Big Wave Legend Garrett McNamara On Chasing 100ft+ Waves

Meet legendary big wave king Garrett McNamara. Garrett is an internationally recognized big wave surfer who commanded global attention by surfing one of the world’s largest waves in Nazaré, Portugal, and popularizing Nazaré’s now famous surf break. He has also accomplished a myriad of other absolutely insane surfing feats like surfing waves generated by a 300ft glacier in Alaska, giant barrels breaking on shallow, jagged reefs, and on massive, open ocean hurricane swells. We dive into Garrett’s background—how he began surfing, his 100-foot wave quest, and the docu-series that captured it all. As an added bonus, Garrett’s wife Nicole—absolutely his partner in all things—joins the conversation at the end to enlighten us on the manifestation spiritual practice she and Garrett utilize to guide their decision-making and execute their goals. Garrett is he’s quite a character, truly one of a kind. My exchange with him and Nicole is one I won’t soon forget. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/richroll Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Whoop: WHOOP.com LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL Athletic Greens: https://www.athleticgreens.com/richroll Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:19Rich Roll?

  Imagine yourself standing before a 100-foot wave of ocean water. That's like a skyscraper. For most, I'm guessing, running to safety would be the first instinct that would kick in, but for today's guest, the immediate thought is singular. Grab your board and let's go surfing.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Fear is something that we choose, something we manufacture in our mind. If we fully embrace the moment, fear does not exist.

• 1:48Rich Roll?

  His name is Garrett McNamara, and he is an internationally-recognized big wave surfer, one of the greatest to ever do it, who commanded global attention by surfing one of the world's largest waves. I just wanted to surf. The goal is to keep surfing. And has accomplished a myriad of other just absolutely insane surfing feats. It's like surfing waves generated by a 300-foot glacier in Alaska, surfing giant barrels breaking on shallow jagged reefs, and on massive open ocean hurricane swells. Garrett and his team are also the subjects of the hit HBO docu-series you might have seen called "The 100-Foot Wave", which thrillingly chronicles their pursuit of the largest waves in the world.

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  There's nothing that we can't do if we put our mind to it. Season one is just a must-watch Emmy Award-winning series. It's a real-life, edge-of-your-seat filmmaking experience. And season two, which is scheduled to debut very soon, is sure to continue that tradition. In today's conversation, we discuss Garrett's background, how he began surfing. We talk about the 100-foot wave quest and the docu-series that captured it all. And as an added bonus, Garrett's wife, Nicole, absolutely his partner in all things, joins the conversation at the end to enlighten us on the manifestation spiritual practice she and Garrett utilize

• 3:14Rich Roll?

  to guide their decision-making and execute on their audacious goals. It's all coming right up, but first.

• 3:28Rich Roll?

  Okay, Garrett, Nicole, gotta say, I really love this one. There's just something beautifully earnest and childlike about Garrett that I find very appealing. He has this sense of awe and wonder and joy that he naturally exudes. He's a character, for sure. And Nicole is just an absolute delight. So I'm excited for you guys to hear this one. One final note, they did bring their newborn with them to the studio. And from time to time, you're gonna hear a cry or two in the background. Do not fret, all is well. And with that, I give you the one, the only Garrett McNamara and Nicole.

• 4:08Rich Roll?

  Awesome, man. Super nice to meet you. I'm really glad we could make this happen. I kind of feel like I know you, though, because I've been consuming so much of your content, your adventures, your experiences, of course, the docu-series, which is unbelievable. And I presume that you're in Los Angeles because of the Emmys. Is that the main reason?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  That was the main reason, yeah.

• 4:28Rich Roll?

  You guys took the W, too.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I couldn't believe it. It's more than we expected from this whole mission, this whole journey.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  That's gotta be pretty surreal. I mean, the arc of everything that you've endured over many years to arrive at this place where you're on the receiving end of so much recognition. You know, it's gotta be, at times, a little bit destabilizing or sort of, you know, strange.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, I feel like, pinch me something, like, is this really happening? But then when we're in Portugal and Nazaré, and you're walking up the cliff, and there's thousands of people, and they're all, "Thank you," and then you start crying with all these tears of joy and just gratitude.

• 5:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's really at the heart of what almost interests me the most about your story. You know, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Alex Honnold after he had Free Solo to El Cap, but like a year before the movie came out. And through that conversation, I felt like I understood what he had accomplished. Similarly, with yourself, like, I'd seen all the video clips, and I kind of thought I had a sense of what you were up to out there in Portugal. But it wasn't until I saw Free Solo and I watched the docu-series that I had a heavy dose of like, "Oh, you actually didn't really understand

• 5:58Rich Roll?

  at all." Like, there's so much more that went into this adventure than meets the eye. And it's only through, like, telling the story in real time with all this archival footage that you guys have that you can truly appreciate what has been accomplished here. And a big piece at the center of it is this community that you built, that you, you know, took years to construct prior to even, you know, dropping in on the huge wave that kind of made headlines around the world.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, for us, it was 100% the team. That we could not have done anything that we did without this amazing team. And in the beginning, we were all marching to the same beat with the same goals and desires. And it just was so effortless and so it just every day was just so fun and enjoyable. And everybody was just happy all day, every day.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  I mean, there was definitely some challenges here and there.

• 6:56Rich Roll?

  There was a lot. I mean, what I took from it was that you really invested. Like you're like, the only way this is ever going to work is if I build a team and a network and generate community and consensus around this massive goal that I have. And that's by, you know, basically working with everyone in the community there to, you know, create a situation for success. Um, you know, without understanding that and watching the documentary, like, I would have thought, oh, you just drop, you arrive there, you brought your towing guy, you got the wave runner and you just shoot out and you just check it out, you know, it wasn't that at all.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And this was a different animal due to the fact that it was just a big beach break, a big closeout beach break that was deemed impossible. Like a number of people went there before we went there and had everything, were ready, and said, it's impossible, you can't get back out. You might be able to ride a wave, that jet ski comes in, it won't be able to go back out.

• 7:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  And it was just dumb luck or I don't know.

• 8:03Rich Roll?

  I don't think it was dumb luck at all. Like I think it was an engineering problem that you took a lot of time to try to solve and figure it out, like a workaround to make it work. But maybe we should, I want to get into your backstory because it's so, you know, insane, but let's talk about Nazaré right now. Like for somebody who hasn't seen the docu-series and maybe only knows you as a guy who surfs big waves, like let's start at, you know, the beginning when you, you received this email and this invitation to go to Portugal.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  It came in like 2005 or '07, somewhere around there. And he just, he emailed me saying,

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  He's like a City Commerce guy, right?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  He was a bodyboarder and he worked for the, in the mayor's office. And a branch of that called Nazaré Qualifica. And he was in sports programs. But as a child, he had been on that lighthouse dreaming somebody surfing the big waves. And then that dream just, until he was in a position to hunt, to find somebody. He actually sent an email to Laird Hamilton first. Didn't get a reply. Then he sent one to Carlos Berle. Didn't get a reply. I was third, I was the third choice.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  Third on the list.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  And he said, I replied like that. He said, bam, his reply.

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  But it was a number of years after that email before you took the first trip out there to scout it out.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Well, my wife doesn't like to take credit for this, but I give her all the credit. Because that email was sitting there in my inbox from a while back when we met. And she was going through all my emails, getting me organized. And then she came across that email and she's like, what this? And I'm like, oh, some, some guys wanted me to go to Portugal and see if their wave's any good and any big. The email said, can you come and test our wave and see if it's good and see if it's big? And if it's good and big, can you help promote our town?

• 9:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  And,

• 10:00Rich Roll?

  Little tiny fishing village.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  One month after she saw the email.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  You were there.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  So other surfers had, it wasn't, it wasn't like a total secret that there was a big wave there. It's just nobody had ever had the audacity to try it? Or how come, like, it took so long for people to notice what was happening there?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  It was deemed impossible. And Jose Gregorio, who's Quicksilver Portugal, awesome, good surfer, decent pilot. He tried. The guy sent me pictures of all their jet skis with just blowing apart, yard sale. And so they never went back. And then when I got there, toe surfing was now frowned upon. You know, there was the media and a group of surfers. And I don't know if they actually really planned it, but really felt like it to just kill toe surfing. And so toe surfing was dead. It was frowned upon unless maybe you're in Australia at a slab or chopo when it gets too big and you can't paddle. But even then, it was like, and so-

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  This is like 2008, 2009, and you get there in 2010.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  And it was, to be very honest, there would still be nobody there today if we didn't actually give it a try.

• 11:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Because nobody was gonna try it and toe surfing wasn't cool. Once Kai Lanny got into the, started promoting, posting his toe surfing, then it was cool again. Thank you, Kai.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean Laird had done-

• 11:30Speaker 01

  I mean Laird made it cool for the, yeah.

• 11:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Laird the man.

• 11:33Rich Roll?

  We'll get into that inflection point of you, you know, watching him do that for the very first time. But you on a flyer, you know, you and Nicole head out to Nazaré. And that first season out there was really mostly just recon, like trying to understand what was happening, watching the waves, meeting with people in the government and, you know, trying to build a team and make sense of how you could do this, you know, quote unquote safely or as safely as possible.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we call that the exploration year where we were just exploring and figuring out all the challenges that we might face, figure out solutions. And we were so like, it was, it never received that type of welcome anywhere in the world where the Portuguese Navy opens their doors, opens all the charts and, and I mean, everybody and anybody was at our, you know, ready to help with whatever they, whatever information they had. We didn't have a lot of funding. I mean, there was a little restaurant, Celeste Restaurant, she gave us meals for $7 was her contribution.

• 12:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Luis Cervado was a fish company. His, he's the biggest fish company in Nazaré. They gave $10,000, but other than that, we had nothing. And Lino from Nazare Water Fund, he came in personally and just asked what we needed and whatever we needed, he made it happen.

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that requires a healthy dose of humility. Like you're this Hawaiian surfer guy, you have this understanding like, look, I'm not Portuguese. I can't just come in here and pretend like I know what's going on. I have to make sure that I have the support of the community before I even attempt to do something that's going to put this town in the spotlight.

• 13:29Rich Roll?

  Was that part of the thinking or was it just, this is your natural tendency?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Kind of natural tendency I assemble. We have, I don't like to call it, my families around the world. Like we've assembled in Tahiti, in Chile, in Peru. All over the world, we have our little family set up during my toe surfing career. So wherever I wanted to, wherever a big swell was going, we would have something already in place. So we call, we're coming and boom, everything's ready.

• 13:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  But it was nothing like what happened in Portugal. You got the government, you got the town. Oh, actually the town at first did not want to know us. They were like, they're very passionate, you know, very loving. And I was the guy that was going to die tomorrow. So they didn't want to get to know me because they didn't want to be sad when I die.

• 14:15Rich Roll?

  Right, they had this long history of all these fishermen dying, right? As a result of this wave. And what's interesting is what makes that wave so big? So talk a little bit about like why that wave is so different and special.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  It's crazy because 10 miles down the road at Panish, it'll be six feet. And in Nazare, it's 60 feet. It's, there's this underwater canyon that's 25 miles long. Three, two times, two or three times the size of the Grand Canyon. The depth, two times the size of the Grand Canyon. And it kind of bottlenecks. So it starts out really wide and then it gets really narrow right before the... Right before the last rock in the lighthouse.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  Right, it runs perpendicular to the shore.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  It actually passes the lighthouse. And runs all the way to the beat there, so the energy keeps moving with all of its full raw power without getting disrupted by a reef or a sandbank or a shelf in that canyon. But on the right side is this shelf, which is, um, it gets like 60 feet deep at the deepest. And over here you got a thousand feet deep where the wave breaks. And then, um, where the wave breaks on the shelf is like 30 to 40 feet. The biggest swells we've ever had might be breaking into 60 feet deep. Um, but these, these swells are going slower, or these waves are going slower as they hit

• 15:41Speaker 01

  the shelf, and the same exact waves goes faster down the canyon. And then they, they miss each other when it gets to the, where they're gonna break, but then they it turns sideways. Creates a wedge.

• 15:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  A crazy wedge.

• 15:58Rich Roll?

  And there's this, when you, when you watch video, kind of zoomed out a little bit, it just looks like a massive washing machine, like, we're sort of used to, when we think of big waves, we think of these, you know, beautiful, clean sets on the North Shore of Oahu where they're perfect curls and they're coming in and it's all kind of very, you know, pristine and tropical. And this just looks like, you know, the gods are angry, like, it's just crashing, you know, like, how do you even make sense of like, where to be and where the wave is gonna break, and it looks like there's another wave coming from the side, like, making sense of all of that and trying to understand, like, is this even possible to ride? Seems like a hefty equation to solve.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I think that's what's most, uh, what we love the most about it. You, it's never the same twice, and it's, there's always a challenge, there's always, number one, picking the wave. Like, sometimes you have the biggest swell you ever saw coming at you, and you start driving for it, and that cross wave cancels it, and it doesn't even, it just kind of go wah, and there's nothing. And other times it'll be a medium size, and when it hits, the wedge is perfect, bigger than, like, 10, 20 feet bigger than you expected. And um yeah, it's it's never the same ways twice. It's always challenging. It's it. The the biggest challenge of all is right in front of the cliffs or first peak left breaks.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  If you fall right there, there is the water is so foamy and so aerated. And the hold downs are so brutal and right in there is like a river riptide just coming out full force. So you have this current pulling out and the wave coming in. And if you fall there, it's almost impossible to come up. When you finally do, the next wave is usually right there. There's no time to get you. And if the ski can get in there, if you grab the guy and you try to go in the aerated water, you don't move. So it's like somewhere you never want to fall. We've had a few people fall there and and they've had the worst experience or the most challenging experience they've ever had in the water.

• 17:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what was what was interesting was figuring out like there's the I want to talk about the mechanics of towing into these waves. But what the epiphany was really realizing that you needed an additional wave runner for rescuing the person in case they they wipe out, right? Because when they're in that foamy no man's land, you can't even see where they are. And the guy who dropped you off, the towing guy can't get there, right? Like it's impossible. So the only way to make it semi safe is to have two wave runners out there, one specifically for rescue.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and one of the biggest keys to success is your eye in the sky, your spot on the cliff, who is communicating with both drivers and even the surfer if you have a year. Yeah, Nicole. Well, we started out to have her for safety. But then we're saying, which wave? And she's like, good waves.

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  Right. So it is this huge team effort. Um, I underappreciated the skill level required for the tow in wave runner pilot. Like, that's a whole thing. And, you know, the docu-series does an amazing job of demonstrating, like, how trained up these people have to be and how in sync, like, there has to be this, you know, connective tissue, almost a, you know, a synergy and unspoken connection between you and and uh your. Tow in pilot in order for that to work, right? And then you've got Nicole on the cliff and these other people and you guys all have walkie talkies and you're communicating the whole time. You're wearing specialized wet suits that have inflation in them.

• 19:33Rich Roll?

  So you're not going to get caught in the washing machine underwater for too long. Like so, so many precautions and so many team members in order to make this thing operate.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the inflation is the best invention in big wave surfing. What's even better is the flotation that we put into our suits. So as long as we have a little flotation in a suit, whether you pull or if it malfunctions or if it breaks, you're still going to pop up sooner or later somewhere and we'll find you. Uh, but with the inflation, it's just like,

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  You're coming up.

• 20:10Rich Roll?

  You look like a Michelin Man or like a Marvel character in those things.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Big time, big time. And, um, yeah, the drivers, what you were asking earlier, I mean, we have the, the initial tow who usually is the guy who first responder, but then everything's running perfect. You have one guy on the, on the left and one guy on the right watching the person surf. So the driver usually gets you if he, but he can't see usually because he, it's hard to get to the shoulder really fast to be able to look down. So you have the guy on the left and the guy on the right actually eyeballing and you have the eye in the sky. So if one of them misses, then the next one comes. If they were going to go left, but all of a sudden last minute went right, the guy on the right got. So yeah, there's, those are the definitely the, our lifeline. Those, those safety drivers.

• 20:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, it's cool. I mean, you're Irish by descent, right?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:04Rich Roll?

  And you got like, uh, you got, um, initially you have Al who's a Irishman, right?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Legend.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  And then you got Cotty who's an Englishman. Like none of these guys are Polynesian or Portuguese or anything like that. Like all Northern European guys, like you're like an unlikely, you know, set aside the age piece, which we're going to get into. Like you're an unlikely candidate for this whole world to begin with.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  An unlikely success story, starting from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a hundred miles from the ocean.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the team, you know, if I could do it all over, I wouldn't change anything. But if I was gonna do it the way that would be set up for success, I would have brought Kele Imaala, my Hawaiian driver, because he doesn't miss ever. And he's, I don't even have to say anything.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  He comes in in like your third or fourth year there, right?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  He's, I know he's in season two. I'm not sure if he made season one at all. Was he in season one?

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  I think he's in season one. Yeah, yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, that's good.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Because Cotty was back home for a spell, right? Because he lost his sponsor.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for 2012. He put me on that wave. Oh, and he missed me, which he never does. It was like crazy, the Hawaiian miss. So he flew off the ski, yeah.

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  But I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, Cotty is the most selfless, my favorite person in the world. And then Al Many is just a gentle giant. And the whole team, we were just... And it was easy, you know, because they had a lot of, for lack of a word, they had a lot of respect. They're like, you know, kids, like, what are you... So they actually did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, so I could really...

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  Train them up.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and really know that my desires were gonna be met every time as long as they were learned and you're training them up, right?

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  They were gonna listen and train up how I'd like them to be.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  And you're very specific in like what you want and what you need. Like, what is the most important, you know, sort of skill set or capacity of the tow and pilot? Like, what are you looking for? Like, what do they need to have and be?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  They have to be very in tune with the ocean, very confident and very comfortable. And, you know, I've had some drivers that I worked with for years and they will never get it. They're basically, they don't, they're not in tune with the ocean or I don't know what it is, but they'll never get it. And other guys will get it like right out of the gate. Cotty was already good and Al was already good. The first day when we towed, I caught this long wave. And I'm not sure exactly how I ended up on the inside, but it was in his, he picks me up

• 23:52Speaker 01

  and we're flying in and it's like the first time that we're gonna try and come back out. And... Right there, I was like, it's on. You're good. We're ready.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  And when you're out there, and I want to work up to that.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You're on the back of that sled and you don't know where you're going, but you can feel it. And he was flying in and then the biggest turn, and then I was like, yeah.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  That reminds me of how Anderson Cooper describes you. Garrett, when he's talking about these waves, he's like, imagine you're, it's like you're, you're cruising down the side of a skyscraper, but the skyscraper is collapsing on top of you. He's like, I've never met anyone like Garrett. Like it's so animated.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  He is the best. Yeah, he is the best.

• 24:40Rich Roll?

  So let's, let's work our way up to that 70 foot, eight footer. Like that was, that was in the second year. So the first year you're out there, you spend the whole winter and it's really just getting everything set. And you go back the second year and was there a sense of possibility like, okay, now we're going to execute. We have all these pieces in place. I have the support I need. I've got the guys who have my back. They know what they're doing. Like everything is firing on all cylinders and we're good to go.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, I was super confident. I, I visualized that we manifested, we knew what was happening. My wife Nicole, she's like, when she wants to manifest something, it happens the next day.

• 25:19Rich Roll?

  We're gonna, we're gonna get into the manifesting piece.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And funny thing is my whole life I had been manifesting, but I didn't really know until I watched The Secret. Like, I don't know, maybe five years after it came out or something. And I was like, oh, that's what I've been doing this whole time. It's this.

• 25:38Rich Roll?

  You're a, you're a generator manifester, right? In the human design.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  I'm actually a.

• 25:46Rich Roll?

  Generator?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Generator, straight up generator.

• 25:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. A generator. Yeah. Of course you are, right?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:53Rich Roll?

  So, uh, even though you had spent that entire first winter there, it wasn't like, like, was anybody like in the surf world? Like, oh, Garrett's out there. Was that, that was sort of dismissed. Like, oh, who knows what he's doing out there?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Actually, Kelly and I were communicating before I went there. Yeah. And he.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  He would go there to hide from everybody. He panishes, you know, an hour, forty-five minutes away where the contest is. And he would go to Nazaret, to Lighthouse and just hide. And he surfed a couple of little breaks and had fun and but really just enjoyed the power and just sat there in awe. And um, I, we talked about a month before I was going. And then uh,

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  Before you were going the first time?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then two weeks before I went, he was on the lighthouse and he's like, Garrett, it's big, it's gnarly. If one mistake, you might not be going home. Please be really careful out here.

• 26:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, those are wise words. You know, from a guy who knows.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:54Rich Roll?

  But you had other plans. So you go out the second year and uh, this is where everything kind of lines up, right? And I gather that like, the swells are pretty frequent, right? You're not waiting, you're not having to wait around too long before these big waves start rolling in. Like it's pretty on the regular.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yes, most frequent big wave spot in the world.

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Just the, the wind has to align. But nowadays, the guys are going out no matter what it's like, even if it's all windy and choppy, they're out there just charging.

• 27:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Rich Roll?

  How long into that second season before you catch this seventy-eight footer?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  It was November eleventh, what, or November first. Um, Nicole, do you happen to remember when we actually were, I think we, it was pretty quick, wasn't it?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  From the day we landed till the world record wave? Yeah, it was quick because we probably

• 27:57Speaker 01

  It was the first, well, we called Audi and, uh, Cotty and Al over and it was on, right?

• 28:01Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Right. So you drop in on this huge wave. It gets documented. You already have like this documentary crew with you though. Like how, was, was the docu-series already locked in and in place? Or was this just kind of amateur footage that got cobbled together later once the documentary?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  City Hall hired a still photographer to document what we're doing.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  He actually had a couple Go, or I had GoPros. I had GoPros. He had a camera that was HDV, so you could actually film. Second I landed, we became friends and I said, "Please do not turn the video camera off."

• 28:43Rich Roll?

  Right, so you just have all this footage.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he did good.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  He did really good.

• 28:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's incredible how much archival footage there is from those first two years. When nobody was expecting anything to happen.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  You, you ride this 78 footer. It's a story that quickly goes around the world. Essentially, the, the biggest wave ever surfed in the history of surfing. My first question is, and I kind of already know the answer, but I think it would be instructive for, for everybody listening or watching, is how do you determine the size of a wave? And I loved CJ's description in, in the docu-series about the kind of less than scientific, sciency approach to calculating all of this.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  It, it's literally impossible to actual get the height of a wave just because of the, I mean, if you got the Google Earth things now and you got these watches and you got everything measuring everything and it's still pretty much impossible because you gotta be able to come out to the flat. And everybody's measuring about 20, 30 feet, feet up from the flat. And then you got the contour. Are you actually measuring the distance of that contour or are you measuring a straight line straight up? It's, it's super controversial, super, um, the finding the top is very easy. But then in the rules, it's where the surfer is.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  So say it's 80 feet here, but the surfer's over here and it's 60 feet. And then... It changes a lot.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  It was where the surfer is on the wave, under his feet there, instead of the other 30 feet or 40 feet.

• 30:29Rich Roll?

  Because the surfer's not necessarily at the bottom of the wave.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Never. We're never actually at the bottom.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  And the wave could be getting larger as the ride goes on.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:38Rich Roll?

  Right? And then you have to take that, so you estimate where the bottom is, you know where it's cresting at the top, and then you have to measure the size of the surfer. And the surfer's generally in some kind of crouched position. They're not standing straight up, so you can't say 6 feet or whatever. So you have to estimate that, and then you just do multiples of that to calculate it. Like, it's, there's no way that you can get an accurate reading on this, and this is something that is completely ephemeral. Like, it exists for a moment, and then it's gone, and there's no way of going back in time to figure it out.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  And people's careers are based around it. And they said that they measured my shin bone to get the size of the 78-foot wave, and nobody measured my shin bone.

• 31:24Rich Roll?

  That you remember, right? And then there's the political aspect of it, right?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  Who's making these decisions, and what are their motivations?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Usually it's sponsors in control, but once in a while, there's no rhyme or reason. You're just like, but maybe it's continent, they want to sell more in that country, or do more with surf in that country. And then other times, I think it's right on the money. The person who wins is supposed to win, but mostly it's politics. Most is politics.

• 31:52Rich Roll?

  The WSL manages that now, right?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:55Rich Roll?

  So they're independent on some level, yes.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's good.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  They've grown women's surfing beyond, I love watching women's surfing now. The level of the surfing. And at first, I was like, what are they, they're just trying to grow, but they, hats off, they crushed it out of the park. And with this, the tour, they're doing great. With the big waves, it's always a battle with the surfers and their organization. And hopefully someday, everybody will see eye to eye, and it'll go where it should be today. For toe surfing, should be like the NASCAR of surf. I mean, it could be huge. You get these teams organized, you get these garages, you get... Yeah, it could be huge and people could really be, um, they could be retiring.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  But right now, one or two actually get paid and the rest are just

• 32:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  hanging on by a thread, working, working a day job and so they can surf.

• 32:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I, I, you know, I feel like that's changing though. You know, people like yourself and Laird and, you know, figuring out ways of making people interested in this art form and sport is really, you know, creating a, a larger and larger audience for this. I mean, every, everybody wants to see somebody surf a gigantic wave, right? As you know, right? So you, you surf this 78-foot wave and the video and the photograph like quickly goes all around the world and suddenly you being this, you know, relatively obscure, later in life surfer is kind of foisted into the spotlight and there's a lot of, you know, commentary around the validity of this whole thing, right?

• 33:36Rich Roll?

  Uh, my sense was that the traditional surfing community was somewhat dismissive, like, ah, it's a mushy wave, like, that wave doesn't really count, like, who knows what's going out in Nazaré, like, where, you know, there was, there was a level of dismissiveness initially.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. You know, the whole, mainly the surfing world, the rest of the world loved it.

• 33:56Rich Roll?

  Sure, well, we know, what do we know? Well, you know, CNN, it pops up on CNN and you see this tiny speck you, like, going down this insane wave that looks like, you know, a sea monster, right? And you're like, wow, that's unbelievable, but...

• 34:09Speaker 01

  The main reason it was dismissed, number one, they didn't know or understand, um, never been there. Number two, it, uh, toe surfing was dead, as I shared earlier, so nobody wanted to know anything about toe surfing in the surfing world.

• 34:26Rich Roll?

  Is that true though? Cause Mavericks was a thing by now and, you know,

• 34:30Speaker 01

  And they closed the jets, they closed, no more jet skis.

• 34:33Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, now, uh, they turned it into a sanctuary, it still is today. I mean, a couple guys go out when it's really big and our safety guys are allowed, but, um, yeah, they've closed toe surfing there. Um, but it was challenging, yeah, to, you know, I, I was calling all my friends, I was emailing everybody, I'm like, come on over to this wave and, and then all of a sudden all this, like, ah, whatever. So, my wife was like, once you cross over to CNN... Be ready, because now you're in that world.

• 35:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Are you sure you want to do that? And I'm like, I just want to surf. The goal is to keep surfing. So whatever is the easiest way to keep surfing. And if we got the attention of the whole world, then the surfers will come. They'll get it together and everybody embraces it now. And everybody's just so supportive. And we were at Malibu yesterday. It was a dream, all the boys. And we're taking all the kids out and it just felt like home. It felt, it was so special. I was, I've had a lot of good days in Malibu. I love Malibu, but yesterday was so special.

• 35:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. And it is amazing because now everybody, you know, everybody in the world who knows anything about surfing knows Nazaré. Right? And there's all this energy and focus on the winter season there and what's going to happen. And it really goes back to you. You're like, you're patient zero and you created like all of that out of your imagination and a simple email that drew you there initially. And this belief, you know, this idea that something that had not yet existed was possible. It's cool. It's really cool.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 36:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. So even after that happens, you go back for the third year. And it's not like, oh, suddenly like hundreds of surfers are showing up. The only people that show up, and I can't remember whether that was the third or the fourth winner there, was the, you know, a handful of these Brazilians.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:36Rich Roll?

  They were the only ones who said, we need to go check this out.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a few teams that showed up on their own. And they were all hungry and they were, yeah, it was, it was interesting to watch. It was fun to actually see somebody else ride the wave.

• 36:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  To go on the cliff and actually watch for a minute.

• 36:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but what was interesting to me about that was the fact that they came in. And despite the fact that you had three seasons banked and all this experience, they didn't seem all that interested in tapping into that knowledge base. They were going to go and figure it out on their own terms and they kind of got spanked. I mean, Maya almost died.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And that was.

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  As a result of that.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  And it was totally unnecessary. Yeah, it was very surprising. I'm an open book. I love to share. I love everybody to succeed. I don't try and hide things to, you know, I go, I got the best board and I'm just gonna not let anybody have access. I share everything and I was ready to share everything, but I didn't want to impose, you know, when you impose, people don't listen anyway. And we were talking with Carlos and Maya and maybe a few other-

• 37:49Rich Roll?

  We're talking about Maya Gabara, who then went on to be the, you know, the world record setter for serving the largest wave for a woman.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  She's super inspiring herself, her story and her achievements, and her movie's coming out soon. But my wife says, "Look," when I was leaving, she grabbed me, "You gotta go back there and tell them that if they fall here, they don't go that way, they go that way." So I grabbed them and I told them, "Okay, if anybody falls, they go to the, they go south. They don't go," because you would think it would go north up the beach, but you go south into the corner. And I explained very clearly, but then when that accident happened, they did the opposite. They went-

• 38:32Rich Roll?

  And they didn't have a rescue wave runner. That was the big thing, right?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and of communication, I think, was down or something.

• 38:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so Maya goes down hard. She basically, not only almost died, like, did she actually die for a moment? Like, they had to resuscitate her. It was bad, right? And then she has like a four-year period of trying to rehabilitate herself before she comes back.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's superhuman. That girl is, she's excelling as good or better than all the guys out there these days.

• 39:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when she finally broke the record, which, what was that, 2020, I think?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  When she was like a 73 footer or something?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:15Rich Roll?

  The New York Times article about that was written by Adam Skolnick, who's my co-host here.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Oh, no way?

• 39:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, so we've talked about Maya.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  You gotta get her on here.

• 39:27Rich Roll?

  I'd love to have her on here. Yeah, she'd be fantastic.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  And she's very well spoken.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Talk to me about the relationship with fear. I mean, this is the low-hanging fruit question, right? Everybody wants to know, like, what is, you know, what is it about you that makes you uniquely suited to, you know, approach these giant waves and, you know, sort of from a perspective of enthusiasm rather than terror?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Well, my trainer says my body type is perfect for big waves. I don't know about all that.

• 39:56Rich Roll?

  Because why?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  The length of the legs and arms and torso and yeah. But um, I had surfed the glacier waves and Alaska, the waves are caused by calving glaciers. And after that day, this fear that I, the fear that I had when that glacier came down on that first wave and I let go of the rope and I'm riding this teeny little wave and looking at the glacier thinking, oh shit, it could fall again and then I'm dead, crushed. It was overwhelming. And then when I went back, I was already, I'd already surfed so many waves, so many big waves all over the world and got in so many good pounding. Cause my, my, the way I always approached it was all or nothing. Get, to get the ultimate ride, the ultimate feeling.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  So I would always put it, go as deep as possible if I could. Put it all on the line. And with that approach, you don't make 50% of your waves. And I didn't mind, cause I felt like ready and I could handle it. I could hold my breath long, I was strong. And um, with that, yeah. So I had first of all endured so many heavy poundings and then I went into the glacier and got desensitized from fear. After the glacier, it was a funny standing joke. Whenever I kicked out of a wave in Tahiti where it's the most death defined, my boys would be in the channel, did you get the rush? And I'm being like, uh, not really, a little maybe, but not the real deal.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  And uh, so after 2007, I didn't, I wasn't afraid in the ocean anymore after the glacier. I literally was not afraid. I, I enjoyed all the situations I'd, I've gotten myself into after that.

• 41:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the uh,

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Like thoroughly enjoyed them.

• 41:39Rich Roll?

  Just to, just to paint the picture though, a little bit more thoroughly. The footage of you in Alaska, trying to surf these waves that are being created by the calving of these glaciers is absolutely harrowing. I mean, massive sheets of ice are just falling off the sheer cliffs of these gigantic glaciers, which are causing a tsunami that you're there to ride, right?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  It is, literally, yeah.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  And, and, and you, you have to position yourself close enough to the edge of the glacier in order to catch that wave, right? And if the, if the ice falls directly down, like in a sheath, it's all good, but if it decides to tip backwards and flat and land flat like a pancake?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Bookshelves.

• 42:25Rich Roll?

  Is that what they call it?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Because it's the book.

• 42:27Rich Roll?

  You're, you're literally getting crushed like an ant. Is that so? The sense that that could be possible at any moment was

• 42:36Rich Roll?

  and that's one of the few times where you're like, I'm out. Like that first day there, you're like, this is not okay.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  I always visualize a positive outcome and always work on being positive and seeing success. In that moment, I visualize being smashed like a tomato is what I've and that was just, yeah.

• 42:55Rich Roll?

  And even, even if you survive that and you're riding the wave, there's gigantic pieces of ice everywhere, right? Like you, I mean, the, the prospect that you would collide with one of those is pretty high.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  And they're, they're literally sharp cement floating somewhere.

• 43:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it would be just like careening into a brick wall.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, like, why?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  It's really funny what friends will talk you into doing. And yeah, be careful what those friends talk you into.

• 43:24Rich Roll?

  Right, but you did end up doing it that second day. You, you were out there doing it.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I don't think things through too much. I just think, I feel if it's a good idea or not, and then I go. And then, once I get into what I've decided to do, I'm like, oh, oh. Still trying to stay positive, see the positive.

• 43:42Rich Roll?

  It's a gut read, it's a gut instinct.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, all gut, you know. Us generators.

• 43:49Rich Roll?

  There you go, right? But, you know, this gets you into trouble a little bit. Like when you, I think it was, was it 2016? When you had spent a number of seasons at Nazaré, but you're like, I want to go surf these other breaks and be part of this competition of surfing the biggest waves all over the world and kind of travel a little bit more. That lands you back at Mavericks. And the first wave out, where you took this crazy spill and end up getting severely injured and sends you down like, you know, a, a number of years to kind of get well again. I couldn't help but think like, Was there a little bit of ego and hubris? Like, I've been surfing Nazaray for a number of years now. Like, what's the big deal with Mavericks?

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  I can go out here and do it no problem. Like, having a little bit too cavalier of an attitude and lacking a little bit of respect for Mother Nature.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  So I went out a couple sessions before that one. And it was the most crowded day ever. And I got every single wave I wanted. Everybody was all grumpy.

• 44:56Rich Roll?

  That's not in the series. I didn't even know you could get that.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  No, it would've been nice. But I just got every people blown or blew, blown away. Because Nazaray, you don't know where it's gonna break. And I've been surfing that for five years. All of a sudden, I show up at Mavericks. Peak, go. And I caught every wave. I was like in heaven. I was like, this is too easy. And so then I'm like, okay, I want to be getting this contest. And so I went back every time. I went back two times. And then the third time was that January. Just got back from Nazaray, had a sore neck. Going there for the wrong reasons. Not for fun and not, I mean, I was going for fun. But I was thinking about getting in that contest. Getting invited. How do I get invited? I gotta show a good showing.

• 45:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they told you you couldn't do it unless you showed up at Mavericks a number of times.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  And I'd been surfing there.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  Put your reps in.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, uh, wrong reason. Going there for a contest instead of going there just for fun.

• 45:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And not, my neck was really sore that day. So I blew up my inflation vest a little bit so I could actually rest on it while I'm passing. Like a pillow. And board was a little too flat in the tail. It should've had more rocker. It was, I got these two waves that were 60 feet. The two previous swells. And, and I, and the Peter Mel wave. You know where the Peter Mel wave? You see that thing? It was the best wave I've ever been at Mavericks. I was searching for that for years. And for the two sessions before the wipeout, I got one of those. paddled, started, and then it doubled up and I couldn't make it down.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  So I'm standing, but I get kicked out the back twice, two different sessions. So I'm like, I'm getting a bigger board, a heavier board, I'm going back there, I'm getting that wave. That would have been a good story to tell. Bam, smack me down. Yeah, a little, probably not as much, um, I have all the respect, ultimate respect. I think the no fear was a little bit, it didn't make me as focused and cautious as maybe I could be.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  More just like, whatever, just go, if I eat it, no problem, I don't, don't want to eat it, but take, bring it on.

• 47:13Rich Roll?

  Right. So you break your foot, you smash your shoulder, all kinds of stuff, right? That really benched you for a long time.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, still today, I mean, that scar tissue.

• 47:26Rich Roll?

  Oh wow, so you can't straighten your left arm?

• 47:29Speaker 01

  I can, but with help. But it gets better every day.

• 47:33Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about the yoga and all that kind of stuff too. Um, before we kind of get into your, your backstory, uh, I do want to talk about the hundred foot wave phenomenon, right? Like, I, I, I guess I'm probably one of those people who thought you surfed a hundred foot wave. I think there's a lot of people out there that just think of you as like, oh, that's the guy who surfed the hundred foot wave. Because that iconic, famous photo, probably the most iconic, big wave surfing photo ever taken, was you dropping in on this wave that ultimately never really broke and you kind of, you know, kind of surf out of it on the left-hand side. But you were on it long enough for that snap that went around the world and

• 48:18Rich Roll?

  the mainstream news outlets all reporting that you surfed a hundred foot wave.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  That was, be careful.

• 48:24Rich Roll?

  That becomes like, kind of like the bane of your existence, but also like the thing that, you know, drew a lot of attention to you.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the most beautiful picture I think I've ever seen and such a special moment. We were, I was so focused. I waited in the water for two, three hours for that wave. We, we want, that's the big mama. That's the right that goes into the safest wave. If it's over 80, under 80, the ble, the most dangerous wave, because it goes straight on the rocks. Over 80 goes into the channel breaks on that 60 foot shove. It was almost broken to 60 and then kind of came into the 40 and, and just kind of fizzled off into the thousand foot channel. So if they didn't show us at the end of that wave, I kicked out and Kaylee came to get me and missed me and flew off the ski as well.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Then the second rescue came in, went by Kaylee, he's like, and it went by Kaylee and got me, but I'm paddling this little six foot twig that I can barely paddle with all this flotation and, and the rocks are right there and I'm right here and, and this white, the second wave was bigger. So the whitewater's coming at me and I pushed the board and I swim under and I'm in this flotation suit that is just too much flotation to swim under. And that almost, and I would have landed right on the rocks. There was a GoPro footage of that that wasn't shown either, would have been cool, but, but, uh, that ride was very special, but I was very, I was not happy at all when I kicked out

• 50:01Speaker 01

  of that wave. I was, it was, um, it was, you know, I just didn't do what I wanted it to do.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  Right. It wasn't a full ride, right? And you even said like, please don't share those images. I didn't really ride this wave.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  It wasn't.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  Nonetheless, they leak out, they go everywhere. This creates a huge media cycle around the whole thing. You're like, I didn't even, I never said it was a hundred foot wave.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  The most challenging.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  How did that become a thing?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Most challenging part was Surfer Europe. The photographer Tom Monet sent it to Surfer Europe and Surfer Europe titles it, Mcnamara Claims To Have Surfed A Hundred Foot. Ah!

• 50:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, when you look at it, like, does it, did it measure out to be a hundred foot wave or no?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  It depends who's measuring. But, uh, the top to the actual bottom. With the curve, hundred percent guarantee hundred foot wave. But the, from here to there, I don't know, probably like sixty, seventy.

• 51:02Rich Roll?

  Hmm, hmm hmm. So why didn't you fully ride it? Why did you decide to kick out?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Uh, it just ended. The rocks were right there.

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  Cause it wasn't, it wasn't breaking.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  It was one of those cross ones that don't actually break. The one behind broke.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Should've waited for the second wave, yeah.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  Um, wow, man, it's crazy. Uh, I wanna talk about your upbringing. It's so colorful and, and unique. I mean, you have this, you know, truly original way in which you were reared. I mean, almost feral as a child. So, talk a little bit, I mean, you were born in Massachusetts, but you really kind of grew up in Berkeley. Paint the picture of, you know, what a, what a typical day was like for you and your brother.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Well, we, when we showed up in Berkeley, Peoples Park Riot has just finished and, you know, there's a lot of tension in the air, but it was just kind of subsiding. And I was just one and a half, so I didn't really know much, except, uh, you know, there was like twenty people living in this three-bedroom house. And my parents would go leave anytime they wanted and I'd be home with some babysitter, who was not really a babysitter, just one of the hippies who was hanging out and, um...

• 52:18Rich Roll?

  So this was, uh, the commune house that your mom started?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  In Berkeley, it was the gathering to get the commune people to go...

• 52:27Rich Roll?

  The commune was in Sonoma, right?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Berkeley, I mean, Casodaro, yeah, Sonoma County, yeah.

• 52:32Rich Roll?

  So your mom like inherited some money?

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  And that was the goal, like, I'm gonna build a community, a hippie community?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. And she did really well. I mean, we had some professors and there was people studying us. And it was a, a really good group of people. Um, they were very free spirited, you know, everybody was running around naked, um, taking whatever drugs they felt like taking that day and doing whatever they felt like doing on that day. And, um, it was super, um, I, I really enjoyed those, those times. Um, it was just, we were free. And my wife always says you were basically free from from one, one and a half, one and a half. They found me a mile down the road, Stoppes boarding school, upstate New York. They found me a mile down a dirt road, getting ready to enter the highway in my diaper.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  And the cops pulled over, grabbed me. And they called the house and they're like, oh, you guys missing the girl? And my mom, like, girl? No. And if she looked, oh, that's my, check the diaper. Oh, yeah, it was a boy. How's my Gary? Bring him home. I broke, I just disappeared, but she, you know, she was always busy and didn't really, I mean, we let her watch our kids once in a while and if we will watch from the window and she'll be going that way. And the kids will be like, oh, oh.

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a, there's another word for that. That's less kind, you know? I mean, it's crazy that, you know, in today, child services would have been called and that might have been that between you and your mom. I mean, it's a pretty neglectful situation and, and

• 54:06Speaker 01

  I don't think she wasn't neglectful. She was just very self-absorbed.

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  Right. There's another word for that, too. It's interesting, you know, my sense is that your mom, whether it's narcissism or neglect or just being consumed with her own quest, you know, find meaning in her life or find God or whatever it is, you and your brother just didn't, you know, really find your way onto her priority list in a, in a healthy way. And every time you kind of characterize your childhood, because I've listened to a number of interviews with you, you're always painting it in, in bright, colorful language, like it was fun and we got to do what we wanted. And, you know, it was, I have joyous memories of all of that.

• 54:55Rich Roll?

  But Nicole's like, yeah, that's, you know, there's another version of that story. Like to me, like this is, this is, this is a traumatic experience that it seems like you found a way to compartmentalize or to process in your own way. And maybe that comes out in, in your surfing and in your, you know, quest for adventure in these various ways. But I would imagine it was very difficult with all the, you know, adventures that you went on with your parents.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, the hundred foot wave shows a bit and it's interesting. It's my favorite. Number three is my favorite with all that craziness, but it's nothing compared to what we went through. There was barely scratched the surface. And then the book, The Hound of the Sea. It shares a little, but it's nothing to scratch the surface. So when the feature film comes out, I was gonna be a...

• 55:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, is there a feature coming?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm a ma- I'm a, you know, I'm a gener- generator? So I can't go and add, but if somebody comes to me and wants to do a feature for me, I'll definitely entertain it. But they don't understand what's, what's the stories and the craziness and just, I mean, it would be kinda, if we did it right, it would be like R to the max and just whacked out. And people would blow their mind.

• 56:21Rich Roll?

  So, so what, what is it about it that, that hasn't been told? I mean, you're, so there's this community in Berkeley. Ultimately, there's this commune in Sonoma. Um, at some point, this isn't doing it for your mom and she wants to go to Mexico. Your dad wants to stay. You go with your mom. Your brother gets left behind. You end up on all these crazy adventures down. You get left. Did you get like, you got left with a family and?

• 56:46Speaker 01

  A Mexican family, yeah.

• 56:47Rich Roll?

  A Mexican family?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Don Pepe and the family.

• 56:50Rich Roll?

  Cause your mom was off on her own.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Going to pick up money. I think she was going to get money or I don't know what she was doing. She was always, always trying to figure out how to pick up money from the inheritance at some bank or somewhere. And then always doing something. Um, yeah, there was a lot of times when we got left with different people.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. But that was, by your recollection, like a stable, healthy environment when you got left with that family?

• 57:17Speaker 01

  That was, it was a really good experience.

• 57:18Rich Roll?

  Animals and you could have stayed there.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I loved it. They were just beautiful Mexican family that had a ranch and so I guess she felt really safe. She would, you know, I have to give my mom a lot of credit. She moved us to Hawaii. She gave us our free spirit. She, um... She loved us. She would play music, sing us, sing, put us up. I mean, she was, she was good overall. Um, it was very unconventional, but yeah, she was loving and she was a, you know, just, you know, my wife now is a polar opposite. She is 100% present all the time. And, uh, so I got, you know, I think that's what really attracted me to her is that I was always looking for my mama.

• 58:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you could have very well ended up marrying a version of your mom. I mean, that's what a lot of people do. They seek out that same kind of relationship again, and the pattern repeats itself. So it feels like you course corrected here and found the healthy, the healthiest type of relationship that you could to kind of mend that and, you know, sort of arrest the, the repetition of that unhealthy cycle. I just had, the, the podcast that just went up this week is with this guy, Dr. Gabor Maté. I don't know if you've heard of him or followed any of his work, but.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  It does sound familiar.

• 58:36Rich Roll?

  He's a, he, he, he became prominent for his work around addiction and recovery and this thesis that he has that most addicts or addictions can be traced back to unresolved or unhealed childhood trauma. And he's sort of more currently extrapolated on that thesis to say that so much of what ails us, whether it's physical or mental, can be traced back to unhealed trauma. And that discussion around trauma and how it manifests in our lives and later in life in terms of like behaviors that we perpetuate or relationships that we get involved in, I think is, is, is really profound. And one of the things that he helped me reckon

• 59:20Rich Roll?

  with is this idea of separating, like when you look at how you were parented, right? Like, I love my mom and my dad or whatever, and I don't want to say anything bad about them. But he was able to help me understand, like, you're not vilifying them. Like, they did the best that they could. It doesn't mean that they're bad people, but that also doesn't mean that you didn't incur trauma because of decisions that they made about how they parented you. And I feel like you're protecting your mom, and maybe there's an opportunity, a growth opportunity for you to really get into some of what transpired when you were younger in a way that you can make peace with it that would make you feel more whole.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Funny, I.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  I always, um, you know, work on being positive and, but there was definitely things I held on to. And I did a 3.3 gram mushroom medicine.

• 1:00:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  I did four days in the mountains doing the medicine wheel. Uh, it's a book where you go through and work on all these different things that apply to mostly your past. And then, um, you go to, to the, you, the, the mushroom, the medicine isn't, isn't required or necessary. If you do the book, you can do it in your living room. Better to go to the mountains and away from everybody. That's what I did. But, uh, then I did a 3.3 gram journey. I let go of everything, said thank you to it all. It's like, yeah, I'm, I'm so, feel so light and so good and I'm, and none of it is holding me back or taking me down or weighing on me. It's all, I've, I've,

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  I've had a nice, uh, conversation. Thank you. Not serving me anymore. Love you.

• 1:01:08Rich Roll?

  That's great. Good for you, man. Did you do that under supervision or just read this book and decided to do a DIY trip?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Uh, a good friend of mine, Eric Nice, he, uh, shared the book with me and then he flew over and guided the, the journey.

• 1:01:25Rich Roll?

  Right. Wow. How long ago was that?

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Three months ago? What? Three or four months?

• 1:01:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's recent. Wow. Wow. Um, but that was a breakthrough for you.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Oh, visiting all these things that are just stuck, letting them go, loving them. Choosing to love them all was the key. Choosing to love all those situations, all those challenging moments, all those life experiences that you might categorize as, like, ah, I love you. Thank you.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  You got me where I am today. I love you. Thank you. I wouldn't be right here now. I love you. Thank you.

• 1:02:02Rich Roll?

  All of these experiences cohere to create, you know, this, this incredible hero's journey that you've been on.

• 1:02:14Rich Roll?

  You end up in Hawaii. At some point Liam comes, but your brother is back in the picture, right? Like you and your mom and your brother all go together to the North Shore?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:02:23Rich Roll?

  Cause she hooked up with some other dude or there's a stepdad involved or what was happening?

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  A musician, a black musician. His name was Darryl and we tried to go to Florida like two or three times. First when we jump in the car, you place an ad and somebody, "Okay, yeah, come drive with me." Some whack job, like weirdo. We jump out quick, like a couple miles down the road. I think this happened twice, going to Florida. And then we're going to Hawaii. All of our friends throw this big party for us. "Oh, sorry, we can't go." Finally, Darryl actually gets us to Hawaii. Through Darryl, we got to Hawaii and we end up on the North Shore and probably the, I mean, we're in Hawaii on the North Shore, but we're in the least desired spot called Cement City.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's kind of like affordable housing project type apartment buildings?

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yes. And we were, you know, Darryl was a musician and he actually worked with Don Ho's daughter and he was, he was good. And then he left as soon as we got there.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, he split?

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  So then we're on welfare and government assistance and this and my mom was just depressed.

• 1:03:33Rich Roll?

  And you're like, what?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  11. 11. I went to first year of elementary, was one of the only white boy in the class. All Filipinos and Hawaiians.

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  And, and you basically didn't really go to school though, right? Like you'd go on the front door and out the back door?

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  That was during elementary in, in California.

• 1:03:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  I never went to school. We would go to UC Berkeley every day and hang out on the campus from five to, no, from like...

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  We, you know, like six or seven to 11.

• 1:04:09Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  We never went to school. We would literally go climb the fire escape of these buildings and go and pull all the marijuana plants and go home and roll fat joints. We're freaking 10 years old.

• 1:04:20Rich Roll?

  So you're smoking fatties at 10?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Oh my god. We ate peyote up there and I ate peyote when I was about five.

• 1:04:28Rich Roll?

  Was that because your dad was running a vegetarian restaurant? He was serving it at the restaurant? Is that true?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  He wasn't serving pot. He, but he had a, it was my goodness cafe on Shattuck and Ashby.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Oh, right in the thick of it.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we were on Emerson, the two block street.

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  It was right back from Shattuck, one block back from Shattuck and Ashby.

• 1:04:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Holy Foods was on the corner. I don't know if it turned into Whole Foods, but it was Holy Foods. Uh, yeah, so, yeah, we were wild and we were free and we did whatever we wanted. We would stay out till 12 to whatever, from seven to 11. We were free. There was a, the serial killer was on, like, killing right in our, and we were out there until.

• 1:05:13Rich Roll?

  That was, was that Zodiac era?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  I think so. I don't know which one it was, but we were out when he was out.

• 1:05:18Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  And we weren't supposed to be.

• 1:05:22Rich Roll?

  It's total insanity. It reminds me of a.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  I now imagine the, the, put that into a, yeah.

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, yeah, it's like, have you read Flea's book, Acid for the Children?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  I was just looking at that.

• 1:05:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I have it right over there. You should read that book. I mean, it's pretty similar. I mean, he was a feral kid and he had, you know, kind of a chaotic, you know, family situation, but he was just running wild on the streets of LA at a very young age. You know, it's, it's a, it's a version of your story in some, in some way.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we skimmed the surface on, I mean, you paint those pictures of killers over there on the left and you're over here on the right, shooting off rockets that you stole the day, that day.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  Right. Alright, so you're in Hawaii, elementary school. So, at some point, a surfboard gets introduced to you. I mean, you're on the North Shore. It's almost inevitable that you're gonna end up in the waves.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  We were super lucky. Normally a holly who enters a school, you're gonna get beat and it's not gonna be fun. I got super lucky. First day of school, I had a fight with this one guy and. Got him good and then the naughtiest guy in the school came and we were best friends and we made a gang. We had our leather jackets. I, we, we, yeah, it was funny. And then the principal calls in the office and says, oh, no gangs in my school takes our leather jackets. But I'm sorry, the question, where were we going?

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  Surfboard.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Surfboard. Mom goes to a garage sale and buys a board for 15 bucks. And brings it home. And that was our board. It was like 12 feet long, about 50, 60 pounds. And think in the book, it says, we found it in the bushes. Yeah, there's a lot of different.

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  My brother said that, my brother remembers everything. My brother Liam and.

• 1:07:09Rich Roll?

  And it was like a love at first sight type of deal or what, how did the, you know, relationship with surfing kind of flourish from there?

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Well, the first encounter was with our best friend Butchy Boy and his dad had a bunch of kneeboards. These beautiful artwork on these kneeboards on the wall. And then it was his birthday and he said, oh, come, we'll go surfing. My dad's kneeboards. And we went out. We weren't about to stay on our knees, so we went straight to our feet. Fell in love. That was it. Nothing mattered on the land. Whatever's going on the land disappeared. You're in the water, you got shorts. Warm water, surfboard. You're just in heaven. It was just too good. It consumed us and became our passion, became our love, became my everything. It was a bit. Took Liam a few more years. He was, he loved baseball. And he was already being scouted by the UH was scouting him and.

• 1:07:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I, I didn't realize that initially he's the surf star.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Oh, for 10 years, he made.

• 1:08:04Rich Roll?

  The guy, like he was a big deal.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Big. He made as much or more money than every, anybody for about 10 years in a, yeah. And he made money for at least a whole of 20, maybe 25 years.

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Good money.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  Right. He's your younger brother.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And so he's getting all these accolades. He's on the cover of all the magazines. He's taking home prize money. Um, but ultimately, like he, he becomes a victim of his own character defects, right? Like he's a hothead and ultimately ends up like making a lot of enemies. At least that's the way the narrative is spun in the docu-series.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  He was, uh, he didn't back down. He ruled Rocky Point and did his best to rule Pipeline. His best to rule both those spots. Those two spots were the most photographed spots in the world. He got more waves than anybody guaranteed for 10 years. So he had a really good career just based on Pipe and Rockies. We loved going to Japan. We go to Australia. I would kind of be in his shadow, get to go along once in a while and try and surf in the contest. I never did any good. He would always kind of, he would do, you know, he was a fierce competitor. He was gonna beat you. You have to get three waves in 20 minutes. He's gonna paddle around you and take that, the best three waves of the heat if possible.

• 1:09:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  And he's not gonna let you get any waves.

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he, forget the etiquette and the decorum.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  But there was none when it came to those heats. All the boys, all the surfers, it was dog eat dog and you're not friends once you get in that heat. Nowadays, it's a little different. They're a little more friendly until the end, oh, the priority. It's just there's real rules now with the priority, so. But, uh, back then, it was, yeah, if you're Hawaiian or you're from Hawaii, you had an edge because all the surfers around the world want to go to Hawaii. And if you're a badass and you hung with the boys, you're one of the boys, when they come to Hawaii, they're gonna get sent home if they mess with you anywhere else. So even in these heats in Japan.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  And he's being rewarded for that behavior.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Until the.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  He's the bad boy of surfing.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, until the magazines blackballed him and the judges started giving him .5 less always. If he was gonna win a heat, he had to really win it. Like, there was a Pipe Masters that he, I think he won. I'd like to watch the tapes again, but they scored Kelly Stater .5 higher on each wave and scored him a .5 lower on each wave. And, um.

• 1:10:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And ultimately, at some point, you start catching up to him. So what was going on? How, how were you able to no longer be the older brother in the wake of his younger brother and surpass him?

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  It's funny because I'm still. I'm really no longer in the wake, but once in a while I'll meet somebody who knows Liam or knows of Liam and didn't know me and they're like, whoa, you guys are totally opposite. But toe surfing, I started toe surfing to get away from all the crowds. There's so many crowds. And Laird and Buzzy and Derek show up with their jet Zodiac and I saw, and so I ran home. I got my board. I'm sitting at sunset with my 10 foot board and I'm about to paddle out there to ask them to tow me into one.

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  And this was the first, like their very first experiment with this. Buzzy Kerbox and yeah, that original OG toe and crew.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  And I sat on the beach with my jaw, you know, those cartoon characters where the jaw drops to the ground and didn't move. Me and Johnny Boy Gomes and we're just watching. And then I, from then on, I was obsessed. I bought a Zodiac, painted a giant shark mouth on it, tried to do it my Zodiac. It was, and then my friends got a Sea Doo jet boat. Charlie Walker and Dawson Jones got this pontoon, jet ski with a pontoon, basically. And they brought me in and that was it.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  That was it. So it went from, I'm never gonna be a big wave surfer. That wasn't cool to, it's all about big waves now.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Well, no, I, I actually was from, till 16, I was scared to death of big waves. I was not gonna surf wave over 10 feet, 10 feet face. And then after 16, I, I fell in love with big waves. A friend made me go out when I did not want to and gave me the right board, gave me the right advice and I got every wave I wanted. So I lived for big waves from that day forward. But it was a, my career was based around Japanese sponsors, pretty much, a couple of USA sponsors. And then,

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  I loved big waves, but there wasn't much there for a big wave surfer, you know? There wasn't really these soul surfers or free surfers, but I like call a soul surfer. But I made a little money, like 500 a month, maybe 1500 at the most for all these years. I had to rent rooms to pay for the, pay the bills and, in my house. And then toe surfing was to get away from everybody. And all of a sudden it became this cool sport that actually everybody was interested in.

• 1:13:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Cause you know, all of us have had an experience in the water, a traumatic experience in the water, whether it's a bathtub, a lake, a river, an ocean. Sometime throughout our life, most, all humans have had a traumatic, we have utmost respect for waves and then big waves. Like, how? And so they're just captivated and interested, so all of a sudden this.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  A lot of energy around this thing.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  You had been into just for the pure joy of it, not because like, oh, there's a way to be pro and a way to support myself doing this. So you become the guy who's working to live, right? Like it's just, I gotta make enough money so that I can go surf the waves I wanna surf.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  The money was more for the family. When I got the job, when I got the store, it was just kinda like.

• 1:14:06Rich Roll?

  You got kids.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  It was just to stay home and take care of the kids and hopefully take them all on a trip.

• 1:14:11Rich Roll?

  Right, so you open up this store on the North Shore. Was it a surf shop? What kind of store was it?

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was called Epic Sports and it was a surf shop, but it was, there was a little bit of MMA stuff in there. The Bad Boy was my partner and sponsor.

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  And that, and that's between, how old were you during this period?

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  I was 35. Yeah, I think about 35 is when I actually, oh wait, was 35 was when I closed the store. It was, um. Thirty to thirty-two to thirty-five.

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  Right, so for three years, okay, you know, I'm not gonna go work in a cubicle. I'm gonna be a little bit of a small business entrepreneur. At least I can control some aspect of my destiny.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I was creating epic empire. It was not gonna be small.

• 1:14:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  It would be huge, worldwide.

• 1:14:57Rich Roll?

  Right, so this was franchises of this store all over the world. Surfing meets MMA.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, epic sports.

• 1:15:05Rich Roll?

  All right. But, you know, quickly you become a bit of a working stiff, right? Who's like driving by the waves on the way to work and, and, you know, kind of living this life of quiet resignation.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gave up on my passion, opened that store and quiet was the word and...

• 1:15:24Rich Roll?

  You're doing what you need to do to support your family, pay the bills and, you know, be responsible adult.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  That's what I thought, but it definitely brought me to become somewhat depressed. And just because I would drive by these perfect waves every day going to work and I'd be like, "I'm going to work," and look at the waves.

• 1:15:44Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I see a lot of myself in this story. I mean, the facts of my, you know, narrative are quite different, but, you know, I had my version of that, like at, at forty, this existential kind of crisis about what I was doing, how I was spending my time, the choices that I had made about how to make a living and just being deeply unhappy with all of that, but also feeling very confused about how to resolve that, right? So walk me, you know, in your version of, of this story, like what was the tipping point or what, you know, what, what occurred to lead you to this place of saying, "I, I can't do this anymore." Like there's something else, something bigger, something better out there for me.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  If you don't mind, I'd like to know your tipping point.

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Ah, well, I gotta, I'll give you this book, but I had, I mean, mine was, you know, mine came in the form of a little bit of a health scare that coincided with this, you know, kind of low-grade depression about, you know, where I was in my life. And that created a little bit of a perfect storm. And my resolution began with just changing my relationship to myself, first through food and then through movement. And that very slowly kind of led me in a new direction. So it was a, it wasn't like a, like a lightning bolt kind of thing where everything changed quickly. It was a very gradual shift.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Well, interesting. I'm gonna get that book.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  If you sign it for me, I'll read.

• 1:17:12Rich Roll?

  I'll definitely do that. This is about you, bro.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Okay, so, uh, going, driving to the store, perfect waves, gotta go work. That was where it was like, uh, and, and I started drinking coffee at thirty-five, or thirty-three. When I opened the store, the first time I started drinking coffee.

• 1:17:29Rich Roll?

  Meaning, like, for the first time in your life, you needed something external, exogenous, to excite you, or give you energy.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 1:17:38Rich Roll?

  Whereas, prior to that, you never needed that.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Nope. And so, uh, we get to the store, and I remembered, okay, I wrote a business plan for this store. I got that Business Plan for Dummies book, and I'd made a business plan for the store. And I'm like, oh, let's see if we can do that to keep surfing. So I put on the Keep Surfing, the goals, win the Eddie, win the Jaws. How do I do that? I eat very, you know, the eating program, the training program, the manifesting, visualizing. And, um, did that for, from that day, since I wrote that plan.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  And, uh, focused, put so much time in, and I had put it on the refrigerator, I put it in the car, I put it in the bathroom mirror, I, uh, the, the, the map.

• 1:18:30Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  The blueprint to achieve these goals.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  So there was clarity, though. You knew, okay, I gotta get back to surfing. How am I gonna do that? I've got a family, I've got bills. Well, Jaws, Eddie, those are contests with prize money, right? So, the quickest way to put money in the bank account is to win one of those. How am I gonna win one of those, in the short term? And then, long-term, it becomes about sponsors and all of that, right? So is that what the business plan looked like? Like, I'm interested in, like, what were the line items, you know, in the business plan? And how did those translate into sticky notes with specific goals or, or mantras that were gonna lead you in that direction?

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  It was the, uh, the winning was everything. Cause with that would come the sponsors and the partners.

• 1:19:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  And did you have a history of winning competitions where you knew that that was a feasible possibility, or was that more like a pipe dream to win a big contest like that?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  I've been surfing Waimai more than anybody, up to the store, I'd been towing. I was real confident that I was gonna win. I knew that Eddie, I was winning. There was no doubt in my mind. And the Jaws, I thought I could win that as well, until I went there after writing my goals. I went there for the first time, they called the contest on, and it was windy and small, so they canceled it, but we went out and towed it for the first time, and it was terrifying. So powerful, so... And I was like, "Oh, I'm winning Eddie, I just wanna come home in Maui, at the Jaws, I just wanna come home."

• 1:20:09Rich Roll?

  Right, so for people that don't know, Jaws is the huge wave on Maui. It's the one that Laird kinda made famous.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Totally, Laird and Derek and Buzz.

• 1:20:18Rich Roll?

  And this was at the time when there was, it was all about Jaws, right? Cause Laird was there, and that was, that was the Nazaret of that moment.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And Eddie is North Shore Oahu, so that's your backyard. That's...

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Literally my, I could see it from my front yard.

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  Right, so it would make sense, oh, well Eddie is, is probably the better opportunity for you, because you know it so well.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Contest day arrives, they call both of them on, same day. They don't have, we don't have the computers, uh, looking at the buoys, you had to call every hour to see where the buoys are at, cause that's how you know how big the waves are gonna be. And I'm literally calling every hour, checking the buoys, checking the buoys, all the way, I'd sleep a little bit, call, sleep a little, call, sleep. 4 a.m., I was still undecided, I had my partner, Rodrigo Zende, my teammate, on Maui waiting, and I was in the Eddie. The previous year, I'm the only surfer in history that, I was number nine alternate, and, uh, number nine didn't come, and I'm paddling out, Elijah Young didn't show.

• 1:21:27Rich Roll?

  This is it, Eddie.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  I'm paddling out in the Eddie, I get out there, Elijah makes it, paddles out, Garrett, you gotta paddle in.

• 1:21:35Rich Roll?

  Meaning, you're out, you can't compete.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Right. Devastated, beyond, but, okay.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  But, the universe has another plan for you, Garrett.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  So I'm still, now I'm seventh alternate, not ninth. And um.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just couldn't see myself sitting on that beach, not knowing if I could surf or not. And the main thing is I had my teammate waiting for me. So at 4am, I rushed to the airport, got on the plane and went to.

• 1:22:03Rich Roll?

  Shot over to Maui, right? And said, let's drop in here. What was the difference in prize money between Eddie and Jaws?

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Well, Eddie was, I don't know, like 20 grand or something like that. Oh, maybe 50 it was. It was. Eddie was, could have been kinda high back then.

• 1:22:19Rich Roll?

  But Eddie was kind of the more.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Most prestigious.

• 1:22:22Rich Roll?

  It's, that's his last name, right? So it was in honor of this legendary surfer. And that was like the prestigious one to win.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Eddie Icau, Invitational, the one we all big wave surfers dreamed to be in, it's like the pinnacle. And um. But Jaws was the first of his. Jaws was the first of its kind, but they had $70,000 prize money.

• 1:22:43Rich Roll?

  More prize money, but you're less experienced on this wave. You had never surfed this wave before.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  And my partner, get this, he's never towed before. So he shows up on a Wahoo.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  This is not looking good.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  He shows up on a Wahoo and I tell, okay, let's go practice. So I take him over to this little wave. It's called um Police Beach. And it's this little teeny wave that's about just tall, maybe a little bigger. But it breaks just like Jaws, a nice right to go in the channel, a left that's kinda gnarly. And I tell him, just put me on that right. And it's this big. And he puts me exactly on the way, perfect. And I'm like, oh, we got this. Don't worry. He's like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm like, we got it. We got it. Don't worry. Cause I, I mean, I had my plan. I knew how to win. And I knew what to do. And I shared with him and we focused and we didn't train that much. And but I knew that he just had to put me on the wave. The rescue guys will pick me up.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  So he would put me on the wave. The rescue guys would get me. And he was like a shark. He was a badass. Like he was so into, you know how I was sharing, some people will never learn and other people learn quick. I was a slow learner. It took me a while to get good. This guy was good instantly. So um, and he surfed better than every, he was more focused than any big wave surfer at that time for paddling.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  So you go to Jaws and you feel confident, but it wasn't like there was an expectation that you were going to win this competition, right? Who were the, who were the people that were expected to win?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  They were all there, Parsons and Gerlach and all the Maui Boys. I mean, yeah, it was, that was a really good, solid showing.

• 1:24:22Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they definitely, none of them were probably thinking about me and Rodrigo.

• 1:24:27Rich Roll?

  Right, and you're how old, 35?

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  35.

• 1:24:30Rich Roll?

  35, right? So not exactly in the prime of your physical career as a professional athlete.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Hey, what are you talking about?

• 1:24:38Rich Roll?

  I know, we're going to get to that part. Like, it's all love, Garrett. Listen, you know, I didn't, I didn't start getting into my athletic stuff until my 40s.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Oh wow.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  Um, alright, so, long story short, you end up winning this competition. Like, when you think back on that, I mean, two questions. First, what was it that you did that allowed you to win? Like, what was the secret sauce in that victory? And then, perhaps more importantly, like, what do you, what do you make of that in retrospect? Looking back, you know, at the arc of your story and kind of everything that's transpired as a result? Because that, this is another huge inflection point that sets up the ability for you to have a life as a surfer and go on to do all these other things.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  First of all, we had a Magic 7-2 Brewer and from Laird.

• 1:25:29Rich Roll?

  That's a surfboard, right?

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, from Laird and them, you know, working with Dick, they made what was the best at that time, and I was lucky enough to tap into that.

• 1:25:38Rich Roll?

  It's like specific for Jaws.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:40Rich Roll?

  But didn't everybody have that board, or no?

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  Hmm, they all had versions, their own version, but 7-2, that was long. We're on 6-0s now. It was still dinosaur.

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  And everybody had dinosaurs, but they all had the similar dinosaurs, uh, compared to what we're on now. But, so, um, I sat him down, I said, "Look, we're..." He went first, for, I think it was like 45 minutes, 30, 30, 30, 45 minutes, and then I, we had half, half of the heat was me, half of the heat was him.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  I said, "Look, we're making, you make three waves, no matter what. I'm putting you in a safe enough spot, so you can make the waves." I remember I was a really good driver already, so I put him in a safe zone, so he can make the waves. He made us three, after you make three waves, you can, then we'll get barreled. That was the goal. Then pull in, but until you make three waves, don't even think about pulling in. So he made us three waves, fourth wave, he pulled in. It got, he, it kinda clamped on the top and he got, and I went in to pick him up, and he jumps on the sled, and this wave is coming, and it's all foamy, and the ski's not going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh," like stuck in mud. And this massive wave is coming, and

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  then, the selfless guy that he is, he look, he, and he was already beat from that first one, he was tired. He pushes the sled, as the wave catches us, and then, the ski goes up ten, fifteen, maybe twenty feet high, I'm up there, and I'm just like, "There's, it's done. There's no way you can come out of this." But I, I got my feet in these foot straps, I got my handle on them, my number one first sponsor ever, it was his jet ski by chance, he let us use it, and I'm about to bail, but I just kept holding, and it flew me out in front, landed, "Bap!" I mean, that was the hand of God. If there ever was a hand of God, that was it.

• 1:27:43Rich Roll?

  So, basically, what you're saying is he put you, by hook or by crook, in, in the most unlikely situation, you ended up exactly where you needed to be to get this wave and have this ride of your life.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Well, him, he got the wave, he got the ride. So he got the three good waves, and made them.

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  So, the way it works is, you alternate surfing and towing with your partner, right? So it's a two-man gig?

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:28:06Rich Roll?

  And you're getting scored, as, you know, how you kind of do collectively as a team?

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  So it's those three waves each?

• 1:28:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And then the purse you split?

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Purses, or it depends on what you agree on, you know?

• 1:28:19Rich Roll?

  I won't ask you whatever that was.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  It was split, it was split.

• 1:28:23Rich Roll?

  And ultimately, you end up becoming victorious in this, in this event, in an unlikely way. I'm sure people were surprised, like, this thirty-five-year-old guy who had seemingly retired, suddenly is back. What did the surfing world make of that, at the time?

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Uh, not much.

• 1:28:41Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  They swept it under the rug. And they kinda made it like Parsons Gerlach won.

• 1:28:45Rich Roll?

  Liam's brother had kind of a thing, but like, we don't need to pay too much attention to that.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Well, plus I'm Liam's brother.

• 1:28:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  But Parsons got the best wave of the contest, this crazy wave and made it. And, uh, they just really pumped that up in all the surf media. In Brazil was a big thing, just Brazil. Me and Rodrigo won, Studio Omega's the sponsor, Global TV, the biggest network. It's going on prime time. So we, I was huge in Brazil. The rest of the surfing world still didn't really know much. And the sponsors didn't start flying in.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  And I thought to myself, okay, well, now I'm going to Tahiti. And I'm gonna go get something big there. And we went and I got a cover on Surfer. And then, of course, I won the contest, they, you know, they knew of the word, oh, but nobody, oh, well, who is this? Then I go to Tahiti, get this frickin' incredible wave that graces the cover of the, all kinds of magazines.

• 1:29:42Rich Roll?

  That's a big deal.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  All over the world. And then I'm going, okay. So I was watching the boys at Jaws and I'm just like, what the hell are they doing on, why aren't they in the barrel? And then I went there that first time, I was like, oh, now I know why they're not in the barrel. This wave is, it's Jaws, it's trying to eat you and it's not, nothing to play around with. And now I know why, but I, I understood why, but I still wanted to go get barreled there. So I went that next winter, 2003, got the barrel. So now I get the-

• 1:30:11Rich Roll?

  You're the first guy to get barreled at Jaws.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  I don't know about the frickin' barrel, but I got a, a really good one.

• 1:30:16Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  And, um, so I got the win, then I got Tahiti, then I got the barrel. The funny thing about the barrel is they put on the cover, it's me, but it says Laird and Company. So I get, it's like, so I could only imagine people going, ah, how's that barrel? And he's going, oh, uh.

• 1:30:35Rich Roll?

  Right. And, uh, yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  So it was, it was a trip.

• 1:30:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so then, um, but the sponsors started coming. I got on, I was working with Red Bull a little bit since I had the store.

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  And they were coming all in and then, uh- Then I had a manager came in right then, made me a website and then um we got, I was with Excel. The manager screwed that deal. Yeah, things were, I had this manager who wasn't a surfer, he was a senior vice friend of Time Warner in marketing and production. And he retired and then took me on as his main project. So I learned every, I know nothing. I mean, I was a surfer that did not want his face, did not want his name, did not want anything, don't want to talk about what I just did, just

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  and he's like, "You gotta make a poster, Karen McDeMare, you gotta do this, go to that."

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  Well, it was a, there's a convergence of a couple of things happening here. I mean, first of all, culturally, within surfing, it's not cool to promote yourself. It never had been. It was, you know, the punk rock of it all was to just go out and surf waves for the joy of it. If anybody's paying attention, fine, but you're not going to be the guy out there throwing stuff up on social media, but that's because social media didn't exist and also, you know, carving out a career outside of the very narrow scope of what it meant to be a pro comparative surfer was starting to change. And with, with the advent of these new surfing technologies and tow-in surfing and all the experimentation that was kind of being led by Laird and his cohort of surf renegades.

• 1:32:16Rich Roll?

  Suddenly, and then with social media kind of being layered on top of that, there was this sense of possibility, like you could craft or carve out a career that lived outside of those traditional notions of how to make a living. But that meant that you had to be, not necessarily shameless, but you had to be in control of your own kind of promotional engine and responsible for getting the word out about what you were doing because, you know, ultimately, you had the responsibility to shoulder like getting sponsors and all of that, manager or no manager.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, Laird was the OG, the guru, the guy who broke out of the surfing and went to the rest of the world. And I really watched and learned and really embraced how he did things.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  And so when this senior vice president guy is telling me I gotta do this, that, the other thing, I'm like, okay, okay, okay, not what I want to do, but that's what they're doing, so we'll do it. But so, and that's what, yeah, it was from there.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  The doors just opened, they started knocking on my door, I didn't have to knock on doors. It was almost amazing. It was the first time in my life I wasn't, hey, please sponsor me.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  Right, but the business plan's working.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  Business plan's working.

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you are, you're manifesting, you're generating, it's all happening, you're able to pay the bills.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  It's all about that goal and that blueprint. It's, it works, but you know what the number one thing in, in all of our, um, in sports or careers or whatever is carving out a niche, because a niche has longevity. You, you might not be the best for more than a year or two, but if you have a little niche, you're the, you're the yogi of this, or you're the Jack Johnson, or you're the photographer, or you're still in the world, you're still in surfing, but vicariously through this niche that you carved out.

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  So you were conscious of that, and what, what, how would you define the, the niche that you were carving out or attempting to carve out at that time?

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  I was just a guy who would just put it all the line, bulletproof, I mean, my friends would call me bulletproof, and I felt bulletproof, and I had a little flotation that nobody else had, so I was.

• 1:34:36Rich Roll?

  That was your little innovation.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  They didn't realize, they didn't, they're like, what are you doing that? They're laughing and going, and I'm going, anyway, please, come, pound me, no problem, I'm coming up. And so they thought I was kind of crazy, they didn't realize it was calculated crazy.

• 1:34:55Rich Roll?

  And at, at what point, I mean, your, your first marriage ends up sort of dissolving, right? Around this time?

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:02Rich Roll?

  What was going on there?

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  Lack of support, um, lack of trust. And rightfully so, I wasn't in the best place.

• 1:35:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, um, and you got you that first married, I mean, you got married really young, yeah.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, um, and what's your relationship to like drugs and alcohol and all of that? I mean, you had this crazy childhood where it would seem like it was omnipresent. But did you grow out of that or was that still part of your world at that time?

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  I smoked pot from 12 to 22.

• 1:35:42Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Sopped in 89, um, never really liked the taste of alcohol, but loved a good party. Loved, uh, you know, a couple with corons with lime tastes good and with some tequila. And then you're having a great time. Yeah, yeah, then you're having a great time. Uh, to be honest, cocaine was something that we played with a little bit. When we're really young, we, my brother and I got into it. And then I went to Japan when I was 19 and saw that I could have a career. And then that's when I quit pot, quit everything and then got my brother too. And, um, I slowly got sucked back into cocaine a bit.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  And it wasn't, wasn't pretty to be honest at all. It wasn't a party anymore. It was just like dark and.

• 1:36:34Rich Roll?

  Was that when you were?

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  It was depressed, getting depressed, yeah.

• 1:36:37Rich Roll?

  And when you were at the store?

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  There was things that led up to it. I mean, if I went back, probably some childhood things, but more things that happened in my relationship with my wife that really depressed, made me bummed out about our relationship because of things that she did. So I would probably, that was probably what really, I mean, I can't blame anybody. I take full responsibility. I chose to, you know, I chose it. I, I, so it was all me. Um, was there things that? Definitely weighed on me, that I let weigh on me. Yeah. Now I'm choosing not to let anything weigh on me. Love it all.

• 1:37:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it sounds like a lot of the use was kind of situational or environmental. Like when you make these, made these decisions at different times to like walk away from it, you were able to do that. So you never went down some like rampant addiction rabbit hole or anything like that. You were able to kind of put it in the rearview when you needed to or need to?

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Funny because I would, on my birthday, August 10th, I would have one last big party and then I would train and until I accomplished something really huge.

• 1:37:51Rich Roll?

  And then celebrate.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  And then at my party again. And that might go for the rest of the, until my birthday again.

• 1:37:57Rich Roll?

  Is that still going on or?

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  No, no, I've been, since I met Nicole, I've been just.

• 1:38:03Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about Nicole. Like that's the other huge inflection point. So the inflection points that, that like I'm trying to like, like map it out. Like you have, you know, moving to Hawaii, of course. And then, you know, there's winning jaws, like these kind of pivotal moments in your life. But certainly, I don't, I don't see any more important or monumental pivotal moment in your life that exceeds meeting Nicole and kind of how, the impact that, that she has had and this relationship has had on, on like how you are, not just on your surfing, but like how you are as a man and, and you know, what you value and

• 1:38:44Rich Roll?

  what you're, you know, choosing to invest your time in, et cetera. So talk a little bit about meeting her and kind of what this relationship has meant to you.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, you know, the cartoon character I was when I saw Laird in them with my jaw on the floor and when I saw her, it was like the cartoon character that gets, levitates and dragged across by his toes to her. It was just love at first sight. And it was, um, yeah, I was just captivated by her, her beauty, her, her present, just being in her, you know, your full, she's so present and.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  So inspiring and so, everything that I've dreamed, everything that I dreamed of in a, in a partner, a life partner, it was, she was right there in front of me.

• 1:39:35Rich Roll?

  You guys met in Costa Rica?

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  Puerto Rico.

• 1:39:39Rich Roll?

  Puerto Rico.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  At a surface healing, Uncle Lisi Pasquett, so I was supporting his surface healing event in Puerto Rico and she was there at the charity dinner the night before, helping with the flower arrangements through her dad's friend who was doing the flower arrangements. She was there for a race, she was a badass paddler, she like, and we met and that was it.

• 1:40:01Rich Roll?

  And that was like 2008 or something like that?

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Ten, nine or ten, ten.

• 1:40:06Rich Roll?

  Ten?

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  Ten.

• 1:40:07Rich Roll?

  So shortly after you guys met that you ended up in Nazaret then? I didn't realize that timeline was so compressed.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:14Rich Roll?

  Wow. Wow, she comes into your life and then suddenly you guys are in Portugal.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Oh, we went on the most amazing journey ever. We lived out of a suitcase for three years.

• 1:40:25Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  And it was the best time of our life. Our life is still like too good, I geek, I'm like pinch me, I can't even believe where we're at right now. But that was the most, um, we were just present and together and, I mean, as she says, I held on to her every word, I was at, you know, anything and everything she wanted at all time and the same her for me and that was before the kids.

• 1:40:52Rich Roll?

  I think, you know, like I can't help but like try to compare your story to my story and I don't want to make it about me, but you know, I have a similar, I've, I've had a very similar experience in many ways. And there's something about my relationship with my wife, who's very different from me, that creates a certain kind of powerful alchemy and I see that in your relationship, like the sum of the two of you together is much greater than the sum of its parts, right? Because of this partnership and what you each bring to this equation, you've been able to, you know, accomplish things and manifest things that, you know, I'm sure exceed what you would have thought possible for yourself.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally, since we've joined forces, we literally strongly, without a doubt, feel that we can pretty much do anything we want, like anything. There's nothing that we can't do if we want, if we put our mind to it.

• 1:41:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and where does that come from?

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  It comes from, well, you know, that was a secret. And then I've read, I've been into Deepak Chopra, Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. But it really comes from, she's very organized. And I think most of all, it's because all of our, the things that we focus on are more selfless. And somehow we want to give back with whatever we're doing. When you have that aspect to it all, you really can't fail. I mean, you know, you get the goal, you get the plan, you get the roadmap, but you have a selfless approach to it.

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  That's the secret sauce in everything. If you're in a mindset and have a plan to be giving more than you're receiving or looking to receive. For me, that's always been a recipe for manifesting things even larger than what you imagined.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  I like that. I have to, yes, I agree with that one.

• 1:42:57Rich Roll?

  You're the doer and you're the dreamer. Nicole is very much the structure and the feedback loop and the accountability piece.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Projector.

• 1:43:06Rich Roll?

  Projector, of course.

• 1:43:11Rich Roll?

  Human Design, that's another podcast, but yeah.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  She's badass. She does it. Like she has a line of people that want it so bad.

• 1:43:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  But she very rarely does one.

• 1:43:23Rich Roll?

  I love it.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  She's really good.

• 1:43:24Rich Roll?

  But I want to, I want to like kind of double click on this and really try to deconstruct this process for people that are listening or watching. You know, everybody has a dream or something they're trying to accomplish or a goal that feels a little bit out of reach. And it's easy to make excuses or to construct reasons why it's not rational or reasonable or possible. So help me to better understand like the mechanics of your goal setting process, the mantras, the manifestations, like what does that look like in terms of, you know, how you're going about your day?

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Well, the mantra is loving, kind and helpful. And if we're loving, kind and helpful all day long, I mean. You're gonna feel great, because everybody around you is gonna be feel great. And everything's gonna unfold as it should. I've been up, you know, I like to get up really early and do my little meditation and, and when we're really on point, like in the first, I'd say five years, maybe even longer, we would wake up together every morning, we would do our little meditation, then we'd write down what we want to work on personal growth, and what we want to work on career, and then we would actually manifest.

• 1:44:45Rich Roll?

  Right, so that's a daily thing?

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, together.

• 1:44:48Rich Roll?

  Making a very specific answer to those respective questions.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  The outcome. The actual outcome. See yourself where you, where that goal leads you.

• 1:44:59Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Live in that reality. Feel it, right, to your bones, because you can't experience it. If you're not visualizing it, then how is it gonna be possible, right? That's the idea.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  And don't be too rigidly attached to the end game. Let it morph if it wants to. Let it go this way or that way. Don't be too rigidly attached to the outcome.

• 1:45:24Rich Roll?

  So this is a daily practice. Do you do this in the morning, at night?

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Morning. We were doing the morning, just morning, too, and night, and it, sometimes.

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  When, when we were really wanting to create what it was, it was morning and night.

• 1:45:39Rich Roll?

  Morning and night, or morning and, so twice a day?

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  We haven't done it since we had the kids. That's eight years now.

• 1:45:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  Another key point I would talk about, you know, is choice every moment of every day. Every action, every word.

• 1:45:53Rich Roll?

  Right, like.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  It's a choice that's either gonna bring you closer or farther away. That's just a fact. Like, every single choice is either closer or farther away.

• 1:46:00Rich Roll?

  Right. See, I invited Nicole to sit in on this. I'm thinking that's the better podcast.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  I can go get her over here and, and.

• 1:46:06Rich Roll?

  We don't want to do it.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  I can watch the baby. No, she is the best.

• 1:46:10Rich Roll?

  You want to come in for this part?

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, come on in. Bring the baby.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  As long as the baby is, okay, can we just?

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  No, that baby's a dream. She'll just sit there.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  Can we just shut, set up the extra mic really quick? I knew we needed to have Nicole on, right? I'm so glad you're joining us.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:46:25Rich Roll?

  Thanks.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  It's an honor, truly.

• 1:46:26Rich Roll?

  The baby is asleep, so I think this is like, this is the juice. This is the best part of the podcast. I want to get deep on the mindset techniques and the manifesting and the dream weaving, all the mystical energy that gets injected into, you know, what's required to like, chase an audacious goal, especially when it feels like the world is lined up against you.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  It's true. It's a good stuff. Magic. And it is a little bit of magic. I think you have to have that belief that, and you have to believe that anything is possible. You know, in today's, today's world, it's almost like they don't want us to accomplish our dreams. You know, they fill our days with distractions and, and also maybe a disbelief in that you have to be a certain way to be successful, and that's just not true. And that's the beauty about human design, which we've mentioned a couple of times, is that, you know, human design is all about deconditioning yourself back to your authentic

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  being so that you can really, your energetic aura can be inviting the universe to send you what you are really meant to have.

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  And you can be fully expressed in what you're naturally inclined to do.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:47:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  You don't have to wake up at 5:00 a.m. if that's not what you're meant to do to be successful. You can still be successful without being exhausted.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Wait, what? You don't have to wake up at 5:00 a.m.?

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  Well, you're a generator. You're meant to, so go for it.

• 1:48:00Rich Roll?

  Right, that's the thing with all these like, here's the morning routine. Here's what you need to be successful. Well, like first, understand thyself. Like, how are you wired? Not everybody is wired the same.

• 1:48:10Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's super important.

• 1:48:12Rich Roll?

  My family is, is all generators, except our youngest is a, I can't remember whether he's a projector or a reflector, but in either case... It's a totally different energy, right? This is somebody who needs a lot of alone time, can go out in the world, but then has to go decompress.

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  Decompress, it's really important.

• 1:48:32Rich Roll?

  And has to be invited into things and as opposed to going out and chasing things. And it's just a different wiring. And like, understanding that allows us as parents to figure out a better means to support that type of energetic system.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  It really changes the parenting game, yeah, absolutely. And another thing is also, I think it's super important who you surround yourself with when you have these dreams and these goals. You know, your team, and your team is everyone you surround yourself with. It's not just your team, it's, you know, your friends, it's your family. It's anyone you choose to surround yourself with, you know. They're part of your journey and you have to be with people who really believe in you.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  And when you have these goals with these roadmap, or what do we call it, a roadmap?

• 1:49:26Speaker 02

  A blueprint.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  A blueprint. It's really important to understand that every second of every day that you spend not on what's on that map will take you further away from your goal.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Right, it's knowing that every word we speak is a choice. Everything we consume in our, on our phones, on the TV, on our computers, in our body, our food, is bringing us closer.

• 1:49:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  Or farther away.

• 1:49:59Rich Roll?

  There is nothing static. Everything is in flux. So every decision that you make, every interaction that you have, every thought that you entertain, every word that comes out of your mouth is moving you towards the thing that you aspire to achieve or be, or away from it. And when you can root yourself in the moment and really appreciate that, it really helps drive a better decision tree and helps you to say no to the things that aren't serving you, et cetera. But you have to overcome all your kind of default programming.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  For sure, there's a lot of work to be done.

• 1:50:28Rich Roll?

  For me, it's people pleasing, you know, like all this other noise that gets in the way, right?

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  And we like to say that we are by no means the best at that, but we're always working on it. And we're always working to better ourselves and our lives and our team and the world.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  But going back to... Real tools that you can do. You know, so here you are wanting every choice you make throughout the day to be bringing you closer to these goals you have. So what really helps is, you know, you're making this blueprint. Here's my goal. This is what I need to do. And as Garrett said, you know, he put it everywhere. So if you walk into our bathroom, on the mirror, expo marker, you know, you have your mantras written, you have your goal written, you get in your car, have a little sticky note. Like, a great way to do it is take your blueprint, take a picture of it, and make it your home screen.

• 1:51:16Rich Roll?

  Put it on your home screen on your phone, which you look at a million times a day.

• 1:51:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, the more you see it, the more you're feeling it, and plus, the easier it'll be to make the decisions that are getting you closer.

• 1:51:30Rich Roll?

  So, Garrett, I know that you've said that you're not an adrenaline junkie. But clearly, you have a certain kind of unique relationship with risk and adventure. And I know Nicole has said that like, the riskiest thing you've ever done is get involved with this guy Garrett, right? Your relationship with risk is different. Maybe on a relationship level, like you have a high-risk, you know, sort of tolerance?

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:51:59Rich Roll?

  Because, well, you got involved with him, so you know you're going on some crazy adventure. You didn't meet her father. I saw it. Well, I saw him. I'm like, that guy looks like a character.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  He is a character. That's the only way to describe him, is character. But I really, you had the most beautiful description of our relationship that I've ever heard, is that, you know, the alchemy of it. And, you know, I always say, you know, that we were wrought together for a reason. Like, it's really clear that we're together because we can do great, you know, help the world a little bit. And when we started the documentary, you know, I told them, I was like, "Look, we'll do this, but there is no way that I'm making a surf movie." Like if you guys have any desire to make a surf movie, we're out of here. The only way I'm doing this and us putting our time in is if it's inspiring. Like I want people to walk away knowing that it truly is.

• 1:52:53Speaker 02

  It's like never too early and never too late to follow your dreams. And on top of that, when people say you can't do it, like the doctor said, you're probably never going to surf again, your arm's never going to work again. Like, that's a big thing to mentally overcome. And, you know, people are going to face adversity every day of people who don't think they can do it. Because people don't want them to do it, because then that means they're gonna have to go do it.

• 1:53:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  You know, it's like this comfort.

• 1:53:19Rich Roll?

  It puts you right in your face, like if this, so when you surfed the 78 footer, that was 2011, right? We're the same age, I think we're the same age. So that makes you 44 at the time.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Forty-three.

• 1:53:36Rich Roll?

  Forty-three, okay, right. So I love that, like that's, that's, that same year is kind of when I was hitting my peak as an athlete and doing things I didn't think was possible. And that's a story that's inspiring to other people. But what people don't get or realize or appreciate is in the lead up to that, when you're doing the reps and the work to get to that point, not a lot of support. Like, a lot of people are, because it's challenge, like, oh, if you're doing that, that that means that maybe I should be deconstructing how I'm living. And that's scary for a lot of people.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  It's uncomfortable.

• 1:54:07Rich Roll?

  For understandable reasons, right? So you can't expect that kind of support, which means your nucleus, like the people that you surround yourself with are super important. And this bond that you guys have is really the key to, you know, everything. It is like the, the nuclear power generator for all of what has transpired.

• 1:54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Rich Roll?

  It's cool. And so I am interested in like, when, when did the documentary, like, when did these guys approach you? I mean, Chris Smith is not going to make a surf documentary. Like, he's a super experienced, he's gonna, he's gonna tell really interesting nuance.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Tiger King.

• 1:54:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, tales, like, yeah, it's like, this guy knows what he's doing. He's not like a surf documentarian. He wants to tell a story.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  She doesn't like to take credit for us going to Nazaré because she answered the email and got us there, even though we wouldn't have went if she didn't get on the email chain. But...

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  This documentary 100% would never have happened without her. And because she's a projector, she's very organized. And she wrote a little treatment that was just super inspiring. Everything's possible.

• 1:55:20Speaker 02

  Well, it was really, it was really going to focus on Garrett, Cotty and CJ because CJ broke his back. Cotty broke his back.

• 1:55:28Rich Roll?

  CJ is your brother.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  Yes. And Garrett's shoulder injury. So it was really about how the human spirit is limitless and we're all limitless. An inspirational one hour documentary.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  One and a half, one and a half.

• 1:55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna do it. We were gonna do it ourselves, you know, like Gorilla. And my cousin is married to Joe Lewis, the producer. So I had called just for advice. And he's like, oh, this is really good. And, you know, it just worked out that he's like, oh, you know, I'll do it if you want. So I knew in that agreement that I was pretty much giving away

• 1:56:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  Creative direction. So he came on board as the producer and the first thing he did was get Chris Smith. But it's really funny when talking to Chris, if you ask Chris, he'll be like, yeah.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  No interest.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  When Joe said surf, I was like, no way. I have no interest, but I'll, but I'll talk to Garrett.

• 1:56:19Speaker 01

  For Joe.

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we had this Zoom call and Chris says, the only reason I did it is because Garrett's just so interesting.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Joe did it because he said, this is gonna win an Oscar. But the one and a half hour version.

• 1:56:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so what was the decision to make it a series as opposed to a standalone documentary?

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  They somehow it got missed that we had archival footage from a long, long time ago. So we sent him just literally a suitcase full of of hard drives, full of, and when they, when they saw how much they had, they, they were like, this has to be a docu-series.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  And Nicole was crushed. She was like, my Oscar, oh no.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  But Joe's like, don't worry, we'll get an Emmy. I'm like, alright.

• 1:57:11Rich Roll?

  Won the Emmy, come on, you know?

• 1:57:13Speaker 02

  And then, and now we have season two, which

• 1:57:16Rich Roll?

  So you must have already, you've been shooting that.

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  Yes, so

• 1:57:19Rich Roll?

  Is it already wrapped?

• 1:57:20Speaker 02

  It's really hard, yes, it's hard to believe, but season two is better than season one.

• 1:57:25Rich Roll?

  When is that gonna premiere?

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  Uh, probably January.

• 1:57:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, in January. That's coming up quick. Wow. So, I mean, congrats.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:57:33Rich Roll?

  That's unbelievable. Nicole, when you, I'm sure you've gotten asked this before, but you know, when, when Chris is like, Garrett is so interesting, like, what is that quality in Garrett that makes him different or capable of surfing these big waves? Like, how do you think about that? Like, what is his secret sauce in, in that recipe of uniqueness?

• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting, and I'm gonna take it back to human design again.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, that interesting word, I use that instead of saying something negative.

• 1:58:04Rich Roll?

  Is that a pejorative?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Instead of saying, well, so interesting. Instead of saying something negative, a lot.

• 1:58:09Rich Roll?

  For you, for people that are just listening and not watching on YouTube, like, he's making googly eyes.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 1:58:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, you're very animated and like, you're your own character, you know? Like, you're a cartoon character of yourself.

• 1:58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:58:25Rich Roll?

  And I'm not saying that pejoratively, like, in a very, you know, endearing way.

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:58:30Rich Roll?

  And there's an earnestness to you, you know?

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's charismatic.

• 1:58:34Rich Roll?

  There's a, there's a, but it's not performative charisma.

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  It's who he really is.

• 1:58:39Rich Roll?

  Like, it's an authenticity.

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  Exactly, and that's why I take it back to human design. So, generators are meant to have these just super open auras that just attract everything to them because they're just so glowing and fun and light and, and genuine. And what happens is we become conditioned our whole life to shut that down. And as much as I will say that Garrett's childhood was completely disturbing, he didn't really get conditioned, you know? His authentic, like, charismatic, like, open aura.

• 1:59:17Rich Roll?

  A beginner's mind and a childlike.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  Yes, an innocence.

• 1:59:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  There's an innocence to him that makes him just, you know, he's, he's a lover. He has just a super loving heart at the end of the day. He's, he's really a gentle, gentle person.

• 1:59:38Rich Roll?

  How does that translate into the parenting stuff?

• 1:59:42Speaker 02

  Oh, let's not even go there.

• 1:59:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a whole other podcast.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny, when he tries to parent, I'm like, where are you, like, do you have scientific?

• 1:59:50Rich Roll?

  Well, you have no.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  Right, exactly, that's what I say.

• 1:59:53Rich Roll?

  There's been no example in your life for healthy parenting.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  Exactly, so I'm like, so how do you know that this is working? Have you read a book? If you've read a book and you have some research to back it up.

• 2:00:03Rich Roll?

  There's something to be said for that in this day and age, like, and I'm sure there's a lot of that in your, in your kids' experience, but.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  I'm very lucky that they're very open to letting the kids experience things.

• 2:00:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, are you capable of disciplining your kids?

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Hmm, I, I mean, definitely not physically, but, um, actually, I would probably grab their ear and pull them.

• 2:00:26Rich Roll?

  Can you set a boundary? Do you know how to set a boundary, like, with your kids?

• 2:00:31Speaker 01

  At times, I mean, it depends on what.

• 2:00:34Rich Roll?

  Because you don't have, you never had one, so.

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  He goes, I don't know, he always says, when he has the kids, he's like, I don't know, it was so easy. I'm like, yeah, because you let them do whatever they wanted to do and gave them whatever they wanted.

• 2:00:44Rich Roll?

  But you, as a, as a professional athlete who's done things nobody else has done, there is a certain, you have a capacity for discipline and rigor in your life. Like, you weren't taught that, that wasn't part of your rearing, right? But you've learned that for yourself and you've kind of shouldered the responsibility of creating that structure so that you could accomplish these goals. And I'm sure, I'm sure Nicole is helpful in that regard, but like, it's like an unlikely story that you would become somebody who could, you know.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  Parent some children?

• 2:01:16Rich Roll?

  Well, parent yourself, like, you had to, you had to parent yourself, right? So you had to learn these things outside of the household. But I'm interested in like, you know, the discipline, the rigor, the accountability piece, all of that, you know, as a professional athlete, like, how did you figure that out?

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  I don't know, I was always into health, eating healthy, whether I did it all the time or not. I was aware from young.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we'd been vegetarians and we grew so many different vegetables and fruit trees. They used to call me Luther Burbank, a world renowned botanist you might have heard.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  But just because, maybe from lack, wanting to achieve, figuring out how to actually achieve, how to succeed. And then just, I don't know how I actually, Well, the Business Plan for Dummies was definitely the catalyst for the ends, for where I am now and after thirty-five.

• 2:02:21Rich Roll?

  Right, but in the context of being an athlete, being a high-performance athlete, like, what does the training look like? Like, how do you prepare mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, to drop in on a wave of that gravitas?

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  I love training and I love working out with a group of people, but I also like working out by myself with a trainer. And back in the day, I had my gym, so I would do my weights and I would ride my bike up Pupukea Hill and then I would go to the track at Sunset Beach and run this quarter-mile track where there was benches on one leg of it and I would do hold-my-breath exercises there and that was enough. I credit my, all the experiences I've had underwater were enjoyable because I did my hold-my-breath exercises. Today, there's so much more, there's so many different, there's so much breath work, you have an Iceman, we have Wim Hof, we got all these freedivers.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  I mean, there's so many different tools now that we can access through social media, through friends.

• 2:03:29Rich Roll?

  The breath work thing was really interesting. You brought in a freediver to teach you guys how to do static breath holds and Nicole, you got to like three and a half minutes or something like that, like doing that. But like, that was so cool that you're like, let's, we need to learn this. If we're gonna be on these waves, like, this is gonna be a key thing to understand.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  And then the, um, there's so many good trainers. I was just in Austin, Texas, training with all these trainers. I loved it. I have a personal trainer in Hawaii, Sherry Gunnaway, who's a godsend. She is just so hands-on and she actually does the body work, which is the best in the world that I've ever experienced. And I've had it all, treatments all over the world. And she's also like a psychic and I mean, it's just, yeah.

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I've trained with Kyborg, I got functional fitness gym, and then Daniel Bachmann up at Sunset. And in Portugal, there's a gym right in Nazar, there's two or three gyms in Nazaré. But that's more I work, do that on my own. I like working with the crew.

• 2:04:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  I like working with somebody or a few people.

• 2:04:33Rich Roll?

  And talk to me about the yoga piece. So this forest yoga is like a big deal for you guys.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Have you ever tried it?

• 2:04:39Rich Roll?

  No, no, no.

• 2:04:40Speaker 02

  She's really amazing.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  Do you ever want to do yoga? Forest yoga is by far the best we've ever experienced. And we've

• 2:04:45Speaker 02

  Well, I love it because it's really, you know, yoga nowadays.

• 2:04:49Rich Roll?

  What does it actually mean?

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  Right. And today it's just, you know, I don't think it is, what it is today is not what it's meant to be. And that's why I really love forest yoga is because it kind of takes it back to what it should be. Um, well, I shouldn't even say should, but what it, you know, what it is. And I love the ceremony part, aspect of it too, which they didn't show much of that in the series. But, you know, every, uh, every class starts out with a ceremony, like this deep ceremony of gratitude and, and the land that our ancestors.

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  And, and then it's also about really how you were saying, the guy you had on your podcast last week. It's, you know, we hold our trauma in our body. And it's using the postures to move that trauma out of the body. And that's why I thought it would be really great for Garrett, you know, not only from his childhood traumas, but also his physical traumas and the scar tissue and for all three of them.

• 2:06:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's great. Yoga's, yoga, I hate saying yoga, but yeah. You know, it's, it's super important for your mental and physical.

• 2:06:12Rich Roll?

  Right. And your, your spiritual growth.

• 2:06:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:15Rich Roll?

  Of course, you know, so forest yoga, it's not forest like trees, it's anaphor.

• 2:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:20Rich Roll?

  What was the name of the book that she wrote?

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  Fierce Medicine.

• 2:06:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, good job.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  And she's just.

• 2:06:25Speaker 02

  She's fierce.

• 2:06:25Speaker 01

  So powerful.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  She's a wizard.

• 2:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Rich Roll?

  And beyond that, like, so, all right, so you have the weights and you have the breath holds and you have the breathing techniques, the cold baths, like all that kind of stuff, like what else is part of, like, I feel like,

• 2:06:44Rich Roll?

  because big wave surfing is still pretty new, right? Like figuring out, like, how do you prepare for something like this? Like, what is the best methodology to get you right? Like, you have to be physically sound and strong, of course, and there's techniques for accomplishing that, but like, how do you mentally and emotionally get your head in the right place to tackle, you know, that kind of fear inducing, you know?

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  For me, being physically prepared, strength and stamina, breath. Then mentally, I haven't been back to where I was before I got hurt physically. So I'm still stuck, challenged with the mental a little bit. Always wondering if I'm actually gonna enjoy it still, because I always enjoyed it, didn't matter what was going on, and now I'm kinda, huh.

• 2:07:31Rich Roll?

  And you get back.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the breath work is so important, uh, leading up, you know, for two weeks minimum, a month or two better. And then on your way out and while engaging breath work, like on your way out, you breathe up, so you're hyper-oxygenated. Then you're sitting there waiting for a while, okay, keep doing your breathing. You're getting ready to take that wave, wake, make sure you, you were high, you know, oxygenated beyond. And so when you actually, uh, if you don't make the wave. The beat down will be enjoyable. If you're not ready, it'll be super stressful and you could end up passing out. But then your body has to be able to hold together.

• 2:08:17Speaker 02

  The breath work, I think, is the most important. No spoiler alerts, but season two, you know, CJ has this situation where he says like, if it wasn't for all my breath work, he probably wouldn't be here.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  He would have passed out. We would have found him.

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  Okay, but yeah, it's, I think, because along with the breath work, depending which kind you practice, you know, a lot of the breath work practices these days also, you know, touch on the spiritual and the emotional part. And, you know, you can go to places through breath work that, you know, you can reach some traumas and heal. You can heal through breath work.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  You can have a medicine experience from the, what is it? The holotropic. Oh my God, I've gone places like, who needs, who needs medicine right here? Breath.

• 2:09:06Rich Roll?

  My wife takes groups of people through those experiences and then we all get together and share. And it's crazy what happens to people. They have insane emotional breakthroughs. They go to different places and are like

• 2:09:21Speaker 02

  And it's just the breath.

• 2:09:22Rich Roll?

  Inhabiting the bodies of animals and like all kinds. It's like wilder than any kind of psychedelic experience. It's very, very powerful. And I think we're just at the beginning of truly learning and understanding the power of breath and how to harness it for all manner of things beyond just respiration. You know, it's, it's super interesting. In the, in the kind of context of your story, I mean, it's super inspiring to see somebody blossom and really find their, their, their power like later in life. You know, I feel like so many people feel like the story of their life is written at 25. This is who I am. This is my career, this is where I live, these are my people,

• 2:10:05Rich Roll?

  and this is just gonna be my thing, right? And, you know, I've experienced a later in life kind of transition or, you know, kind of different kind of trajectory for my life. And I see kinship in what you've done in a different way, you know, doing it later in life. And so I think it would be instructive to share a little bit about, you know, what that has been like. Like, you could have stayed running that store. You could have stayed doing what you were always doing and kind of succumbing to the pressures of just, this is what life is supposed to be like as an adult. And, you know, it takes a lot of courage to break free of that and to take a risk and try something different, especially when you're in your late 30s or 40s

• 2:10:48Rich Roll?

  and you, you know, kind of doing what you're doing now into your 50s, like, with no end in sight. I think it helps really, it helps people raise the ceiling on their perception of what's possible for themselves.

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 2:11:06Speaker 02

  What was it?

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  What was it?

• 2:11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, what made you at 35 decide this, you know? I know this isn't what I want for my life, so I'm going to go for it instead of, because most people would just, I know I don't like this, but this is what I'm supposed to do.

• 2:11:23Speaker 01

  I just wanted to keep surfing.

• 2:11:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but I think what it is, Nicole, it goes to something you said earlier, which is, is because Garrett had this unique childhood experience where he wasn't conditioned in the way most of us were. He's been able to maintain a connection with his childlike sensibilities. And what, what gives and gave him joy, right? Like, you've talked about, like, if you're struggling to figure out what that is, like, go back to when you were three years old, right? But we have so much conditioning and programming to prevent us from looking in the rearview in that way and connecting deeply emotionally with those very pure kind of primal impulses that we had as, as young people, right? But I feel like you've, you, what's unique about you

• 2:12:10Rich Roll?

  is like, that connective tissue was never ruptured.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  I feel like in this world, we're conditioned to settle and to just do what we're supposed to do. And somehow through my childhood and all of my life, I was not doing what you're supposed to besides that one point in time when I had the store. And it just didn't feel right. And I mean, just like in my marriage, I didn't want to, you know, I settled. And at the end of the day, I moved on and I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't. And I really work on not having any regrets. Whether you felt it was a bad decision or not, I work on not having any regrets.

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  And through that journey, I've released any regrets that I may have had or any. Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:13:10Rich Roll?

  So for somebody who's maybe grappling with their own discontentment, what is the recommendation or the advice that you could give to that person to help them kind of connect with something deeper that might help them reckon with it?

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  That's easy. Figure out what you love doing. Figure out what you're passionate about.

• 2:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but how do you do that? Okay, I would start with probably.

• 2:13:36Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I said, go back to when you were three.

• 2:13:37Speaker 02

  Or the, I think the medicine, the beauty way, the medicine wheel really helped you, the book. I mean, the book is great because it, they.

• 2:13:48Rich Roll?

  This is.

• 2:13:49Speaker 02

  No, no, this is the medicine wheel.

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 2:13:52Rich Roll?

  It's amazing.

• 2:13:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's great because it's really simplified it so that people can do the exercises in their living room if they want. They don't have to go into the forest for four days with no food and water. I mean, they could. It's helpful, but the book has set it up to really, you know. Kind of look at the things that are causing the pain and holding you back and how to work through it.

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  Right. Well, figure out what you think you like doing, or better to love doing it. And then figure out how to make that your life, what the goal, okay, I love doing this. How do I make that a career? And then you make the roadmap, you make the blueprint and you follow it and you'll be doing it. And as I said, don't stay rigidly attached. If it morphs to another direction, go check that out. If you achieve it and you're really here and you're like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be, then go at it again.

• 2:14:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that idea of holding it loosely is important because if you are too rigid, then you're short-circuiting your ability to be available for the miracle.

• 2:15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:00Rich Roll?

  Because the miracle doesn't show up in a prepackaged way, on time, as predicted. It doesn't work that way, right? It's a meandering path and you kind of have to have that north star that's driving you, but also be kind of available and open to the turns in the road along the way. Because sometimes when those are, those are the messages that actually like lead you towards the greater opportunity that didn't even occur to you.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:28Speaker 02

  The one path leads to a totally new path you never thought even existed.

• 2:15:36Rich Roll?

  She's getting antsy. Don't worry, we're gonna wrap it up here. I mean, maybe that...

• 2:15:40Speaker 02

  I do think, I know you asked him about fear. I do think he missed some key.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was that?

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Fear is, you know, something that we choose, something we manufacture in our mind. And it's when we're thinking about the past or thinking about the future, and those two things do not exist. So if we fully embrace the moment and just think about where we are in that moment and do our best in that moment, fear does not exist.

• 2:16:09Rich Roll?

  It can't, it can't live in the present moment.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  It doesn't.

• 2:16:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's powerful.

• 2:16:15Speaker 02

  We had a great guy, Kent, you know, he taught us PCP, just be PCP and, you know, that's what he does out in water. Present, and so when you're fully present, then you're connected to Source, to Spirit, and then you're gonna be protected.

• 2:16:33Rich Roll?

  So, present, connected, protected.

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  PCP, baby. Not what you're thinking.

• 2:16:39Rich Roll?

  Different kind of, yeah. The other PCP.

• 2:16:43Speaker 01

  No, thank you.

• 2:16:44Rich Roll?

  Maybe not so present or connected. Definitely not protected, no. Um, alright, well, what's on the, uh, what are on all the sticky notes now? Like, what's on the, uh, the, the screensaver on the, on the iPhone? Like, what is the dream, the goal?

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  Do I have a picture of it here?

• 2:17:00Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  It's on the fridge, latest one.

• 2:17:05Speaker 01

  It's been morphing lately.

• 2:17:06Speaker 02

  Be conscious parents.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  Conscious parenting, definitely at the top.

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  There's a few projects in the pipeline. You don't, you, you might remember some of it that's important? What, what are the goals right now that?

• 2:17:23Speaker 02

  Love your wife.

• 2:17:25Rich Roll?

  There you go. You need a sticky note for that? Come on.

• 2:17:30Speaker 02

  I just tell them, like, if you just love me, then I'll do everything else. Because I'll be so watered and blossoming that I'll just want to do everything, so.

• 2:17:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool, alright, cool.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  Look, she agrees.

• 2:17:44Rich Roll?

  Are you, uh, so you split the, you split your time between Hawaii and, uh, Nazaré now, right? Like, you, you have a home there and you live in Portugal half the year? Yeah?

• 2:17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, we love Portugal, we, we love Hawaii, we love LA. Um, we have really good, quality friends here. And we're really, you know, like, as you're saying, it's all about who you surround yourself with. And, and, uh, the funny one is, do you want to hang out on the, on the ground and, with the chickens and eat worms? Or you want to soar with the eagles? So, we've been really focusing on, um, quality friends. And another one, for lack of a better word, expanders. People that you look up to or aspire to be like, or, or really inspire you. And they don't have to be wealth or anything, just inspirational people that have goodness. Nothing about wealth.

• 2:18:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's good advice.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  Health is wealth. Number one is health above all.

• 2:18:41Rich Roll?

  There you go, buddy. Cool. Well, I feel like we just touched the surface on what I could talk to you guys about, but I think we can wrap it up for today. That was amazing. Thank you.

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:18:55Rich Roll?

  I'm really inspired by the journey that the two of you guys are on, and I can't wait to see season two, man. It's exciting. You guys are Emmy Award winners now. It's crazy. You got season two coming up in January, and I want to see all your goals manifest, my friend. So, consider me a resource if there's anything I can do to help either of you.

• 2:19:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. And us as well, for you. Whenever you come to Hawaii or Portugal, let us know.

• 2:19:21Rich Roll?

  Cool. So, obviously, everybody should check out Hundred Foot Wave on HBO, HBO Max. Where else should people go to learn more about you guys? Your Instagram?

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  McNamara underscore S.

• 2:19:36Rich Roll?

  And that's for...

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  The McNamara family.

• 2:19:37Rich Roll?

  And then we've got... Yours is like Mama... Mama Unearthed. Yeah, Mama Unearthed. Right? That's good. I like that.

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  She's the philosopher.

• 2:19:45Rich Roll?

  She is.

• 2:19:46Speaker 01

  Leave no stone unturned.

• 2:19:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, no unearthing your essence. No unearthing your essence. Yeah.

• 2:19:53Speaker 01

  Unearth your essence.

• 2:19:54Rich Roll?

  Or like you completely deconditioned. You're an unearthed or real self. 100%. Listen to her. All right.

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:20:04Rich Roll?

  Cool. Come back and share with me again sometime. Peace.

• 2:20:16Rich Roll?

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

• 2:20:47Rich Roll?

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

• 2:21:29Rich Roll?

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