy Rivs?

  What it feels like is, I mean, I've been told now that it, that it's amnesia and retrograde amnesia and, you know, not having enough oxygen for so many weeks and months that there's, you know, irreparable brain damage and things like that. And what it felt like was that all of these files that I had over the last, gosh, maybe 10 years were corrupted. And, and then, and then during those months that I was in a coma, I, I wasn't here, but I was still, I was somewhere, you know?

• 49:07Tommy Rivs?

  And, and what I experienced was, you know, time is interesting. Time can distort, time can fall back on itself, time can be, you know, stretched.

• 49:20Tommy Rivs?

  And I experienced lifetimes during those weeks and months. And then the really tricky thing is that then when I started to have the realization that I was back here, wherever here is, all of those experiences that I had when I was asleep, I guess, Steph and I call it when I was in the in-between, you know, wherever I was.

• 49:49Tommy Rivs?

  It's as though they got planted back in where all of those corrupted files had been and just kind of mixed together. And so the interesting thing is that they didn't, they didn't get filed as though they were dreams. They got filed as though they were memories. And so, everything from the last decade has been mixed with all of these other experiences. And...

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  So you still have trouble sort of parsing those things and making sense of what was real and what transpired in the liminal space?

• 50:25Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  So what was that, what, like, where do you think you went? Like, like, paint that picture for me of being in that in-between?

• 50:34Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, gosh. That's hard. There was exhaustion, I think, is the overwhelming feeling that I felt initially. And it was, it was that I was trying so hard to stay here. I could sense that something was pulling me. And it was painful, it was uncomfortable. I was trying really, really hard to not leave whatever this was.

• 51:14Tommy Rivs?

  Whether we think of it as a, like a cage, you know? Trying to stay within that cage and trying to be held by my body still. And, and then I remember there was a, there was a time where I, I was just so tired, just so, so tired. And I remember thinking, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't think I can do this anymore. And, and by then, I, I'd lost any recollection that I, that I had a life here. I didn't remember that I had kids. I didn't remember...

• 51:56Tommy Rivs?

  You know, that I lived in Flagstaff, that I, um, any of it.

• 52:03Tommy Rivs?

  And there was a, there was a point where, the weird thing is that Steph was always with me the entire time. I thought, I thought we were on this just grand adventure, you know, that we were exploring the cosmos together. And, and I got to a point where, um, it's gonna be hard.

• 52:29Tommy Rivs?

  I stopped, uh, I made the conscious decision that I was gonna be done, that I didn't want to fight whatever was pulling me away anymore, that I didn't have the strength to fight it anymore. And, um, and there was a sense of, um, peace and just, um, comfort in wherever it was that I was going. And, um, and I saw it, and it was inviting and, um, beautiful and safe. And, um,

• 53:09Tommy Rivs?

  and Steph nudged me and she said, "You've, you've gotta go back." And I said, "I don't, I don't wanna go back. Like, look at, look at this place." Um, I said, "Come with me. Just, just come with me. Like, don't you wanna be here too?" And she, uh, she grabbed my face and, and turned my head. And, um, I said, "I don't, I don't wanna go back." And she said, um, she said, "You don't, you don't have a choice." Um, and she pointed,

• 53:46Tommy Rivs?

  and I could see in the distance, um, my, my girls. And, um, I'd forgotten that they even existed. And, um, she said, "You don't have a choice. You've got those three little girls that you've gotta go home to." And I remember seeing it, and, um,

• 54:15Tommy Rivs?

  And being so angry, just because I felt like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this. I don't have the strength to go back. I'm so, I'm so done, you know, I'm so ready to just, just stop fighting whatever this is. And I remember just closing my eyes and breathing and just, um, kinda just accepting it. It was like, okay, you know, I guess, I guess I don't have a choice. I guess I have to come back. And then the, um, the pull, all of that fighting

• 54:55Tommy Rivs?

  that I had done to stay where I had been initially, um, it was the same amount of effort to come back to that space. And I remember when I finally did come back, um, and I got here, wherever that is, um, I was so angry. I was angry at my physicians. I was angry at Steph. I was angry at everybody. I was angry at everybody that had prayed me back, you know, because it felt as though I couldn't even choose to die the way I wanted, you know, because the pull of, um, that pull was so strong, you know, whatever it was

• 55:36Tommy Rivs?

  that, um, that pulled me back when I had chosen to, I even chosen, where I just didn't know how I could continue doing it. I just felt like I didn't have the strength to continue, um, the ability to continue that amount of discomfort and that amount of effort. And whoa, and I got back and, um, woke up, I guess. I, I, it's not that simple, but, um, and I was in this shell of a body and I was like, what did you, what'd you guys do to my lungs? What'd you do to my body? What'd you do to, you know, I weighed 95 pounds and...

• 56:11Rich Roll?

  How long, do you know how long you had been under at that point? This was coming out of the coma?

• 56:18Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Rich Roll?

  So this was like, how many weeks or months?

• 56:22Tommy Rivs?

  It was, gosh, I don't even know. It was, um, Steph said that there were times that in, in August, in September, you know, that I, that I...

• 56:34Tommy Rivs?

  Was responsive to certain things. It was way later than that before I actually was able to piece together what was going on, before I understood that I was in the ICU, that I had lymphoma, that I was undergoing chemo, all of those things. That was probably November before I actually realized that. But, you know, I woke up with, I had pressure ulcers on my heels and on my shoulder and on my sacrum. I've got a scar, you know, the size of my fist on my tailbone. Where, you know, just from having to be in the same position. Yeah, the bed sores.

• 57:18Tommy Rivs?

  You know, they just happen if you can't be shifted.

• 57:21Rich Roll?

  But this idea, like the mysteries of consciousness when you're in a comatose state, right, is fascinating. And you have this, you know, basically near-death experience that you recollect with incredible clarity.

• 57:35Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Rich Roll?

  The idea that you had awareness in that liminal space is fascinating. And coming out of that, and now with some, you know, time and distance between that experience and where you're at now, like, what do you make of that, like spiritually? You know, like, that's a trip.

• 57:53Tommy Rivs?

  Right, yeah. I talked to Steph, like, initially, right as it was happening, and there was, at the time, it was very clear, and there were more answers than questions. But as I look back now, there's now more questions and answers. And what I did say to Steph, and I remember thinking, was that, and of course, this was my experience, and I don't know how, who knows how much of it is.

• 58:39Tommy Rivs?

  I don't see it in any way as though like, oh, I discovered the truth. You know, I had this, I had this vision, I had this experience and this is the experience that you have. I don't, I don't feel that way at all. It was the experience that I had. But I remember, we continue. We don't, it's not just darkness. It doesn't just end.

• 59:02Tommy Rivs?

  But it's,

• 59:07Tommy Rivs?

  and it's right here. It's all happening right here. But it's, it's different.

• 59:13Tommy Rivs?

  I remember realizing that, okay, is if, if I, if I become unmoored from this body, I can't go back. And I will still be here, right here. All of this will still be happening. But I won't have the ability to communicate with everybody who's still in that space. And I remember thinking how, how agonizing that would be to see my girls and, and they would still be right here, but I wouldn't be able to communicate to them. I wouldn't be able to let them know.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  But you would have awareness of the other dimension.

• 59:53Tommy Rivs?

  But also complete awareness of all of their fear and all of their questions and all of their grief and all of their heartache. And, and being able to see it and feel all of it, but not be able to reach across and say, but I'm still right here. Just so you know, I'm still right here.

• 1:00:10Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:00:10Tommy Rivs?

  And that was, the fear of that was a huge motivator.

• 1:00:19Tommy Rivs?

  I remember also thinking and, and feeling and seeing

• 1:00:27Tommy Rivs?

  that, that heaven and hell.

• 1:00:35Tommy Rivs?

  They exist, but they exist to everybody simultaneously. And they exist in proportion to the amount of love that we gave and the amount of love that we were able to receive. And then the hell part is the recollection and the understanding of all of the love that we didn't give and didn't receive when we could have. And that heaven and hell exists simultaneously

• 1:01:10Tommy Rivs?

  based off of the different relationships that we had while we had the opportunity to express those things. And there could be a sense of heaven,

• 1:01:22Tommy Rivs?

  such a big term, but a sense of peace

• 1:01:28Tommy Rivs?

  with the way that we conducted ourselves with a certain individual and the complete opposite with an awareness of the way that we conducted ourselves with somebody else. And that it is all, that it's all connected, that it all continues. And that,

• 1:01:49Tommy Rivs?

  gosh, just the urgency of now. And

• 1:01:59Tommy Rivs?

  that what we continue to feel beyond this is

• 1:02:10Tommy Rivs?

  is directly linked with the way that we

• 1:02:16Tommy Rivs?

  interact with people.

• 1:02:17Rich Roll?

  Comport ourselves.

• 1:02:18Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:02:19Rich Roll?

  And that's so powerful. That's such a powerful lesson. It's also encouraging to me, you know? Like, it makes me feel

• 1:02:30Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Rich Roll?

  good and safe in some regard. It gives me a sense of agency and kind of a directive about how to live. But it's comforting

• 1:02:40Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Rich Roll?

  to hear that. And I suspect you being where you're at right now, which is, you know, obviously in a better place than you were, but also somewhat precarious, there's some comfort for you in having that awareness and understanding.

• 1:02:56Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, there is in some sense, but the part of what

• 1:03:05Tommy Rivs?

  Part of the fear, the fear that I had as I experienced that was that um, I, I remember feeling as though um, whatever it is beyond here, beyond this, um, it's not bad, it's not scary, um, but it's not here and it's um, it's, it's, it's lovely, whatever it is when it happens, but I, I'm not ready yet. I don't want to go yet. Um, because my,

• 1:03:50Tommy Rivs?

  because I, I like it here, you know, and it, um, this is the after-party, you know, there's no after-party. This is as good as it gets. This is everything right now. Um, and whatever is beyond this, it, it doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily bad, but it's, my girls aren't there.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Tommy Rivs?

  My family's not there. My friends aren't there. My life is not there. It's here. And gosh, I want to stay here as long as I can and just wring everything out of this experience first.

• 1:04:25Rich Roll?

  How does that color, you know, how you kind of navigate your life day to day now? Like, has it changed? Obviously, you're more self-aware of your mortality. I suspect you're more present with each given moment and understanding the preciousness of, I mean, you have young girls. It's like, it's the best.

• 1:04:49Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Rich Roll?

  You know, but to be able to have that awareness and enjoy it while it's happening rather than in retrospect.

• 1:04:57Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 1:04:57Rich Roll?

  Certainly a gift.

• 1:04:59Tommy Rivs?

  That's, that's, um, I mean, that right there, like you nailed it. That is, that's been the biggest takeaway is that, um,

• 1:05:07Tommy Rivs?

  There is not this idealistic future somewhere down the line where we're gonna find happiness. You know, where happiness exists there and we're, we're going to be happy, you know? That we're gonna get there and everything's gonna be right. And we're gonna have this sense of just contentment and rest and ease. It's like, that doesn't exist. It's right, it's right now. It's, it's, it's all happening this very moment.

• 1:05:32Rich Roll?

  It's the choice that you make about how to experience your life moment to moment.

• 1:05:36Tommy Rivs?

  The heaven and hell, heaven and hell are all happening all the time to all of us. The entire range of, of human emotions, experiences, all of that is happening to us all the time. And, and whether or not we experience that joy, that happiness is, is based in our ability to see it as it's happening, rather than in, in retrospect, rather than looking back and saying, "Oh, okay, I was happy. I didn't realize it, but I was. Things were really good back then. Those were the good old days," you know? We, we don't ever realize that until after the fact. And our ability to, to have joy, to have happiness, to be happy,

• 1:06:16Tommy Rivs?

  it's, is 100% based on our capacity to see it as it's happening. I mean, this right here, there's nothing, I remember thinking that this morning, you know, it was cold this morning, it was windy this morning. Um, there's construction going on, you know, it's loud, there's a bunch of cars, um, driving way too fast, but it was also, the sun was out, I could hear the ocean. Um, I can breathe without carrying oxygen with me. I, I can eat through my mouth. I don't, I don't have a tube anymore in my stomach. I can take a shower by myself. I don't have to bring oxygen into there. My heart rate doesn't go to 190 just because the hot water hits my body.

• 1:07:02Tommy Rivs?

  I can use the toilet by myself. I don't have to wear a diaper. I don't have bed sores right now. I don't have to piss out of a catheter. All of those things. The absence of all of those things is remarkable. I mean, it's incredible. It's a miracle. And the ability to see that right now. This situation, there's nothing, there's nothing that could make it any better. I mean, I have contact with my family. I saw them just a couple of days ago. I'll see them tomorrow, you know? I have my girls. I have a house. I have a car. We have climate control. We have, I mean, all of this stuff. Like, there's nothing that could make it any better. Nothing. I mean, really. I sincerely believe that.

• 1:07:47Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful, man.

• 1:07:48Tommy Rivs?

  There's nothing that could, that could improve

• 1:07:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Tommy Rivs?

  this situation.

• 1:07:51Rich Roll?

  But here's the thing. I feel like you're somebody who already understood that. Like, you've conducted your life in accordance with those values all along. I suspect maybe you're in a, you know, graduate degree program with that, but you're, it's not like you were living your life antithetically to those principles prior to your illness. Like, you seem like a guy who understood that before.

• 1:08:17Tommy Rivs?

  Maybe. I mean, maybe in theory, you know? I mean, but I, I don't know. I'm cynical. I'm grumpy. I'm, you know, a lot of what comes out, you know, whether I say it or whether I write it, or, or, you know, however, however it's expressed, is, is the conversation that I'm having with myself, you know? Trying to help myself realign, trying to help myself focus on, on what's good, you know? Facing a challenge, being honest about what that challenge consists of, figuring out what I can control, focusing on that, and then spinning a positive narrative around it. But gosh, I, it's always, it's always been the conversation that I, that's

• 1:09:02Tommy Rivs?

  going on in my head, you know? That, that inner dialogue, I guess. To try to

• 1:09:12Tommy Rivs?

  To try to face whatever it is that I'm going through.

• 1:09:17Tommy Rivs?

  I guess in an optimistic sense, but um. But that doesn't mean it's ever been.

• 1:09:28Tommy Rivs?

  Easy, you know, it's um. Gosh, I don't know. I mean, there's.

• 1:09:34Tommy Rivs?

  And this whole situation, this has been. The things that have been the most challenging are are things that you wouldn't. You wouldn't necessarily think about, you know, um, I wouldn't have thought about I.

• 1:09:45Rich Roll?

  Like what?

• 1:09:47Tommy Rivs?

  Uh, waking up addicted to pain meds. I mean, gosh, that um. That's been.

• 1:09:56Rich Roll?

  What did they have you on? Just like a battery of opioids, morphine?

• 1:10:01Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, fentanyl, morphine, um. And that stuff is lovely, you know, I mean, I don't think I've ever. Grieved the loss of something.

• 1:10:14Tommy Rivs?

  As much as as that.

• 1:10:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's heavy.

• 1:10:18Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, it becomes um. Everything, you know, it it that's how.

• 1:10:27Tommy Rivs?

  You get through.

• 1:10:29Tommy Rivs?

  That's how you get through those. Those experiences, you know, it's like, how do people endure that? It's like, well, you endure it because you're. You have a drip of morphine right into your. That stuff's um. Fifty times more potent than. Heroin, you know, and uh. Coming off of that, um. That in combination with, you know, you're on everything and you're on it because because you need to be on it. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how you could. How you could endure what you go through if you weren't. Heavily medicated, but then when the time comes to. A lot of the times, it seems as though you're medicated because. They don't actually think you're going to make it through. So it's like, okay, let's make this as comfortable as possible.

• 1:11:11Rich Roll?

  This is pain management.

• 1:11:12Tommy Rivs?

  As you, yeah, as you transition out and then um. Well, then you don't die and then it's like, oh, damn, okay, we've got to figure out how to. Get your body. To where it can function without all of this and um. And that was hard. I mean, that that was. That's still hard. I mean, that still is um. I mean, to say that I don't think that pull ever goes away.

• 1:11:42Tommy Rivs?

  And you just have to jump it from that to something else, you know?

• 1:11:45Rich Roll?

  And it's it'll slowly, slowly fade into the background. But yeah, it never quite goes away. It's always lurking in the background.

• 1:11:55Tommy Rivs?

  Well, and it's it's been something that um, it's not new to me. I mean, it's it's always.

• 1:12:03Tommy Rivs?

  I think addiction is so ubiquitous that I have a hard time even referring to

• 1:12:10Tommy Rivs?

  people as addicts. I think that people are humans and that we're driven by

• 1:12:17Tommy Rivs?

  these gods and their dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin. And there's lots of different things that we do

• 1:12:25Tommy Rivs?

  to be able to have the right combination of those.

• 1:12:31Tommy Rivs?

  And some of them are culturally and socially acceptable and some aren't. And some are more, you know, potentially self destructive than others.

• 1:12:38Rich Roll?

  And we all on some level find our way to the drug that works for us. And that could be shopping or television, or it can be, you know, a morphine drip, whatever it is, and every combination in between. But I think we all gravitate to that thing that kind of solves that problem in our brain that we feel like we're missing.

• 1:12:58Tommy Rivs?

  Right, yeah. The interesting thing like for me, as I've, as I've gone into, I guess, just most recently with this, just experiencing it.

• 1:13:11Tommy Rivs?

  To me, it felt as though, you know, there's this.

• 1:13:16Tommy Rivs?

  It felt as though it's a misconception when when we look at people and think,

• 1:13:22Tommy Rivs?

  why would so and so, you know, they have a beautiful family, they have a they have a great job, they have a nice house, they have a, you know, a beautiful life. Like, why would they? Why would they choose to use something like that when they know how self or how destructive it can be?

• 1:13:42Tommy Rivs?

  As though there's something malicious in it, you know?

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  Right, that shit has nothing to do with it.

• 1:13:45Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly, and my, my, my view of that, I guess, most recently with this is that, that you actually, the reason that, that somebody goes to use something like that is, is because they love their life, because they love their family, because they love the version of themselves when they're on that, and they hate the version of themselves when they're not on it, because their friends actually don't like the version of them when they're not on it, because society doesn't respond well to that version, that, that it actually, in some situations, you know, when you're completely dependent upon it, it does make you a better person, it does make you more capable of functioning within

• 1:14:25Tommy Rivs?

  whatever that life that you've created is, and, gosh, you know, people think about how expensive those types of things are, but, and how inconvenient those things are, but it's like, gosh, rehab and sobriety, and, and, and coming off of those things, gosh, that's expensive, and there's never a convenient time for that.

• 1:14:50Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:14:50Tommy Rivs?

  And, you know, it will, it will absolutely, you know, just rock everything that you have going on, you know? I mean, I spent three weeks in a bed, just...

• 1:15:04Rich Roll?

  Just trying to detox.

• 1:15:05Tommy Rivs?

  Rising, you know, and just, um...

• 1:15:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:15:08Tommy Rivs?

  Shaking and, um, felt like my brain, my spinal cord, my entire nervous system was having an allergic reaction, I mean, it's like, if your brain could itch, you know, and, um, just such a strong pull, that you know that in it, all you have to take is one of these little, beautiful little white pills, and within 10 minutes it's gone.

• 1:15:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Tommy Rivs?

  You can end it, you can stop it.

• 1:15:34Rich Roll?

  You will go to the ends of the earth.

• 1:15:36Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 1:15:37Rich Roll?

  To solve that equation.

• 1:15:38Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, yeah, it's just...

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  It's heavy, man.

• 1:15:42Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, no, but it's good, though, I mean, it's good to, to experience that and to know...

• 1:15:50Tommy Rivs?

  I guess to just to realize that there's not a

• 1:15:55Tommy Rivs?

  there's just such this misconception that we have that that there's malicious intent, you know, that it's, you know, if somebody struggles with something like that, it's because they're they're deviant, you know, they're malevolent. It's because they just, um,

• 1:16:09Rich Roll?

  They're on a search for wholeness, and that comes in various forms. But when you find that drug and you latch on to it, it's really hard to let go. And you being somebody who's already innately very compassionate and empathetic towards other human beings, like, it's just, it just deepens that reservoir of empathy and helps suspend judgment for those that struggle and are in pain and in that vicious cycle. Yeah, it's hard.

• 1:16:43Rich Roll?

  Well, we glossed over like the diagnosis. I mean, you have this, you have this rare lymphoma, but the actual diagnosis is primary pulmonary NK T cell, right? And this is like a crazy rare thing. Like, it's surprising that they even were able to diagnose you because so few people, how many, how many cases are there? There's almost no cases.

• 1:17:07Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  You stay out of that part of it.

• 1:17:10Tommy Rivs?

  That's the part that gets a little bit tricky. I start, you know, I start to hear, you know, I start to read about it or research or I hear kind of overhear stuff and it doesn't bolster my confidence. So I stay away from it, you know?

• 1:17:27Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Rich Roll?

  So in the hospital, five months?

• 1:17:33Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:17:35Rich Roll?

  Don't even know.

• 1:17:35Tommy Rivs?

  July, July through January.

• 1:17:41Tommy Rivs?

  July, February, March, right, July, August, September, October.

• 1:17:47Tommy Rivs?

  Seven months. Yeah, seven months or so.

• 1:17:49Rich Roll?

  Steph wrote, she kind of went through the litany of all the procedures that you endured.

• 1:17:54Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Rich Roll?

  Are you aware of these? Because I was thinking about recounting some of them, but if you're, if you don't want to, you don't want to be.

• 1:18:00Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. I mean, I, on a surface level, um.

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  You're, you're aware.

• 1:18:06Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Rich Roll?

  You know what they did to you.

• 1:18:07Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. I mean, I think so.

• 1:18:08Rich Roll?

  Plucked and prodded at you. I mean, basically, we don't have to put too, too fine a point on this, but multiple surgeries, most of them while sedated, ventilary intubation, which we mentioned, open lung biopsy, ECMO placement in both your jugular and femoral vein, tracheotomy, PEG GI feeding, uh, two chest tubes for collapsed lungs and internal bleeds. Uh, you suffered acute liver failure. You had deep vein thrombosis in your arm. You had a stage three sacral pressure ulcer and two different strains of fungal lung infections, as well as a septic

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  blood infection. You suffered from severe ICU and steroid induced delirium. Many days you were unable to recognize Steph or even remember your own name. You lost 70 pounds of muscle, going from 170 down to 98, 95 pounds, something like that. Um, you had to relearn how to talk, how to swallow, how to chew. You strained but succeeded to speak on a Passy Muir valve, which I don't know what that is.

• 1:19:17Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Rich Roll?

  While still on ECMO in a ventilator. You had to relearn how to move your limbs, beginning with your finger and your toes. This took weeks. I mean, this is insane. It goes on and on and on.

• 1:19:30Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Rich Roll?

  Like, do you have memory of these phases and stuff like that?

• 1:19:35Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. Um, the surgeries, all the procedures, I have, I've got big scars now. And, um, you know, I've learned about a lot of this just from, a lot of it happened when I was, I guess, in a coma. And so I, um.

• 1:19:51Tommy Rivs?

  I woke up with with all these incisions or just with tubes still, you know, connected.

• 1:19:59Tommy Rivs?

  And some of it, the crazy part is that some of these procedures I was I was sedated for, but I remember them as they were happening, you know, and I remember I've got this, well, I've got this scar here.

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  Right, like wow, right on your sternum.

• 1:20:18Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, right on my sternum. Yeah, I forget this is audio. So big scar. Yeah, big scar, right, right where my sternum was. And that was a pericardial window where they, I guess it was a way to go in and access my heart for some different procedures I had and then to do some work on. It's called your pericardium, which is this.

• 1:20:41Rich Roll?

  They had to drain fluid out of that sac, right?

• 1:20:43Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, to drain the fluid out of that. And then that that basically was just kept open because so that they could go in and keep working there. And then eventually there's, you can't stitch it because there's just too big of a hole. And so that was cauterized. And I remember that. I remember smelling.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  And you have to do a skin graft on that? Or how did they even get it to cover up?

• 1:21:07Tommy Rivs?

  Just burnt, just cauterized, just. And I remember I remember smelling it and it reminded me of branding cattle when I was younger. I was like, why does it smell like we're branding cattle? And then I realized that the smell was was coming from from me, you know, from my chest and and feeling it. And I remember thinking, guys, I can I can feel this, you know, this thing that we're doing, like I'm, I'm still here. And but not being able to communicate, like, okay, we gotta, can you give me something, you know, or can you put me out? Because I may not be responsive, but I'm still here, you know, and how's uncomfortable? I mean, that.

• 1:21:50Tommy Rivs?

  And then that's the other thing that with, you know, where everything is just so confusing, but that I was still experiencing lots of stuff. I mean, some of it was just horrible, you know, and just the most uncomfortable things you can imagine. And, you know, I've heard people say like, these things that you go through when you're, you know, in the ICU, end of life, stuff like that, that they're these dehumanizing experiences, you know? Having, you know, catheter, a rectal catheter. I mean, being fed through a tube.

• 1:22:34Tommy Rivs?

  Having a tube down your throat, a tube in your throat, you know, through your nose, through your neck, you know, all of these things. And I, it's interesting that it actually, there's nothing more humanizing, you know? Those are humanizing, the very most humanizing experiences.

• 1:22:55Rich Roll?

  Because it connects you with just the frailty of being human and the temporal nature of our short existence here on Earth.

• 1:23:02Tommy Rivs?

  And everybody will be, well, hopefully not, but, but, you know, if we live to an advanced age, and if we don't go out with a bang, you know? If we go out with a whimper instead, it looks like that, you know? And everybody will be in that situation. And, you know, realizing that, you know, maybe somebody says something and it comes across really gruff. And it's not because they don't mean to say it in a kind of way. It's because they know they've only got enough energy for three or four words. And they're only going to have the energy to get it out one time, you know? And I remember working with...

• 1:23:45Tommy Rivs?

  With patients, geriatric patients that um I remember thinking like wow, it's really interesting how how how curt you become as you get older and then realizing

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Self preservation.

• 1:23:59Tommy Rivs?

  Right, exactly. And it's not based off of you don't have the luxury of considering how something is going to come out or how it's going to be interpreted because you just you only have the energy to just say something one time. And it's just, man, this yeah, just being able to be aware of that and see that and experience it.

• 1:24:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the the kind of silver lining in this is you had that palliative care experience without being a geriatric and you have this second shot to, you know, basically ply what you learned and, you know, attempt to make your life more meaningful in the process. I mean, anybody, the people who work in palliative care, I mean, it's fascinating. They come, you know, they have their they're getting a firsthand experience with people at the end of their lives and their last words and their reflections on their lives. And I find that to be, you know, so powerful and instructive. And yet you hear it and then you forget it immediately and you just go about your business.

• 1:24:56Tommy Rivs?

  Right, exactly. But man, one thing I gotta say though is um, oh, man, nurses and the doctors, the physicians, um, man, they're I think about this this situation and and and I guess some of the feedback I've gotten and some of the messages I've received and stuff and um, this is, I don't know, this is not a story of um, heroic feats, you know, I mean, at least not by me. And when I think about it, it's like

• 1:25:36Tommy Rivs?

  the nurses and the physicians that that chose to um, to take me, you know, when when everything looked so bleak, um, really putting their reputations on the line to be able to do this and to be able to be willing to take me when there was such a limit, um, like limited resources, limited bed space, limited manpower, all of that. It just

• 1:26:07Tommy Rivs?

  It's difficult to find the right words to express that kind of gratitude. And not just to the, you know, the team that accepted me and was willing to work with me, but also with just the outpouring of support, you know, and love from, gosh, from so many people.

• 1:26:32Rich Roll?

  I mean, I don't know what your awareness is because, you know, you were where you were, but the outpouring of love and the support online and the community that kind of, you know, congealed around supporting you was unbelievable, man. It was really a beautiful thing. And I'm sure you know that, but if you don't know that, you need to know that, like, people love you, man. And that's a reflection of the way that you've lived your life. You know, to the extent that, you know, your experience has created a referendum on how you want to live and how you want to be and improvements you can make, you need to understand that you have lived your life in such a way that, you know,

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  people are, you know, going to the ends of the earth to try to find ways to support you and your family.

• 1:27:20Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, it's, man, people are good. It's, all we hear is the negative. All we see is the scandals, you know, the times that people mess up and the, just this obsession we have with finding fault. And that it fosters this mindset as though humans are just these fallible, wretched, cynical creatures. And that's one, that's one aspect of humanity. But our ability to do good, to impact the lives of people around us,

• 1:28:04Tommy Rivs?

  to help make things better for other people around us, it's just, it's infinite, that capacity, that ability. I think about, I think about humanity. We talk about humanity all the time. Well, we did, growing up at least, in my home. My mom was an artist, my dad...

• 1:28:29Tommy Rivs?

  His graduate degrees were in humanities and religion. And.

• 1:28:34Rich Roll?

  That's fascinating. I didn't know that, but I'm like, of course.

• 1:28:40Tommy Rivs?

  But growing up, you know, we studied the masters, you know, of the humanities. They were the artists, they were the writers, the.

• 1:28:49Tommy Rivs?

  And that word became synonymous with like masters of the arts.

• 1:28:55Tommy Rivs?

  They were great writers or painters or sculptors. When we think about Michelangelo or Bernini, or we think about.

• 1:29:04Tommy Rivs?

  These individuals that had this ability to capture. Human emotion, human experience, and that that's why. That's why we call it the humanities, not because.

• 1:29:17Tommy Rivs?

  You know, it's not synonymous with artists, it's that they have the ability to capture. The essence of humanity, you know, not just, not just have the ability to paint or just to be a, or to be a sculptor, but to actually capture a feeling, this this universal. Human. Experience and. There's this massive, I think about this massive. Spectrum of of humanity and on one end is the. Is the weak miserable wretched aspects of humanity. But then on the other, or on the other side of that spectrum is. Is our potential for good, you know, and. We are.

• 1:29:59Tommy Rivs?

  We are masters at picking up the broken pieces and. Recreating and repairing and.

• 1:30:08Tommy Rivs?

  We're masters of redemption. I mean, we really are, and we're also masters at deflecting. The fact that we have that capacity, we put it on something else or someone else always. We look at these incredible achievements that.

• 1:30:24Tommy Rivs?

  Humans have accomplished and.

• 1:30:27Tommy Rivs?

  Our first reaction is, oh, it must be, it must be extraterrestrials. It must be something else, you know, that did this.

• 1:30:34Rich Roll?

  We couldn't have possibly achieved this.

• 1:30:35Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly, because, because if we recognize.

• 1:30:41Tommy Rivs?

  Our capacity as human beings, then we also, well, if we recognize the achievements of a previous civilization or somebody else, and if we don't attribute it to, oh, divine intervention, or some unseen force that actually accomplished it, then it condemns us as human beings. Then we have to acknowledge the fact that, well, we maybe aren't reaching our potential as human beings. And so, we're so quick to give something else the credit,

• 1:31:23Tommy Rivs?

  which is great. I mean, there's, there's obviously, it's important to have humility and to recognize that.

• 1:31:28Rich Roll?

  But to face that is to reckon with our innate power. And if we're living our life frivolously, we don't want to look at that.

• 1:31:35Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly, yeah. But when we realize, you know, our life is ours to choose essentially. I mean, we, if there's something that we want to work, to accomplish, there's, there's work involved. There's personal responsibility that we have to take and we have to actually do that. But, but it is within our capacity. It is, it is within our ability. And, um, gosh, to, to be able to, to see that potential that we have as human beings, and to realize that that redemptive capacity

• 1:32:17Tommy Rivs?

  that exists within each of us is a human characteristic. You know, to realize that not just the flawed, broken aspects of our humanity, but our potential, and what we, what we can, what we can do individually, but also what we can do collectively. And, and seeing that play out with, with this experience, the, the support that my family received from.

• 1:32:44Tommy Rivs?

  Continues to receive from so many. I mean, I can't even begin to number them just because it's just, it's just immeasurable.

• 1:32:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Tommy Rivs?

  And the, the contributions, the generosity, the support, the encouragement, all of that. Seeing that and just, just realizing, remembering as I see that, just the incredible capacity that we have for good.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it reaffirms my optimism about humanity.

• 1:33:15Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Rich Roll?

  You know, amidst all the, the chaos and the strife and the division and this breakdown in our ability to communicate and the lack of nuance in our discourse and our, you know, quick to, quick to judge, you know, kind of disposition and canceling people for this and that. Like this idea of redemption, right, is so important and this appreciation of nuance and this, you know, default to trying to find or trying to identify the best in people or, you know, see the potential in our individual and collective humanity is something that I feel like we need to reconnect with and appreciate.

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  I feel like it's evaporating, you know, right before our very eyes and we're all suffering as a result.

• 1:34:02Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, it's so, just everybody. I mean, there's not a, there's not, that's what, that's what makes us human is the fact that, that all of us have these secret boxes that are full of our fears, our grief, our insecurities, as well as our hopes and dreams and aspirations.

• 1:34:27Rich Roll?

  Sure. And then, and then sort of sitting right next to that is a culture that's, that's biding its time, just waiting to judge you in accordance with your worst day.

• 1:34:39Tommy Rivs?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:34:43Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, we just.

• 1:34:47Rich Roll?

  But this idea of, I love this idea of artists as doctors of humanity, right? Here to kind of help us connect with what we all share. And I feel like you channel that sensibility in your writing. Like when you make these beautiful Instagram posts, they're really, they're really, you know, they're poems, their musings philosophical on the human condition. They're not about you, they're not even really about running. They're really about life and they're very broad and sometimes they're very specific, but they always speak to something that we can all connect with and share about what it is to be in this meat suit and deal with the bullshit that we have to deal with as

• 1:35:32Rich Roll?

  human beings.

• 1:35:33Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  I mean, they're beautiful. I love reading your writing and Steph too, like the two of you together. It's like, let's write a book together.

• 1:35:41Tommy Rivs?

  That's incredible. Thank you, that means a lot. It's always just been my journal, really. And I, from the time I was a kid, you know, we were encouraged to write every day. And my dad has had a journal that he writes in and has kept since the 1970s and it's like 17,000 pages long.

• 1:36:06Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:36:08Tommy Rivs?

  You know, he writes it every month and then prints it out and sends it to each of us, you know? And so, and it's basically that, you know? It's just his thoughts and the things that he reads and the things that he experiences. And so, we've, you know, we were always taught to do that, that that was something that you should do on a daily basis is sit down and write. And my, you know, my little daughter, my oldest of the three.

• 1:36:36Tommy Rivs?

  You know, she's old enough to where she can do something like that. She can sit down and write. And, and that's something that I've, their allowance is based off of. It's like, well, if you write every day, you know, at the end of the month, you can add all this up.

• 1:36:49Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:36:50Tommy Rivs?

  And just because it's a, it's a way to express, um, to identify what it is that you're feeling and to be able to put it down on paper and it validates that experience for you, you know? And if there's other people that, you know, that feel like it can be helpful to them as well, then it's, and you can do it in a way that's generic enough to where.

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Tommy Rivs?

  Um, and that's what that's always been, you know, I, even before social media, that's always just been something that I've done and it's something I still do. I mean, I don't share a lot of it, but, um, but getting into the practice of, of writing,

• 1:37:32Tommy Rivs?

  I think that there's this, this quote by Hemingway where he talks about writing one true thing. You know, he sits down and he's just right, just write one true sentence, right? The truest sentence that, you know, and, and that's what it is a lot of days, you know? And, and it's not, it's not always this yearning where I have to sit down and write something. Otherwise, you know, I'm not going to be able to contain my thoughts. It's, it's a practice, you know, I sit down and I, I make myself write one true thing. And, um, and sometimes I share that and sometimes I don't, most of the times I don't.

• 1:38:05Tommy Rivs?

  But it's really helped me in the last, um, in the last several months as I've been trying to get, you know, there are aspects of my memory that I don't think I'll ever get back, but, but I feel like I'm finally being able to get my mind back, you know? Have the ability to think and be able to, um, I guess process kind of just what's going on around me and, um, and internalize that and then be able to. Metabolize it, you know, through, through putting it down on paper.

• 1:38:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it has a very like Beat Poet vibe to it, right? And it's, it's cool, cause I think, you know, we think of athletes being here and then artists being over here. And it's rare when these two things come in one package. And you see it kind of probably more in the ultra space because that's sort of a more kind of esoteric pursuit. And I think is prone to, you know, kind of, you know, waxing poetic, I suppose. But I love it when athletes are kind of channeling that innate artistic sensibility that I think we all have.

• 1:39:16Rich Roll?

  When I think of you, I mean, I think about Ricky Gates, you know, being somebody like that, like, I don't know, do you guys know each other?

• 1:39:23Tommy Rivs?

  I know of him, yeah.

• 1:39:24Rich Roll?

  Like, I mean, you guys have a Vulcan mind meld.

• 1:39:27Tommy Rivs?

  Definitely know who he is, but, yeah, no, he's, he's a really inspiring.

• 1:39:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's, it's like Notes from the Edge. You know, like, we're out here, we're explorers of a certain kind, and we're reporting back with, you know, what we discover out there. And I think it's, I think it's really cool. The other piece to this is this, this default to being service minded. And I was reading or listening to something your brother Jacob said, and he was talking about when you guys were in college in Hawaii and, and really, you know, immersing yourself in the, in the indigenous Hawaiian culture and trying to understand the precepts and principles that kind of underpin their philosophy.

• 1:40:12Rich Roll?

  You know, the idea of Ohana and aloha and mana and all of that, but a core principle being this idea of ha, like this, this predisposition towards giving and the idea that when you are in a giving spirit, that it is there that you find your, your greatest power.

• 1:40:31Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:32Rich Roll?

  So talk about that a little bit.

• 1:40:34Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, gosh. Yeah, we were out there for, we were out there together for a few years and that was, that was an awesome time on Oahu. And we had a professor that was the Hawaiian Studies Professor. We both studied.

• 1:40:51Tommy Rivs?

  Part of what we both studied was cultural anthropology. It was part of, I guess what he ended up studying. And then, yeah, so we had some classes that we were together in. Yeah, there was definitely, there were components of that belief system that just really made a lot of sense. And I think some of it had to do with our upbringing. But this notion that, one of the strong ones was this relationship that we have with the natural world, with the earth. You know, and there's a belief within, traditional Hawaiian belief, that if you are steward of the land, if you protect the earth

• 1:41:35Tommy Rivs?

  and you care for the earth, that the earth has a moral obligation to care for you in return. And, you know, I wish I understood it better. But I feel there is a, definitely is a connection, you know, and there's a, there's a sense of, there's some type of reciprocal, reciprocal relationship that exists where, not just in that, well, that respiratory relationship that we have with the earth. I mean, that's incredible to think about that, that we,

• 1:42:16Tommy Rivs?

  that we consume carbohydrates and we breathe in oxygen and we drink water, and that the combination of those three things creates CO2 and energy. And then we breathe out that CO2 and the plants breathe in that CO2. Right. And they create carbohydrates and oxygen and breathe that back out. And I feel as though there's a, there's something else that exists that are somehow our connection with the natural world and moving through the natural world, whether it's walking or running, or cycling, or swimming, or surfing, whatever it is, that the emotions that we store, absorb, you know, from,

• 1:43:01Tommy Rivs?

  I've always absorbed people's emotions around me.

• 1:43:06Tommy Rivs?

  And that gets heavy, that gets really heavy. And running is, has become, it was always an outlet. It was always a way to metabolize that emotion and somehow breathe it back into the natural world. And it felt as though there was something within that natural world that I wasn't, it wasn't a toxin that I was emitting. It was almost as though it was, it was something that was beneficial somehow. And.

• 1:43:34Rich Roll?

  Right, the more that you grow and mature and metabolize all of this, like whatever you're, you're aspirating out.

• 1:43:41Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:43:42Rich Roll?

  Is providing sustenance to something.

• 1:43:44Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, yeah. And the reason that I, I feel that is because I can go out and I can spin my wheels and go through the motions in a densely populated city. And I don't feel that release. I don't feel as though it's metabolizing the same way as if I was in,

• 1:44:07Tommy Rivs?

  you know, in the mountains or in the canyon or, you know, or, you know, these hills around here. I mean, that's what I love about, what I love about here is that you can be in such a densely populated area and then you just move.

• 1:44:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:19Tommy Rivs?

  You know, just right next door is this rugged, wild mountain and you have the ability to exhale all of that, you know, that you've absorbed. Anyway, it, it goes back to, to the, I guess, the things that we learned there when we were, when we were in school there and just that, this understanding that, that there is a connection, that there's a reciprocal connection, not just between us and the natural world, but between, you know, ourselves and other human beings and.

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  I feel like that's heightened in Hawaii.

• 1:44:52Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  There is a real like palpable sense. It's very experiential when you're there because there's a lot of light, but there's a lot of dark there. Like there's a polarity that exists for some reason.

• 1:45:03Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Rich Roll?

  Maybe it's on some meridian. I don't know what's going on there, but I mean, it's real as far as I can tell.

• 1:45:10Tommy Rivs?

  Absolutely.

• 1:45:10Rich Roll?

  But the trick is then to come back to the mainland where it's less pronounced and maintain that kind of reverence and respect and, you know, awareness.

• 1:45:22Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. Yeah. And the one thing that I, well, not the one thing, but one thing that I do love about being out there is.

• 1:45:32Tommy Rivs?

  Is that the currency out there is is service to the people around.

• 1:45:38Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, that's what I was driving at with this idea of ha.

• 1:45:42Tommy Rivs?

  Right, exactly. Yeah, I think about the word inspire, you know, inspire means to to breathe life into something, the same as that notion of ha. Conspire, to breathe life into something together with somebody else, you know. And just that sense that that you have the ability as a human being to positively or negatively affect the people around you based off of the way that you choose to interact, you know, and our purpose, if there's a purpose, our purpose for being here is to

• 1:46:26Tommy Rivs?

  serve, is to serve each other, is to is to try to make the life of another individual easier, you know, to try to help them on their way, to try to somehow be of assistance. And there's this notion, this need for cooperation, coordination, that that we have as human beings. It's existed for hundreds of thousands of years, but in the last, gosh, I don't know, the last couple of centuries, we've become more individualistic. We've we've become more isolated, you know, rather than

• 1:47:04Tommy Rivs?

  working together with individuals cooperating in a tribe setting.

• 1:47:12Rich Roll?

  There's something uniquely American about that because of the way we over-prioritize and over-index and kind of herald the idea of rugged individualism, which is really an illusion. Like, nobody gets anywhere without cooperation and help. But for some reason, we celebrate this idea of the self-made man. And these sort of. Principles upon which our country was built really look to that idea of individualism as something that stands above all these other, you know, kind of ideas that I think we should be celebrating probably a little bit more. And as a result, we're isolating ourselves from each other.

• 1:47:57Rich Roll?

  We're not raising our children in a village and we don't know our neighbors. And we consider it a weakness to ask for help. And all of these things, I think, are really denigrating the quality of our lives.

• 1:48:09Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, absolutely. And we, rather than focusing on coordination and cooperation and, and receiving the the reward that comes from that, which is this production and distribution of oxytocin. We, we use our consumption and accumulation, you know, to, to feed that same need. And we isolate ourselves. And we get our validation through our devices.

• 1:48:40Rich Roll?

  Or we only, we only conspire and cooperate in order to get to a place where we can consume more. And, and separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters. You know, I mean, I was, I, I, I'm sure you have this same experience, but I mean, we originally met because we were both with James Aaron Cowboy on the final day of his 50 50 50. And we got to run a few miles together and that was super fun. And, you know, one of the things I remember about that experience was you being not just a cheerleader, but a guy who was, you were there to serve. Like you're running back and forth, you're making sure everybody's okay. You're making sure James is okay.

• 1:49:23Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I, I mean, I was very aware of kind of, I was very conscious of like, The intentionality that you brought to that experience in that it was all about like making sure it was the best day ever for James, right?

• 1:49:40Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:40Rich Roll?

  And it was, and it was amazing, and I'll never forget that day. I went back to, on two occasions to, you know, participate in his latest crazy adventure, the Conquer 101, that's what he's calling it, that's what he called it, right? And, and one of the things, I mean, set aside the, you know, the sheer athletic achievement. The thing that was most meaningful to me was seeing this whole town turn up to support this guy, like a small little town, not really a suburb, like it's far enough away from Salt Lake that it's kind of its own place.

• 1:50:14Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:15Rich Roll?

  With its own community. And everybody showed up to support this guy, and all these people flew in from all over the place to support this guy.

• 1:50:25Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Rich Roll?

  And it was the most kind of cooperative situation. And in some ways, kind of a throwback to a different time, because it's a place where kids ride their bikes down the street.

• 1:50:37Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:37Rich Roll?

  And everybody says hello to each other, you know, it's a very Leave It To Beaver kind of town, right?

• 1:50:42Tommy Rivs?

  Yep, absolutely.

• 1:50:43Rich Roll?

  And I was like, wow, this is kind of nice, you know, like I don't see, I live in LA, I don't see this anywhere, right?

• 1:50:50Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50Rich Roll?

  But it is that spirit of, of cooperation and a sensibility around kind of giving of yourself for something greater than yourself.

• 1:51:00Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, it's been a-

• 1:51:01Rich Roll?

  And I know you were out there, you went out there for, I think, I went out there on the last day, and James was telling me that you had been out there, I think, a couple days prior.

• 1:51:08Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, I got there in, oh, New Jersey, so I think the second, the second half, maybe last like 25 or so.

• 1:51:16Rich Roll?

  Right, on the 50, yeah, I mean, you were there for a huge, long stretch, but I mean, the recent, the latest-

• 1:51:20Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Rich Roll?

  -thing, you were out, you, you came out for a day.

• 1:51:23Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, yeah, if I was with my, my dad and my sister, and we went, went out to see him, and, um, gosh, that's incredible, I mean, I- There's not even words.

• 1:51:33Rich Roll?

  I mean, what do you even say about it?

• 1:51:34Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly. Well, yeah, James is, gosh, his ability to, you know, just exactly what we were talking about earlier, the potential that we have as human beings, you know, to explore those outer ragged edges of that human capability and to do it in a way that just empowers other people to realize what it is that we're actually capable of, you know, to rewrite those rules. And the way that he is able to do it is through that, you know, cooperation, coordination, to see how, I mean, it is an equal distribution of effort by him and Sonny and his kids in the wing.

• 1:52:16Rich Roll?

  And he's the first person to make sure that everybody understands that this is a team thing.

• 1:52:22Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly. No, it's really.

• 1:52:24Rich Roll?

  I mean, the wingmen are unbelievable.

• 1:52:27Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, they are. Gosh, yeah, that's a good crew. I mean, that's a solid group of people. And you can't help but, you know, walk away from that and be just inspired by, you know what I mean, that in that same way that I mentioned that like it breathes life in you. It helps you realize what you're capable of as a human and not just, not just what James has done, but just like the way that we can rally around any cause, whatever it is. And even, you know, not just the outward things that are said, but just observing it, just watching it, just seeing how it plays out and doing it so transparently and openly like that

• 1:53:08Tommy Rivs?

  to where everybody sees, you know, this is, there's no curtain that separates behind the scenes and the front stage. Everybody is just right out there and you see all of it and you realize how, how much it takes to be able to pull something like that off. And that makes it even more inspiring, you know, just that you can, you can create something like that, a community, you know, a tribe, a family, whatever it is. And, you know, you have a goal and then you figure out a plan and then you just chip away at it until you get it done.

• 1:53:41Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:53:42Tommy Rivs?

  It's pretty incredible.

• 1:53:43Rich Roll?

  In your case, I mean, so much of your, of who you are, so much of your identity is that of the athlete, right? And now, obviously, you have to recalibrate that whole thing. Like, how has that been for you and how do you think about that?

• 1:53:58Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, man.

• 1:54:01Tommy Rivs?

  You know, it doesn't, it doesn't, in my head, it doesn't change. I've never been,

• 1:54:09Tommy Rivs?

  you know, I had an opportunity, I've had the opportunity to be around a lot of really, really great athletes, living in Flagstaff and, you know, working in, you know, being a body mechanic, basically, you know, working on bodies, studying physical therapy, studying massage, studying

• 1:54:31Tommy Rivs?

  manual therapy. You have the opportunity to, to be around and put your hands on lots of really incredible, incredible athletes. And it's really good because it helps you realize how unremarkable you are, you know. And you, you go to Flagstaff, you learn really quick that you're, you're a tiny fish in an enormous pond.

• 1:54:53Rich Roll?

  There's Ryan Hall, there's Sarah Hall, there's Scott Fable.

• 1:54:57Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly, yeah. I mean, there are, even on the, you know, the, the buildups where I was in the very best shape of my life, there are, I don't know, three dozen males and females that could, you know, kick my ass on any distance, you know, any, any, any event. And I, you know, I, I was never going to be the greatest. I was never going to be a great, great athlete, you know. I mean, I like to do everything that I could to wring out my own potential. But I, you know, I was very, very aware that I was never going to be, I'm built to be a distance runner, you know.

• 1:55:40Rich Roll?

  Sure, but at the same time, there's that, there's the kind of performance outcomes of being an athlete. But more importantly, or more meaningfully, is just the experience of being an athlete. Like, I get to go out and run these trails, and I can, I can feel a certain way, and run these distances, and connect with my breath, and, you know, all of that, that, that, that gives us sustenance, right, is suddenly not available to you.

• 1:56:05Tommy Rivs?

  Well, I guess what I was, what I was getting at is that it is still, it's just different. It's just...

• 1:56:13Tommy Rivs?

  The thing that drew me to it was always, you know, being able to be a part of that community, being able to feel a part of, you know, there's this cohesion that takes place when you're out suffering alongside people and training towards something and working collectively towards something. And, you know, my body is wrecked. It likely, it likely won't ever be able to recover fully. But I can still get out. I can still.

• 1:56:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you, like, what can you do? Like, what does it look like?

• 1:56:47Tommy Rivs?

  Well, it's a lot of walking right now, especially in Flagstaff at that elevation. And I'll get out and just slowly move. And, and just that process of moving through the natural world, it still provides the same, I have never loved the, I mean, it's fun to compete, but, but I really have always done it as a way of, of just being able to work through my own issues, you know? It's this meditative reverent practice of, of going out and, I guess, seeking this transcendental experience, you know? And, and you become so dependent upon it, you have to make a lifestyle out of it eventually, otherwise

• 1:57:31Tommy Rivs?

  it gets flagged as, you know, something that's, that's, that's an addiction, you know? It's self-destructive and.

• 1:57:37Rich Roll?

  Let me just shroud all of this and tell everybody it's a career.

• 1:57:41Tommy Rivs?

  If you can do that, I mean, you know, I mean, that's, but that's what it is. I mean, that, that really is. And, and otherwise it becomes, you know, something that people say you should, you know, you should probably reconsider. I remember talking to my dad a couple of years ago. My dad's like my best friend. Like, we talk on the phone like almost every day. And he, we were in.

• 1:58:05Tommy Rivs?

  I was out on the same road, same road that I run back and forth, day after day after day. And I think it was like the third run of the day, just because I'd had to break it up and, and I was getting ready for a marathon. And I'd been living in Flagstaff for, I don't know, maybe six years and, you know, pursuing that full time. And he said, wow, you're running again? You're, you're really into this running thing, aren't you? And I was like, yes, Dad. Yep. You know, it's something that I am pursuing a little bit, you know, seriously. And I was like, Dad, that'd be like if I said to you, like, oh, you're still reading books? Oh, you're really into that reading thing, aren't you?

• 1:58:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Still writing in your journal.

• 1:58:46Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, um, yeah, it, it's changed. I mean, it's different. It's slower. But gosh, if, if we got to the end of this life, and if there was some kind of sit down judgment reconciliation, and, and the only thing that you had to show for it was how fast you could run, I mean, what a, what a waste of a life that would be, you know? I mean, really, like, it's like, it's like, well, what did you do? It's like, well, did you see how fast I could run?

• 1:59:13Rich Roll?

  Two eighteen.

• 1:59:14Tommy Rivs?

  Did you see how fast I could run a marathon? I mean, that is a pretty pathetic existence, you know? I mean, there's so much, that is, there's nothing more self-serving than that, you know? And, and so, yeah, I'm, I don't know, who knows? I don't know if I'll ever run that fast again, but.

• 1:59:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, you were out, you've shared on Instagram, you were out in the canyon with your, with your daughter.

• 1:59:34Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Rich Roll?

  So you're getting out there.

• 1:59:36Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah. So I walk, I get out, yeah, I get out and move. And, um, and that's as good as it gets, you know? Being able to be in the canyon with, um, Harper, she's 11. I mean, she's incredible. And we have like, she says things that, um, the way that she's connected to the natural world is, it's unlike anything I've ever experienced before. We were walking and she said, um, She said, you know, Dad, it sounds like the way that, you know, when you lick a rock? And I said, what? She goes, it's the sound of like licking a rock, but not like a river rock and not a piece of limestone, like a piece of sandstone. Like, you know that sound that it makes when you lick a piece of sandstone?

• 2:00:21Tommy Rivs?

  And I was like, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, that kind of, um.

• 2:00:27Rich Roll?

  There's the poet.

• 2:00:28Tommy Rivs?

  Exactly.

• 2:00:29Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 2:00:30Tommy Rivs?

  No, I was just like, wow, that's so, that is so, um, that's so in tune, you know?

• 2:00:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:00:37Tommy Rivs?

  Having experiences like that with her, you know?

• 2:00:38Rich Roll?

  And she like shamed, somebody had like a boombox or something like that down in the canyon and she was like, not into it.

• 2:00:45Tommy Rivs?

  Just a Bluetooth speaker, yeah. She just shook her head and she just, she goes, noise pollution. I was like, yeah. And it wasn't even to me, it was just to herself and I just heard it and I was like, man, that's awesome. I mean, that's a really proud moment. Then she said something to me and it reminded me of something that maybe I had said to her at one point, but she, she said it back to me as though it was an independent thought. You know, I could tell it was like something that was a part of her, but you know, we were having a, I was having a hard time coming back out, you know, we're hiking back out and gosh, I swear the canyon got way steeper, you know, in the last year and a half, but I'm coming back out and she's like, hey, you know what? It's okay. Like, it's okay. Sometimes, sometimes the memory is a lot better than when we're actually living the experience.

• 2:01:29Tommy Rivs?

  And I was like, gosh, this kid, you know?

• 2:01:33Rich Roll?

  And children are our teachers, Tommy.

• 2:01:36Tommy Rivs?

  Nothing better than that, you know?

• 2:01:37Rich Roll?

  That's unbelievable.

• 2:01:38Tommy Rivs?

  I mean, it's just like, to be able to have that experience and, you know, the fact that I can do that now, be able to walk down there with her and, um, you know, be able to walk on the trails just around her home and sit outside and play with the ducks and the chickens and, you know, just all of that. It's like, there's nothing, um, there's nothing better than that. And, and I have that now, you know? I remember a year ago, a year and a half ago, bartering with whoever it is that's in charge of all of this, you know? If I can just, just let me get through this year, just give me one more year. Like, if I can have a year, then, you know, I'll gladly go. And I've made it, it's been a year and, um.

• 2:02:21Tommy Rivs?

  Gosh, and then you get selfish. You're like, okay, five more, 20 more, 50 more.

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:02:25Tommy Rivs?

  You know?

• 2:02:25Rich Roll?

  Because we're humans, man, right?

• 2:02:27Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly. But I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't get any better than this. It's, it really doesn't. And I mean, the tragedy is that we, that we don't see it until afterwards, you know? I, I mean, I've been thinking about, um, people say like, and they lived, and they lived happily ever after. Like the operative verb there is lived, you know? They were, they were alive and that's why, that's why they were able to, that's why it was happily ever after. Then they died and it becomes a fucking tragedy, you know? But like, gosh, life is incredible. I mean, it, it just,

• 2:03:09Tommy Rivs?

  as bad as it seems, as hard as it seems, um, it's just such a, a gift to be able to do it. And we talk about how tragic it is when somebody, when something happens, you know? Somebody dies, somebody gets sick, um, there's an accident, there's a disaster. And as though, um, as though that's, um, that's out of the norm. And, and in reality, the fact that we're alive, it's just, it's just a miracle. I mean, the fact that we're, that we're here, that we're, it becomes hard to talk about this stuff because you can't express it in ways that haven't been expressed in just such cliche terms, you know?

• 2:03:50Tommy Rivs?

  But the fact that we're living and breathing and talking and all of this, um, with everything that's going on.

• 2:03:58Rich Roll?

  On a space rock?

• 2:04:00Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:04:01Rich Roll?

  That emits oxygen that we can breathe and we give it back CO2 as we're hurtling through space. I mean, it's all insane, right?

• 2:04:08Tommy Rivs?

  That's spinning 16,000 miles an hour.

• 2:04:10Rich Roll?

  But our brains can't, can't really, you know, grok that whole thing. I mean, of course, obviously we intellectually understand like that life is a miracle. But we can't fully embody that or appreciate that on a moment to moment basis. And, you know, in my experience, people who have experienced certain types of trauma or life altering, you know, situations like yourself.

• 2:04:35Rich Roll?

  Come out of those experiences with obviously this renewed appreciation, but there's kind of a timeline, like that dissipates over time. Like it's hard to hold on to that, right? And so here you are a year later, like I feel like you're, you really are holding on to that, you know, you really are in the moment. Like when we first sat down and you're like, this is great, man. I'm so happy, like, I can feel it, like that's real. And I think that's an incredible gift for all of us to like, hear you express that, for you to fully embody that. And a powerful reminder of just how precious all of this is and how fleeting and how delicate and fragile.

• 2:05:16Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:16Rich Roll?

  And I just wanna, like, I want a piece of that. Like, I wanna like, I wanna, I wanna feel that on a soul level in the way that you feel it.

• 2:05:25Tommy Rivs?

  The lucky part is that as good as things are, they're, they'll get bad again for all of us, you know? I guess the key is to not waste that suffering when it comes. Like, see it as a, see it as a gift, see it as an, as, as an opportunity to open our eyes and, and to be able to really, to value, you know, what it is that we have. It's normal, a normal day, you know? Just realizing how incredible that is. And the tragedy is that we don't recognize it until after the fact. But everything is, it's so cyclical, you know? Everything that is good, anytime we're in, we're having a, a good time,

• 2:06:09Tommy Rivs?

  a comfortable time, life is good, you know? We can be 100% guaranteed that it's gonna get bad again, you know? And as bad as it is, you can be 100% guaranteed that it's gonna get good again, you know? And it's just being able to see all of it, all at once, and, and recognize, recognize what is good. And

• 2:06:31Tommy Rivs?

  And be able to really value it as it's happening. Because, you know, like I was saying, there is, there is no idealistic future, you know, where it's just gonna, it's gonna all be right and we're just gonna be happy, you know? Happiness isn't something, we're not a victim of it, it doesn't just happen to us, you know? It's, it's happening all the time and it's our ability to see it and recognize it and it's just, it's incredible, really.

• 2:07:00Rich Roll?

  I had so many other things I wanted to talk to you about, but I can't imagine a better way to end it than with that, that was so beautifully put.

• 2:07:08Tommy Rivs?

  Thanks, Jim.

• 2:07:13Rich Roll?

  You're a beautiful man.

• 2:07:14Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, geez.

• 2:07:15Rich Roll?

  I really appreciate you coming here today, I really do, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's moving for me just to be in your presence after having kind of closely followed everything that's, that's occurred in your life. And I just have so much reverence and respect for, for you, yes, as an athlete, but really just as a human being, like the way that you comport yourself, the way that you interact with the world, the way that you are as a family man, as a husband and as a father, I think it's really exemplary and I just have a huge amount of respect for you and I wish you well, man, I'm, you know, I'm here for you for whatever you need, man, and

• 2:07:58Rich Roll?

  I'm just delighted that we got to spend a couple hours together.

• 2:08:01Tommy Rivs?

  Gosh, thanks, Rich.

• 2:08:02Rich Roll?

  So, thank you.

• 2:08:03Tommy Rivs?

  Thank you so much.

• 2:08:04Rich Roll?

  I did want to point out before, before we close this up, a couple of things. At first is, you have this GoFundMe, it's still up there, right? People can still contribute to that.

• 2:08:15Tommy Rivs?

  I don't know.

• 2:08:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think you can. I mean, you guys have raised a bunch of money, but, you know, medical bills are expensive, so I'm gonna link up that in the, in the show notes for people who, who, you know, want to learn a little bit more about that. And also, you're, you're a long time ambassador of craft, right?

• 2:08:37Tommy Rivs?

  Right.

• 2:08:38Rich Roll?

  And this is really cool, like they came up with this, I mean, they have this Team Ribs collection, right? But- Inspired by your experience, they've decided to provide the US a discount on their gear until the US gets universal healthcare. You know about this, right?

• 2:08:58Tommy Rivs?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:08:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so they're giving 10.7% off, which represents the amount Swedish citizens pay of their income to cover healthcare.

• 2:09:07Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:08Rich Roll?

  Which I thought was really cool and clever. I think that was a recent announcement, right?

• 2:09:12Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, just a couple of days ago. Yeah, they're an incredible company. It's been... Swedes just do everything better, you know? I mean, it's a Swedish company, you know, been around since, I think since the 1970s. They started with creating ski gear, you know, cross-country skiing, and then got into cycling and getting into running and just having the chance to work with them. And they've been, you know, I started to work with them and we started to, you know, collaborate on creating a shoe and creating some gear. And it was right after I started with them that I got sick.

• 2:09:49Tommy Rivs?

  And, man, they had, as far as our contract was concerned, like, they had every right to terminate the contract. Because I was, my job was to basically be an athlete and to collaborate on, you know, research and development of these different products that we were creating. I wasn't able to do any of that, you know, at the time. And they, you know, not just stayed with me, but like doubled down and supported me and my family and have gone on to create, you know, this entire line of clothing.

• 2:10:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:34Tommy Rivs?

  And, man, they just, it just speaks, just volumes as to the kind of company that they are, you know?

• 2:10:42Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 2:10:43Tommy Rivs?

  And, yeah, they've been, it's been unbelievable.

• 2:10:45Rich Roll?

  Been great.

• 2:10:46Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, that support. And, you know, and this is just, I don't think it was necessarily in response to me, but it was just more in response to just the idea that...

• 2:10:59Tommy Rivs?

  You know, they wanted to provide that to.

• 2:11:02Rich Roll?

  Well, it definitely was in response to you. I mean, you catalyzed that thing. I mean, it's cool. I think that it's cool that they're doing it. Also, I should point out for all you iFit people, you've got like a ton of stuff on the iFit platform, right? Like you've gone all over the world, like running all over the place. So there's all kinds of content on that platform.

• 2:11:19Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah, I had an opportunity to do that for a lot of years before I got sick. And we've got, yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there. Yeah, it's been a really cool experience to be able to do that. And yeah, and that was something that kind of, kind of took off when I was, when I was asleep too, you know, that just the support that came together from iFit and from that community has been, that's been just, just mind blowing, honestly. Yeah, it's been really appreciated.

• 2:11:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool, man. Well, come back and share with me some more. How do you do that?

• 2:12:00Tommy Rivs?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:01Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 2:12:02Tommy Rivs?

  Absolutely.

• 2:12:03Rich Roll?

  Everybody should definitely check out Tommy on Instagram as well, at Tommy underscore RIVS. And anything else before we sign off here?

• 2:12:12Tommy Rivs?

  No, just, man, I just thank you to everybody for all of this, you know? I wish there was, I wish I had better words and bigger words, but you know, just to express.

• 2:12:21Rich Roll?

  It was beautiful, man. All love, brother. All love.

• 2:12:23Tommy Rivs?

  Thank you, Rich.

• 2:12:24Rich Roll?

  All right. Talk again soon. Peace.

• 2:12:40Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 2:13:11Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering

• 2:13:54Rich Roll?

  by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.