Roll On: Defusing Emotional Landmines

Post-election thoughts. Managing stress and disagreement. Connecting to gratitude. Weekly wins. And, of course, listener questions. Welcome to another edition of Roll On. Commanding co-host duties as always is my hype man Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist perhaps best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me co-author. Adam has written about adventure sports, environmental issues and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently hard at work on a novel. Some of the many topics explored in today’s conversation include: • The importance of actively creating a gratitude practice; • plant-based holiday ideas; • how to deal with family stress and disagreement; • Alex Hutchinson’s essay ‘COVID-19 is like running a marathon with no finish line’; • the new documentary, ‘Feels Good Man’ and how a meme turned into an alt-right mascot; • the terrifying capabilities of artificial intelligence; • Alenka Artnik’s 114m world record free-dive in Egypt. In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you have real conversations in the era of smartphones and social media? How do you raise plant-based children? How do you balance work, parenthood, and marriage while still making time for personal passions? Thank you to Adrian from London, Daniel from Australia, and Carlos from Germany for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:23Rich Roll?

  All right. It's time to take Roll Call.

• 1:29Rich Roll?

  And we are back. We are ready to take Roll Call. Adam?

• 1:34Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it, man.

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  How are you feeling?

• 1:35Adam Skolnick?

  I feel good. I feel good. It's a...I love a short holiday week.

• 1:41Rich Roll?

  That's what we're looking at right now.

• 1:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:43Rich Roll?

  So, this is yet another edition of Roll On, where me and my hype man bestie, Adam Skolnick, break down matters pertinent, matters current. We take listener questions. We talk about what's top of mind. And before we launch into it, if you're interested in having your question discussed on the podcast, you can leave us a voicemail at 424-235-4626. As always, we launch this thing off with a little fitness check-in.

• 2:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 2:14Rich Roll?

  How are you doing as the father of a newborn?

• 2:17Adam Skolnick?

  I'm doing well. And you know, April, my wife has been rocking it back into form too. So it's like, it's become like the thing that we do for fun. I mean, really, it's the pandemic. So the thing that we do to blow off steam is, is to exercise.

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:33Adam Skolnick?

  And it's been good. You know, I sprained my ankle two weeks ago, so I'm just coming back out of that. But I was able to run after a week and just a little bit by a little bit. But I've started working with Nicolam Ramirez, the French, he lives in Sweden, but the French swim runner who won Catalina with his partner.

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  Catalina Otillo.

• 2:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he's the head of Team Envol, which is like this dominant team.

• 2:57Rich Roll?

  Super dominant.

• 2:59Adam Skolnick?

  And he kind of has these things where you can join in remotely and do his workouts and he prescribes workouts for you.

• 3:05Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 3:06Adam Skolnick?

  So I did my first one this morning. It's, it was like a zone one to three. Included this skipping and running, kind of minute skipping, a minute running at zone three.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  For like technique?

• 3:19Adam Skolnick?

  To get my technique down.

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  Interesting. In the sand or where did you do that?

• 3:22Adam Skolnick?

  I did it. No, I just did it in the, in the, like, the problem is where I live.

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  In your wetsuit?

• 3:26Adam Skolnick?

  A little uphill or a little downhill. No, I did it in my really sexy running shorts. The shorter the better.

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I'm so glad that you have a coach.

• 3:36Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  Can I credit this to our conversation about me telling you that you needed a little guidance?

• 3:41Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. Yeah, a little guidance. I've got like the, the guy, the best guy now in my ear. So.

• 3:46Rich Roll?

  That's very cool. You're going to be a ringer come November when Otillo returns to Catalina.

• 3:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. But you know, the problem is, is that.

• 3:54Rich Roll?

  One year.

• 3:54Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not really used, well, November, right?

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm not used to like using my Garmin for anything other than like a dive watch and like, you know, recording really basic stuff. So this morning I hit run thinking I have to remember all the different, you know, minute this and 10 minutes, five minutes. But the workout was already programmed into it.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 4:16Adam Skolnick?

  And then I still fucked it up. Like I didn't know how to work it and like screwed up like when I hit the lap button and all that.

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  That's cool. So it syncs with Training Peaks. He uploads the workouts to Training Peaks and then it just automatically feeds to your watch and prompts you.

• 4:31Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 4:31Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 4:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's very cool.

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  I dig it, man.

• 4:33Adam Skolnick?

  I've got the Garmin for people who care, the Garmin Descent, which, because it's got a freediving and scuba diving application.

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  I'm rocking the Garmin, I think it's the 310, no, the 4, the 4, is it called the 4Runner?

• 4:49Adam Skolnick?

  Is it?

• 4:50Rich Roll?

  What is it called?

• 4:51Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know.

• 4:51Rich Roll?

  I should know. Mine's ancient. My point is that it's a super old one.

• 4:55Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. Well, you don't need coaching. You're like,

• 4:57Rich Roll?

  I do need coaching.

• 4:58Adam Skolnick?

  You're fully baked.

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  No, no, no.

• 4:59Adam Skolnick?

  I'm a little, I'm a little duckling.

• 5:01Rich Roll?

  I need a tremendous amount of coaching, especially when it comes to swim run. And I fully intend on competing in that Otello Catalina.

• 5:09Adam Skolnick?

  The full distance?

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  We'll see. Yeah, maybe.

• 5:13Adam Skolnick?

  My goal is like in a year to do a full distance one.

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you should.

• 5:16Adam Skolnick?

  But I would like to also do the 15 mile, 15K one first, something like that. Yeah.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  You should. It's exciting to see this sport grow. My buddy Garrett Weber Gale, who was a very early guest on the podcast way back in the day, Olympic gold medalist, back in the Phelps era, is now getting into swim run. He did one recently in Austin. He was all fired up.

• 5:39Adam Skolnick?

  Back in the Phelps era?

• 5:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Adam Skolnick?

  That just ended.

• 5:42Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, we're old.

• 5:43Adam Skolnick?

  Early Phelps.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  We're old. If you're young, that was a bygone era.

• 5:47Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, he was in the last Olympics.

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  He was, yeah, but this, I think, he competed in the Olympics, I think, was it London?

• 5:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  I can't remember.

• 5:57Adam Skolnick?

  16.

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so.

• 5:59Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, so your boy, well, that was what? That was 12, right?

• 6:01Rich Roll?

  No, Garrett, no, Garrett was swimming in 12.

• 6:03Adam Skolnick?

  12, yeah.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty sure. Hopefully I'm not wrong.

• 6:07Adam Skolnick?

  That's crazy. That's crazy how long Phelps has been dominant.

• 6:10Rich Roll?

  I know. When you speak of the era, you have to talk about which part of the era, I guess. But.

• 6:17Rich Roll?

  On a personal level, I'm back slowly working my way into doing some, some running and some cycling. As I've spoken about at length in the past, I've been dealing with some back issues and that's sidelined me. And then I went into the gym and started developing my strength, which was very productive and I enjoyed and continue to, or you know, will continue to engage with. But I started working with this body worker guy called Lawrence Van Lingen, who's been a godsend. He's this South African miracle worker and he's been working on my back. Yeah, he's down in Laguna.

• 6:50Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. So you've had to make the haul.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  But he, well, he, I was introduced to him through Chris Houth, uh, who, uh, works with him as well as Emily, his wife. And, uh, in just a couple of sessions, he's really made some great strains.

• 7:07Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  And has been a guiding force. So I feel like I, it's not that it is completely resolved, but I feel like I have a path. And he gave me some certain gentle exercises to work on and I'm intending on seeing him pretty consistently. So.

• 7:19Adam Skolnick?

  So no weights for now?

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  That feels good. Uh, no, I've kind of backed off that a little bit and getting back into some endurance stuff and just trying to lay a base. And if I look at next November as, you know, an interesting race to get involved with, that gives me something to put my sights on.

• 7:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I saw you were in the pool as well, right?

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  A little bit. Yeah. There's a pool actually near where we're recording that, uh, uh, is, it's a big complex. And you can book lanes online and it sells out pretty quickly. So you gotta do it kind of in advance. So I actually booked all these times throughout the week and then of course my schedule didn't align with that. And so it was like $4, you know, for an hour. So a lot of that money went by the wayside.

• 8:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  But I figure, you know, best to try and get those, bank those in. No. So I've been hitting that pool a little bit. I mean, I'm far from being conditioned right now, but it feels good to start getting back into contact with it. So that feels good.

• 8:17Adam Skolnick?

  I like seeing those Instagram stories where you just flop your. You know, your, your

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  The paddles.

• 8:22Adam Skolnick?

  And your paddles.

• 8:23Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 8:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  People love that. That's my thing.

• 8:26Adam Skolnick?

  It's a cool thing.

• 8:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Adam Skolnick?

  Keep doing it.

• 8:27Rich Roll?

  Like, what are those?

• 8:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's comforting.

• 8:29Rich Roll?

  What are those paddle things? You know, what's interesting is that I'm, I'm listening to Bonnie Choi's book, Why We Swim, right now.

• 8:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 8:37Rich Roll?

  Who was introduced to me through you and she's coming on the podcast next week.

• 8:41Adam Skolnick?

  Very exciting.

• 8:43Rich Roll?

  It's a great book and she has this, you know, beautiful way of putting an anthropological lens onto like the human relationship with swimming.

• 8:51Adam Skolnick?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:52Rich Roll?

  And Kim Chambers plays a big part in the book.

• 8:56Adam Skolnick?

  She does.

• 8:57Rich Roll?

  And she explores all aspects of, you know, our relationship to the water through cold and hot and long distance and open water, et cetera.

• 9:05Adam Skolnick?

  The shipwrecked guy in Ireland.

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. The guy in Iceland.

• 9:08Adam Skolnick?

  Iceland.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, who swam to shore and became this national hero. But one of the things that I found really fascinating is that Benjamin Franklin is credited with inventing the hand paddles for swimming.

• 9:20Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 9:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  So when I drop those paddles down on the deck, you know, as I do on Instagram from time to time, plenty of people are like, what are those things? Like people who don't swim don't know what they are. They're like, hand paddles. And now I know that they are the invention of Benjamin Franklin.

• 9:35Adam Skolnick?

  Noted nudist.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Adam Skolnick?

  Be careful. He's been canceled.

• 9:38Rich Roll?

  He was a bather.

• 9:39Adam Skolnick?

  You're gonna get in trouble for aping Ben Franklin because he's been, what is it? No, he's not canceled.

• 9:44Rich Roll?

  Is he?

• 9:44Adam Skolnick?

  This is just in.

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  I can't keep.

• 9:45Adam Skolnick?

  Ben Franklin.

• 9:46Rich Roll?

  I can't keep track of everybody that's been canceled. Anyway.

• 9:49Adam Skolnick?

  But I like that. I liked her, not to get too deep into it because you're gonna have a whole episode with her, but you know, what was cool as someone who I've known her for years, although only in person a couple of times, but, but have kept in touch, seeing her family story and how that was related to swimming was really cool.

• 10:11Rich Roll?

  How her parents met.

• 10:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  In the, in a pool.

• 10:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Rich Roll?

  Her dad was a lifeguard in Hong Kong.

• 10:16Adam Skolnick?

  In Hong Kong.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Adam Skolnick?

  All right. So that was really cool to see.

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 10:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I, I met her in Tahiti and we dove together years ago on like a press thing when, when we both were still doing those press trips.

• 10:29Rich Roll?

  The free diving. A free diving dive?

• 10:31Adam Skolnick?

  No, it was just a scuba dive. And at the time I was pretty new to scuba diving and I was like, An air pig just sucking my bottle. And this was like in 2005 or four or something like that. And 2005, I think. And, you know, she's like, she's been a great swimmer for her whole life. So, you know, she's effortlessly staying down there for like, an hour and I come up like, at like, 38 minutes, thinking I've just like, I gotta, I gotta quit this sport because I'm so bad at it. It's like, not worth it. You know,

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you're talking about somebody who had, who had like, swimming vernacular woven into her wedding vows. Like, this is how much a part of her, her life this is.

• 11:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, but then, you know, obviously, I got good at it. But it takes a while. Sometimes for some of us with scuba diving, you can, you can suck down the air really quick, especially if you're too stressed underwater, or your body position is wrong. There's lots of things to it. And so, but I remember at that time, I coming up from the dive thinking, that was great. I wish I could have stayed down twice as long.

• 11:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's all about relaxation, Adam.

• 11:35Adam Skolnick?

  It is, man. It is. But anyway, that was my, that was when I met her and excited about her book. It's got top 100 books for Time Magazine.

• 11:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool.

• 11:44Adam Skolnick?

  Very cool.

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  Very cool. Like, that's no small thing.

• 11:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  You know, so I'm looking forward to talking to her. Meanwhile, on the subject of books, thank you to everybody who has ordered Voicing Change. It's been a pleasure to sign so many of them. What's been interesting about doing it ourselves, being in charge of fulfillment as a self published book, is you're really closely connected to the audience. And when we made it available, we thought, well, we'll, we'll offer it to people who just want to buy it. But if people want a signed copy, you know, we'll add that as like, a bonus little extra, thinking that maybe, I don't know, 10% of people would want a signed copy. But it turns out, like, 90% or 85% or something like that want a signed copy, which is amazing, but also means that I

• 12:32Rich Roll?

  have to spend hours and hours and hours signing these things every week, which is great. And I'm

• 12:37Adam Skolnick?

  Hours and hours and hours. That's a good thing.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  Listen, this is what we call, call a quality problem.

• 12:41Adam Skolnick?

  A quality problem.

• 12:42Rich Roll?

  I'm happy to do it. So, thank you to everybody who's ordered the book. It's been really cool to see people sharing it on social media. And, and just, you know, really gratified by that whole thing.

• 12:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, we are moving forward on the new studio. I shared a couple behind the scenes pictures of the build out. It's coming along. I think we're going to be up and running in there. Probably conservatively in three or four weeks.

• 13:07Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, nice.

• 13:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 13:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so.

• 13:10Adam Skolnick?

  Three or four weeks.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  Well, we're just waiting on the cert of occupancy so we can start really moving in all the furniture. And that's a bureaucratic, you know, regulatory thing that we're working with the developer on, but we're pretty close to getting that. Once we get that, then we can go in, we can hang the lighting rack and, you know, get everything configured. It won't be completely done, but I think we'll be able to get up on our feet and start recording episodes in there pretty soon.

• 13:34Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  Which is super exciting.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  It's really cool.

• 13:39Adam Skolnick?

  I can't wait to like, just be a squatter. That just shows up and just writes and like, you're like, wait, wait.

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  We got a bunch, we got a bunch of furniture courtesy of Fully, who's been a great podcast sponsor over the years. They make this wonderful line of ergonomic movement oriented furniture. So we got a bunch of standing desks and some stools and et cetera. So I think we have like five or six desks in there. We're going to be able to move the whole team over there so we can all work together. But we have a specific desk that we're temporarily calling the DK.

• 14:14Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, the DK.

• 14:15Rich Roll?

  For when he pops in, but I think, you know, that can be a battle between you and DK to come in and work whenever you, whenever you like.

• 14:23Adam Skolnick?

  When we need to.

• 14:23Rich Roll?

  And what's exciting about it is that it's going to be able to provide efficiencies in the workflow. So eventually I think we're going to work out systems where perhaps we can create additional content. Maybe we can move from six episodes to eight episodes a month. We'll see how that goes and potentially start working on some new stuff, right?

• 14:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  Which is a longer conversation.

• 14:48Adam Skolnick?

  Let's not even talk about that yet.

• 14:49Rich Roll?

  Let's just tease it now.

• 14:50Adam Skolnick?

  But you know.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  Tease it now.

• 14:51Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I think about that every day.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 14:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  That is in the plan and to have like an HQ.

• 14:58Adam Skolnick?

  Be amazing.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  Is really.

• 15:00Adam Skolnick?

  I'm so stoked, I'm stoked for you because it's such a great progression for what you're built, you've built and like, and I'm stoked for the listeners. It's, you know, to be a part of the show, you fully appreciate, I mean, to have, you know, hung out with you and swam or grabbed a bite in Malibu. You, you know, you see how people engage with you and what you bring. But to actually be a part of the show and to see how much it means to people, it's very inspiring. So to be able to then take this next step and this next, you know, create an even bigger platform, foundation for something bigger. I think, I think it's going to be very powerful.

• 15:35Rich Roll?

  It's exciting and it's great to have you as a value add to the equation.

• 15:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, man.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  And in reflecting back on it, it seems crazy because when it started, it was really just a harebrained like, hey, let's just try a podcast, you know, there was no plan.

• 15:53Adam Skolnick?

  On a farm in Kauai.

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  Or aspiration that, yeah, that it would become what it has become, let alone, you know, any kind of vocation or anything like that, or something that could lead to, you know, a 2,000 square foot warehouse space where we can really operate at the highest level of production quality. So, you know, I think it, the, the, the lesson in that is that, you know, you follow your curiosity and you double down on it and you show up for it consistently. And when you do that and you're coming from a pure place, I really think that that is fertile ground for, you know, unpredictable magic to occur.

• 16:32Adam Skolnick?

  That's really well said. Do you think something about just having the detail oriented eye of also someone who wrote a book, but also was an athlete your whole life and then studied the law, like detail in the law is very important. Like just having a detailed focus nature enabled you to, to get to a place of excellence where you were really caring about each, each episode versus just kind of mailing it in and like seeing what happens?

• 16:56Rich Roll?

  You mean being a control freak?

• 16:58Adam Skolnick?

  I don't see that way. But like having that kind of, that mental training is big, built into the way you are.

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  I think so. I think, you know, from a very early stage in the whole thing, like I cared about the small stuff, maybe more than I should have, and certainly probably more than many others who kind of were operating in the space. And I think by paying attention to those details, we were able to kind of set ourselves aside from others who were, you know, kind of doing something similar. And I think it's just a reflection of, of caring deeply about the show. But as it grows and matures, it's been.

• 17:42Rich Roll?

  A challenge for me to let go of some of those aspects, like at the very beginning, I was editing the show myself in GarageBand. I did every, there was, there was no aspect of the show that wasn't me because I was the only one doing it. And the good part about that is that I learned every facet of it. The bad part is that as we try to scale up, I have to let go of those things and empower other people to do them. And my instinct, it runs counter to my instinct, which is to get, you know, involved in all this stuff. And ultimately, you know, what I've learned is that it all operates a lot better when I let go of a lot of that stuff and focus on the one thing that is the most important thing, which is trying to have the best conversations. But that's a, that's a process for me.

• 18:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  And it means that when you are letting other people do stuff, like they're going to do things that might not be the way that you would do them, and that that's perfectly fine, too. So.

• 18:37Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you got so many talented people involved, too.

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like there's Blake right over there, smiling.

• 18:41Adam Skolnick?

  While we're on the subject of the podcast, I'll just ask you one more question. I know that listeners might be curious, how you choose your guests? How does that process work for you?

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  There is no system to that whatsoever. It's really a gut thing. It's intuition, it's a feel. I have like a, you know, an open note, like, you know, the little note app on your phone or on your desktop.

• 19:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 19:07Rich Roll?

  And when I come across an article or, or, you know, read something about somebody interesting, like I'll make a note and think, maybe that person's, you know, compelling. Maybe I want to talk to that person. And then at some point, I'll dig a little bit deeper and decide. So at any given moment, there's a lot of burners operating, like I'm, I have feelers out to lots of people. Sometimes it takes a very long time to get somebody on the show. And then the order in which you release the episodes is very important to kind of keep it differentiated and dynamic by not having too much of one subject matter in a row. But it's really a feel thing. And I've made mistakes over the years, and I've talked about this before. But I've made mistakes where a lot of people are saying, oh, you gotta have this

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  person. They're great. You know, they're awesome. You do it, you know, and I'm like, yeah, maybe. I don't know. I'm not really feeling it, but because everybody seems to think this person's amazing, I'll do it.

• 20:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:02Rich Roll?

  And then the episode ends up being a little bit flat. And that's not to cast any aspersion on the guest. It's because if I'm not personally, you know, emotionally heavily invested in this person's life, then I'm not the best host for that conversation.

• 20:19Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 20:19Rich Roll?

  So I've really learned to just trust my gut and to follow, you know, what inspires me. And the only rule is like, I'm curious about this person. And I've had to balance that as the show grows against the number of pitches that I'm now on the, I mean, it used to be in the beginning, it's like I'm cajoling and begging to get anybody to come on the show.

• 20:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  Right? And I felt so grateful that anybody would donate their time to come on. Now I get, you know, 10 to 20 pitch emails from publicists every day with this person who wrote this book and that person who wrote that book. And it's really difficult to kind of navigate all of that. And so it's not about getting people to come on the show. It's about getting the right people to come on.

• 21:03Adam Skolnick?

  I pitched you Bonnie.

• 21:04Rich Roll?

  You did, right? And that, that didn't take immediate, that's a perfect example.

• 21:08Adam Skolnick?

  I think I pitched you a few times.

• 21:09Rich Roll?

  Okay, here, she wrote a book about swimming.

• 21:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  That's cool. But like, is this, I don't know, you know?

• 21:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  I had to like, sit with it for a while.

• 21:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:16Rich Roll?

  And then I saw, oh, her book made the time list.

• 21:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  Like, that's interesting. And then I dug a little bit deeper and I was like, oh, this is actually hitting the bullseye

• 21:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Rich Roll?

  of everything that I care about.

• 21:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  And she's written this amazing book about, you know, perhaps the one thing that I care about more than anything that I've ever experienced in my life, which is my relationship to swimming.

• 21:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  So how could I not have her on? But, you know, it didn't, it didn't immediately connect. Like, it took time. So yeah, that's a good example.

• 21:45Adam Skolnick?

  It's perfect timing. Sometimes a little later is the perfect timing. You know, timing is everything.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I just, you know, another example would be Laird Hamilton, who just came by last week, that episode is going up, I don't know, sometime soon.

• 21:58Adam Skolnick?

  Can't wait for that.

• 21:58Rich Roll?

  And that's somebody who I've wanted to have on the show for a very long time. His wife Gabby was one of the very first guests on the show. But I think it's perfect that he came on now and not two or three years ago, because I'm a different person than I was then, and I think I'm better suited to have the kind of conversation that I wanted to have with him now versus then. So these things all have their own timing, and I've also learned to trust that timing, like getting out of the business of trying to force a guest or a certain episode to happen and just being in the allowing, like, oh, it's not right right now. It'll come around if it's supposed to.

• 22:37Adam Skolnick?

  But that's not easy.

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  And so I don't, so I don't press too hard. Like, I put feelers out, like, I'm always fishing, and, you know, I'm in various stages of email communication around scheduling, but I don't get in there and try to compel anybody to come on, because another thing I've learned is that I only want to have conversations with people who actually want to be here.

• 22:59Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  And when you cajole somebody to be here, when maybe they're like, what am I doing? Like, who's this guy? Like, why am I doing this? That's not going to make for a great experience for the listener.

• 23:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right. But it's not easy to do the, at first with the allowing, then you get used to it. But like, at first, for me, especially you're saying controlled tendencies to allow, I've had that problem with reporting stories where I really want a source, I really want a source. Now I'm much more relaxed about it.

• 23:24Rich Roll?

  Well, you're also dealing with a deadline.

• 23:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I'm dealing with a deadline, I'm dealing with, you know, also just doing the story justice, which requires for me talking to multiple people, so I can get different angles. And sometimes those requests don't get answered right away, but nothing helps your allowing, like having a new baby in the house. You're like, you know what? Who gives a fuck? I've got to change a diaper.

• 23:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, puts things into perspective, right? And all I can tell you is that it's good life advice in general. Like, you don't want, you, you need to push for what you want, but there's a point at which... That starts to venture into terrain that's going to produce the opposite of the result that you seek.

• 24:08Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt.

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  And there is an art to the surrender or the letting go and the allowing to provide the space that some of these things require in order to manifest in a certain way. And that's something that I've kind of feel like I've honed over the years.

• 24:24Adam Skolnick?

  Ask Bonnie about the fallow period.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  I will.

• 24:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Rich Roll?

  I don't know what that means, but.

• 24:30Adam Skolnick?

  She but she, yeah.

• 24:30Rich Roll?

  I'll make a note.

• 24:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, make a note.

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  Um, cool. All right. Well, before we, we, we dig into the, the subjects of the day that we're going to talk about today, I think it's worth spending a few minutes, um, or a minute or two, uh, just reflecting on the last episode that we did together, which is perhaps the most politically overtly political podcast that we've ever done.

• 24:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:55Rich Roll?

  Um, and I stand by it and I'm proud of that conversation that we had and I feel strongly about the opinions that I expressed. And that episode was met with a predominantly positive reaction, but it was not without its detractors either. And we were on the receiving end of a lot of feedback, tons of emails, like I said, mostly well received, but there was more than a few who vigorously disagreed with my politics, your politics. And I just want to tell all of you, if you're listening, if you were one of those people and you've decided to still tune in, that, um, I appreciate that.

• 25:35Rich Roll?

  Like I acknowledge the disagreement and the fact that we may not or don't see completely eye to eye, uh, but that's what these conversations are about. And I, and I, and I credit those people who took the time to write messages, some of which were quite lengthy.

• 25:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  And well thought out. I think that that's to be lauded. Like if you feel differently and you take the time to sit down and explain why you disagree, how can I not do anything but, but welcome that? So I appreciate that. Thank you.

• 26:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And thank you. I a hundred percent agree. I, I, I stand behind everything I said. But I will say, you know, sometimes I think. Uh, some people are put off by a tone that I might express my opinion in when I feel strongly about something. And all I can say is what I feel most strongly about is unifying and coming together in a way and building a better country and a better world. So that's all, that's all it's coming from, just that place only. It's not ever an elitist place. It's not ever looking down on anybody. Sometimes we joke about like getting news from YouTube

• 26:52Adam Skolnick?

  or whatever, because it does seem ridiculous to me, since I make my living as a reporter, and I know how that stuff is made, and I know it's made by caring people who care, you know, who are really competent. So, so that probably is where that comes from. But I'm trying to, it's fun. It's, I'm trying to have fun at the same time.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get it. Yeah. And it, I think, you know, I think for the most part, people understand that.

• 27:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Rich Roll?

  But the unifying thing is important. So I applaud you if you disagree with me and you're still tuning in and listening to this. And I hope that you continue to, to applaud this journey with both of us.

• 27:30Adam Skolnick?

  Come, come aboard. We might piss you off every once in a while.

• 27:34Rich Roll?

  I hope not too much.

• 27:35Adam Skolnick?

  No, but just every once in a while.

• 27:37Rich Roll?

  And like I said, and I said this last time, like, I don't court controversy. I'm not trying to be, you know, a firebrand in any regard. I really do want to create a place where anybody feels comfortable here.

• 27:50Adam Skolnick?

  But the fact that your podcast, which is really about making, like, making yourself better, making the world better, like, being more open, has become a source of controversy, kind of speaks to the moment that we're in, in which case we've all felt the need to express ourselves in ways that we haven't before.

• 28:07Rich Roll?

  Well, you know, we're all, all of us, no matter how grounded we are, we're all a little bit more easily triggered than we have been in the past. And, and, you know, we're walking this tightrope, this high wire act where, you know, we're dealing with some really big problems, and there's some pretty large disagreements about how to solve those problems.

• 28:28Adam Skolnick?

  And there's microphones everywhere.

• 28:29Rich Roll?

  There are.

• 28:30Adam Skolnick?

  And so like, it all gets magnified, you know, it's like, it's, it's all true. It's, there's some really tough stuff we're dealing with, but also, there's just so much media about it.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  The revolution will be podcasting.

• 28:42Adam Skolnick?

  The revolution.

• 28:46Adam Skolnick?

  Bird, next book idea.

• 29:00Rich Roll?

  All right, let's pivot to the big story.

• 29:02Adam Skolnick?

  Big story. The big story, you know, it's Thanksgiving week.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  It is. This is dropping on Thanksgiving Day, my friend.

• 29:09Adam Skolnick?

  So we thought that it would be a good time to talk about gratitude. The practice of gratitude.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  When is it not a good time to talk about gratitude?

• 29:18Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. Like, we're pivoting to gratitude, listeners. And-

• 29:23Rich Roll?

  This will not be a political-

• 29:25Adam Skolnick?

  This is not, this is not a political roll on yet. But, but even Thanksgiving has been politicized, as we know, right? Like, it's being called into question. You were gonna talk about something even at your own house is being called into question.

• 29:38Rich Roll?

  Yes, I have daughters, in particular, one daughter, who feels very strongly that we should not be celebrating this holiday in the traditional manner in which it has been celebrated in the past. For reasons that she feels strongly about. Like, she's a very young, politically minded, progressive, you know, sort of activist in her own right. And she basically said, "I don't want to do this this year. I don't think that it's right." And I'm trying to honor her and listen to her. And it's been a little bit of a dance because we still want to be able to have a family dinner and express gratitude and give thanks for the many blessings of our lives.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  At first, she balked at that because she thought anything resembling what would be considered a traditional Thanksgiving celebration is tantamount to basically rubber stamping the, you know, the kind of checkered tradition that birthed this holiday to begin with. So we're dealing with a little bit of that at home right now, which has created a lot of interesting conversations with the kids, which has been great.

• 30:49Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of really what it should be about anyway.

• 30:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 30:53Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 30:54Adam Skolnick?

  Is she writing the show under an anonymous name by any chance?

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  She sends me like change.org petitions to sign like four a day.

• 31:07Adam Skolnick?

  It's the pandemic, man. They should be at school, having fun.

• 31:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right. But I mean, you know, for me, it's like, I love the idea of focusing on the gratitude aspect of it because there's something there, even even if the myth is is not whole and and there is a history behind this that we have been taught only in piecemeal, like the broad strokes that we've latched on to because they're nice, but not the full story because it's not so nice. To me, it's like, at this point, we're not the pilgrims, we're not the, we're not in the new world, we're 200 something years later, and it's okay to have dinner and have a traditional meal and talk about gratitude. That's what I think.

• 31:54Adam Skolnick?

  That's my personal opinion on it. And I think we should be, we should welcome all those kinds of, and this is a good part of it, you know, she's grateful for things too. And it's a great, it's a, you know, to be able to have that conversation at home, I know she'll look back on it and be grateful for that.

• 32:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

• 32:11Adam Skolnick?

  TBD. Well, why don't you tell us, you know, you're talking about the practice of gratitude. What do you mean by that?

• 32:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I've talked about this quite a bit in the past as well on the podcast. I mean, for me, gratitude doesn't come naturally, like left to my own devices. I'm a pretty crotchety, cranky, self-interested, selfish, self-seeking, irascible, you know, difficult to be around human being.

• 32:34Adam Skolnick?

  You are not difficult to be around.

• 32:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I came home.

• 32:39Adam Skolnick?

  Julie's done wonderful work.

• 32:40Rich Roll?

  We were, we were, you know, talking about fitness a few minutes ago, and I went out for a ride on, was it Sunday, Saturday or Sunday? It was like a three hour ride. And I just was limping on the way home and it's very difficult for me to not measure like where I'm at physically against, you know, where I have been in the past. Right. The truth is like, I haven't been on the bike. So how can I expect to feel great and powerful and strong? And I was really kind of struggling at the end and just not, you know, and so, and Julie was pulling out of the driveway as I was coming home. She's like, how's the ride? And I was like, I feel terrible. She's like, all right, I gotta go. Bye. You know, she just knows, like, she doesn't even engage with me when

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  I'm like that. She's like, okay, bye, honey. Okay, bye.

• 33:30Rich Roll?

  You know, that's a more accurate, you know, window into, you know, how my, my default like operating system. So my point being that I have self-awareness around this. And I know that I have to do a fair amount of work to connect with gratitude. And when I'm able to do that, my life is better, the people around me are happier, I have a sunnier disposition. But it is a practice. It is not like, I don't wake up in the morning and think, I'm so grateful. Like, I literally have to make a gratitude list, either at night or first thing in the morning. I have to really sit with that and remember, like,

• 34:09Rich Roll?

  here's where I'm at. Like, look at what, where I was before, look at where I could be, look at what's happening with all these other people. There's so much for me to feel grateful about. And it's important for me to do that in order to feel that, because that's what

• 34:31Rich Roll?

  makes me feel whole. And it makes me a better servant and a better parent and a better partner and a better friend. But without that, like I said, I will just, no matter how many times I remind myself, if I don't do it diligently, like you can't sail on yesterday's wind, like Chad Wright says, like, I have to do it every single day, or I lose sight of it. And so I think Thanksgiving is, you know, it's sort of like, shouldn't every day, you know, the trope always comes up every year, shouldn't every day be Thanksgiving? And it should, right? Right. This is a, this is a day where we kind of canonize it and we give it a lot of attention. But, but gratitude being the foundation of Thanksgiving is something that we can practice on a daily basis.

• 35:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and it brings the light in, right? Like when you're, when, when things aren't going well, to like bring it back to basics and to remember what you are grateful for can reset your body and mind. It can like bring the pulse down and the stress down and you can, you can get some light, even if it's just for a few minutes.

• 35:34Rich Roll?

  It's all gonna be fine.

• 35:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and hopefully that's all true. But like even just for those few minutes, just to remember what you're grateful for. I mean, to be grateful for something simple, like a meal, is like a harvest, something, something, but not banal, but like a harvest, like something that, that you should expect to reap. That's to me, what's cool about gratitude is, is not just the big things, but like all the things. So I, I texted you that we should do a little practice right now.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:05Adam Skolnick?

  One big thing, one small thing, one obvious thing, one fucking hard thing that made us who we are, our own little gratitude practice. So what's your big thing?

• 36:15Rich Roll?

  The big thing. I mean, there's plenty of big things that come to mind. The most important is your health, right? I'm grateful to be healthy and that's something we tend to take for granted. I'm grateful for my family, for my sobriety, for, for my career. Like these big kind of top of mind things fall into that category of the big thing. But they can be things like, you know, I have food on the table. Like it does, it's, it's hard to talk about this because it does sound so trite and like lame.

• 36:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, I even said that.

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  But that's why it's important to like really sit with that for a minute.

• 36:53Adam Skolnick?

  What is the one big thing today?

• 36:56Rich Roll?

  Today?

• 36:57Adam Skolnick?

  Today, the one big thing.

• 36:58Rich Roll?

  The one big thing is, is, is health.

• 37:01Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 37:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That I feel healthy in my body.

• 37:05Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome. For me, the one big thing is Zuma.

• 37:10Adam Skolnick?

  The baby.

• 37:11Rich Roll?

  The beach or the baby?

• 37:12Adam Skolnick?

  The baby. Zoo of Beach is nice, too.

• 37:14Rich Roll?

  If somebody's new to this, your newborn's name is.

• 37:17Adam Skolnick?

  That's right. He is 12 weeks old. And, and he's really fully waking up now and like, you know, engaging and reading and, and looking at the pictures and like going on walks where he's checking things out much more. And, and we have this nice cheat at home now where we don't always just read him the kids book. Sometimes if we want to read our, we just read the book that we're reading. I read him a murder mystery a couple, like a couple of weeks ago.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:45Adam Skolnick?

  Hoping it doesn't sink in too deep. But he's just hearing the words, I think. I don't speak baby, so I think it's working.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  I think it's important to not speak baby.

• 37:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  To just be a human being.

• 37:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and, and kind of grant them that dignity.

• 38:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Rich Roll?

  You're recognizing them as a sovereign human being.

• 38:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. And I'm thankful. The other big thing besides just Zuma is that he's now up to seven hours and 20 minutes in a row of sleep.

• 38:14Rich Roll?

  That's huge.

• 38:15Adam Skolnick?

  We're getting there. If I went to bed at seven o'clock.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  That would be a small thing for, for other people, but that's a big thing.

• 38:21Adam Skolnick?

  It's a big thing for us at this moment, at this moment. What about the small thing?

• 38:28Rich Roll?

  The thing that immediately comes to mind for me is having a good night's sleep last night.

• 38:32Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 38:33Rich Roll?

  Which is small, but it's kind of big, too.

• 38:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Rich Roll?

  Like, it's a small thing, but like when I wake up and I've had eight hours and I feel good, like that's, that's a, that's a small thing that's actually huge. And I'm grateful that my back pain is reducing.

• 38:45Adam Skolnick?

  There you go.

• 38:47Rich Roll?

  You?

• 38:47Adam Skolnick?

  For me, it's just being able to exercise during the pandemic, having, having that outlet, like having that connection to something and moving the body during this period of time. I think it's really been helpful and useful.

• 38:59Adam Skolnick?

  And it's a small thing you can do every day. And sometimes it really is small for me. It's not like I'm like this, I'm no Ultraman, you know, like I'm not, I'm not doing it.

• 39:08Rich Roll?

  Yet.

• 39:10Rich Roll?

  That's gonna be the title of this podcast. Roll on yet.

• 39:14Adam Skolnick?

  Believe me, it is a small thing when I exercise, but I am doing, I do do it consistently and doing, and, and really enjoying it. So that's it.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  Small things can be the big things, and then the big things can also be the obvious things, which is the next category.

• 39:30Adam Skolnick?

  So.

• 39:30Rich Roll?

  These things all bleed together to me.

• 39:32Adam Skolnick?

  What's the obvious?

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  I mean, the obvious thing is, you know, beyond like my kids also being healthy.

• 39:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  And them all being at home right now and being able to enjoy them, doing the podcast. That's an obvious thing.

• 39:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  But I'm super grateful that I get to come in here and do this and have these conversations with you and other people, and that I get to make a living doing something that I enjoy. Like, it's crazy. How many people get excited when they wake up in the morning to go do the thing that actually puts food on the table? Like, I don't take that for granted at all. I mean, actually, I should say, I do take it for granted unless I engage in this process and remember and connect with what a gift it is.

• 40:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, the gratitude to be able to do this for a living and have the, it's like, it provides so much freedom, doesn't it? Like, you don't have to pour yourself into something that's like, mind numbing, but that doesn't mean there aren't details.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  It still works.

• 40:25Adam Skolnick?

  There's, there's, there's still shit you don't want to do. Every job has shit you don't want to do. But, uh, but yeah.

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  I gotta call Adam and go over the outline this morning before the podcast.

• 40:37Adam Skolnick?

  He's so, he's so talkative. He's so chatty.

• 40:41Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it's funny, I put the obvious thing in there as a place for us to put the family stuff, so we didn't get in trouble by not putting them in the big thing. But I'm glad we did them as a big thing. And then the obvious thing. I would say, uh, for me, this year, for sure, last two years has been Can't Hurt Me. And, uh, and the people rallying to that book, um, you know, it literally is, is, has completely changed my credit score. So I appreciate that. Uh, my life too, but.

• 41:08Rich Roll?

  Your credit.

• 41:09Adam Skolnick?

  My credit score has really benefited from it.

• 41:11Rich Roll?

  That's incredible.

• 41:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. And, um, so, and just the fact that it's helped so many people and just to be a part of that. So thankful to David and Jennifer and Can't Hurt Me. So.

• 41:22Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 41:22Adam Skolnick?

  That's my big thing.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Adam Skolnick?

  Obviously.

• 41:25Rich Roll?

  And then One fucking hard thing to be grateful for. Yep. This is my favorite category. I think it's the most important category because it compels you to reflect on things that are were perhaps difficult or that you're enduring right now and trying to find where the lesson is in that. And I think those are the things that can really shift your perspective in your life. So in my case, there are obvious fucking hard things to be grateful for, like my alcoholism. I remember when I came into recovery and people would identify as a grateful alcoholic. And I was like, what is that? Like, why would

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  you say that? That's insane. Now I totally get that. I completely understand that. I'm on that page. Like, this experience that I had of being, you know, in the throes of a of a of a of a malady that really took me to a dark place and then coming out of it, makes me so grateful for those experiences that I've had because it catalyzed the path that I'm on now. And I wouldn't be on this path without having endured the hardship and the pain and the difficulties and everything that that entailed back then. And I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for having weathered that. Similarly, for having weathered

• 42:45Rich Roll?

  the financial, you know, sort of devastation that myself and my wife and our family endured not that long ago, like in the back in 2012, 2013, even back in even before that, starting around 2008, many years of really like living hand to mouth and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life and how I was going to put food on the table. And I look back on that now, and I really feel like it was like, you know, what was what was required in order for me to be able to kind of carry the frequency that I carry now? And I'm just, I'm extremely grateful for that experience, as difficult and as painful as that was. Yeah.

• 43:29Adam Skolnick?

  Mine isn't too dissimilar, not the alcoholism, but went through a divorce in 2012. We weren't married very long and it kind of ended very quickly and badly. And that kind of precipitated this crazy cycle where just everything went to shit for like months and months. And I remember like turning around, I don't want to get too much detail. We talked about it when I was a guest on the podcast. So if you want to hear about it, that's probably the best place. What episode number was that? It was a long time ago. It was like we were in that Westlake office. Right. But there was that cycle and I know I have a neighbor who says like he's going through

• 44:12Adam Skolnick?

  a cycle like that where you know, you get hurt, you know, the like you passed due on rent, your, you know, wife is gone, you're like, like those kinds of crazy cycles. And you just, at the time, at first, it was so painful to just continue to get kicked in the face. But, you know, and I even had a friend say, you know, in 10 years, that'll just be a blip. And at the time, I didn't believe it. I thought like, you don't know, you know, how it feels, but it, it is a blip. You know, it was a blip. It was, it was, it does feel that way. And, and not only that, just going through that period of time, put me on a path to

• 44:53Adam Skolnick?

  where I'm sitting here today because of, because of that divorce, I moved to Kauai to cover a story. And the photographer who came and worked me on that, Leah Barrett, brought, you know, came up with this idea to go cover a freediving competition, which led me, you know, to being there and covering it for the New York Times when the first American freediver died. And the first American, the first freediver ever to die at a competition happened, he happened to be the best American freediver, Nicholas Mivoli, and subject of One Breath. So that just triggered everything. Right. Like without the divorce, none of that happens. Other things happen, which is fine, but like without that, feeling that pain and going through all of that, you know, you just never know what's on the other side of that.

• 45:37Adam Skolnick?

  And so you have, you have to get to, of course, you have to get to the other side. It's not as easy to get to the other side, depending on whatever someone's pain might be or circumstances might be. Some people don't get to the other side because they give into it or give up or, or it's so like whatever they're going through. Is so bad that it prevents them from doing that. It's not always an internal fortitude that gets you to the other side. I wasn't threatened, my life wasn't threatened, but there was plenty of times where I felt like things were going quite, I remember getting caught out in, you know, while I was in Kauai, getting caught in, you know, overhead surf, couldn't get in and just kept, and there was nobody around. I mean, I had moments like that in that period.

• 46:21Rich Roll?

  Like this is it?

• 46:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, like, like you're like, whoa, this is really the universe saying, saying something.

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  We're putting you in the wash cycle.

• 46:30Adam Skolnick?

  Getting slammed around, but now I'm grateful for them.

• 46:32Rich Roll?

  It's interesting how rear view vision is always 2020.

• 46:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 46:38Rich Roll?

  The more that time passes and our ability to prospectively cast that glance forward is nothing but blindness, right? Like we can't see the path ahead of us.

• 46:50Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 46:51Rich Roll?

  And when you're in that pain point, when somebody comes to you and says, you know, Adam, this isn't happening to you, it's happening for you. You're like, fuck off. That is like not what you want to hear.

• 47:05Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  No matter how true it may or may not be, but I can tell you, as somebody who's now in their mid 50s, like when I look back on the most difficult, the most, you know, enduring moments that I've had to weather over the course of my life, without a doubt, they invariably were experiences that led to a better outcome in the future that I could not have predicted or foreseen in that moment. And the only kind of comfort that I can give somebody who is struggling, who finds themselves, you know, treading water or powerless in a situation in which, you know, chaos reigns and they can't see their way out of it, is just to

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  stay in it and break it down into the most finite of moments, to be present with what you're experiencing, try to do the next best, right thing that you can do, and to maintain your composure and equanimity. Like if you can navigate it from the perspective of a Jedi, where externalities don't penetrate your core and you can figure out how to remain true to yourself. That's all you can do.

• 48:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's a big deal. That's a big thing, too.

• 48:19Rich Roll?

  Which is really difficult to do.

• 48:21Adam Skolnick?

  Especially when chaos descends, which is what I used to talk about when it was happening was chaos descends, and it does. And there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes chaos descends.

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  DFO.

• 48:30Adam Skolnick?

  It's your time.

• 48:31Rich Roll?

  Don't freak out.

• 48:31Adam Skolnick?

  It's your time. And so we're laughing about it because we've been through it. But like, when you're going through it, it is so painful. So when we talk about these kinds of things, you know, they are from experience to some degree. And but, you know, if it wasn't for that period, I wouldn't be sitting across from Rich Roll right now.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  And I wouldn't be sitting across from Adam Skolnick.

• 48:53Adam Skolnick?

  We weren't about, we wouldn't be talking about vegan Thanksgiving ideas.

• 48:56Rich Roll?

  Of exactly. Getting to talk about how are we going to have a plant-based Thanksgiving.

• 49:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, let's pivot.

• 49:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So every year, I end up talking about this. I think Thanksgiving presents an amazing opportunity to kind of ply your plant-based skills, to be an environmentally conscious person, trying to live a little bit more sustainably and compassionately with our animal friends. And it's difficult, especially when family members are involved or large gatherings, like, how do you do it plant-based? Or try to introduce a plant-based bent to what is traditionally a fowl, and I say that.

• 49:39Adam Skolnick?

  With a W.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, foul, like poultry fowl.

• 49:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 49:42Rich Roll?

  Bent to the whole thing. But there are some easy ways to do it. I think when you set aside the turkey, let's face it, turkey actually isn't that good. It's pretty dry and tasteless overall. So I don't get the big fascination with the whole thing.

• 50:00Adam Skolnick?

  It probably tasted better when it was a wild turkey that they hit with an arrow.

• 50:04Rich Roll?

  It seems more ceremonious than anything at this point.

• 50:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  But from a pure like taste perspective, I challenge you to come up with an argument about why turkey tastes great and why you need to have it.

• 50:16Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 50:16Rich Roll?

  So let's set that aside right now.

• 50:19Adam Skolnick?

  Why you need to have it?

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  No, why? Come to me with an argument like why

• 50:24Adam Skolnick?

  Why it's still in the

• 50:25Rich Roll?

  Turkey tastes so good and you just like you crave it or whatever.

• 50:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's the gravy.

• 50:29Rich Roll?

  I think it's the ceremony around it. Yeah, it's the gravy. It's the seasoning.

• 50:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's all the stuffing.

• 50:34Rich Roll?

  It's all the other stuff. And all the other stuff is plant based.

• 50:37Adam Skolnick?

  It can be.

• 50:37Rich Roll?

  So get rid of the turkey. You can have the potatoes and the sweet potatoes and the stuffing and the cranberry and all of that. Without any of the other stuff.

• 50:46Adam Skolnick?

  You don't have to kill a bird.

• 50:48Rich Roll?

  But if you're looking for guidance, I got a couple of things that you can pursue. The first would be to check out our Plant Power Meal Planner. Like a self-serving plug here, but thousands of recipes that you can customize and plenty of stuff in there. That is highly appropriate for Thanksgiving. So check that out. That's at meals.richroll.com. Also Julie and I several years ago, and it must've been, I don't know, six or seven years ago, did a series of videos that I think are still on my YouTube channel. I'll find links to all of them. Where we walked people through a variety of recipes around Thanksgiving, plant-based recipes. So check the show notes for that.

• 51:30Rich Roll?

  The Washington Post just came out with an article, Vegetarian and Vegan Thanksgiving Recipes. They make up the menu. I mean, it's amazing when the Washington Post is writing articles about how to have a vegan Thanksgiving.

• 51:40Adam Skolnick?

  No kidding.

• 51:40Rich Roll?

  This is where we're at culturally, which is amazing.

• 51:42Adam Skolnick?

  It's really advanced. It's incredible.

• 51:44Rich Roll?

  And our cookbook, The Plant Power Way, we've got tons of recipes in there that are also very Thanksgiving adjacent.

• 51:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  Julie had an interesting idea the other day, like in kind of delicately, you know, trying to traverse this upcoming holiday with our daughters and their sensibility. She found this cookbook called The Sioux Chef. Sioux spelled like Sioux, Sioux Native American, S-I-O-U-X. It's not a vegan cookbook, but most of the recipes in there can be easily veganized. But basically it's traditional Native American cuisine, which is really the kind of baseline genesis of the whole Thanksgiving rigmarole to begin with, right?

• 52:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 52:33Rich Roll?

  I can't remember the author of this book and I was going to bring it because she had it on the kitchen table and I forgot to bring it. But I was paging through it this morning and it's pretty cool. There's like a lot of amazing stuff in there and it's really predominantly plant-based. So maybe check that out and make that like a little family. Adventure.

• 52:52Adam Skolnick?

  Do you have any say in the menu?

• 52:56Rich Roll?

  Do I have any say?

• 52:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you personally.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  I have a say. It's questionable how much that say is weighed.

• 53:03Adam Skolnick?

  You say it after you read it.

• 53:05Rich Roll?

  Julie's in charge. No, but I'm good. You know, like, she's amazing. Like, she, when she cooks, like, everybody's happy. I can only mess that up. I think the larger question for the listener is, I mean, this would be a different conversation if we weren't in the middle of COVID, because people aren't traveling. So, you know, most people aren't doing large extended family gatherings like we normally would be doing over this holiday. But that's not to say that that's not happening in certain circumstances. And I think if you're going to be attending a dinner and hopefully doing it in a safe and socially distanced way, I don't know how that works.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  But you can bring a plant-based dish. Like, you can't, you may not be able to commandeer the entire menu, but you could introduce a recipe that maybe ordinarily would be meat or dairy-based.

• 53:58Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 53:59Rich Roll?

  But do it in a plant-based way and use that as an opportunity to say, hey, look, you know, this is great. It tastes amazing, and it doesn't have to have those other things in it. And perhaps that will prompt a discussion around this topic.

• 54:13Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful. I wanted to add one thing on piggybacking on the sous chef idea, and that is seating sovereignty, which is Sovereign Nations, Native American Advocacy, Rights Advocacy Group, that was kind of came together around the pipeline fight in North Dakota, Dakota Access Pipeline, Standing Rock. They are doing a fundraiser, a virtual four-miler. So for runners who want to get into it, and we'll, we'll put the link. You can get to it through their Instagram. And it's being led by some really great Indigenous runners.

• 54:52Adam Skolnick?

  One is Jordan Marie Daniel, who is recently profiled in Sports Illustrated. She's been an activist and advocate for years and years. She's local here in LA.

• 55:05Adam Skolnick?

  And so, let me see, I wanted to bring that up.

• 55:10Adam Skolnick?

  And she's going to be leading it. The other one is.

• 55:14Adam Skolnick?

  A woman who actually Bobby Jean Three Legs is her name and she was one of the people that started the Standing Rock movement when she ran to DC to go advocate on behalf of her people.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  I don't even know that story.

• 55:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so that's she's been called the voice of a generation. And so she's going to be one of the people running. So, you know, we're talking about some real amazing young activists and athletes that are part of this. And if you want to be a part of it, you just have to sign up. I think it's like 20 bucks and you can sign up.

• 55:44Rich Roll?

  Virtual four miler.

• 55:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's like the virtual Ahmaud Arbery run. I think that happened. Similar, you just do it in your own space, your own pace over the course of three days. I think it's open from anywhere from the 25th to the 28th or something like that. And you can just you sign up and

• 56:00Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 56:01Adam Skolnick?

  And you do it.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  We'll put the link

• 56:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Rich Roll?

  in the show notes. Do you know the link offhand, though?

• 56:06Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I go

• 56:08Rich Roll?

  Seeding sovereignty.

• 56:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, seeding sovereignty, I think is it's, yes, it is. I'll put the link up. It's kind of this longer link. I'm on seeding sovereignty's website right now and it's there. So seeding sovereignty.org.

• 56:22Rich Roll?

  We'll link it up.

• 56:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Rich Roll?

  The food is one thing, but when we're talking about Thanksgiving and this holiday, the real bigger issue is strategies for managing tricky family relationships through the holidays and how to deal with the stress and perhaps a disagreement here or there around

• 56:47Adam Skolnick?

  Once or twice.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  The holiday dinner table.

• 56:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 56:51Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 56:52Adam Skolnick?

  That's happened.

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  It's been known to happen.

• 56:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:55Rich Roll?

  I suspect it might be happening a little bit more frequently and vigorously than in past years, just because of where the culture is right now.

• 57:02Adam Skolnick?

  If, yes.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  And again, you know, in typical times, this might be a little bit more heightened than normal, but with COVID. Are people traveling or are they not traveling?

• 57:12Adam Skolnick?

  I mean,

• 57:13Rich Roll?

  I can't tell.

• 57:13Adam Skolnick?

  There was, I mean, they're traveling, bro. People are, people are traveling. I think Arizona's airport, there were some photos that went online that were like really crazy and another person photographed stuff in Vegas that seemed nuts. For our family, uh, COVID, actually the disagreement about whether to get together was happening because of COVID before. It wasn't really even a disagreement. It was more just like the comfort level.

• 57:38Rich Roll?

  Right. It's before you even get, it used to be like, at least we all agree that we're getting together.

• 57:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  Right. Now it's like,

• 57:43Adam Skolnick?

  Comfort level.

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  Should we, you need to come. No, we're not coming. Yeah. There's disagreements about the safety about getting together.

• 57:49Adam Skolnick?

  About the responsibility of even having it.

• 57:51Rich Roll?

  The strife occurs before the, you know, gathering even transpires.

• 57:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, in our case,

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  It's a whole other layer of complexity.

• 57:59Adam Skolnick?

  It wasn't really like strife, but at some point, um, you know, like my sister and my mom were going back and forth and very polite, but kind of pointed language like, you know, um, I think you need to do what's best for you. I wasn't judging you, you know, like really sweet stuff. And I'm just sending Zuma pictures to,

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm sure everybody wants to see the baby.

• 58:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's part of it. So it ends up, I'm going down to the desert where my parents live with April and Zuma. And we're just going to be the five of us having dinner. We all got tested ahead of time. I got tested this weekend. Obviously the way I look at it with COVID is anytime you leave the house, you are taking a risk. That's just the way it is. It's, it's in, it's airborne. That's life. Uh, but we're very careful. You know, I come here, I come to the farmer's market. I go exercise. That's basically it. We do everything else. We're doing like Instacart. We're not really going a lot of places.

• 58:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:50Adam Skolnick?

  And it's been that way for a long time. But, you know, even that, like my sister's family lives up in the Bay area. So to come all the way down and then, you know, make that trek and having the kids having to use the restroom and any sort of interaction that freaked my sister out. So it was, you know, at first it was going to be nine of us. Now it's five. Yeah.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  Well, for the purposes of this discussion, let's, Establish a hypothetical scenario Let's do it. in which an extended family has figured out the parameters under which they can gather and they are indeed gathering. So they're all together Okay. in one domicile somewhere, preparing the holiday meal. Okay. And the inevitable, you know, sideways comment comes out or the button that the parent installed gets pushed by that parent. And Yeah. the recipient gets triggered in a certain way. Right. And what ensues is that predictable cycle that's been repeated for, you know, years, if not decades,

• 59:51Rich Roll?

  that invariably, you know, ends up in the same place it always does, which is people not happy and whatever. Right. So how do we reconfigure this? Or at least create a scenario in which a healthier, better outcome could perhaps transpire? There are certain obvious things that you can do. You can avoid talking about politics. You can turn off the news. You can make your encounters more activity based rather than conversational. Right. But I think this is really difficult and I don't have, you know, the bulletproof, easy answer to all of these things. But I think it's important, first and foremost,

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  that if you find yourself preparing to enter into one of these encounters, that you do everything in your power to be as emotionally and spiritually fit as you possibly can. And to understand that the only thing you can control is your response to whatever is occurring. And when you maintain that focus on yourself and not, rather than trying to control, you know, what other people are going to say or not say or behave. Right. You're in a better position to be that Jedi and navigate it from a place of grace and consciousness. So make sure that you are getting enough sleep, that you are exercising, that you are meditating,

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  that you have some kind of brief mindfulness practice so that if you find yourself off kilter, you can bring yourself back to your baseline, that you can be resilient in the face of disagreements or, you know, treacherous emotional water. So. Self-care, I think, is absolutely critical and needs to be heightened rather than de-escalated in a situation like this. And I think if you're traveling, you're out of your environment and it becomes more difficult to carve out that time, or it feels indulgent, like I don't have time because I'm in somebody else's house, or whatever.

• 1:02:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  Then the conversation, in my mind, turns to healthy boundaries. Like, you've gotta create healthy boundaries around your own self-care routines, but also just around yourself in general and how you interact with other people. And that's to say that here's where it gets tricky, because if you find yourself in a heated situation, if you are in a circumstance in which you have a point of view that's different from somebody else, you don't want to be the person who avoids being honest or expressing your truth because you're afraid of losing the relationship, or escalating a certain situation. But if you do kind of refrain, I think in the short run, that might be an effective strategy

• 1:02:46Rich Roll?

  for like avoiding a scenario. In the long run, though, it's not a good strategy because it will lead to resentment. And that resentment will brew and create a perhaps more perilous fracture that's difficult to heal. So there's short-term and long-term.

• 1:03:04Adam Skolnick?

  But it doesn't depend on the kind of the, there's like, it's not that black and white. There's like scores for the different variables, right? Like, if it's a big thing, probably don't talk about the dinner table. You can have a little talk upstairs. If it's a small thing, I would include even politics in that, even though that feels really big right now. Like, that's still, to me, can be considered a superficial disagreement between family members at the table. So which is the one, you know, to me, like, I'm like, I'm thinking in my mind, refrain, refrain, refrain.

• 1:03:36Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, I think it's, you know, in my mind, it's like, what's most important? What's most important? What's most important? And if a sideways comment gets slung out, it's up to you whether you bite on that or respond or not. You don't have to respond. You don't have to engage. And that's part of the healthy boundaries, right? Like, if you erect a healthy boundary around yourself, Or you make, you know, you make some rules for yourself like, I'm not going to engage with this. You can just let it go.

• 1:04:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Rich Roll?

  And even if you feel your body contracting and you feel like the heat going up into your head, that doesn't mean that you have to do anything with that.

• 1:04:13Adam Skolnick?

  So that's not accommodation. If you've set up the boundaries and it falls outside the boundaries, then you're doing it on your own terms. Therefore, it's not accommodation.

• 1:04:22Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's, it's, again, it goes back to like, if it's about a political matter, like, is this really important? Like, do we, you know, and understanding, like, you're not going to change this person's mind. They're not going to change your mind. Like, do you have the acuity and the level of emotional maturity to not get triggered by that? Like, it's a, it's a discipline, right?

• 1:04:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  And if you can just be a full Jedi and non-reactive in those scenarios, then that puts you in a position of power, right? Like, if the button that your parent installed in you gets pushed, and that parent knows that when they push that button, you're going to react in a certain way, and then you don't react that way, that becomes confusing and throws the whole program off the rails, right? And then you're in a position to, to be in a place where now you're not just mindlessly repeating a pattern that, you know, is on autopilot and has been your entire life.

• 1:05:19Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. So, set healthy boundaries, create the environment conducive to the best outcome, meditate, get yourself together prior to going in, and then really letting, it's like playing tennis. When the ball is going and you know it's outside your boundaries, let it go. But if it's something right in your wheelhouse, it's super important to you, then it's okay to stand up for yourself in a way that's healthy, that's not degrading the other person, and, and, and speak your mind.

• 1:05:45Rich Roll?

  But I think it's important, the manner in which you do that.

• 1:05:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Rich Roll?

  Right? If you do it... In a confrontational way, then this is not going to go well. But if you lead with curiosity and somebody says something you disagree with, and I've talked about this before, your response is, tell me more about that. And you just ask questions. You're able to converse about that subject, but you're depleting it of its electrical charge, which is really the problem, right? It's not the issue itself. It's all the emotions around it that then compel you to like, say the thing that you know that you shouldn't, and you can't help yourself, and you do it anyway.

• 1:06:25Adam Skolnick?

  I've always noticed that also, I'm sure you have the same way. In uncomfortable social situations, just ask questions. You never have to say anything what you really believe. What other people do all the talking?

• 1:06:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just keep asking questions. But you don't want to be passive aggressive with those questions either.

• 1:06:44Adam Skolnick?

  Not loaded questions. If you treat it like really with curiosity, that's a good way.

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  Like a journalist.

• 1:06:49Adam Skolnick?

  Like a journalist. Like if I'm speaking, if I'm on a story, like on the border wall story, and I was hanging out at a bar with border patrol agents, I'm not, I wasn't rude to them. I wasn't like trying to debate them. I'm listening to them. But how come I can do that, but not with a good friend or someone like that?

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  Or a parent. Right. I mean, that's because you're living in the past. Like you're living in a past that doesn't exist anymore. So a really helpful technique that I've employed in this situation is to, you know, it's related to your border patrol example. Pretend that the person you're speaking to has like a television set around their head, and that you're watching them on TV. You're like, it's not like, then it's like, oh, they're just saying that thing. Like you're not, you're not getting all emotionally worked up when you see somebody on tele, maybe you do.

• 1:07:42Adam Skolnick?

  You've never watched TV with me. I throw things.

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  But like, oh, this is a program, right? This is a program. This person is running a program. And I don't want to run my program because I have a program too.

• 1:07:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:07:55Rich Roll?

  And that allows you to put a little bit of objective distance between what that person is saying and how you react or respond to it. And I think ultimately, remember, it's not about them and you can't control them. All you can do is control yourself. So just keep returning the focus onto your own behavior and response.

• 1:08:17Adam Skolnick?

  Love it.

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  And I think Rumi said it best, did he not?

• 1:08:20Adam Skolnick?

  He did. I love what you have here.

• 1:08:22Rich Roll?

  He said, "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."

• 1:08:29Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  So maybe think about that a little bit.

• 1:08:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:08:34Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. Teachable moment. COVID is a never-ending endurance race.

• 1:08:41Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:08:41Adam Skolnick?

  So you found this story.

• 1:08:43Rich Roll?

  This is a great article by podcast alum Alex Hutchinson, who is an amazing journalist. He's also an incredible runner.

• 1:08:54Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  He wrote an amazing book called Endure. He was on the podcast several years ago. Can't remember what episode number that is, but I'll link it up in the show notes. He's, he's one of my favorite writers.

• 1:09:05Adam Skolnick?

  He's a columnist at The Globe and Mail, which is where this is from.

• 1:09:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he lives in Canada. And just really, he has a very thoughtful, analytical, scientific lens on the intersection of sport, particularly endurance sports and larger issues. And I kind of put him in the same category as like a David Epstein.

• 1:09:28Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  The books that he's written, they, they share kind of a similar sensibility in that regard. But anyway, he wrote this article called COVID-19 is like running a marathon with no finish line. What does sports science say about how we can win? And I thought it was really insightful in the way that he compares how we approach and weather difficulty in our daily lives and how this kind of plays out in running. And he does it in the context of the idea of finish lines. Like, no matter how long the race is that you're running, whether it's a marathon or an ultra marathon, there is a finish line. And just knowing

• 1:10:12Rich Roll?

  A that there is a finish line and where that finish line is helps us stay engaged with the process of arriving at that finish line.

• 1:10:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Rich Roll?

  But here we are with COVID. In the early days, we kind of thought there would be this finish line. We didn't know exactly where it was. And in recent months, we're all now living in this liminal space where

• 1:10:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  Like, is there a finish line? Where is it? We don't know. It could be a year. Some are saying this, some are saying that. And that's creating emotional challenges with how we engage with the world because we don't know where that ending point is.

• 1:10:48Adam Skolnick?

  And these promises that like, maybe the vaccine is coming is almost works against you is what he's arguing, right? Like,

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  Well, because it keeps getting moved, right?

• 1:10:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Or like now you think you have a finish line, but when that does move inevitably or possibly, then you really get deflated.

• 1:11:03Rich Roll?

  Right, right. It's and that's like the Navy SEAL example, right?

• 1:11:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:11:07Rich Roll?

  Like where they try to fuck with you by, you know, trying to convince you that you've completed this task only to then, you know, extend it.

• 1:11:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right, like, you know, in Can't Hurt Me, David talks about during hell week with a specifically, a particularly sadistic instructor was leading them back from, um, from chow back to, you know, the pain. And, um, and, uh, he just, they thought they had a two mile run back and all of a sudden the, the instructor takes them on this circuitous route and people in his boat crew were just like gutted and were like, what the fuck? And all the other boat crews too. But he kind of got his boat crew together and it's like, no, we're staying on this guy the whole time because to David, that's what he's built for. That's what he talks about. There is no finish line. You're training for life. You're not training for the race.

• 1:11:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:58Adam Skolnick?

  He's built for it because

• 1:11:59Rich Roll?

  And every race that he does, as soon as he crosses the finish line, he goes and does more.

• 1:12:04Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect example.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  He just did it this past weekend.

• 1:12:05Adam Skolnick?

  The JFK 50 miler in Maryland. He did the 50 miler in, in eight 30 mile splits and then,

• 1:12:12Rich Roll?

  Eight 25.

• 1:12:13Adam Skolnick?

  Eight 25. And then went back, uh, to Pace's buddy for, um, another 11 or 12 miles.

• 1:12:20Rich Roll?

  It's, it's a practice. Like he, I don't think he would ever just finish and like celebrate like he, he compels himself to then go do something hard right away.

• 1:12:30Adam Skolnick?

  He did 25 pushups after finishing Moab.

• 1:12:33Rich Roll?

  It's also similar to this thing. I had Joe DeSena on the podcast recently and hasn't aired yet. He's the founder of Spartan Race. And he's got this farm in Vermont and he create, prior to Spartan Race, he created this other race like it is on his property. And the whole idea was to create like the most difficult thing ever. And the hardest part of it was that he wouldn't tell people when the race was starting, or what the race was, or how long it was, or when it would end. And it was that mental game of not knowing, like, how long am I going to be like lifting logs and trudging through frozen ponds, or whatever it is that he had them doing. Not knowing when it was going to end was the thing that

• 1:13:17Rich Roll?

  just broke most people. And what Alex Hutchinson is talking about in this article is that very thing, like how, you know, the unknowing, the mystery around how this whole COVID thing is going to get resolved creates a paralysis in people because we can't see the finish line.

• 1:13:35Adam Skolnick?

  He calls, he cites a term from a German physiologist, teleo anticipation, like future anticipation of an ending. And he like, I think he goes through some science, sports science on it where he looks at, I guess, the studies that have proven the first and last mile are always the fastest by far of any marathon or any race.

• 1:13:58Rich Roll?

  No matter how long the race is.

• 1:14:00Adam Skolnick?

  Any race over 10,000 meters.

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  You know, whatever 500 meters or half kilometer is always the fastest, with the exception of perhaps the first kilometer.

• 1:14:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right. That's right. And it was, it was because of, because of just that. You know you're going to end, so you give it all, all out. And there was another study that, you know, when people were on the treadmill for however long, and then when they got off the treadmill. And they were told, oh no, you got to get back on there for 10 more minutes. That's when their performance really sunk. It wasn't that they couldn't have just stayed on for 10 minutes. If they'd known it was 10 minutes longer, they probably would have been their fastest 10 minutes. But because they were told that was it, it was over. And the whole thing is couched in this, you know, virtual ultra, which is really

• 1:14:44Rich Roll?

  Right. It's Mike Wardian, who's an amazing ultra runner and this, this backyard ultra race where virtually across the world, these ultra runners would run this, I think it was like a four mile loop.

• 1:14:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, four miles every hour, right?

• 1:14:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Or every, was it every, yeah, every hour. And it's a last man standing thing, whoever's still going. And like at one point, Mike just can't go anymore and he gets a second wind. I can't remember the exact

• 1:15:10Adam Skolnick?

  His wife, his wife wouldn't let him quit.

• 1:15:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:15:13Adam Skolnick?

  He goes, I don't feel like doing this anymore. She goes, that's not a good reason.

• 1:15:16Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and why does he feel that? Like, he's certainly physically capable of going longer, but it's the not knowing, like, because he's competing, he doesn't know how long these other people are going to keep going.

• 1:15:27Adam Skolnick?

  Well, part of it also though, like in the story, Alex points out that like, after they got to 100 miles, like the first 24 hours, because 24 hours, you're at 100. After you got to 100 miles, uh, yeah, because it was like, I guess it must've been five, whatever it was.

• 1:15:44Adam Skolnick?

  Once they got there, like the next hour, half the field just failed.

• 1:15:47Rich Roll?

  They all dropped out.

• 1:15:48Adam Skolnick?

  They had their own finish line in mind.

• 1:15:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:15:50Adam Skolnick?

  I just want to do it for 24 hours.

• 1:15:51Rich Roll?

  That's how they got that far by focusing on the 100 mark, right? But once that was eclipsed, then what are they looking at? And you can't stay motivated, right?

• 1:16:00Adam Skolnick?

  It's very interesting. So the point is, is to embrace the no finish line mentality, right?

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  Right. So he says in this

• 1:16:06Adam Skolnick?

  With this.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  In this piece about teleo anticipation, using endurance sports as, as their medium, researchers in the subfield have probed what happens when you hide the finish line, surreptitiously move it or take it away entirely. For those of us tempted by promising vaccine updates to start fantasizing about an end of the pandemic, these researchers have some advice. Don't.

• 1:16:29Adam Skolnick?

  Don't.

• 1:16:29Rich Roll?

  Right. So what do you do with that, right? And the conclusion that he draws that I think is so instructive and informative is that we need to stop.

• 1:16:40Rich Roll?

  Asking like, can I make it to the finish? And instead, ask ourselves, can I keep going?

• 1:16:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  And when you're in that place of can I keep going? Which is really a mindfulness practice of rooting you in the present moment. You're more likely to be able to, you know, tap into the reservoirs of motivation required to, you know, continue to move forward.

• 1:17:02Adam Skolnick?

  And that's also a good strategy for the chaos cycles when that descends, you know? Can I keep going?

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  It's a good strategy for anything. Like whether you're an endurance runner or just somebody, you know, who's trying to make it through the pandemic without going insane.

• 1:17:14Adam Skolnick?

  Because you can keep going. That's really what it comes down to.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  And that's the point.

• 1:17:18Adam Skolnick?

  You're a human being. You're built to keep going.

• 1:17:20Rich Roll?

  And then in the example that he gives about Mike Worden, like after he outlasted everybody else, then he wanted to keep going and they wouldn't let him.

• 1:17:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right. He ends up winning. He ends up going 60 plus hours and then the guy didn't show up for his last, the last, the latest hour. And that, that was, it was over and he was like, bummer.

• 1:17:38Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's illustrative, once again, of the distinction between our mental capacity and our physical capacity and how the mind is truly the limiter, not the body.

• 1:17:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Beautiful.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  All right. We will link up that article in the show notes. It's in the Globe and Mail, right?

• 1:17:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:17:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And with that, let's take a quick break. And we'll be back with a little show and tell and listener questions.

• 1:18:16Rich Roll?

  All right, we're back. I feel good, man. How do you feel?

• 1:18:20Adam Skolnick?

  It feels good, man.

• 1:18:22Rich Roll?

  Interesting you should say that. Cause that's what we're going to talk about right now.

• 1:18:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Rich Roll?

  For show and tell, I don't think we had a documentary recommendation last time we got together, did we?

• 1:18:32Adam Skolnick?

  It's been a while since the Rich Roll Film Club has invaded my life.

• 1:18:36Rich Roll?

  I think we need to get back to our roots, which is that truly this is a documentary focused podcast.

• 1:18:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:45Rich Roll?

  Our documentary this week that we're going to talk about, what an amazing film. It's called Feels Good, Man. This movie, I feel like in many ways is a close cousin or kind of.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Important tangential viewing to movies like The Social Dilemma or The Great Hack. Like it's a deep dive into artistic iconography and how powerful that can be and how symbols can become the underpinning of political movements.

• 1:19:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Rich Roll?

  I guess is one way of putting it. This movie, it premiered at Sundance, but I don't feel like it's gotten its due in the kind of streaming universe that it should because I thought it was extraordinary.

• 1:19:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Rich Roll?

  So maybe explain what it is.

• 1:19:33Adam Skolnick?

  2020, yeah. So to me, it's one of the best documentaries I've seen in years. Like the social network or social, not Social Dilemma was very, was good, but like that kind of follows in line with the kind of the Netflix documentaries that are, that are coming out, which are, you know, compelling, great information, but it's not like amazing filmmaking. This is an amazing film. Like it really is.

• 1:19:59Rich Roll?

  It's made by a true artist and a filmmaker.

• 1:20:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Rich Roll?

  That tells a very important story, but does it in a uniquely creative way.

• 1:20:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And it tells a story of, of Matt Fury, a great cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog. And this, this book, he had a book, what was it called? A Boys Club?

• 1:20:20Rich Roll?

  Boys, Boys Life?

• 1:20:22Adam Skolnick?

  Boys Club? Yeah, something like that.

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. In a comic book series.

• 1:20:26Adam Skolnick?

  Comic book series, which included Pepe the Frog and a dog and, and like four characters. And they were just basically burners. They were like little baskets. They'd, they'd, they'd party, they'd get drunk, they'd smoke weed and then they'd wake up and like, you know, fuck around.

• 1:20:38Rich Roll?

  Right. And that was the whole point. He's like 20 something post collegiate nihilistic, like party dudes that kind of just all live together in a shitty apartment.

• 1:20:47Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  Do whatever.

• 1:20:48Adam Skolnick?

  And, and it was a very popular series, a very funny series, like fellow cartoonists kind of chime in and talk about it, but it ends up, Pepe the Frog ends up. Cut to the 2015, even before that, but becomes an alt-right mascot, especially in 2016. And ends up, Pepe the Frog ends up on the hate watch list or something for the Anti-Defamation League. And all, you know, there's nothing that, and you know, obviously that was never the artist's intention. It was just like a fun comic.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:20Adam Skolnick?

  And he ends up being like this, this really powerful, potent figure, thanks to 4chan and the power of memes, where it really is first where it took root. And so this, this movie follows Matt Fury and Into the, Into This Dark World of 4chan. It also is an explainer of 4chan, an explainer of kind of the alt-right's rise up in support of Donald Trump. Explainer of a lot of the chaos that we have now.

• 1:21:49Adam Skolnick?

  This is an explainer for that. So it's this story about a really nerdy, cool artist and his friends in San Francisco that becomes this kind of lens which to see the last several years.

• 1:21:59Rich Roll?

  I found it, I found it utterly fascinating for so many reasons. First of all, you've got Matt Fury, who's just this sensitive, sweet artist.

• 1:22:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  Right? Who likes to draw and play with his daughter and he just seems like a cool dude, right?

• 1:22:14Adam Skolnick?

  Loves frogs. He's been drawing frogs since he was a kid.

• 1:22:16Rich Roll?

  His whole life.

• 1:22:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:17Rich Roll?

  And my kind of entry point to this is, you know, I remember specifically when the frog emoji started showing up in certain Twitter account bios, right? Like clearly it was a symbol that meant something more than this is a cute frog.

• 1:22:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Rich Roll?

  And I started to learn about kind of who Pepe the Frog was and some origins, but it's always been completely confounding and confusing to me. Like Pepe the Frog is a symbol of a certain political sensibility. Like, how did that happen? And this movie unpacks the whole thing. And it's far more interesting than you could possibly imagine.

• 1:22:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and it's twisted and dark and really fucked up. And then has a really great ending where there's a twist to it, but. But yeah, I mean, to me, it was a reminder of how out of it I was in 2016 because I didn't know about Pepe the Frog.

• 1:23:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:10Adam Skolnick?

  I was, I was busy swimming in the ocean like five days a week.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  You weren't on 4chan?

• 1:23:14Adam Skolnick?

  I was.

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:23:15Adam Skolnick?

  I was not on 4chan.

• 1:23:17Rich Roll?

  So, so like you said, Matt creates this character. He's been drawing frogs his whole life and the, the kind of inflection point was in the MySpace era, he would take JPGs or screen grabs of some of his pages from his comic books and post them on his page.

• 1:23:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:23:34Rich Roll?

  And the one that really tipped it over was a picture of Pepe, you know, this character he created, Pepe, who was like peeing in a urinal with his pants down around his ankles. Cause like, who does that, right?

• 1:23:47Adam Skolnick?

  Cause he had like a buddy. He's like, he remembered being like 10 and like walking on his buddy who had his pants, like that's what he does.

• 1:23:53Rich Roll?

  All the way down at his ankles on a urinal. Like who would do that? And, and his roommate's like, what are you doing? And he's like, feels good, man.

• 1:23:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Rich Roll?

  And, and, and there's a weird expression on his face that's very Mona Lisa-esque. Like you're not quite clear. It's a, it's kind of a smirk.

• 1:24:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Rich Roll?

  A knowing smirk, but you're not quite crystal clear on where this character is coming from. And ultimately that finds its way onto 4chan when 4chan exploded, which is, you know, a very, um, uh, unlimited, you know, anonymous space for people to express their opinions. Um, and it's kind of, you know, retrograde, retrobait in that regard, right? Because everybody's anonymous there. People say things they wouldn't ordinarily say.

• 1:24:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And it was kind of owned by, oh, sorry.

• 1:24:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:24:47Adam Skolnick?

  It was kind of like dominated by really sad kind of people who are at loose ends who, who.

• 1:24:53Rich Roll?

  Lonely, disenfranchised, young males for the most part.

• 1:24:57Adam Skolnick?

  Incels in specific.

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  That came later.

• 1:24:59Adam Skolnick?

  That came later, but that it kind of grew into that.

• 1:25:01Rich Roll?

  This is kind of a, a breeding ground for what would become like the incel movement.

• 1:25:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  And at some point along the way, this community adopts Pepe the Frog.

• 1:25:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Rich Roll?

  And makes it their own.

• 1:25:16Adam Skolnick?

  Like they just exchange memes. Like at first 4chan becomes big because like artists are exchanging memes in funny ways and it becomes, it's all about being ironic and I don't care about anything.

• 1:25:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:27Adam Skolnick?

  And, um, you know, like this nihilistic art kind of space. And then it gets.

• 1:25:32Rich Roll?

  But then it tips into this other world where it becomes a symbol for the alt-right movement. And when Trump enters, it takes on an additional meaning. And then it explodes outside of 4chan into the greater political landscape. And we travel with Matt as he tries to figure out like how to navigate this whole thing where this innocent character that he created suddenly is completely out of his control and stands for something that he never intended it to stand for. And what do you do about that? And, you know, and kind of how he grapples with that as this, you know, meme and this character continue

• 1:26:14Rich Roll?

  to evolve over time. And so it's really, you know, it's kind of a polemic about artistic iconography. It's a, it's a portrait of this young artist and what happened to him. And it's a case study in the power of imagery and how that kind of fuels culture.

• 1:26:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:35Rich Roll?

  Political culture and culture at large.

• 1:26:38Adam Skolnick?

  You know what, also, a couple of things, when, when, basically what happened, how it ended up in the Trump campaign and a vehicle for alt-right was people were exchanging memes and then Instagrammers were starting to raid 4chan to get the cool memes.

• 1:26:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:56Adam Skolnick?

  And be the first to put them on. And so then the, the 4chan, like the, the real kind of hardcore, I hate everybody 4chaners, including myself, saw that and were like, get these normies out of here. And so they started putting like swastikas on him or making Pepe like Hitler mustache.

• 1:27:13Rich Roll?

  Originally just to be a chilling effect on the normies from stealing their, their hero and spreading it, you know, in the greater internet, you know, greater internet space.

• 1:27:24Adam Skolnick?

  But then someone put Trump's hair on Pepe and that kind of changes everything. And we don't get too into that, but like that does change everything. And to me, what that did, what I, a couple of things I thought of watching this, one is, It's sad, man. It's sad that we that we live in this winner versus loser society. Where people feel that disenfranchised from the world and don't have an outlet that's constructive and and ends up being destructive. You know, 4chan ends up being linked to the Isla Vista mass shooter. You know, there's there's a, you know, the rise of the alt-right and coming out of the woodwork. A lot of that, to me, is based in disillusion and darkness, like

• 1:28:09Adam Skolnick?

  within oneself and within society, feeling disenfranchised. I'm not making excuses for bad behavior. I'm not trying to make excuses for a shooter. But my point is, is that we have lots of people living in school. You'll watch this and you'll see people living in their basement, living in filth, and and feeling like they're completely disengaged because of the way they've been treated or because of the the course of their life. And sort of taking pride in that. And taking pride in that. But at the same time, it speaks to the conditions that we've created in our society. Because we don't have like a mental health network in a way. We don't have like a community, a real community, a lot of times, where there's a place to catch people who are falling and and help them feel empowered. And so what

• 1:28:52Adam Skolnick?

  ends up happening in this, in this, in real life, I say in this movie, what ends up, what really happened was, all of a sudden, these basement hacks got anointed with purpose. And the purpose became fueling this whole Trump theme. And so it's very interesting to me. With the goal, really, of just fomenting chaos. Just fomenting chaos and pissing off liberals and pissing off normies. And which is really, we've been triggered by this this entire time. And some bad people got involved and made it, you know, obviously, made it very potent in the way they've advertised here and there. And one of them is interviewed in this. But it's just so interesting, like the power of purpose. You know, I know that's a weird place to go with it, but like, all

• 1:29:34Adam Skolnick?

  of a sudden, these people that had no purpose, the purpose was 4chan, now have purpose. And all that kind of. Became very energized around that. Yeah. And unified. Yeah. And that purpose is is powerful. So that, to me, that just speaks to the power of purpose in a way. And that's what conspiracy theories give people, gives people purpose. That's what that's what like.

• 1:29:56Adam Skolnick?

  You know, that's what Q gives people. And a lot of people are lonely and just feeling disillusioned.

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  There's a gamifying aspect to it, too. Like, when you have all of these people living in filth and basements, and I'm not making that up, like, that's portrayed in the movie. And suddenly, they can organize around this character and create real-world ramifications for that and do it together and be in constant communication with each other, it does become like a video game.

• 1:30:26Adam Skolnick?

  It does. And then the conspiracies, and then it leaks into the mainstream, and now it's not just people in basements. Now, it's like, your uncle that you're gonna have to see at Thanksgiving. You know what I mean? Or your aunt. You know, like, literally. And so, like, I think you sent me this Yuval Noah Harari.

• 1:30:44Rich Roll?

  Yuval Noah Harari, who's also been on the podcast. He wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, "When the World Seems Like One Big Conspiracy", and he basically, you know, deconstructs that very thing.

• 1:30:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's just the fact that, I think, here's a quote, "The skeleton key of all global cabal theories. It unlocks the world's mystery and offers people entree into an exclusive circle, the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person, and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class: professors, journalists, politicians."

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  I mean, in the case of, in the case of Pepe the Frog specifically, you had this massive 4chan community, and they really were the only ones who understood what Pepe the Frog meant. And that was the appeal, because when these memes would leak into broader culture and get misinterpreted, they were the ones who were in the know and could kind of regale in the irony of all of that.

• 1:31:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so it's a movie about art, it's about purpose, it's about, it's a critique, a social critique of our society. There's a lawsuit with Alex Jones. It's really good.

• 1:31:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. So, yeah, I mean, that, you know, begins... From a place of not wanting to rock the boat, like when Pepe starts becoming another thing, he could have put his foot down and

• 1:32:05Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:32:05Rich Roll?

  You know, filed a intellectual property claim.

• 1:32:08Adam Skolnick?

  He could have come out for 4chan.

• 1:32:09Rich Roll?

  And he was like, I'm an artist, I don't want to do that. And then it got super out of control.

• 1:32:13Adam Skolnick?

  Out of control.

• 1:32:13Rich Roll?

  The Anti-Defamation League not only puts Pepe the Frog on its, on its hate symbol list, they put his name, it's the fact that his name is there too.

• 1:32:22Adam Skolnick?

  His name is linked to it, yeah.

• 1:32:23Rich Roll?

  And he wants his name off of that, and that becomes a battle that he, you know, gets involved in pursuing, and ultimately

• 1:32:30Adam Skolnick?

  He's not good at pursuing.

• 1:32:32Rich Roll?

  Ends up, yeah, I mean, he's not like, he's not suited for that kind of thing, right?

• 1:32:36Adam Skolnick?

  No, that's not what he's here for, no.

• 1:32:37Rich Roll?

  But he does suck it up enough to go after Alex Jones, which is a crazy story in its own right.

• 1:32:43Adam Skolnick?

  He does, so the one person that he, well, he ends up getting a law, a law firm involved to try to at least get Alex Jones from being able to sell a poster with Pepe the Frog on it.

• 1:32:51Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's a really amazing documentary, and the director is, you know, quite a cartoon artist himself.

• 1:32:58Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:32:59Rich Roll?

  I believe he did all the animation sequences in it, which are very well done.

• 1:33:02Adam Skolnick?

  Please see it.

• 1:33:03Rich Roll?

  So check that out, it's on, I think it's on Netflix, is it on Netflix, or was it on Amazon?

• 1:33:06Adam Skolnick?

  No, I rented it on iTunes.

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:33:09Adam Skolnick?

  It was on Amazon, it's not yet on Netflix.

• 1:33:12Rich Roll?

  I think that's why maybe it's having a discoverability issue.

• 1:33:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  If it was on Netflix, everybody would, would be watching this movie.

• 1:33:18Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  I think I got it on Amazon, but check it out.

• 1:33:21Adam Skolnick?

  I put it in like, in the, you know, in a place like Capturing the Freedmans, or Our Crumb, like some really seminal, like indie period documentaries that were like

• 1:33:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Our Crumb is a great example, I think.

• 1:33:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:32Rich Roll?

  The other aspect of it that I think is interesting and worth a few minutes discussing is the extent to which what happened on 4chan was fueled by the anonymity aspect of that community, right? The fact that everybody is anonymous there, they can say all these things, and they're detached from the real world ramifications of that, or having to take personal responsibility for what spills out into the real world, like what happened in Isla Vista, because they're shrouded in anonymity.

• 1:34:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  And I think right now, we're grappling with how to police or regulate the social media space when it comes to verification. There is a strong argument that, for example, everybody on Twitter should be verified or on Facebook, like you need to be able to establish that you are actually the person that you claim to be. The counterargument to this, which I talked about with Jack Dorsey when he was on the podcast, is that anonymity is important for dissident voices that feel threatened by speaking out publicly, that they require some level of anonymity in order to be whistleblowers, and that that has to get valued against the verification argument.

• 1:34:49Rich Roll?

  But I think when you tabulate all of this, like, what is the larger threat? Is it making sure that we're protecting that dissident voice, which I think is incredibly important? Or is it more important to enact measures that prevent bot farms from creating, you know, millions of fake accounts out there that are spreading disinformation? I don't propose to have the solution to this, but, you know, these are the conversations that we need to have in order to figure out, like, how to move forward here.

• 1:35:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because anonymity create gives you the hubris to be able to say whatever you want, and then those the language creates the environment that ends up fomenting actual action.

• 1:35:30Rich Roll?

  Right. And anonymity allows you to be whoever you want to be and convince people that you're somebody that you're not.

• 1:35:36Adam Skolnick?

  It's a very good question. You know, I remember when we talked about it earlier today, I was thinking even journalism has, I think, an anonymity problem. We for a long time, it was, I mean, I think for most of the 20th century, anonymous sources were kind of not appreciated in in big papers. And I think, if I remember correctly, with the Watergate reporting with Woodward and Bernstein, it's been a long time since I saw the film or read the book, but All the president's men.

• 1:36:06Rich Roll?

  I just watched it like a month ago.

• 1:36:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and but I seem to remember like the fact that Deep Throat was anonymous source was pissing Benjamin Bradley off and like he didn't want to run the story on an anonymous source.

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  Well, the whole movie is basically Woodward and Bernstein trying to browbeat Bradley into letting them publish their story and him constantly saying, you don't have enough.

• 1:36:27Adam Skolnick?

  Get better source. Yeah. And so now, though, you can read almost any, any story about like, it could be sports, it could be movies, it could be, it could be a political story and anonymous sources are so prevalent. And I think, I think that's problematic too, to stories. And I think that, that like, that leads to distrust of even these news sources. Because if, if, if it's just an anonymous source, anyone could make it up. Because look at 4chan, people are making stuff up. So it's like, it's, it's, it's bled into this mass of where you can't, you can't discern it. So then when you actually have a name on it, do we really believe that too?

• 1:37:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:03Adam Skolnick?

  So it's, we're in this place where it's really hard. And there's an Atlantic journalist, Adam Schwaber, something, he's in the movie. And he talks about the whole point of some of this is just to flood the zone with shit.

• 1:37:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, I remember that guy.

• 1:37:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, just flood, flood the zone with shit. So you can't tell what's real and what's not. And that's kind of where we're at. So how do you solve that? I think actually verifying more people is a good way of doing it.

• 1:37:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because this problem is not going to go away. It's only going to grow and become exacerbated.

• 1:37:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Rich Roll?

  And a good reason to, you know, believe in that position is the advent of deep fake technology, which leads us into the next article that I wanted to talk about, which is this beautiful New York Times piece called, Do These AI-Created Fake People Look Real to You? And what's amazing about this piece is the kind of dynamic visual aesthetic or quality that the New York Times created, where you scroll through this article and you see the, the faces like changing races and, you know, their features are changing. And it's astounding, like these people. Look exactly like real people and they're just all computer generated.

• 1:38:14Adam Skolnick?

  They're all made up.

• 1:38:15Rich Roll?

  And then it gets into how you can tell like these tiny little details, but that's going to get worked out.

• 1:38:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:21Rich Roll?

  It's not going to be possible for us to determine who's a real person and who isn't.

• 1:38:25Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:38:26Rich Roll?

  And what happens when that tips into video and audio, they can all, they can almost do it perfectly now with audio.

• 1:38:32Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:38:33Rich Roll?

  Then it becomes impossible to decipher what's real and what's not. And I think that that tips me in the favor of verification. Like, you know, when you, when you look at these photographs, these aren't even real people, but they look exactly like real people. We're entering into this crazy uncanny valley where, you know, fact and fiction are, are impossible to determine.

• 1:38:58Adam Skolnick?

  And then what's going to happen is it's going to become even more fractured where some people are like, I'm only going to be on X platform because they verify everybody. Well, other people will be happy to be on the unverified platform.

• 1:39:08Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, we're seeing that now with Twitter and Parler, parlors, right?

• 1:39:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. It's crazy. But there's also other problems, like we were talking about this, like one of the podcasts, like it's a top rated Apple podcast that tries to, like their, the description on, on Apple is that we are a, we, we don't align with any party, like independent thinkers only, you know, thinking political podcasts. It's a, it's a, it's a far right podcast. Like there's got to be better moderation across all, that's a social dilemma thing, and verification across all these platforms. Cause it's irresponsible otherwise. Cause those, those types of podcasts, I'm not going to say who it is, but those types of podcasts and those types of entry points, like Millenew, like the.

• 1:39:54Rich Roll?

  Stephon Millenew.

• 1:39:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  Millenew from, from Rabbit Hole.

• 1:39:57Adam Skolnick?

  From Rabbit Hole. Those are the entry points to this like crazy anti-information space.

• 1:40:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:04Adam Skolnick?

  And it's dangerous, so.

• 1:40:06Rich Roll?

  Well, agreeing on the problem is one thing, but finding a valid solution is another thing because who gets to be, you know, how do you police that?

• 1:40:14Adam Skolnick?

  It's a good question.

• 1:40:15Rich Roll?

  And once you start making value judgments, then you're in a world of shit.

• 1:40:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:40:20Rich Roll?

  Because, you know, you can't, you just, it's impossible.

• 1:40:23Adam Skolnick?

  And then, then, you know, they keep saying in this movie and feels good, man. The genie's already out of the bottle. It might already be.

• 1:40:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:31Adam Skolnick?

  It might.

• 1:40:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We've unleashed the kraken.

• 1:40:34Adam Skolnick?

  Stop saying that. You don't know what a kraken is. Stop saying that.

• 1:40:39Rich Roll?

  All right. Uh, moving on. Um, win of the week. You got a win of the week, right?

• 1:40:44Adam Skolnick?

  I do. Yeah. I, um,

• 1:40:46Rich Roll?

  I don't really have one.

• 1:40:47Adam Skolnick?

  I filed a report yesterday. It should be out soon. I don't know exactly now when it'll be out either this week or next week, hopefully. For the New York Times Sports, it is Alenka Artnik, a Slovenian freediver, dove to 114 meters, breaking a world record in a freedive in Egypt, in the Red Sea. That happened on November 7th. Uh, I was late to this story, but it's the first time I've covered freediving actually in quite a while.

• 1:41:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:41:16Adam Skolnick?

  But it was fun to be able to get back in there and tell Alenka's story. And she was third. She's 39 now. She was 30 when she found freediving. Just at a pool in Slovenia in the capital. Um, she was partying a lot, drinking a lot, kind of self sabotaging, not, didn't have purpose. And just by crashing this workout in a pool where people were just like, literally just doing dynamic apnea, which is doing laps in a pool. Not, not in beautiful blue water, not in Egypt's Red Sea, just doing that. She joined them and was immediately hooked. And like the next day, went out and bought her first pair of plastic bifins, the long fins and, uh, and, you know, she, she, over the next few years,

• 1:41:59Adam Skolnick?

  she did it a few times and, and, and did depth, got to 28 meters in her first class and then got to 49 meters by 2015. And then when her father died, her mother had died in 2009. She, uh, sold the family house with her sister and moved to Egypt to train full time. And to see what you can do. You know, it just speaks to her incredible athleticism, focus, deep relaxation in, in the water. 114 meters. I mean, that's, you know, that is, you know, 370 or something like 350.

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 1:42:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. You know, that's like, uh, you're swimming the length of a 70 story building. By the time you get back up to the top, it's a three minute, 41 second dive.

• 1:42:45Adam Skolnick?

  And, and you know, I get into the detail of it and how women's freediving has really blossomed in the last couple of years with Alenka and Alessia Sacchini, who's an Italian with the first to break the great Natalia Molchino's record, Hanako Rosso, who's from Japan. These three women have really electrified the sport and it's really exciting to be able to write about another great waterwoman, a powerful person and a very exciting record.

• 1:43:14Rich Roll?

  Her backstory sounds similar to Nick Mavoli.

• 1:43:17Adam Skolnick?

  It does sound similar. It is similar. The difference is Nick was always a stud athlete. Like, he was a great athlete growing up. Alenka, and I didn't have enough words to get fully into this, but Alenka really never had that. She was never a great BMX cyclist. She was never a sporty person. She kind of was like drifting. And there was part of her inside, she said, that she knew she could do something great, but she just didn't know what. You know, she just didn't have, and she didn't, wasn't really attracted to the, you know, get married, have a house type of thing, have babies. That wasn't where she was at at that point in her twenties. She didn't want that. But she didn't know where to put herself. So she was, you know.

• 1:43:57Rich Roll?

  It's cool.

• 1:43:57Adam Skolnick?

  Spending a lot of time out, out at night. And then when she found this, it really clicked. And that's what people are saying, like that she moves like as if she's dissolved in the water. Like her, her power feels effortless. And that's the kind of relaxation you need to be able to go super deep and come up and not burn all your oxygen. Yeah.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  It's such a weird, specific skillset.

• 1:44:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  That is so much about holding back. You know, when you think of athleticism, you think of exertion. And this is the opposite of that.

• 1:44:27Adam Skolnick?

  Well, right. I mean, you know, we, I talk about it in the story is like one of the biggest components of a deep dive is the free fall. And so she kicks, you know, really, if, if you go out. And you're on a dive line and you're doing one of these courses. What they teach you is you kick for the first 10 meters hard. And then you kick 33 feet, then you kick the next 33 feet a little softer because you're already becoming somewhat negatively buoyant, but the first 30 feet, you're positively buoyant. So if you stop kicking, you'll get pushed back up to the surface, especially if you're in a wetsuit. And then beyond 20 meters, you can really just stop kicking and you'll sink. But when you're going to 100 plus meters, you can't do that at 20 meters. It'll just take too long.

• 1:45:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:09Adam Skolnick?

  So she kicks all the way down to 70 meters. From 40 to 70, it's every little while, it's not much, but she, and she has a monofin. So she's just kind of doing this dolphin kick. And at 70, she just goes super relaxed, doesn't move, tries not to think at all. And then it just lets herself get carried down like a tractor beam.

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  Wow. Yeah, for people that are, that are listening who are unfamiliar with freediving, we're talking about swimming straight down. You're not, you're not swimming laterally, you're swimming straight down along a cord, like a line that marks your distance.

• 1:45:39Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 1:45:40Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. What was the world record prior?

• 1:45:43Adam Skolnick?

  113, she shared it with Alessia. So they shared a record. So the, what happened was Natalia-

• 1:45:49Rich Roll?

  Is that a world record across the board or for women?

• 1:45:52Adam Skolnick?

  For women. So the record is, is held by Alexei Molchanov for men at 130 meters.

• 1:45:58Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:45:58Adam Skolnick?

  And Alexei was the son of Natalia Molchanova, who is the best women's freediver ever. She had 41 world records, world champion over 20 times. She disappeared on a dive in 2015. It shows you how, you know, there, there is a thin margin for error here. And so she died in 2015. And then when she died, it was like this void in the sport. No one thought, no one had ever broken 100 meters besides Natalia. And, and this is all in one breath, by the way, if you're curious if this is really interesting to you, this is all in there, at least up to Natalia's dominance. Then Natalia-

• 1:46:34Adam Skolnick?

  Disappears and no one think like, all of a sudden, the men's draw is really exciting. Alexi versus Will Trubridge, who's going to be the best. But on the women's side, there's like no one to step in. And then Alessia, who's only 29 now, or 27 now, comes into Vertical Blue in 2017. Seventeen, no, 2018. And she and Hanako take turns breaking Natalia's record. And then all of a sudden, that was 2017, and 2018, Alenka shows up out of nowhere and ties Alessi's record at 105. And so now, the three of them just progressively have gotten all the way to 114. I mean, that's like a level that even Natalia never approached. And, you know, who knows if she ever would have got there.

• 1:47:17Adam Skolnick?

  That shows you the level that these women are at. It's really impressive.

• 1:47:21Rich Roll?

  That's incredible.

• 1:47:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:23Rich Roll?

  Did I tell you about my experience trying to learn freediving in Malta?

• 1:47:28Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  I didn't, we didn't talk about this?

• 1:47:31Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think so.

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  So I was in Malta, it's a year and a half ago, or something like that.

• 1:47:36Adam Skolnick?

  No, I don't think we talked about this.

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  And there's a well-known, former world champion freediver that lives out there.

• 1:47:46Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:47:47Rich Roll?

  Whose name escapes me right now, and I'm so embarrassed that I can't remember his name at the moment.

• 1:47:51Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:47:52Rich Roll?

  But he was friends of one of the friends that we have on the island, our friend Kurt Arigo. And Kurt's like, hey, you should go meet this guy. So we go out to Gozo, the other island like next to Malta, where he's got this whole setup out there, and he trains like up and coming competitive freedivers.

• 1:48:12Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:48:13Rich Roll?

  And I spent the better part of a whole day working with this guy, doing all kinds of breath techniques, and he was teaching me.

• 1:48:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Rich Roll?

  Like how to do, you know, the inhale and the exhale, like most of it was spent at his house, like, learning that aspect of it.

• 1:48:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Rich Roll?

  And then we went out to this, you know, kind of deep hole where he takes people out and got, you know, the hole set up on and the fins and the whole thing, right?

• 1:48:35Adam Skolnick?

  How'd you do?

• 1:48:36Rich Roll?

  And I did terrible. I was terrible at it.

• 1:48:39Adam Skolnick?

  Could you not equalize? Was that the problem?

• 1:48:41Rich Roll?

  I'm, yeah, I can't equalize. Like, literally, I'm only down like 15 meters or whatever and just feels like my head's gonna explode.

• 1:48:48Adam Skolnick?

  So that's it, yeah.

• 1:48:49Rich Roll?

  I could not figure out how to equalize. And I was like, I can't, I couldn't crack that nut.

• 1:48:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and that happens.

• 1:48:55Rich Roll?

  Breath holding is fine. Like, I'm pretty good with that.

• 1:48:58Adam Skolnick?

  He didn't have you go head up and try to equalize that way?

• 1:49:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he did. He was giving me all that stuff, but I couldn't figure it out.

• 1:49:04Adam Skolnick?

  Cause head down equalization, you can't use the same techniques you would like scuba diving. It's a slightly different technique.

• 1:49:12Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's called, it's frenzel instead of volaslava, I think, is the original kind. And so it's, it's just, it's basically, you're not using your diaphragm, you're using just your sinuses, you know, your, your, your soft palate. But so a lot of, some people just can't equalize beyond 10 meters head down. It's just, it's just normal. My first class, I had the same problem.

• 1:49:33Rich Roll?

  It was, I mean, I literally felt like scanners in your head. Like, my head was gonna crack wide open.

• 1:49:40Adam Skolnick?

  But don't feel bad. It took me like 20 professional freedivers to finally be able to get to 100 feet.

• 1:49:47Rich Roll?

  That's good, though. 100 feet, man.

• 1:49:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but you could do it. It's just a matter of getting, cracking that one equalization thing. And that just is a muscle you build up. I believe everyone can equalize to that level. It's just a matter of doing it.

• 1:49:59Rich Roll?

  All right, let's do some listener questions. Before we launch into the first question, I do want to mention that a question that we fielded in our last roll on had to do with eating disorders among males. And we had a discussion about that.

• 1:50:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:50:19Rich Roll?

  That prompted some interesting emails and feedback that I was on the receiving end of. Lots of people saying that they were happy that we were talking about this and maybe talk to this person or that person, or get somebody on the podcast who has experience with this, because it is kind of an important emerging conversation to have. And then boom, just the other day, there's a new article on, on Runners World.

• 1:50:46Rich Roll?

  In which Jesse Thomas shares his experience as a young college track and field athlete with with bulimia. And I know Jesse, he's been on the podcast, his wife has as well, who and his wife Lauren Flushman talked about eating disorders among young athletes. But this is the first time that Jesse has spoken publicly about this battle that he's had over the years. And I think that that just speaks to the fact that this is, you know, an important subject. And, you know, I think what's weird is that, you know, as stigmatized as this is amongst women, and particularly women athletes, it's oddly

• 1:51:28Rich Roll?

  almost more stigmatized for men, which is strange, because men don't, there's a weird like vulnerability to it, I guess, that the idea that a man would have a eating thing.

• 1:51:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:51:38Rich Roll?

  And I think it's really powerful and courageous that Jesse stepped up and, you know, shared his experience with all of this.

• 1:51:44Adam Skolnick?

  I agree. And there's something must be something to the fact that the pressure on men isn't the same as the pressure on women societally. But obviously, when in sport, it is.

• 1:51:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:54Adam Skolnick?

  You know, yeah, training to make weight, training to get faster, training to like look better, whatever it is.

• 1:52:00Rich Roll?

  So we'll link that article up in the show notes as well. It's called REDS, Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, REDS for Runners. And it opens with Jesse's story. All right, let's do a question.

• 1:52:12Adam Skolnick?

  All right, let's go. This is the international edition. So we're starting in London, starting in London.

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  Hi, Richard and Adam. This is Adrian Grove from London, England. And firstly, thank you for your amazing podcasts. I was introduced to them through the wonderful Chris Evans. And they really are a ray of sunshine during these challenging times. My question to you both is about real conversation and communication. As an actor for 25 years, I've noticed that during breaks in rehearsal or on set, whereas everyone would sit around, drink coffee, eat and talk, now there's silence as people sit by themselves checking the latest social media feed or how many likes they have.

• 1:52:56Speaker 02

  And on social events too, conversation is stilted as the ping of notifications draws people away and you're left wondering why am I here? So my question to you both is, how do I stop getting frustrated with my friends and colleagues? Um, how do I stop feeling like an out of touch dinosaur at 52? And how do we as a society promote real conversations?

• 1:53:24Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, uh, once again, um, absolutely, you can play this on air and um, I look forward to the next roll on and the next podcast.

• 1:53:37Rich Roll?

  That's a great question. Uh, thank you for that. Yeah. I think the best way to open up my response to that is to hearken it back to that Rumi quote, right? Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I'm wise, so I am changing myself. Yeah. Um, we can, we can, uh, be upset that the world is the way that it is, but it is the way that it is. And frustration over that will only result in your own personal suffering over the whole thing. Um, you're not going to get to change other people's behaviors. All you can do is change your own.

• 1:54:18Rich Roll?

  So to the extent that you're dismayed by the fact that everybody's face planted in their phones, the only thing that you can do is be the instigator of that change and how it relates to your own personal relationships, right? So be, be the one who goes up to your friend and says, hey, let's go for a walk or why don't we go on a hike or let's go on a bike ride or let me meet you for a socially distanced coffee or whatever it is, like just to make those adjustments yourself and take responsibility so that your own life is, you know, infused with the personal interactions that you're seeking and perhaps missing right now. Um, but to let go of how other people are behaving and being upset about that, right? Yeah. Cause that will just foment your frustration.

• 1:55:03Rich Roll?

  The second thing that I would say is that you want to be like Eric Clapton and not like the guy who is still hanging on to the, the heavy metal hairband that he was in in the eighties. Let me explain. What I mean by that is, to the extent that you're 52 and feeling like a dinosaur, embrace the fact that you're 52, right?

• 1:55:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28Rich Roll?

  When we see Eric Clapton show up later in his career, he's well appointed, wearing an Armani suit, looking very nice, still rocking it out, but comfortable with the fact that he's growing older.

• 1:55:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:41Rich Roll?

  And not trying to hang on to some, you know, 20 something version of who you are with a receding hairline, but still, you know, trying to look the part.

• 1:55:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:55:52Rich Roll?

  Right? There's something more dignified about embracing the truth of where you're at, rather than trying to pretend like you're, you know, going to be a TikTok star.

• 1:56:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:56:05Adam Skolnick?

  Just, you're saying, bring a newspaper to the set. And when everyone's on the phone, like ripple it, fold it up.

• 1:56:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:14Adam Skolnick?

  That, that actually would be cool.

• 1:56:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:56:16Adam Skolnick?

  That would be kind of funny, a little protest with the riffing of the paper.

• 1:56:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the point that I'm making is like, you don't, don't put the pressure on yourself that you have to keep pace with every new trend or iteration of, of technology that's happening. You want to be current so that you can maintain your relationships. And have some sense of what's going on, like you don't want to be completely checked out.

• 1:56:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Rich Roll?

  But at 52, you don't have to be on top of all that stuff, right?

• 1:56:44Adam Skolnick?

  No. And, but you're also not a dinosaur just because you're not addicted to your phone.

• 1:56:48Rich Roll?

  As a 54 year old, I take personal offense at that.

• 1:56:51Adam Skolnick?

  But I mean, I think, I think that like,

• 1:56:56Adam Skolnick?

  It's cool to have standards that you think people should interact in a, in a more healthy, kind of less tech connected way. I think that's okay.

• 1:57:06Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:57:06Adam Skolnick?

  You know, and, and to, to feel that way and to model that behavior is cool. Like in a way, it's like, it's cooler to model the behavior.

• 1:57:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:57:15Adam Skolnick?

  You don't actually have to engage and try to change anybody, but to model it, especially on a set or something like that, I think that could actually work very well for you.

• 1:57:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Rich Roll?

  Be the, be the one who sets the tone for everybody else. And to your point about eroding attention spans, like I, I don't know that that's really true. We like to throw that around everyone. Nobody has any attention span for anything anymore, but you know, this podcast is a counterpoint to that, to that idea. And perhaps the eroded attention span is more myth propagated by media outlets than truth itself.

• 1:57:52Adam Skolnick?

  I do think people look at their phones to fill space though. Like, you know what I mean? Like when nothing else is going on for like comfort, like a binky, like, like, you know?

• 1:58:01Rich Roll?

  But that doesn't mean that they're not capable of having a long conversation with somebody in an interesting way.

• 1:58:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right. So just because someone's looking at your, at their phone, doesn't mean you can't say, excuse me and start a conversation.

• 1:58:12Rich Roll?

  Right. They're waiting for you to model that behavior.

• 1:58:15Adam Skolnick?

  They're waiting for you, Adrian.

• 1:58:16Rich Roll?

  And all of your wise 52 years, Eric Clapton style.

• 1:58:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Thanks for that question, man.

• 1:58:22Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:58:24Adam Skolnick?

  I just IMDb'd you, by the way.

• 1:58:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:58:26Adam Skolnick?

  I did.

• 1:58:26Rich Roll?

  Is he in, is he in a bunch of movies?

• 1:58:28Adam Skolnick?

  He's in some stuff.

• 1:58:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:58:30Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Let's go to Australia.

• 1:58:36Speaker 03

  Hi, Adam and Rich. This is Daniel Cullings from the Mornington Financial Up, which is a little over an hour outside of Melbourne, Australia. First of all, shout out to the evil YouTube algorithm because without it, I never would have discovered your work, Rich. And it's been pretty life-changing and transformative for me. Anyway, my question is, my wife and I have been longtime vegetarians and we're currently slowly transitioning to a fully plant-based diet. And we have two young children, a daughter who's

• 1:59:15Speaker 03

  A little under three years old and a son who's about four months old. And we're grappling with how and whether to raise them as fully plant-based and particularly um struggling with the societal pressures and peer pressure that they're likely to to sort of face growing up based on the decision that, you know, we're sort of forcing it on them. And I know that I think your whole family roots is vegan and um yeah, just after some advice around your thoughts around that, how you deal with it, um what's the best path you think for us moving forward? But uh yeah, anyway, keep up the great work from the other side of the world, guys. Peace out.

• 1:59:57Rich Roll?

  Uh, thank you for your question, Daniel. I mean, I think the the the best course of action for you is what feels right for you. You know, it's not for me to tell you how you should parent your children. I think you need to follow your own uh intuition and instincts about that. Um, but I think that first of all, I'll say you can certainly raise children to be healthy on a plant-based diet. And the idea that you can't has been thoroughly debunked. Uh, so you should feel confident that if that feels right to you, that you are well-supported in that regard. And that doesn't mean that society has necessarily caught up with that idea. And I understand and appreciate the social pressures that

• 2:00:39Rich Roll?

  get packed into that and perhaps the judgment that you might have to weather. Um, but I would advise you against future tripping, like this idea, well, if I do this, then in the future, at some point, they will be judged by their classmates or their peers. Like, that's not the reality that you're living in right now. What you're doing right now is just trying to feed them the healthiest food so that they can be healthy. Um, the other notion that I'd like to challenge you on is this idea that you're you're forcing it on them. I mean, you're feeding your children food. Are you forcing an ideology on them? Are is that any different from you're forcing them to live in the house that they live

• 2:01:21Rich Roll?

  in or to, you know, have any other ideas that you feel strongly about? And that's part of what parenting is. You know, I don't think the word forcing is the right word. It's more like this is the environment in which we've decided to raise our children.

• 2:01:37Adam Skolnick?

  Did you, uh, growing, raising the kids, did you have moments where, uh, you know, they strayed or they were out of the house and had something or like that?

• 2:01:46Rich Roll?

  All the time.

• 2:01:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that.

• 2:01:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, our, our approach with our kids is we raise them plant-based, but, you know, when they became old enough where they could make decisions for themselves, we never policed those decisions. Like, our, our idea was, we're gonna have super healthy food in the house, we're gonna cook really delicious meals for the kids. And when they go over to their friend's house, we're not, we, I'm not gonna tell them, "You can't eat this or that." We just try to educate them as best as we possibly can about what's in their best interest. And then the choices they make are up to them.

• 2:02:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  And if they go to a friend's house and eat cake or pizza or whatever, um, and come back and they, and we say, "What did you eat?" And they tell us, I'm not gonna judge them either and make them feel bad about that.

• 2:02:37Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 2:02:37Rich Roll?

  But we'll have a conversation like, "Oh, how'd you feel after you ate that? Like, do you feel, you know, "Oh, a little bit of a stomach ache," or, "Oh, I liked it," or whatever. Um, I think the, the kind of forcing aspect of this comes into play when you make them feel bad about themselves because they've made a certain choice as a young person, right? So, we don't do that. Um, and I think that has worked out pretty well for us, but each one of our kids has had their own journey with all of this. And they've gotta make their own decisions for themselves. So, your job as a parent is to provide the guideposts to that and educate them to the best of your ability, but also not get caught up in the small things.

• 2:03:19Rich Roll?

  It's not about whether they ate, you know, some candy or whatever it was at their friend's house. It's about what their habits look like 10, 15, 20 years down the line. Like, do they have a healthy relationship with food? Do they understand the foods that nourish them versus the foods that... Lead them towards chronic illness. Those are the important factors and I feel like that's what your responsibility is as a parent.

• 2:03:40Adam Skolnick?

  So no future tripping, no guilt tripping and but take a broad view and a long-term view.

• 2:03:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there's a little fear in, you know, that I'm inferring in this question from maybe how their their sort of friends and

• 2:03:54Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you know, it's outside Melbourne, so it's like an hour outside of city. So maybe in and Australia, it's not as there's plenty of plant-based food in Australia, obviously, but but it's not necessarily here in like Southern California to the same level of acceptance. So maybe some of that's there. But like, who's the great, who's the runner in Louisiana? Joshua Delgiani. He's like, you know, he lives in the country in Louisiana or whatever. And he's like, you know, any grocery store in the world, you can do it. So he knows.

• 2:04:26Rich Roll?

  Well, I think also when you you know, as a new parent, when you have children that are months old or, you know, just a couple of years old, like it's a very fragile situation. And you're so tuned in to like wanting to make the right decision for them and you feel that responsibility. Right. And you, the last thing you want to do is feed them food that's going to harm them or deprive them of food that's going to harm them. So I I'm empathetic to, you know, what Daniel is, you know, considering right now is like, oh, if I don't feed them animals, everyone's telling me I should. These other people are saying it's healthy, but do I really know? Like, do I, you don't want to make a mistake, right? So I get that. I can promise you that you can raise children healthy on a plant-based diet.

• 2:05:09Rich Roll?

  There's lots of resources out there that I'm, if you email me directly, I'm happy to share with you. But I think you should feel confident in that regard. But if you're questioning that, I think that's normal as well. And you've really got to just trust your gut.

• 2:05:24Adam Skolnick?

  Literally.

• 2:05:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:05:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Thanks, Daniel. All right. Let's go to Germany.

• 2:05:31Speaker 04

  Hello, Rich. Hello, Adam. This is Carlos Franco. I am 42 old Colombian, but I'm living in Germany for almost 16 years now. Rich, I want to thank you. You have been such an inspiration ever since I read Timing Ultra in 2017. I've been kind of stalking you since then. So thank you very much for putting amazing content out there.

• 2:05:59Speaker 04

  My question is for you guys, Rich and Adam. How do you guys keep being excellent fathers and husbands, spend quality time with your family and still thrive on your passion and career? Sometimes I feel that I can't balance both things, which are crucial for me as a father of three. So guys, appreciate for any thoughts on that. Take care. Bye.

• 2:06:27Rich Roll?

  It's a pretty common dilemma. Yeah. I think Carlos, first of all, thank you for your question. This is something that, that a lot of people can relate to. Yes. You know, I have a lot of strong opinions about this idea of balance and this rubric that we're supposed to adhere to where on a daily basis, everything is, is perfectly ordered, where we're apportioning our attention and our energy in equal parts to everything that is important to us. Right. And I think when we measure ourselves against that standard, we're always going to feel that we're falling short and we're not going to be able to live up to that expectation.

• 2:07:07Rich Roll?

  And as somebody who is prone to the extremes and used to browbeat myself for being unable to come anywhere near that type of approximation, I used to feel bad about it. I had like shame and guilt around that and embarrassment, like, why can't I just be normal? And I, at some point, reached a breaking point with all of this and just let it all go and realized that I need to be who I am. And that is somebody who gravitates towards periods of extreme focus on singular pursuits, whether that's training for a race or competing in a race or writing a book or, you know, building this podcast, whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

• 2:07:51Rich Roll?

  I operate best when I can kind of extract myself out of a daily grind and drop my, you know, plop myself into some other world that can literally, you know, monopolize my focus for a set period of time. And I think by giving myself permission to do that, ultimately, in the long run, it makes me a better father, a better partner, a better... Professional, a better human being because I'm just designed for that, right? And if I deprive myself of those types of experiences, then I feel like I'm somebody who's got one foot in the door and one foot out the door all the time and I'm never

• 2:08:34Rich Roll?

  fully present with what I'm doing. This is something that came up with Laird Hamilton when I had him on the podcast the other day and that episode's going up soon. But, you know, he needs to go on his thing, you know, go to these places and surf these waves and, and by being in a partnership where Gabby, you know, not only permits him to do that, but encourages that, like that's their deal, he's able to be the father that he, that he's capable of being, right? Like it makes him a better father and I, I believe that and I think that that's important. So when I think about balance, I don't think about it in the micro, I think about it in the macro, right?

• 2:09:18Rich Roll?

  This pendulum that swings between, you know, extremes that vary wherein a daily kind of drop in, it'll look like things are very much out of balance, but in the macro, you realize that all of these things ultimately apportion out the way that they're, that they're meant to. So I don't know the specifics of Carlos's life, but you know, it sounds like this might be somewhat relatable to him and it's been a great comfort to me to just accept myself for who I am and to make sure that, you know, my needs are met in the way that, you know, I'm designed. Yeah. And when I do that, you know, luckily I'm in a partnership with Julie where she understands that and that's, I do the same for her.

• 2:09:59Rich Roll?

  Like we, you know, we have, you know, independence within our marriage and our relationship where we give each other wide berth to have those explorations and then we can come together. And be better parents as a result and be, you know, more present with the other aspects of our life that are, of course, of critical importance.

• 2:10:20Adam Skolnick?

  But when you're in town and you're around, does that translate into like, you know, like the Barack Obama book is out now and he's been talking about how like the one thing was having dinner every night at 6:30. I mean, do you have like kind of those stop gaps in place to make sure that you're in, that you have time to engage? Cause you know, it could be.

• 2:10:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, you have to create certain boundaries, back to healthy boundaries, right? Boundaries around how you spend your time so that you're mindful of making sure that you don't let, you know, unnecessary trivialities trickle into what should be, you know, carved out as, as, you know, quality time with your kids, for example, or eating dinner. Like, we're all quarantined at home. We eat dinner together. We're like sick of each other.

• 2:11:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right. That's different.

• 2:11:03Rich Roll?

  So, you know, it's a little bit different right now, but I'm feeling like I need to, I need to like go. Not because I don't love my family and my kids, but like I'm feeling that itch. Like I need to, I need to engage in an adventure just to be me. You know what I mean?

• 2:11:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:19Rich Roll?

  And Julie gets that. She's like, plan something, you know, figure it out. Whatever, you know, she's not like, you can't leave, you know, you gotta stay here and be here. It's not about that.

• 2:11:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I'm in a little different place and my family right now. I'm still trying to figure that out. I don't think I'm allowed to leave just yet.

• 2:11:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no. And you shouldn't. So this is where you're all in on like raising, you know, an infant, right? And you gotta be 110% present for that, which means other aspects of your life that would or should require some attention and focus aren't getting the oxygen that perhaps they deserve right now. And it's about making peace with that. Like right now, this is, I'm in this situation with the baby. I'm not going to be able to do all the work things that ordinarily I would be doing. So by definition, this is out of balance, but I think it's in perfect balance because that pendulum will swing back when it's appropriate. And it's about releasing whatever anxiety or self judgment that you have around that.

• 2:12:19Adam Skolnick?

  And to be quite honest, you know, like we're already, I'm already back at work and I'm able to do the work that I need. You know, the only thing different is I wouldn't go out in the field and do like a big mega reporting trip right now, but like that's not even happening.

• 2:12:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12:32Adam Skolnick?

  So it's kind of, I'm, I'm.

• 2:12:34Rich Roll?

  Nobody's doing that right now.

• 2:12:36Adam Skolnick?

  Some people are. Some people are.

• 2:12:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But, you know, I'm here with you. But that will come. I'm here with you. You get to do this instead, right? Sorry about that. No, I like it.

• 2:12:48Rich Roll?

  All right, let's wrap it up. I think we're done for today. We're done, man. Yeah. We keep thinking that this is gonna come in at like an hour. When you sent me your note. The persistence of that delusion. Well, we cut the outline in half. We cut out a lot of stuff. I know, but that was a lot. Yeah. All right, well, I feel good. Feels good, man. Feels good, man. Feels good, man. Yeah. All right. I'm gonna go pee with my pants down. All right. You could follow. Now, maybe you don't want to follow Adam on social media. At Adam Skolnick, I'm at Rich Roll. Leave us a message, a voicemail if you want your question answered or considered. 424-235-4626. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

• 2:13:31Rich Roll?

  Check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com for links to everything we talked about today. What else? That's it. Let's thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis for videoing today's show and editing it. Jessica Miranda for graphics. No portraits. We got no pictures from you. I know, and I like put on a nice shirt and everything. That's all right. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Tyler Trapper and Hari. All right. Appreciate you, man. Thank you for doing this with me. Feels good, man. Feels good, man. Appreciate being here. See you back here shortly. Peace. Peace. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.