Moby on Transforming Electronic Music, Elevating Consciousness & Saving The Planet

Most know Moby as the eclectic and introspective DJ / musician behind Play — an album that sold over 12 million copies and elevated dance electronica from the clubs of lower Manhattan into a full-blown mainstream phenomenon. Far more interesting is the story of Moby himself. Reared in suburban poverty by a single mom, Moby was an awkward, alienated kid who turned early and often to music for comfort. Classical guitar and music theory morphed into high school punk efforts like the Vatican Commandoes and post college dropout stints DJ'ing at local Connecticut nightclubs. But traction eluded him. So in 1989, this poor, white, skinny, Christian, vegan teetotaler pilgrimaged south to lower Manhattan, thrusting his frail, wide-eyed self into the beautiful, hedonistic, harrowing life of art, music & impoverished squalor that defined the drug-fueled dance music scene of downtown New York City in the 1990's. Cribbing from the flap copy of Porcelain*, Moby's arresting, magnificent new memoir hitting bookstores next week, “[h]e would learn what it was to be spat on, to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City: the age of AIDS and crack but also of a defiantly festive cultural underworld. Not without drama, he found his way. But success was not uncomplicated; it led to wretched, if in hindsight sometimes hilarious, excess and proved all too fleeting. And so by the end of the decade, Moby contemplated an end in his career and elsewhere in his life, and put that emotion into what he assumed would be his swan song, his good-bye to all that, the album that would in fact be the beginning of an astonishing new phase: the multimillion-selling Play.” Not only was Play a multi-platinum smash success, it would soon become the soundtrack to our lives — a record that would shift culture and cement Moby as one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time. Wealth and fame arrived. Obsession followed. And Moby embraced it all. Mansions, lofts and country manors. Debauchery, blowouts and binges. Whatever, whenever. Anytime, all the time. It was always too much. It was never enough. And this is where things get really interesting. The story of Moby is one of fidelity to authenticity. It’s about a life defined by survival, perseverance and self-belief. It's about losing one’s self to surrender to the higher self within. It's about discovering what is most important in life. And the beautiful trudge towards clarity, purpose, satisfaction and service. Today we explore the remarkable life of a most extraordinary artist — a man as introspective as he is self-deprecating; and as serious as he is deadpan droll. I absolutely love this exchange. So press Play and enjoy. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Speaker 01

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• 1:24Rich Roll?

  That's Moby, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:38Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  Greetings, Planet Earth dwellers and podcast listeners. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, the show where each week I sit down with paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of culture, art, health, wellness, nutrition, spirituality, meditation, fitness, athletic performance, entrepreneurship, creativity, you get the picture. I do it to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So, thank you so much for tuning in today, for subscribing on iTunes, for leaving a review on iTunes, and of course... Big love to everybody who has made a habit of always using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Doesn't cost you a cent extra. Click the banner

• 2:27Rich Roll?

  on any episode page at richroll.com. Takes you to Amazon. Buy what you're gonna buy. It's all good. Amazon kicks us some loose commission change and that is greatly appreciated. So, thank you so much. Alright, I got the one and only Moby on the podcast today. Very exciting stuff. You guys know Moby, right? I'm pretty sure most people know who this guy is. I mean, he's one of the most iconic and interesting musicians of our time. But perhaps even more interesting than his music is his story. The story of Richard Melville Hall, which is this really compelling path from suburban poverty and alienation to living this beautiful and at times harrowing life

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  of art, music, and impoverished squalor in downtown New York City in the 1980s and the 1990s as a DJ and a musician. This sort of awkward, poor, skinny, teetotalling, vegan white kid from Connecticut who gets thrust into the hedonistic, drug-fueled, dance-music club scene at a time when crack and AIDS dominated the streets of New York. And after 10 years of this, Moby contemplated hanging it all up. Just one more record, a swan song "Goodbye" before calling it a day. And that record was Play. It was a record that not only sold over 10 million copies, it's a record that seemingly found its way into countless

• 3:53Rich Roll?

  commercials and major motion pictures. It really ushered in an entirely new form of electronic music that literally shifted our culture. And it made him rich. It made him famous. But it didn't necessarily make him happy. And that's where I think things get really interesting. I got a couple more things I want to say about Moby, but first...

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  All right, back to Moby. So, I don't know. This is a really interesting exploration of an extraordinary life, an extraordinary artist, and in certain respects, a really unlikely success. The fact that Moby considered that it might be his last record, you know, on the precipice of play coming out, is kind of a fascinating parable for commitment and perseverance and true, real fidelity to your voice. Anyway, this conversation is great. It's deep, it's funny, it's serious. It's about creativity, it's about artistry, it's about sobriety and advocacy. We talk about the music and art scene in 1980s New York, which is a favorite subject of mine. The

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  evolution of how Moby became Moby. We talk about alcoholism and recovery, the current state of the music industry. And Moby's had a lot of high highs and low lows. And so, what has he learned about what is truly important and meaningful in his life and in life in general? We talk about his veganism and his current advocacy. We talk about his new restaurant, Little Pine, in Silver Lake, which is amazing. And he has also been quite vociferous about the California drought in his advocacy and calling out the governor. We talk about that a little bit. And also, a little bit about his new book, which is called Porcelain. It's a memoir which comes out very soon, May 17. And it's funny, because we scheduled this

• 5:48Rich Roll?

  interview before I even knew he had a book coming out. I didn't even realize it until the day before the interview. I didn't get an advance copy. I still haven't read it, because it hasn't come out yet. But it is getting some really incredible early reviews and press buzz. I've seen the word masterpiece getting thrown about here and there. And he has these incredible blurbs from people like Salman Rushdie and Dave Eggers and Susan Orlean. And look, as a writer, that's about as good as it gets. So, I would surmise that this is a pretty incredible book, which I can tell you, I will definitely be reading the day it comes out. All right, enough. Let's press play and talk to Moby.

• 6:35Rich Roll?

  Thanks so much for doing this, man.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  My pleasure.

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me into your beautiful home. And as I was driving over here trying to wrap my head around the many points of intersection, all the different kinds of things that we could talk about, I thought, you know what, I should call John Joseph and ask him. And John, always the lively one, had, he's like, "Ask him about the punk days."

• 6:59Speaker 01

  "Ask him about the Vatican Commandos."

• 7:01Rich Roll?

  That's exactly what he said. Here, I can show you the text he sent me. What was it? Yeah, the Vatican Commandos, which was your punk band, right?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, in high school, so I was born in New York, on 168th Street. And then I moved to Connecticut and I went to high school there. And I had a high school punk rock band called The Vatican Commandos. And John Joseph might be one of the like 10 people on the planet who remembers seeing The Vatican Commandos.

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And how long did that last?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Hmm, let me think. We started our punk rock band in 1981, 1981. And I left in 83. The rest of them kept doing it until, I don't know, 85, 86. And we actually just had a reunion show in New York.

• 7:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. What are the other guys doing now?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  So this is perfectly in keeping with the world of Connecticut punk rock. One of the guys, the bass player, started a successful media company. And the singer, who like the last time I saw him in high school, had a blue mohawk and was doing acid, is now a brain surgeon.

• 8:10Rich Roll?

  That's classic.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  He's a neuroscientist and a brain surgeon. So this is what happens, like Connecticut punk rockers become doctors and start media companies, which is great.

• 8:18Rich Roll?

  So this was, was this after you were living in Darien and then moved to the city, or before you moved to Darien?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  This was, um, yes, I lived in Darien, Connecticut for about, let me think, maybe 15 years. And... I always have to qualify that because Darien, Connecticut is one of the wealthiest, preppiest towns on the planet. You know, like it's where they essentially invented white people.

• 8:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And when I hear about it, I think about like Robert Chambers and the preppy murder and like Dorian's and the Upper East Side.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  That's the gist of it. Yeah. So I haven't heard someone mention Dorian's in a long time. That's a pretty obscure reference. But so Darien is the whitest, wealthiest, preppiest place on the planet. What made it odd for me is that my mom and I were on food stamps and welfare and she was a pot-smoking hippie who dated artists. So I grew up in this very wealthy environment and we would have to borrow money to buy food. So it's given me like socioeconomic issues that I probably hold on to to this day.

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, that's pretty intense. And from what I gather, you know, there was a fair amount of chaos. I mean, your, your father died when you were quite young, like drunk driving accident or something like that. And your mom, you know, was sort of a wild, free spirit hippie person.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  She was an aspiring wild, spirit-free hippie person. She, I mean, like, because she was, this was, you know, I was born in 1965 and my dad died in 67. So then my 23 year old mom, who wanted to run off and be a hippie and move to Haight-Ashbury.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Suddenly found herself a single parent having to raise a child.

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  And so she did her best, but it was the late 60s and the early 70s.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  She's like, fuck it, I'll just bring him with me.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  That, that did happen a couple of times. Yeah. So I mean, I remember, I did have those experiences of like, being seven years old or six years old and waking up in a commune on a Saturday morning and like walking around and like trying to wake up the naked hippies.

• 10:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  To see if any of them could make me breakfast.

• 10:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, everybody has a story.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I think that that, you know, informs and, you know, underlying core theme of artistic sensibility and everything that you do. And, you know, I'm interested in, you know, where music started to come in and the kind of artistic, you know, spark that, you know, prompted you to move to New York City and, you know, begin this whole adventure.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Well, I remember the first time I heard music. I was four years old, I think four, and I was in the car with my mom. We had this very old, rusty, falling apart Plymouth something or other. And Creedence Clearwater Revival, Proud Mary came on the radio and I was transfixed and I refused to get out of the car until the song had ended. Which both sort of presaged two things. One, a lifetime spent obsessing over music. And two, just that capacity to obsess over anything. So I think at that point, my mom could have looked at me and said, okay, at some point, you'll be a musician and an alcoholic.

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Because no four-year-old

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  That kind of focus.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  gets this kind of like focus, like obsessed OCD focus on something.

• 11:35Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And so how did that begin to manifest? Did you start tinkering with instruments or did your mom say, well, I should, I should probably, you know, get him some lessons or?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Both. So my mom played piano. She had a bunch of different boyfriends, all of whom played different instruments. My uncle played the recorder, you know, like the little wooden flute. Another uncle who played guitar. And so I grew up around all these instruments. And basically, growing up, rather than play sports or hang out with girls, I just played music. Like I borrowed my mom's records. So I'd like stay homesick from school, watch cartoons, play guitar, and listen to my mom's records.

• 12:21Rich Roll?

  And are you one of those people that can just pick up an instrument and just, what's that word called where you can, like an autodidact where you can just learn it, you hear it, and you don't have to learn music per se, like how to read music, but you can just pick it up?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm, I mean, I'm an autodidact in a sense that I'm for the most part self-taught. Like I had, I had a couple of years of music theory lessons and studying classical music when I was very young. But Yeah, I don't know if I have any special ability when it comes to picking up a new instrument, but I have no fear of picking up a new instrument. So like a lot of people, if you put them in front of a cello, they'll assume they're not allowed to touch it. And I am perfectly happy to pick it up and start playing around with it and see if I can get sound out of it, even if it sounds terrible.

• 13:07Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And so when was the first band?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  The first band, uh, when I was 10 years old, 10 or 11 years old, I started a cover band with some friends. It was a bass player, me, and a drummer. And we had no singer, and we learned three songs. We learned "Happy Birthday" by The Beatles. We learned the bass line from "Money" by Pink Floyd, and I think "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin. So our rehearsals, we didn't have-

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  Marketable, marketable skills.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  You go on the birthday party circuit with that.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  And, uh, but the problem is we didn't have a singer and we were all too scared to try singing. So we would just get together and do like these three songs over and over and over again.

• 13:54Rich Roll?

  But did you know, like even then, like this is it for me? Like this is what it's gonna be?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  I guess, mm, no, not really. I mean, I knew that I wanted my entire life to be spent in the world of music, but I never thought of it as a job.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Because everyone in my family, my mom, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, for the most part, were artists who never had any commercial success. So I just assumed that if I decided to be an artist or musician, I would do it because I loved it and never have a career. Is that, so I thought I would have to become a lawyer, or, I mean, I was a philosophy major in school, so I assumed I would go to get my masters or my doctorate in philosophy, teach philosophy at some public college somewhere, you know, some state school. I imagined I would be in a loveless marriage, and I would live in like some cold New England town, and I would like, my wife would get fat and I would get skinny and I would start smoking just to sort of like die early

• 14:58Speaker 01

  and make music in my spare time.

• 15:00Rich Roll?

  That's a very specific image.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Kind of.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  You've put a lot of thought into that.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  That's, that's what I thought was gonna end up happening.

• 15:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And music was just gonna be this thing that I did obsessively, but on the side, and never for a second thought that I would have any like professional life around music.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but, but it seems like there's, there's artistic impulses kind of oozing out. And you have the photography thing too, like that started pretty early too. And didn't you study that formally?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, uh, well, my uncle, who had been a photographer for the New York Times, gave me my first camera when I was 10. So when I was 10, I got my first guitar and my first camera. And I did both of them obsessively. The thing is guitar, and by the way, I have to apologize, there are gonna be sounds in the background because we're sitting almost outside.

• 15:46Rich Roll?

  We're in the world.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you hear a saw or a helicopter, um, you can blame Los Angeles.

• 15:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  But, so playing guitar is a lot more egalitarian when you're growing up. Meaning to learn guitar, you just have to sit down and play guitar. To become a photographer, especially when I was 10 years old, meant having enough money to buy film, to buy paper, to buy, to buy developing chemicals, to have a darkroom. So it's like being a photographer was just too expensive for me to really focus on growing up. So I did, and I love doing it, but I would shoot like a roll of film every six weeks and have to think super hard about every picture I took because each picture represented like a significant part of my net worth.

• 16:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Impediments in between you and the output of the creative impulse. It's funny now, like, because we're like the same age, like even when I take pictures on a digital camera, like I, I feel like I have to exert some kind of economy, like, oh, don't take too many.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:48Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Because you're programmed from, oh, you're wasting film.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now. Anything involving memory or ones and zeros, it's all essentially free and limitless.

• 17:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  It's just like, I can't wrap my head around that.

• 17:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you've, you've, you know, rode that wave of transition in your own career from, you know, the height of it all the way to the other side. And I'm sure it informs, you know, your perspective on your musical career going forward, which is something I want to get into.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but, but let's go back to, you know, kind of the, the early days of moving to New York City. I mean, if you, if you were under the impression like, oh, this music thing is going to be something on the side, I mean, what was, what was the plan when you show up on the Lower East Side?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  The plan was, hm, I didn't, I didn't really have a plan that went beyond like 24 hours. So in the late eighties, I tried to get a record deal. The thing is, I didn't know how to get a record deal. I didn't even really know what a record deal was. So I made cassettes of some of my, I was trying to be like Morrissey, you know, I was playing like, doing like singer-songwriter-y type stuff and doing electronic music and punk rock on the side. But I really wanted to have a record deal as like a Morrissey wannabe. And so I made these demo tapes and I sent them out to 20 different record labels, just like from addresses that had been written on the back of record sleeves.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And I got one response, which was Disney Records sent me a form letter saying that they do not accept unsolicited material. And that was the one response I got from these 20 demo tapes. And then, as I got more involved in the DJ world, I started making demo tapes of my original electronic music. This is the late eighties, 88, 89. And I would go to New York and I'd just wander around Lower Manhattan, go to every record company and drop off tapes. And then the next week, I would do the exact same thing. And I would just keep, kept doing it and kept doing it. Because I think- It's funny, I get asked, now that I'm old, I get asked often, like, what advice do I have

• 18:58Speaker 01

  for up and coming musicians or artists? And, one, I think you have to love what you do. Two, you have to work exceptionally hard at whatever it is you love to do. And, three, it really helps if you don't know how to do anything else. So I had no distractions when I was trying to get a record deal because I had no fallback career. You know, it wasn't like-

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  No Plan B.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  There was no Plan B, and I was living in an abandoned factory.

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  Right, keep the overhead low.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was paying fifty dollars a month to a security guard who turned the other way so I could go into this abandoned factory. I was making four thousand dollars a year, and I was pretty happy. So I would, you know, fill my bag with cassettes and just walk around and drop them off, hoping that maybe somewhere someone would listen. And then finally, in nineteen eighty-nine, someone listened to one of the tapes, and I got my first record deal. And what made it kind of remarkable is that the guy who signed me to his label at the time didn't have an office, didn't have employees, had never put out a record, and didn't have a name for the label.

• 20:08Rich Roll?

  Perfect.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  But I signed a contract with him because he was the only person who'd ever actually taken the time to listen to what I was doing.

• 20:15Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh. And so that was the first record?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  That was the first-

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  And how did that one do?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Well, then, I... So I had my studio set up in his apartment, and I would answer faxes, and I would clean the apartment, and-

• 20:31Rich Roll?

  You weren't just getting signed by the label, you were actually running the label.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  I was like an intern and an artist. So I would, you know, clean the kitchen, take stuff to UPS, go to the post office, send faxes, answer faxes, clean the apartment, and make records as well. But I was the only artist signed to the label, so I made records under five different names, so the label seemed like they had five different artists. In fact, the first compilation album they put out, it was a compilation album of five different artists, and it's all just me.

• 21:05Rich Roll?

  That's pretty funny. So that puts you, that's, that puts you at least locally on the map, right? I mean, do you start booking gigs in the clubs and, and DJing around town?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I got very lucky. I started DJing at a club in New York called Mars.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  I remember Mars.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Which was the biggest, coolest nightclub on the planet. It was like five or six levels. And somehow, the man who booked DJs, listened to one of my DJ demo tapes, and I got a job DJing there. And that was kind of what introduced me to the world of Lower Manhattan and nightclubs and music.

• 21:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And for somebody who's listening, who's not familiar with that, that very specific point in time, in that geographical location, I mean, it was quite something. I was living there. I was in New York from 89 to 94. And it was crazy, you know? So maybe paint the picture a little bit about what that nightlife scene was all about.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, nightclubs, I mean, this was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and the height of the crack epidemic. So, and Lower Manhattan, I mean, now it's so absurd, like $10,000 rents you a two-bedroom apartment. Back then landlords were burning down their buildings, because it was cheaper to burn your building than to pay taxes on it. So every night, there would be different tenements in the Lower East Side on fire. And rent was super, super cheap. And, because it was super dangerous, you know? Every day, someone was getting stabbed, or shot, or infected with AIDS, or something. So it was like

• 22:46Speaker 01

  living in a war zone. And the nightclubs, one of the things I loved about them was that they were mainly Latino and African-American. You know, so when I was DJing at these clubs, it's like 10% of the people going out were white, and everybody else was black and Latino. Which was odd, but as a white guy from Connecticut, it really made me feel at home. And I still don't know why. Like, playing house music and hip-hop and reggae for African-American and Latino audiences somehow made me feel way more comfortable than like, playing rock music for white people.

• 23:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, what were the, I'm trying to remember what the other clubs were like, like Danceateria?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Danceateria was a few years before that. I think Danceateria closed in like 89.

• 23:31Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I loved Danceateria. That was a magical place. But so the other clubs would have been

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  Lime Light.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  There's Nell's, Lime Light.

• 23:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Nell's.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Even the Palladium, Red Zone, The World, Sound Factory. The building was open for a little while, but like also a lot of places were getting shut down because the drug dealers would show up with guns and just start shooting people.

• 23:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  So every week you'd, I'd go to work and one of the doormen would say, oh, did you hear about Raphael? He got shot last night. You know, it's just like, or did you hear about Jorge? He has AIDS. Like every single week, you just kept hearing about that.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  So, but you're making a name for yourself and you're kind of getting into your groove, right? I think there's this, this idea that you burst on the scene with Play, but Play was like your fifth album, right?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I started making singles in 1990. And then the second single I released involved, I used some of the music from Twin Peaks and it became a huge dance hit in the rest of the world. Not so much here, but like in England, it was a top 10 record. Like I still remember seeing it in the singles charts in between Michael Jackson and Phil Collins.

• 24:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  And this was like my second single that I made on like the cheapest equipment in the living room of the record company where I worked.

• 24:54Rich Roll?

  Right. And how old were you at that time?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  I was 25.

• 24:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  So 25 years younger than I am now.

• 25:04Rich Roll?

  So leading, so leading into Play, there was, I mean, did you feel like you had that kind of momentum? Like, was there a sense that Play could be this breakout success or was that just like a shocking surprise?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  So throughout the 90s, I made records and I toured, 1995, I was headlining the second stage at Lollapalooza. So like the first five years of the 90s, and it's funny, I'm putting out a book in May that's about this, these exact 10 years.

• 25:32Rich Roll?

  Right. I want to talk about that too.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  So it's all very fresh in my mind right now, but so 90, by 95, like the momentum you're talking about was there. You know, Spin named my album in 1995, their album of the year. It was called Everything is Wrong. And then the next record I made was a super dark. Punk rock record called Animal Rights.

• 25:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Which stopped the momentum in its tracks.

• 25:56Rich Roll?

  Well, you took this weird left turn, right? And went back to punk.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, not just, but not just punk, but like super visceral, very dark punk, not even like fun Green Day style punk. This was more like, I don't even know. It was like speed metal punk that was like very feral.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  What was the, I mean, why, why did you make that decision?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Um, one, it was what I'd grown up with. Two, after eight years of sobriety, in 1995, I started drinking again and I found myself going to these rock clubs in Lower East Side and wherever, and hearing The Stooges and hearing Pantera and hearing Sepultura and hearing all, you know, the Bad Brains and Minor Threat stuff I grew up with and just fell in love with guitar based music again. And so I thought, like when I was, when we were growing up, a lot of the artists that I loved, experimented, you know, like Lou Reed made Metal Machine Music. John Lennon wrote Revolution Number Nine. The Clash made hip hop records.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Like I thought part of being a musician was to experiment and try out different genres and styles. So I made this album, Animal Rights. I just wanted to make a really noisy punk rock record and I had hoped that the response among critics and whatever would have been, at the very least, some acknowledgement that I had done something different. And instead, it was either met with like the worst of all possible reviews or complete silence. So I suddenly found myself, after five years of good momentum, I found myself playing shows to like 30 people a night.

• 27:36Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And drinking constantly, battling anxiety, dating strippers, just doing all and like, and then it got worse and worse. So by the end of the nineties, I thought my career was done.

• 27:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  By 1998.

• 27:51Rich Roll?

  Let's make it a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Let's just dig that hole.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Like everything just kept getting worse. I was running out of money. My mom died. And so I thought I was gonna make one last record, um, which ended up being the album Play. So that was supposed to be my last record that was supposed to be like a failure out of the gate, and it ended up selling close to 10 million records.

• 28:13Rich Roll?

  Why was it supposed, it was supposed to be a, being the sort of business insiders were like, this is not gonna succeed, or you didn't care, like?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  I cared, but I just, I mean, it was 1999, it was the era of Limp Bizkit and the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. It was the era of people spending millions of dollars on videos and millions of dollars making records. So along comes me, like a bald has been musician making a record in his bedroom involving vocals from records that were 50 years old.

• 28:46Rich Roll?

  Sampling like old blues records.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  It was absolutely, you couldn't have had less of a recipe for success.

• 28:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. But, and yet it struck this sort of zeitgeist chord.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Somehow, yeah.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  And it just, you tapped into something, you know, that was going on culturally because it crossed over in such a massive way. I mean, every song on that record like became a hit. I mean, it was extraordinary. It just exploded.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I almost see it as like, like the Bernie Sanders of records, meaning like completely unexpected and so much more successful than probably Bernie, than I certainly would have imagined.

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  Right. How, how compacted was that period of time? I mean, did it really, I mean, I know it kind of, didn't it come out originally in 99? It kind of eked out some sales and then it was re-released and that's when it exploded? Or how did it all kind of like work?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  So 1999, it came out and it did 100 times better than I or anyone around me thought it was going to do. But then in 2000, it ended up doing a million times better than we thought. Like all of a sudden, a year after it was released, it went to number one in England, in Australia, in Germany, in France, in Italy, and suddenly I had a top five single in the United States and it went to number one in Canada. Like it just kept. It didn't stop, like it just kept going. And every week, my managers and I kept thinking like, okay, it's got to be done now. And then like a month later, it had sold more. And we, I still don't know what happened.

• 30:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  But it was nice. I mean, the downside, well, I guess the double edged sword is the big success of that record and then the next record 18. And then the record after that hotel, which did really well outside the United States. That level of success introduced me to a world that I hadn't really been a part of, which was the red carpet dating movie stars world. And I just drank constantly, went out every night, did any drug that was put in front of me and bottomed out pretty quickly. And the nice thing is I've seen

• 30:57Speaker 01

  almost everything that the world has to offer. And I've indulged in everything the world has to offer. And it makes it a lot easier to not be tempted by it now.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  So now I hear about like people going out and taking tons of drugs and having seven sums. And I'm like, oh, good for you. I just have no interest anymore.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, it is, you're, you're kind of like, you know, the wizard who's, you know, come down from the mountain, or you can, you can be the oracle in the cave because you've lived all these different lives. I mean, we can unpack the sobriety story. I mean, I feel like in kind of canvassing, you know, the history of your life, a lot of it boils down to you always being on some level, and please correct me if I'm way off base here, but you know, kind of, you know, searching like on this spiritual quest. I mean, there's a reason why you were attracted to the punk rock straight edge movement. There was a reason why you got interested in like hardcore Christianity. Like these are, you know, I don't know whether they're followings or, you know, you know, dogma aside, like just a sense of belonging, or at least a sort of spiritual through line that you could

• 32:05Rich Roll?

  connect with. But it seems like it's this evolving search for that through success and ruin and sobriety and, you know, drunken debauchery and big houses and downsizing and everything that you've experienced.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 32:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  It's.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  But I think it, in a weird way, it involves an understand, like a spirituality that we as humans don't talk about that often. Which to me, because oftentimes, like especially in the world, like Southern California, the world we live in, oftentimes, and I'm not going to malign anyone's spiritual practice, but people sort of assume that spirituality means cleanliness and calmness. You know, like, so like, a spiritual world would be like, clean and calm and wearing white clothes. Wearing all white, yeah. Yeah, and like, and to me, the spirituality that I have sort of come to

• 33:05Speaker 01

  is, I hope, a spirituality that's based on both my individual human experience, our collective human experience, and how messy those things are. You know, like, like I was talking to a friend of mine who's a Buddhist, and I think I annoyed her, because I was asking her, I was like, "Why do you think the Buddha is always depicted smiling?" And she said, "Oh, because he's enlightened." And I said, "I think it's because he knows he's still human." Except he's just fully, he's fully experienced what it means to be human, and he just lives with like, a gentle acceptance of that, you know? And that's part of how going out and experiencing things is,

• 33:50Speaker 01

  I don't have the ability to judge anyone. You know, so if someone does something stupid, or thoughtless, or violent, or debauched, I can't judge them, because I've probably done the same thing, or something similar. And, and so it's hopefully, through experience and through self-examination, we come to a place where we are compassionate in our knowing of ourselves.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And equally compassionate in trying to understand other people.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  As cliched as that might sound.

• 34:23Rich Roll?

  Right, it is, but there's also a very interesting irony that's that's like packed into that, which is that you and I are both members of organizations that are sort of known for being highly dogmatic and judgmental.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Which is?

• 34:36Rich Roll?

  Well, being in recovery or having certain opinions about 12-step, right? And and and the outsider's perspective on what that means and and also, you know, the vegan community.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  Certain reputation that comes along with that. Because I really, you know, I don't think I'm a judgmental person. I work very hard to not be judgmental, to be in that place. And, you know, I believe that you are being completely honest and genuine and coming from that place, too. And in the experience that I have in recovery and with a lot of the people that I know in the vegan movement, you know, are on that same level. And yet, there's a sort of public perception issue with both of these organizations, I suppose.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  And that's rooted in reality. I mean, there's a reason for that.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  And I think the moment you offer someone the ability to belong to an organization with like-minded people, it's part of human nature that certain people are going to dogmatically embrace that, even if what they're embracing is non-dogmatic. Like AA, for example, the core of AA, as written by Bill W. and whoever else, is completely non-dogmatic. They don't, there's not, there's not even anything proprietary there. Like, you don't even have to be sober to be a part of it.

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  Right, just a desire to stop drinking.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  But so many people embrace it dogmatically. And it's sort of, I think.

• 36:00Rich Roll?

  Well, and also because the, there's this tradition of anonymity, which, you know, I suppose on some level could be argued we're transgressing right now. I never know where that line is.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I don't worry about it too much, yeah.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  That puts it in a position where it can't really defend itself against those kinds of claims.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  And it, for some reason, that reminds me of 1988, I think it was 88 in New York. I remember sitting on the subway in 1988, and the headline on the New York Post said, "New York City Murder Capital," because New York had had the highest number of homicides in its history. And I looked around the subway and I looked at everybody on the subway and they were all sitting quietly and peacefully going home to like watch TV and make dinner. And just the contrast between this headline, New York City murder capital and everyone quietly sitting on the subway, just made me realize to sort of state the obvious, like, we like dramatic headlines. So the people who get sober through AA and are quiet and nice and

• 37:03Speaker 01

  humble, like, no one's gonna write about that. But like, the person who gets sober in AA and relapses and kills himself, or goes out and screams at people that they need to, you know, be dogmatic in their sobriety, that's what gets headlines.

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  Or the vegan celebrity who's talking about how great it is to be vegan and then abandons it, you know, two months later.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  And I think that we can have standards for ourselves, but there has to be that understanding of like, oh, we're human and here's what it means to be human. Like, as humans, we're messy and flawed and we grab onto things because like, deep down, we know that being a few decades old, in a 15 billion year old universe, like, we're all aware that like, our lives are like fleeting and potentially insignificant. So we latch on to things that might give us a sense of significance, which tends to be rigidity and dogma and the idea that we're right and everyone else is wrong.

• 38:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's an innate drive for certainty, to be a member of a team, even if that certainty is based in fear. You know, that's better than uncertainty, because that's much more terrifying.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, fear and tribalism. And it applies to politics, you know, like militant Republicans, militant Bernie Sanders supporters. It applies to sports teams, you know, like militant Manchester United fans, militant Denver Broncos. It applies to music, militant jazz fans.

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  Mac or Windows or whatever, you know?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  And that's why.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I think that, I don't know, personally, like, I have an inclination towards getting caught up in that. Because I certainly have, like, in the punk rock world, the vegan world, the dance music world, the Christian world. Like, I've been caught up in that orthodoxy and dogma. But it all speaks to my insecurity, you know, which is an insecurity that is both unique to me, but also shared with everyone. Like, you can't, if you're human and you're not a psychopath or a sociopath, you have to have some insecurities and some fears, you know? It's just impossible to get through life.

• 39:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  And not be filled with doubt.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  Right. So let's, let's take it back to, you know, kind of the sobriety story a little bit. I mean, when you, you had, you would flirt, you would have these periods of sobriety, like, sort of quote unquote sobriety. I mean, they weren't sort of 12-step sobriety, just saying, you know, at a very young age, like, you're drinking and getting crazy and then getting sober at, like, 13 or whatever it is.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, first time I got sober was 13.

• 39:35Rich Roll?

  Sober for a while and then deciding, ah, I can drink and doing that for a while. And like, this progressive kind of gestalt of, of using that takes you to, you know, a certain place where you finally have had enough. I mean, what was, you know, did, was it a dramatic bottom? Or was it just, you know what, I'm done with this?

• 39:54Speaker 01

  It was not a dramatic bottom, but it was, because basically, I hit bottom in, like, I'd say 2005. And then I just stayed there for a long time. So from 2005 until 2008, I just lived in a state of bottom.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  Was that when you were throwing those crazy parties upstate?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Throwing crazy parties and like, yeah. And so it wasn't like, like, any one of those nights or mornings for most people would have been a bottom. I just became so accustomed to 36-hour-long hangovers and constant panic attacks. And Self loathing and contempt for the daytime like it just this became my status quo. My so like I live that's what I mean like I lived. I lived in the like this sludgy bottom for such a long time that started to seem normal. Until it started to get even worse, you know.

• 40:55Rich Roll?

  And then what is that like to like be, I mean, you are, you know, this is a moment in time where you're super successful, you got tons of cash, you got like from the outside looking in, it's like this guy's got it made, he's a superstar. I mean, does that create like an extra sense of like shame like this, I'm supposed to be happy, but I'm not and like, why can't I make sense of all of this? I mean, what is that like?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  I mean, it's like, it's that old thing of like chasing the dragon. You know, like I had a couple of perfect nights and I spent the rest of my life trying to get back there, you know, like that, like a perfect night, like this one perfect night, I remember, I think it would have been two thousand and one. And there was ecstasy and champagne and tons of super exclusive private parties and like conversations with Mick Jagger and Richard Branson, going home with the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, like that was perfection. And then I spent every day after that, trying to get back there with sometimes succeeding

• 41:56Speaker 01

  more often than not, but like, you know, the world has a way of intruding, you know, and then you find yourself like four o'clock in the morning, walking down Houston street, blind drunk and lonely and crying. And you're like, oh, and if that only like if, if the majority of my experiences after that perfect night had been quite good, I'd probably still be out there. But over time empirically, the majority of the experiences were just grim, you know? And also the, the inability and I'm, I don't know if you've had this experience, but like, I tried to drink like a normal person.

• 42:37Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  I remember one night in particular, I decided I was not going to be defeated by alcohol. So I went out with the idea of having two drinks. This was, I was like, left my apartment, I was like, I'm going to have two drinks and come home, because that's what normal people do. So at 10:00 PM, I sat down in a bar with some friends and I had two drinks. The plan was to be home by midnight. At eight o'clock in the morning, I had had fifteen drinks. I was having sex with some Israeli woman I'd just met. There were thirty people in my apartment, some of whom watching me have sex. There was drugs everywhere, so that was my best attempt at moderate drinking.

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, who's interested in two drinks, anyway? That's miserable.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Normal civilians.

• 43:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I can't, I don't understand. I'd rather have none, you know? None or all.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Well, that's, I remember after I got sober, I was talking, I was out to dinner with some friends of mine. And I said, one thing that kind of proved to me what an alcoholic I am. None of them were finishing their drinks, and I was offended by this. And I said to a friend of mine, I said, I said, you're not an alcoholic. Why aren't you drinking more?

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  And I said, if I wasn't an alcoholic, I would be drunk every day of my life.

• 43:45Rich Roll?

  Of course, exactly.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  And I stopped, I was like, oh, that's not the thing that, like.

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  Normal people don't think that. Like, I can remember watching a television show, you know, at age nineteen or twenty, some stupid whatever. It doesn't even matter what it was, The Love Boat, whatever it was. And there's like a minibar behind the characters when they're playing out whatever scene that they're, they're playing out. And I just couldn't understand why they didn't just stop what they were doing and just start getting drunk, like, in the middle of the scene.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Sort of to that end, it's funny. The only fistfight I've ever been in was at a bar on the Lower East Side because a man wouldn't get out of my way because I wanted to order a drink.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

  Just don't get it between you and the drunk.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  It's like a mama bear and her cub, like, like, and something feral snapped in me.

• 44:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And I was like, I needed that drink, and how dare he stand in the way?

• 44:35Rich Roll?

  But, but you had to do, you know, do your rounds before you were ready to actually kind of, you know, surrender to the twelve step ideology and philosophy, right? Like, you're trying to do, do it your way a million times.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  You have to be done. That's the thing, and like, you can't.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Really make the effort to do the work until you're done. You know, and you, I'm sure we and anyone who's listening to this, who's been through this process, like when you're done, you know, you're done.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Like, it's just something happens and you're like, okay, I'm done. And like, I have that experience. I go to meetings and people come in who've had bad experiences drinking or using, but they're not done. Like, you can just tell that they're not quite done. And you almost want to...

• 45:19Rich Roll?

  But that sense of being done has to be coupled with a willingness to do some work around it. Cause you could say, like, I know people that say they're done, but then they think that that just means that they're done and they don't have to do anything anymore and they're never gonna drink again. And that's just a ticking time bomb.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  There's a reason why only the first step mentions drinking, you know? And I would say, and I feel bad, like, we're talking so much about sobriety.

• 45:44Rich Roll?

  It's okay, man. We're gonna get into the vegan thing in a minute.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Okay, but, um...

• 45:47Rich Roll?

  Usually I have to, like, it's just, I have a vegan person or I have a sobriety person, you know? It's like, you got, you're the whole package, man.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  I'm the double winner.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  So I remember early days of real sobriety for me. Some old timer on the Bowery told me that AA was not about sobriety. It was about spirituality. And I thought that was the single dumbest thing anyone... I was like, that's a, that's a cliche. That's nonsense. You're, I was like, you're wrong. A few years later, I couldn't agree with him more. Like, getting sober, eh, it's important, but the spiritual side of it, that's the purpose. You know, and it's supported by the literature. It's supported by everything in the big book. It's about clearing the wreckage so you can have a spiritual life.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  And that spiritual life of honesty, compassion, non-judgmental service. At least that's, this is my perspective. And this is what sustains me. You know, like, if I didn't have my weird, cobbled-together spiritual life, I don't know why I'd stay sober. I don't know why I would be doing the things I'm doing. You know, like, it's the opposite of nihilism. I think.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it gives you an anchor and a sense of purpose. I think, you know, people get freaked out by that initially when they come in. It takes it. There's an acclimation period to that, I think.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And the language is certainly everything's God, God, God, God, God. And so you assume

• 47:12Rich Roll?

  It's so weird and colloquial and like outdated. Like the language of the book is bizarre.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  It's adorable in a way like when, you know, like I especially like when they, because it was written in the 30s and they have lines like, maybe someday humans will get to the moon.

• 47:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  You know, maybe some days scientists will understand how atoms work. I was like, I just want to do a re, I mean, it's very, it's an adorable artifact in those ways. Or when they use hipster lingo.

• 47:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  From 1938.

• 47:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. It's so hilarious when they do that.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  But it's still like that, that spiritual core of it, of non proprietary, non dogmatic, non judgmental, compassionate spirituality, which to me, that's the core of every 12 step program and should ideally be the core of our lives, regardless of whether someone's an addict or not.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  And it's been, you know, eight years, seven, eight years.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Seven and a half years, yeah.

• 48:06Rich Roll?

  And you're still plugged in and.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:08Rich Roll?

  Rocking it.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, time passes and I go to, I'm, I love AA and I love the meetings, but it's the spirituality that sustains me. And so I find that spirituality in many things that are not AA related.

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  You know.

• 48:30Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Whether it's reading other books or praying or meditating or what have you, like certain things that, so AA is the cornerstone of my entire spiritual life, but going to meetings where people either complain about how much their rent is, or that they just broke up with their girlfriend, or that they wish they could go back out, like.

• 48:54Rich Roll?

  Non solution oriented.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I'm happy to show up for that, but that can't sustain me spiritually, at least not at this point.

• 49:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I understand what you're saying. So let's get into the vegan thing.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:06Rich Roll?

  So that, that starts early for you.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  1987.

• 49:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  So almost 30 years ago.

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  And what happens? Like you're just, you just have a, at least sort of an inbred kind of genetic predisposition to not be into meat or be extra sensitive?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Pre-Mauricy, right? I grew up loving my American diet. Like, when I was 15 years old, I ridiculed the vegetarians at my high school. Um, I loved McDonald's. I loved Burger King. I loved Steakums. I loved pepperoni pizza. Steakums. I haven't heard that in a long time. Like, I loved the American diet so much, like, and I thought everything about it was just perfect, like chocolate ice cream. Mm-hmm. Like, yellow American cheese. Yellow American cheese. Like, I thought that Fluff. Yeah. Fluff was the one, fluff was the one thing that even, like, fluff and mayonnaise,

• 50:06Speaker 01

  because they didn't seem like foodstuffs to me. Like, I liked them, but like, they were so far from food that I couldn't fully embrace them, even when I loved Twinkies and bacon. Okay. You know, like, I remember eating, sitting down with, like, a can of, like, Duncan Hines frosting and eating the entire thing. Right. And wondering, why don't people do this every day? Because it's so great. Uh-huh. And so I wholesale, fully embraced the American diet, 100%. And, and I didn't know why anyone wouldn't. And my mom, who was like an erstwhile hippie, would occasionally try to feed me brown rice or tofu, and I thought it was child abuse.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Like, I just couldn't understand why, when there was a world of, like, meatloaf and pizza, why she would try to feed me vegetables. Mm-hmm. You know, I have more vegetables. So you weren't a candidate, like, you weren't a candidate for this movement at all, out of the game? Not in the slightest. No, I, I remember we had one vegan in my high school, and she refused to play softball because the gloves were made out of leather. And I ridic, I just thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. Mm-hmm. So, but I also loved animals. So I was a quintessential American in that way of, like, I loved animals and I loved eating animals. And then when I was 19 years old, I was petting Tucker, a cat that I had rescued from the dump, who I loved. And I was petting Tucker.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, I saw that Tucker had two eyes and a central nervous system and fur and a profound, rich emotional life. You know, Tucker loved doing things. Tucker loved people. Tucker loved being outside. Like Tucker was a fully formed life form who just had his own rights and his own will. And it suddenly dawned on me, oh, if I love Tucker as a cat and his two eyes and his central nervous system and his rich emotional life, I was like, that means all creatures with two eyes and a central nervous system have rich emotional lives, are deserving of having their own lives and are deserving of my love and care and protection.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And so basically at that moment, that was my conversion.

• 52:21Rich Roll?

  It was really like one moment where the lights went on like that and that was it?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  It was like going to the chiropractor and getting adjusted. And like, suddenly, I was, I felt aligned. Meaning, up until that point, I had been okay loving animals and eating animals. And at that moment, I suddenly realized, no, imposing human will on an animal is wrong. Like, it's just simply like, as wrong as anything can be. And of course, it took me a couple of years to figure out what to do with this new.

• 52:55Rich Roll?

  Right, is this like 1979, 1980 or something like that?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  This was like 84.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, okay.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  1984. And then I had like, a year of being vegetarian. At first, I had a year of giving up red meat and chicken and only eating fish. And then I had a year of just being like a milk and eggs vegetarian. And then in 80s, Thanksgiving, 1987, I finally became a vegan.

• 53:23Rich Roll?

  And you were living in, well, you were in New York.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  In Connecticut.

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, in Connecticut.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was about a year away from moving to New York.

• 53:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was trying to think like what was going on in New York, like wasn't it Angelica?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  Angelica.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Angelica was on St. Mark's Place.

• 53:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  And that was the first vegan restaurant I ever went to.

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  Right, right. And that's how John, you know, John and the Bad Brains, I think like those guys worked in the kitchen or dishwashing dishes or something like that back in the day, but that was like the one place, right?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  There was that, there was Dojo. I mean, there are lots of vegetarian restaurants. Angelica's possibly was one of like five vegan restaurants on the entire planet. Certainly was the best and

• 53:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  you know, the gold standard. And of course, given the way New York is changing, I don't know if it's gonna be around much longer, which is a shame because it's still, every time I'm in New York, I eat there as often as I can.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  I do too. I do too. I always take the early flight from LA so I can get to New York in time for dinner and I'll check into my hotel and go straight to Angelica like every time.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Do you know they now take credit cards?

• 54:19Rich Roll?

  I do know that, yes. This is a big deal because they have that ATM machine in the lobby. You always make sure you have cash. Yeah, I think they had a, um, there was some kind of dispute with the landlord, but I think they resolved some of it. I don't, I don't know. I think it, it might be moving forward okay right now.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I, I hope that, I mean, it's been around for 40 years.

• 54:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  I hope that it has another good 40 years left in it.

• 54:40Rich Roll?

  Me too. So when did you become this activist? When did you start getting vocal about these ideas?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Well, there was a health food store near where I was living in Connecticut and I would go in there and ask them essentially how to be a vegan. You know, this was 87, 88. And I would buy my organic carrots and my organ, I was also, as I said, making $4,000 a year. So I had to be a very frugal vegan. And so I would make brown rice and I started sprouting my own beans. I started making my own bread because it was just like, I was living on $10 a week in terms of food, which you can quite easily, like carrots, onions, brown rice, black beans, lentils.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Real easy to speak like a super broke vegan, as I was. And one day, I was in this health food store and a woman behind the counter told me about Diet for a New America by John Robbins. And so I bought it and I took it home and I pretty much read it in one sitting. And when I finished, I was like, that's it. I'm an activist. Like, I'm done. This is my life. You know?

• 55:51Rich Roll?

  It just clicked in, like, this was the, this was the thing that you could connect with.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  That, and then, and then, reading, like, PETA magazines, and every time you'd go to the health food store, there'd be like a different flyer about something. And so I basically got indoctrinated via John Robbins and a health food store.

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  Interesting. And so, even though you had these sort of periods of sobriety and then you'd go out or whatever, like, you never wavered on the vegan thing?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I had yogurt in 1992, once. That's my, from 87 until now. Oh, no, I accidentally, I went to a restaurant in Portland about eight years ago, and the chef was making me a vegan meal. And as I took a bite of sushi, he ran out across the, he said, no, that's not vegan. So I did have one bite of crab sushi, which, to be fair, was not nearly as good as the vegan sushi. And I had a couple of bites of yogurt in 92.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  So those, that's my, as far as I know, that's my animal product intake in the last 28 years.

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  A lot of people are, ask me, you know, how do you, how do you make the switch? And, you know, how do you kind of weather the cravings and, and all of that kind of thing? Because I made that switch later. But I find that, like, the principles of recovery are highly applicable, because it, it's sort of like it removes the decision fatigue in the sense that, like, you're either drinking or you're not, right? You're either sober or you're not sober. Like, it's, there's no gray area there. So, in a dietary sense, to say, you're either eating animal products or you're not. Like, it's kind of pretty basic and simple. You know, it's like, just, that's the one rule that you don't break.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  And also, I mean, this is, I'm really gonna sound like an old person now, but like, I wanna say, like, kids these days... The, you know, like being a vegan in 1987, your options almost didn't exist.

• 57:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  You know, your options were carrots, soy milk did exist, tofu and tempeh existed, but like nothing else, there was no vegan ice cream, there was, there were no vegan donuts.

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  Are you kidding? Yeah, the, the natural food market was like just a weird warehouse with some bins in it.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  You know, that, and it looked frightening and the people in there did not look healthy.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  That was Prana on First Avenue. I used to go to all the time.

• 58:09Rich Roll?

  And I was like, are these people look unhealthy because they're eating this food? Or are they in here because they need this food to get healthy?

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  It was never clear.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  And now, I mean, the fact that like you can go online and you have countless vegan resources and there's so many great vegan organizations and there's countless vegan restaurants and the former president of the United States is primarily vegan. You know, some of the biggest pop stars on the planet are vegan. Like back in 87, vegan was so obscure that no one knew how to pronounce it.

• 58:43Rich Roll?

  Vegan.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Vegan.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  Vegan.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Cause it was like vegetable, vegetarian. Like I remember having a serious debate with a friend of mine in Angelica's about whether it was vegan or vegan. And I thought it had to be vegan because there was vegetation, vegetable, vegetarian, like it should be vegan.

• 58:58Rich Roll?

  You were arguing for vegan.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  I was arguing for vegan. And, but enough people corrected me and said, no, it's vegan. So now transitioning to veganism, like there's nothing in the non-vegan world that doesn't exist in the vegan world at least as good as it does in the non-vegan. You know, like, like vegan cheese now is great.

• 59:20Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. Yeah. And I think it's a perfect time to segue into, you know, the new, the new restaurant, Little Pine and, you know, you've done an amazing job. It's a beautiful place, Matt, and I feel like it's the perfect intersection of.

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  Of, uh, how do I say this? I don't know how to articulate it. Like, it's not, it's not too casual, but it's not too fancy either. Like, it's not overly precious in its food preparation, but it's not like fast to go either. You know, it's surprising in the sense that, okay, you have an expectation, you go to a vegan restaurant, what are you gonna get? And then you're kind of mixing it up with some pretty interesting things, like the stuffed shells and things like that, that you don't typically see in a vegan restaurant. You know, they're not gonna emphasize something that is kind of, something that's gonna require a ricotta flavor or a cheese flavor. And my, I surmise that this is because you, you know, filled the kitchen with like real chefs that know what they're doing.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  That's a large part of it. I mean, part of it is the ethos of,

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  I don't, at this point in my life, I don't have any entrepreneurial goals. Like, I don't,

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  you know, I live a relat- a relatively simple life. All I wanna do is activism and music and healthy stuff. So, the restaurant, you know, the profits that it does generate, 100% goes to animal welfare. So that way, I can never make a penny from it. And that means that my, my thinking around it is not, like, when I'm, when I'm wondering about the design, or the menu, or the whatever, I'm not thinking how it can increase my bottom line. I'm thinking about how can it, in a sustainable way, advance the cause of veganism.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  And my goal with the restaurant is, I want it to remind people, who might be non-vegan or whatever, that veganism is very viable. I want it to look like the sort, like, especially, it's in Silver Lake, so I sort of want it to look... Like something like look like the people's homes in Silver Lake. I want our art and the books we sell to be things that would be in people's homes because my hope is like we we live in LA and there are so many progressive people here. There are people who drive Priuses and they voted for Obama. They have a Bernie Sanders sticker on the back of their car. They listen to NPR and they still go to In-N-Out Burger. It's like it's the one thing that's

• 1:01:54Rich Roll?

  missing. Really weird blind spot where that dissonance is allowed to live and thrive.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yep. And so I'm hoping that maybe people have enough experiences, like maybe they go to Little Pine, they go to Crossroads, they go somewhere else, they go to the farmer's market, they see Cowspiracy, and they realize that to be a thoughtful progressive, your thoughtfulness and your progressive ethos has to apply to food and animal welfare. Like, that's kind of my hope with it.

• 1:02:34Rich Roll?

  Well, I think you're succeeding in that regard. And, you know, there is so much kind of, you know, cultural interest in this movement that makes it very exciting, you know, that didn't even exist a couple of years ago. And I think it's exacerbated by, you know, this increasingly intense conversation that we're having around global climate change. And I know that you've been pretty outspoken on these issues, specifically, you know, the water use issue, which, you know, in California is something that we all need to be really mindful of. So break that down a little bit because it was interesting.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  I was talking at Wanderlust. I was giving a talk on meditation.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, that was the one I was just there like for a book signing like the night before, I think. And you were doing with Charlie Knowles?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:03:17Rich Roll?

  And Light Watkins was he there too?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  A bunch of people. And so I talked about my approach to meditation and someone asked me why I was an animal rights activist. And I said, without thinking, I said, okay. Because it's like, it's the magic bullet that fixes everything. You know, like if animals weren't used for agriculture, famine would disappear. Rainforest deforestation decreases by 90%. Ocean acidification decreases by 25%. Water use decreases by 40%. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, et cetera, obesity, all are reduced by at least 60%.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Um, zoonotic disease disappears, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So specifically, and it's like, it's the magic bullet that just fixes all of these issues. So like, whenever someone talks about rainforest deforestation, I'm like, well, that's animal agriculture. Someone talks about heart disease, I'm like, that's animal agriculture. Someone talks about Ebola, that's animal agriculture. It's eating animal, using animals for food. The California, but the thing that drives me crazy, or climate change, 40% of climate change is directly attributable to animal agriculture. So COP21 in Paris, not mentioned once. Animal agriculture. Even the BBC, mainstream BBC, wrote an article saying, why are they not mentioning animal agriculture?

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Because it's 40% of climate change. But here in California, um, I believe, and it's, the, the figures are a little iffy, but like, something like, let's say 50%, I think it's 75% of California's water goes to agriculture. 40% of that goes to animal agriculture, or to the feed that goes to animals. The water, the 40% of water that's used for animal agriculture, supports agriculture that contributes roughly 0.5% to California's GDP. So 40% of our water that's paid for by all of us contributes 0.5% of our GDP.

• 1:05:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's insane.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  It's so in front.

• 1:05:29Rich Roll?

  From like an economic point of view, it's completely insane.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  And I asked the governor and his representative, I don't want to name, so I don't want to get people in trouble. I asked them about this and their response made me want to start hitting people. They said, oh, well, farmers have suffered enough. And I was like, really? So you're lumping a huge cattle ranch with 10,000 heads of cattle in the same category as people who are growing organic broccoli?

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a colossal, you know, non-answer answer, followed by something, didn't he say something like, well, we're all in this together?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  Which is like, what does that mean? That means you're saying nothing.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's so infuriating and I don't know, like, the thing with animal agriculture, there's one simple solution that would fix everything, which is ending subsidies to animal agriculture. If, if every government on the planet tomorrow ended all animal agriculture subsidies, we would simply, as a people, stop eating meat and dairy.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  Be too expensive.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  So expensive, I mean, a pound of beef without subsidies would be about $30, maybe more. You know, a family of four going to McDonald's without subsidies, $75.

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  It would just, it would, it would set the balance where the balance is appropriate to set, which is that, you know, meat and dairy products are sort of, you know, things that are, you know, not, they're not, they're not meant to be, they're not meant to predominate your plate on every, at every meal. They're meant to be sort of, you know, special or what have you. And if economics were allowed to do what they're supposed to do unchecked and unregulated, that's how it would balance out.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  And it's where unfortunately, the true hypocrisy of like Republicans and the Tea Party comes to the fore. I mean, of course, they're hypocritical in everything, but especially regarding animal agriculture, like, the Republicans and the Tea Party should be our allies on this because they want small government and an end to subsidies. If you mention this to them, they take it off the table.

• 1:07:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  They're like, they'll take this off the table and they take defense spending off the table, simply because these are things that exist in their constituencies and they need that support.

• 1:07:43Rich Roll?

  It's a pick and choose when it comes to, you know, regulating in that regard. And that's the breadbasket of America and they're not going to alienate that population.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  But it's.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  And I know that I'm stating the obvious, but it's just, it's, it's so mind boggling that like, we are subsidizing animal agriculture and in the process destroying our climate, destroying the rainforests and destroying us. You know, not to mention the fact that we're killing trillions of animals, but we're killing us. Like, it's like, it's so, like, future generations are gonna look back and just ask, like, what were you guys doing?

• 1:08:18Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly. The analogy I always use is if like, an alien came to the planet and said, "Take me to the person who can tell me how you make your food," you know, and you showed them, they would be like, "What is wrong with you?"

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  And then next, they would say, "Take me to the person who makes your energy." And they're like, "Well, what we do is we go three miles below the surface of the ocean, and we dig up this black toxic stuff and ship it all around the world." And the alien would say, "But you do know, every day, in the form of sun and wind, your planet generates and receives more energy than has ever been used by humans, and it's free." No, we're gonna keep digging three miles under the surface of the ocean, because that just makes more sense to us. Or like, the alien would say, like, "Oh, all that grain you have, why not just feed that to people?"

• 1:09:03Rich Roll?

  Right. But come on, Moby.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Because it's better for them, it's better for the environment, it's better for the animals. Like, you end famine, people live longer, people are healthier, people avoid disease. Like, it's so utterly mind boggling. Like, it's like, past generations, they didn't know better. You know, like, in the 30s, people smoked, and they drank, and they drove without seatbelts, because they didn't really know that much better. But now, we know everything, and we still do the stupid things.

• 1:09:33Rich Roll?

  So what is the block? You know what I mean? Like, why can't we, I mean, we're having this conversation, and this conversation is coming up. Like, I feel like, this is a conversation that didn't even exist two or three years ago, and a lot of people are having this conversation. That's progress. That doesn't mean that it's translated into regulatory changes as of yet, but I feel that it's inevitable at some point. Like, is it headed in the right direction? You know, how can we be doing a better job?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  I think it's like sobriety, or someone who quits smoking.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  You hope that they figure it out before they die. You know, you hope someone gets sober before drinking kills them. You hope the cigarette smoker quits smoking before they get emphysema and lung cancer. As a species, we hope that we figure it out and make these changes before the consequences destroy us. Unfortunately, at this point, I don't know. Like, we as a species are so naive and like, kind of cluelessly hopeful. We always assume things are gonna work out. There's just a chance they're not. There's a chance that 50 years from now-

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  We'll innovate our way out of it somehow.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Rich Roll?

  But when we have these, you know, regulatory systems in place that are so difficult to, you know, upend, it makes it almost impossible.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it has to take smart, committed, clever, strategic leadership. And I think we have to be that. Like, literally, like you, me, and anyone who's listening, you're like, because politicians, all they care about is keeping the lights on tomorrow. You know, and the whole thing is short-term thinking.

• 1:11:14Rich Roll?

  It's incredibly short-sighted. And when you, you know, you poll these people and, you know, 40% of them are climate change deniers, they're not really. You know, they're just, they're pandering to a constituency.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I remember at one point, like, Sarah Palin was giving a speech, it's like, what, like, 60 years ago? And she was talking about her patriotic values. And I remember laughing, she was saying like, you know, like, "A strong military and, you know, a strong energy sector." I was like, "Why isn't this funny that your patriotic values dovetail perfectly with the people who are giving you money?" You know, and like, the sad thing is, they, the oil companies and the defense industry and big animal agriculture have turned their self-interested corporate strategy into patriotism for dumb people.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  Right, which on some level is a stroke of genius.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Oh, it is.

• 1:12:08Rich Roll?

  Brilliance.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  I mean, that whole idea-

• 1:12:10Rich Roll?

  It's not good, but it's brilliant.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  And, and I almost can't, like, I can fault them for doing that, but they're, like, big agriculture, big energy, defense companies, like, they're just being self-interested.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Where, why haven't the Democrats stood up? You know, why haven't, why hasn't Hillary Clinton, or even Bernie Sanders, or anyone stood up and said, "Oh, how is sending American money to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, like, how is that patriotic? How is funding agriculture that causes childhood obesity, causes heart disease, causes cancer, causes diabetes, like, how is this patriotic? These things are not patriotic." And so it's like, the opposition has been asleep at the switch. You know, and I feel like that's where we can't wait for the existing leaders to lead.

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  No, it truly has to be a grassroots movement. It's not going to happen from the top down. It's going to happen from the bottom up. And, you know, one of the things I say all the time is that, you know, we feel, we feel so disenfranchised, you know, like, our vote doesn't count, and, and, you know, "Who cares about me? And, you know, you're just the little idiot, you know, who cares what you have to say?" Uh, but the truth is, what you put on your plate, what you choose to buy, what you choose to eat, are incredibly political acts, and they do have meaning, and they have great significance. You know, every time that you swap the animal products off your plate, you know, save something like, you know, a thousand, uh, square feet of, of rainforest and animal's life, like, a tremendous amount of water,

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  a certain, you know, percentage of CO2 emissions, like, I don't, I can't recount the stats off the top of my head, but they're significant, and that's just one meal.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Rich Roll?

  This is something that you can do. And I think that if you really own that, and you understand what's at stake here, and you can step out of your, you know, myopic worldview, and see that there's a greater play going on right now, um, it's incumbent upon you to act on that and to, and to use your voice.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Well, one thing I really want to do, because I completely agree, is figuring, I want to write, whether it's a website, whether it's a book, on effective animal activism. So I think one problem that we have in our movement right now is we do a lot of wheel spinning. You know, like, we spend money... Rescuing a few animals rather than working on the bigger problems. You know, we fight amongst ourselves. We criticize Beyonce because she's only a part-time vegan. Like, I think we need-

• 1:14:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we argue about like the tiny, you know, the minutia.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and which can be fun, but we have a serious task at hand, which is to change the world and change the way people eat. And we don't have many resources. You know, we're not rich. There aren't that many of us, but we're right. And for us to be serious activists, we need to stop spending money that isn't accomplishing anything, accomplishing anything. We need to stop wasting time that isn't accomplishing anything. You know, so I kind of want to just sort of like, look at the things that we as a movement are doing and apply actual like rational effectiveness criteria to it.

• 1:15:27Rich Roll?

  So what would be an example of that?

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Um, an example of that? It's really hard because it's some stuff that people love. Cat rescues. I love cats, but spending a lot of money to save some cats who are then going to be fed food made from other dead animals might not be the best use of our resources. You can still love cats, but saving billions of farm animals has to take priority over saving 10 cats. You know, especially when those cats are going to go on to kill countless other animals and eat countless other animals. You know, like, there just has to be empirically-supported rational criteria applied to what we do.

• 1:16:12Rich Roll?

  It takes all voices, though.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  You know, you need, you need, you need the angry vegan and you need the palatable vegan. And, you know, all of those people have their role and their place in this, in this grand play.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  I'm just thinking in terms of like charitable giving.

• 1:16:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, you're right. I understand that.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  Like, I have friends who give like a couple of thousand dollars a year. And like, I personally think it should go towards the people who are involved in media and legislation, you know? And like- It means that some of the people who are doing wonderful things just might probably shouldn't be as funded as they currently are.

• 1:16:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. Well, I can't let you go without talking a little bit about the new book, Porcelain, which I didn't even realize until the other day. It's coming out soon, right? In May? Yeah, I wish I could have gotten an advanced copy of it.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  I don't have a copy of it.

• 1:17:00Rich Roll?

  You haven't gotten galleys yet?

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I've gone through the galleys, but I gave them away.

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did? Uh huh. Well, this is exciting because there's a lot of incredibly positive press about this. I just read a piece, I think it was in The Guardian, like just lauding you with all kinds of crazy praise. And you have like these amazing blurbs from everybody from Salman Rushdie to Dave Eggers. I mean, that is like, you know, the literary elite. That's pretty cool.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this might sound like sober, spiritual AA Southern California cliche. I certainly am happy that thus far people have responded well to it, but I really enjoyed making it. I really enjoyed talking about it. I hope that somehow I can be of service through it. Like, I don't need more attention. I've had enough attention in my life. Like, I don't, I don't want, like, there's so much more that can be accomplished with creative stuff, you know, like, A, you should love making it, and B, when it goes out into the world, how can it somehow be of service? How can it maybe help someone?

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  How, I don't, and sometimes we don't know. You know, like, you put out a record, it's like, I don't know how that's gonna help someone, but maybe it does. But that, so if the book does well, I just hope that it can somehow be like of service in accordance with divine principles.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And is it like a sort of a sober addiction memoir? I mean, it's a very specific point in your life, right? Like, it just, it ends before Play comes out. So it's just that section of your experience?

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Basically, the first half of it, I'm sober and Christian and teaching Bible study and in the rave scene and broke and super odd, you know, like...

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Playing at sex parties, but teaching Bible study during the day. And then halfway through the book, I start drinking again and I go to this other extreme of constant drunkenness, uh, dating tons of strippers, all that. And then the book ends, as I think I might have mentioned earlier, like when the book ends, my mom is dead. I've lost my record deal. I'm constantly hungover and drunk. I'm bottomed out in every way and I release the album Play. And that's the, that's the end of the book.

• 1:19:25Rich Roll?

  Right. When you think all is lost.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  All was completely lost.

• 1:19:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's so crazy.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Um, but we'll see what happened. I mean, like, it was really fun to write. And if it, that, so that, that old, that question that we always either ask or get asked, it's like, what is success? And I think success is, hmm, it's complicated. You know, like in the ye olde days, someone would make a book or a movie or a record and the success was only determined by like, how much money it brought in. And I think now, success has to be determined, like, how much integrity did you have around making it?

• 1:20:05Rich Roll?

  Were you creatively fulfilled in making it? Did it, what was your intention and did you stay true to that?

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is it honest? Is it, you know, is it going to reach people? Is it going to help someone who experiences it? Has it, you know, have you created a voice of honesty in the disingenuous world? You know, like, and then if some money gets generated, that's fine, but like, that should largely be sort of like a byproduct of all these other things that are done honestly with integrity, or so I think.

• 1:20:36Rich Roll?

  It has to be that way now anyway, though, because the, the economics don't, I mean, you know, the days of putting out a record and it sells 10 million copies is like winning the lottery.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, unless you're Adele, that doesn't happen.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  So it's this weird time where you've removed all the gatekeepers and now anybody can, not anybody, but most people can get access to at least some level of the equipment required to create music. There's no, uh, you know, distribution barrier. You can upload it to SoundCloud and you're in charge of cultivating your own audience. Like the empowerment that comes along with that is extraordinary, but it also completely changes the economics of the entire thing. But I feel like, you know, has that shifted your approach to making music? Cause I feel like you came from a pretty pure place with Play. And it's the same now. There's a difference in expectation, perhaps.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny, like I came from a place of making music just for the love of making music. It got corrupted for a while when I started selling a lot of records. And now I've like, for many reasons, had to go back to a place of purity, largely because you can't be a 50 year old musician making your 15th record in 2016 and expect anyone to buy it.

• 1:21:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  So like when I'm working on the music I'm working on now, like I love doing it. I hope it goes out into the world and people like it, but and if someone buys it, that's just like a super rare, happy byproduct of the process, but I don't expect it.

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  But how do you feel when you, when you're driving down Las Yenega and you see these crazy huge billboards for the Las Vegas casinos with the picture of the latest DJ, you know, playing at this pool party or that pool. I mean, the ascension of EDM and like this culture that has, that has like blown up around it is fascinating.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  I'm simply happy it's not me. Cause I've done, I've done that. I've, I've played Las Vegas.

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  The eight hour pool party?

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  I've done it and I don't enjoy it. So like when I see the guys who are doing that, I'm like, you know what? More power to you. Like if, imagine you're like a 24 year old Swedish guy. You have a couple of hit EDM tracks. You find yourself in Las Vegas, drinking and doing drugs and sleeping with random people and whatever, like for them. God bless. I'm just glad it's not me.

• 1:22:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Unless someone builds a time machine and we can go back and be 24 years old and doing that. Yeah.

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  So walk me through, you know, your perspective on, you know, reflecting back on this path of, you know, making a lot of money and being famous and, you know, living in fantastic houses and all these sorts of things that you've experienced that everybody aspires to. We walk around intellectually, we know like money doesn't make you happy. Fame doesn't make you, it's more headache than it's worth. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. But then we're addicted to TMZ culture and we still believe that this is going to be the answer. This is going to be the thing that is going to like, make us happy.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Even though there's no evidence for it.

• 1:23:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  You know, like if wealth and fame made people happy.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Donald Trump would be one of the happiest people on the planet, you know, and there would be no divorce lawyers in Beverly Hills.

• 1:23:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, these hills around Los Angeles would be teeming with the happiest people on the planet.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  And then sometimes there are like, there are a lot of people who love going hiking, who love hanging out with their dogs, and they're probably pretty happy. The one thing I have found, and it's true, but it's also a good Southern California cliche, is like, no matter what you do or where you go, your brain goes with you. And the space that your brain sits in never changes. So if you're Puff Daddy in a 40,000 square foot house, or some struggling 50-year-old screenwriter in North Hollywood in a studio apartment, their brain isn't exactly the same sized house, you know? And all the brain, the brain is everything,

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  and all it does is respond to information that's fed to it by our flesh bags, you know? Everything is the brain. And every decision we make, we try to control the world, thinking like that's where reality and truth are. Everything's the brain, you know? Understand the brain, heal the brain, look after the brain, talk to the brain when it's wrong. And that's where I think like, real change happens. You know, because like, the brain is the most complicated, sophisticated thing the universe has ever made, but sometimes it still thinks a stick is a snake, you know? Like, it's...

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the reptilian instinct takes over.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Like, it can do a billion things flawlessly at the same time, and still want to punch some guy who takes your parking space at Gelson's. You know, like, it's just like, it's so dumb and so remarkably sophisticated, but like, it all, like, and everyone thinks, that's what I was saying earlier, is like, I'm so glad that I've gone through the socioeconomic fame ringer. Because I know, okay, I'll tell you, this is the best way to sum up our fame, wealth-obsessed world. I went to a birthday dinner in New York about six years ago for a real estate developer, one of Donald Trump's friends. And Michael Bloomberg was there, Trump was there, Steve Schwarzman was there,

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  all like, the billionaires elite were there. I got invited because my date brought me. My date was this attractive lady, and she got invited, and so she brought me. And the man whose birthday it was, whose name I don't remember, rented Hammerstein Ballroom.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  And had Earth, Wind & Fire playing.

• 1:26:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  And had like 500 of his closest friends there. Fully catered, tons of entertainment, everything, you know, like. And at one point, Earth, Wind & Fire were playing. And I looked at Donald Trump, and I looked at Michael Bloomberg, and I looked at all the billionaires. And they were dancing, but with no, they weren't smiling, no one was laughing, no one was happy. I looked over at the kitchen staff, and they were smiling and laughing and dancing and having the best possible time. And I was like, that in a nutshell, like, if you can dance with your friends, you're probably way happier than people who aren't dancing with their friends. And like, there's nothing, wealth can do good things. It can make you comfortable, it can enable you to be like, to sleep in a clean, quiet bedroom. You can take your friends out to dinner.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  You can occasionally like go to the movies and not worry about it, but like, beyond that, you know, and then it can help you like pay for healthcare and certain things. But beyond that, there's nothing magical about it. In fact, it's the exact opposite, like it pretends to be magic when it isn't. You know, so people spend their whole lives pursuing the magic of wealth and fame. And then when they get it, they're miserable. So it's like way better just put your energy in elsewhere.

• 1:27:23Rich Roll?

  Right, like even more angry, because then they feel like they've been cheated on this promise.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, either angry or feeling inadequate. Like a friend of mine coined the term affluenza.

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, I've never heard that, yeah.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  They get, they like get to a certain point, they have a lot of money, they have a lot of fame, and they're miserable. And so they either then, most likely what they figure out is that they're doing it wrong. So like if they have a four bedroom apartment in New York, they think if they have a six bedroom apartment.

• 1:27:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it goes back to just chasing the dragon. You know, it's like, there's always somebody above you and, you know, Donald Trump's pissed off because there's somebody above him. And, you know, that, you just play that out to your deathbed.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  And I sometimes think like, How would like having $10 million, a million dollars, or $100,000 make your experience in the shower better? How would it make eating a piece of toast with organic peanut butter and apple butter better? How is it gonna make sitting in the sun, reading your favorite book better? How is it gonna make holding hands with someone you love better? Like, just, these are things that...

• 1:28:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  How does it make hiking better?

• 1:28:29Rich Roll?

  The, the retort to that, of course, would be, "Well, that's easy for you to say, because you, you know, because you have all these things."

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  But it's easy for me to say because I've experienced everything, you know? And like, and when you, whenever you, I'm sure you've maybe you've experienced this in people you've talked to or your own life, but like, interview Keith Richards. I guarantee you, ask him when he was happiest, he'll say when he was probably 19.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Before any success, you know?

• 1:28:55Rich Roll?

  It's always that way. It's the, you know, the tech entrepreneur remembering back to when they were in the garage.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  And so it's just, I mean, the stuff that really delivers happiness is available to almost everybody. And most of it is not, it's either free or not very expensive. And it's, it's the meaning that we bring to it. You know, like, an organic orange eaten in Griffith Park is probably going to be better than an organic orange eaten poolside at P. Diddy's 40,000 square foot house, you know?

• 1:29:29Rich Roll?

  Depending upon who you are.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, some people won't believe this, but I'm just, I'm just saying this. This is 100% my experience, and it breaks my heart to see so many people still very actively pursuing things that ultimately won't bring them happiness. You know, and in the process, screwing up relationships, screwing up their health, et cetera. You know, it's like, and find the things that you love right now and focus on that.

• 1:29:55Rich Roll?

  And how do you translate that into your daily practice? Like, what is a day in the life?

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Oh, just being in love with as many things as I can see. You know, like, the way, one of the reasons I live where I live is because I like looking at trees.

• 1:30:10Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you're literally like, there's trails right across the street from you. You can go hiking right out your front door.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  So if I look out my window and I see sunlight coming through green leaves, that makes me happy. Being in a 10,000 square foot house wouldn't make that any better. In my life, right now, for what it's worth, the things that truly make me happy can't be improved on by status or wealth.

• 1:30:34Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And you're a guy who appreciates design. Like, you have a very, I think aesthetics are important to you, right? You've lived in some pretty cool homes and you have, like, I can just, you know, the eye that I can see just around in the room that we're in right now. You know, those things are not irrelevant, but there's ways of doing them and bringing them into your life that don't have to be over the top.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  And none of these, I don't have anything that's expensive. I don't, when you, the moment you have something expensive, you have to worry about it.

• 1:31:02Rich Roll?

  But what was it like? Like, you moved into this giant castle in the Hollywood Hills, right? And you lived there for a while. Like, was there, like, five minutes of, like, yeah, man, this is awesome? Or did that, like, feeling fade? Or what was that like? Like, there was a lot of press written about that house and that purchase.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  It was okay.

• 1:31:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  It was a really...

• 1:31:21Rich Roll?

  It was a baller house.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  It was a remarkable house, but like, you know, 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning, I was sitting at my kitchen table on my laptop. And at that exact moment, everybody else was sitting at their kitchen table at their laptop. I was sitting at a kitchen table in a castle overlooking all of Los Angeles. Didn't really affect my experience of checking Facebook, you know? It didn't really, then I made oatmeal. Certainly didn't change the way the oatmeal cooked, or tasted, or where I bought it. You know, like, the day-to-day stuff, the quotidian minutia that fills our lives is largely unaffected. But, I mean, like, certainly, it's affected by extreme poverty.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  But for most people, it's just, like, they have the exact same stuff in their lives that, in, in the olden days, this is also, I think, it's really odd. In the ye olde days, what wealth gave you access to was very different than poverty. Meaning, 500 years ago, wealth meant you didn't freeze to death. Wealth meant that you actually had food. Wealth meant that you had clothes, you know? Now, the paradox, the irony is, the wealthier someone is, the more likely they are to be thin.

• 1:32:43Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  You know, like, the wealth, the poorer someone is, the more likely they are to consume too many calories.

• 1:32:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  You know? The wealthier someone is, the more likely they are to sweat and burn calories. The poorer someone is, the more likely, I'm just saying, this is all demographic, the more likely they are to sit more. These are, this is weird consequences of wealth and poverty, so, you know.

• 1:33:09Rich Roll?

  A lot of that goes back to the subsidies that we talked about before, right?

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  So, unfortunately, I have to get going.

• 1:33:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, we gotta, we gotta wrap this up here, anyway, but, um...

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  When you, I guess you can't say air, when you, when you...

• 1:33:22Rich Roll?

  Publish.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  I guess still...

• 1:33:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's airing it, publishing it.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Rich Roll?

  Posting it.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  When you satellite these.

• 1:33:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Um, do you, I'm assuming you edit them?

• 1:33:32Rich Roll?

  Not usually, like, I'll just put it up, unless, like, if you were to say to me, you know what, I, I said something I wish I didn't say, or I didn't, or I didn't say it correctly.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  If you could just edit out the parts where I'm talking.

• 1:33:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'll do that, right. No, that was great. You've been very generous with your time, and you are a true artist.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks.

• 1:33:51Rich Roll?

  And you are an inspiration, and I appreciate, I appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Well, thanks.

• 1:33:55Rich Roll?

  Very cool to get to know you a little bit.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  And as we were saying earlier, the leaders have to come from somewhere. I hope it's the people who are listening.

• 1:34:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  You know, like, we...

• 1:34:04Rich Roll?

  It is.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Like, somewhere, like, Gandhi, at one point, Gandhi was like a really mediocre lawyer living in Africa. And he was on track to remain a mediocre lawyer living in Africa, but something compelled him to become Gandhi. Martin Luther King was just a regular old preacher. You know, like, the leadership has to come from somewhere. It has to be us. You know, we can't wait for some magical cornucopia to give birth to magic leaders. It's like, it has to be now, and it has to be us.

• 1:34:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no white horse riding in to save the day.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:34:40Rich Roll?

  We are the white horse.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Rich Roll?

  So, be your own white horse.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  Just don't do it.

• 1:34:44Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks, man.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  My pleasure, thank you.

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  Peace. Blance.

• 1:35:01Rich Roll?

  Alright, that was a really cool experience. I just love that. He's really funny, he's insightful, he's sensitive, he was present. And his story is not only touching, I just think it's really powerful. And I hope you guys enjoyed it and got as much out of that experience as I did. Again, make a point of checking out his new book, Porcelain. It comes out May 17th, but you can preorder it now. Don't forget to check out the show notes at richroll.com. I've got tons of links this week, following up on everything that we talked about, to take your edification and your infotainment to the next level. If you haven't already subscribed to my YouTube channel, please make a point of doing that, youtube.com/richroll.

• 1:35:43Rich Roll?

  I've thrown up four vlogs already, which are these kind of fun, creative peeks behind the scenes at how I live my life on a daily basis, with a little insight that I share with you guys. They've been really challenging, but also creatively gratifying to put together. It takes a lot of my time, but I'm enjoying it. I'm trying to reach some level of consistency with the video output that I'm doing, and so I'd appreciate it if you check it out, let me know what you think on YouTube. What else can I tell you? Oh, let's thank the people that helped put this show together today, shall we? Jason Camiolo, doing an amazing job with audio engineering and production, thank you, Jason. Sean Patterson, who does all the graphics for the episode.

• 1:36:27Rich Roll?

  Chris Swan, for production assistance, he puts together and compiles, helps compile the show notes. And theme music, of course, by Analemma. Thank you for all the support, you guys. I love you guys as the audience, it means so much to me. And my final thought for today is, if you are committed to a path, if you feel strongly about your creative instincts, your aesthetic, as it were, but it doesn't seem like you're getting any traction, I think Moby's story is a really powerful example of what can happen when you stay the course, when you continue to hone your craft and remain true to your voice. And like I said in my most recent YouTube video, my fourth vlog, 004... The writers that make it are the ones who don't give up. They're also the ones who don't get caught up in the results.

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  They don't wait around to see if their script sells, or their book, it's, you know, whatever, how many copies are sold. They just start writing the next thing. And I think that's true of whatever you're involved in, whatever your pursuit is. It doesn't have to be as writing. I think writing, just, that's a good example, a powerful example. So, if this resonates with you, if you find yourself connecting with kind of where you are right now through this story, then stay the path. Double down on the quality and the output of your work, but stay out of the results. Keep moving forward, and most of all, cultivate that belief in yourself. See you guys next week. Peace. Plants.