Mishka Shubaly Interviews Rich

THE BEAST RETURNS! Once again, I'm switching gears. The interviewer becomes the interviewee. Part II. Mishka was a super popular guest on the podcast about a month ago. If you listened to the interview, you know we went deep — exhaustingly deep perhaps. Despite the fact that I had never previously met Mishka face-to-face, I had a knowing sense that we would hit it off given our many points in common – writing, running, alcoholism & sobriety. There was an immediate short hand, and we just went straight to the core until we both felt like we were drowning in molten lava when the interview was over. So when my publisher raised the issue of having someone interview me to coincide with the release of the paperback version of Finding Ultra* — hitting bookshelves and online retailers 5/21! — I knew Mishka more than fit the bill. Osher Günsberg hit the nail on the head with Part I of this self-involved and shameless self-promotional podcast double, and Mishka picks right up with Part II right where Osher left off — repaying the favor of my unrepentant deep dive with him by hitting me hard with some tough questions as we peel back the layers and get behind the scenes on my book, my story and what drives both of us. OK. NOW FOR THE (HOPEFULLY NOT TOO) HARD SELL….. I feel weird asking people to buy the paperback. I'm sure the majority of you listeners out there have already read my book – you have, right? RIGHT?? But then again, who knows? Maybe you haven't. Maybe you just stumbled upon this blog and podcast out of the blue. So here is an opportunity to learn a bit more about me, why I wrote the book and what I hoped to express. Oh yeah, there's also this little matter of admitting that I would like to move some units. Maybe even make the NY Times Bestseller List for Non-Fiction Paperbacks – a list I narrowly missed with the hardcover release. OK, busted. Call me shameless. Call me competitive. Or, just shoot me. I am formally apologizing right here and right now. But hey, wouldn't you do the same if you had spent a couple years writing a book? So cut me some slack. I will say that if I do make the list — an admitted (huge?) longshot, it will be entirely due to YOU — the audience of this podcast and blog. And hey, if my book and this podcast stand for anything, it's that we should all dream big. Making that list is definitely a big dream of mine. Moreover, the truth is, I ain't got no publicist out there shilling for me. Plus, Random House basically told me they don't have the resources to market and promote the release — basically no press to get the word out. So I'm on my own. But I'm not — I've got all of you, who have been beyond supportive. So if you've enjoyed the content I've been freely sharing — content that takes an obscene amount of my time to create — and feel inclined to support the message I so passionately believe in, then this is the time I am REALLY ASKING FOR YOUR HELP. Forget donating, just pull the trigger on the paperback. Already read the book? Then get it as a gift for someone — after all, Father's Day is coming up and you gotta get dear old dad something anyway. Plus, it's darn cheap – just $13.50 on Amazon. What the heck, right? That's like a one cold pressed juice at Whole Foods; and will hopefully be even a bit more nourishing. Then tell a friend. Thanks! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout. Welcome to episode 31 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Mishka Shabali.

• 1:23Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I am Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. I'm in New York City. I love it here. I'm having a great time. I've been here for several days and a couple more days to go before I head back to Los Angeles, and it's been an amazing time. Yesterday, I spoke at The Seed, The Seed Experience, at 82 Mercer Street, which was amazing. Thank you to everybody who showed up. It was awesome. Had a couple hundred people. Show up to hear me give my spiel and it was a really cool event. I'm going back today, this afternoon's a two day event, so can't wait to go and see some of my fellow plant eating colleagues.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  It's, it's pretty cool because it's in this loft space on Mercer Street, right in the heart of Soho, which creates kind of a cool, unique urban hip environment, which is somewhat distinct from a lot of the other kind of veg fest or veggie oriented events that I've been attending and had the honor of speaking at.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  Tons of like hip people with lots of tattoos and piercings, tons of great vegan food and people talking about getting healthy and getting fit and it was a real pleasure and an honor to speak there and I hope everyone who showed up enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed being there. I also got a chance to hook up and meet face to face for the first time with my colleague, colleague, Tim Van Orden from Running Raw. You might remember him if you've been listening to the podcast. He was a guest a couple of months ago. He was a great guest, a very popular guest on the show. We did that interview by Skype and I had actually never met him in person, so it was good to kind of

• 3:21Rich Roll?

  get to know him a little bit. I did a little video interview for him for his YouTube channel. So if you're a fan of Tim's, hopefully he'll be uploading that at some point in the near future. And I've also been running around like a maniac, recording all kinds of podcast episodes while I've been here. I wanted to try to get the most out of this trip and sit down with some of the people that inspire me while I'm here and start to create kind of a backlog library of interviews that I can start to. Upload over the next week or two. So, a couple of days ago, I had an amazing experience.

• 4:01Rich Roll?

  I went out to Queens to visit PS244, a public school, a public elementary school. It's K through 3rd grade out there. You might have heard me talk about it, and I've tweeted about it a couple of times. But PS244 is the first public school in the nation to institute an all vegetarian school lunch program, and it caught headlines across the nation and even internationally, some television news coverage, etc., for kind of breaking this sacred ground. And if you know me, you know that I'm passionate about this school lunch issue, which I think we need a lot of work on. It's pretty deplorable. It's pretty, pretty

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  embarrassing what kids are being fed at their, at their schools, whether it's a public school, or a private school, or what have you. And when I came across this story, and kind of read some of the menu items and the foods that they're serving these kids, I was really fascinated by it, and knew that I had to go out and meet these guys. So I made the schlep out to Queens, sat down with one of the teachers, Christian Ledesma, who's sort of head of the wellness program there, and was instrumental in implementing the new program, as well as Bob Groff, the principal. There's also another critical person in the equation, from the New York City Healthy, what is it called? The New York

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  Coalition for Healthy School Foods, I believe it's called. And she's up in Ithaca. She was not able to sit down for the interview, but I'm going to try to get her on Skype and include her in the interview as well, because I know that she was basically the key person to help make this happen. And what I was amazed to find out was, you know, all the news articles sort of just talk about the school lunch. But what's really going on at the school is so much more beyond that. It's really a wellness and fitness oriented curriculum to its core and in its constitution. And the school lunch is really just the next manifestation of a whole array of programs that they're implementing there. They're growing some of their own food.

• 6:14Rich Roll?

  This is like a city block school and they have these pouches out along the fence where they're growing food. They have a tower, they have a tower planter in their library. I showed up, it was after school, it was in the afternoon. Most of the kids were already gone, but they had after school programs going on. I saw kids tasting blackberries and talking about what they felt when they ate these good foods. And I saw kids making granola bars and I was like, what is going on in this school? So, anyway, I had a great conversation with Christian and Bob and I'm going to be putting that up next week. I really think people need to hear this story and hopefully this lights a spark for other public schools to follow suit.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  I realize there's a lot of political issues and corporate conglomerate interests that are involved in the school lunch program. It's a complex issue, but there is work to be done and I wanted to shine a bright light on what these guys are doing. So, check that out. Look forward to putting that up sometime next week. I also went over to CNN headquarters when I'm in New York City. I always try to find an excuse to go over there and see my friends at CNN and had the good fortune and opportunity to sit down with Ronnie Selig, who is the Director of the Health and Wellness and Medical Unit over at CNN.

• 7:40Rich Roll?

  She sort of lords over that whole department as an Executive Vice President and Producer. And she's also an accomplished triathlete. She's the person behind the CNN Fit Nation program and we had a great chat about what they're doing with Fit Nation, about her personal story in triathlon, which is inspiring and very, very interesting and kind of what goes on behind the scenes over at CNN, you know, how they decide to cover stories, which stories to cover, how they cover them and that was really, really cool. I'm also going to sit down this week with Jonathan Fields, the man behind the Good Life Project. Um...

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  He has a phenomenal program with that and is sort of busting paradigms all over the place. He's an inspiring guy who kind of came across my radar about a year ago and I've been following him religiously. Last time I was in New York, I had the opportunity to sit down with him and get interviewed for his program, The Good Life Project. And now, he's going to sit down with me and I'm going to get to pick his brain, which is pretty cool. I'm also going to interview Jason Wachab, the CEO of MindBodyGreen.com, which is the leading wellness destination on the web, about his personal story, the founding of MindBodyGreen, kind of what they're doing over there. It's my favorite wellness

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  site. They're doing amazing work and they have big plans. So, that should be fun as well. I'm also going to do an interview with the Fat Burning Man podcast. I don't know when that's going to go up, probably not for a couple of months, I'm not sure. But I'll be talking to him. What else? Thanks for all the amazing feedback from the Asher Gunsberg episode, episode 30, which I just put up a couple of days ago. Got a lot of great emails, a lot of great tweets. People seem to enjoy that, which is a relief. Because if you listen to it, you know, we switched gears and Asher interviewed me. And he's

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  great. He's a great guy. Total pro at interviewing. And I knew that he would be a good candidate to kind of sit down and pick my brain. We've gotten to know each other a little bit and gone out on some runs. And, you know, he's a professional host. He was host of Australia's version of American Idol, Australian Idol, and a bunch of other TV shows, including a big TV show here in the US that was on, I don't know, a year ago, two years ago, on CBS called Live to Dance. And he's a great guy. So, I'm really glad people enjoyed that. If you haven't listened to it yet, you should go back and listen to episode 30.

• 10:25Rich Roll?

  What else is going on? Well, as I mentioned, this sort of flipping the switch here and having the spotlight on me for a change on the podcast was an idea from my publisher who said, hey, your paperback's coming out, you know, on the podcast. Instead of interviewing people, why don't you have somebody interview you, which is where the idea for having Asher...

• 10:52Rich Roll?

  Sit Down With Me came from, and I wanted to break it up into two parts. Asher's interview was part one, and today we're going to do part two. And the person that I nominated to handle this is the good Mishka Shubaly. That was another very, very popular episode when I sat down with him about a month ago and interviewed him. That was a really intense, in-depth interview that people seemed to enjoy. And I thought that he would be a great guy to, in turn, interview me. And we could cover a bunch of topics and ground that only Mishka knows how to delve. So that's what we're doing today. And I think it's a good complementary piece to the Asher interview because we talk about

• 11:37Rich Roll?

  a bunch of different stuff that we didn't talk about with Asher. And once again, as it always is with Mishka, it goes deep. It's intense because he's an intense guy, and I love that guy. So that's what we're putting up today. I'm excited to share this with you, and I hope you guys enjoy it. Why am I doing this? Well, as I continue to mention, my paperback, the paperback version of Finding Ultra, is coming out on May 21st, which is in a couple of days. Today's Sunday, May 19th, when I'm recording this. And you gotta give me a break, man. I gotta get a little self-promotional here.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  I started this podcast really because I wanted to introduce to you guys all of these people that I've been able to meet as a result of this journey that I've been on. Really cool people with amazing stories and amazing information, and I wanted to shine a spotlight on them. This podcast is about my guests. It's not about me. But I gotta get a little shameless here. My publisher basically said they don't have the resources to help promote the paperback release, and I don't have a publicist, and there really isn't any press to speak of to help buttress getting the word out about the paperback. And so it's on me.

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  It's on my shoulders to try to make something happen. And I want to move units. What can I say? I spent two years writing a book. It feels weird to try to kind of... Tell you guys, hey, buy my paperback. And especially, you know, I would imagine a good percentage of you that are listening to this show have already read my book. They're like, enough with this book that you wrote two years ago. Come on, let's move on. But it's a window of opportunity in which I have to get a little bit shameless. So I'm apologizing now. Forgive me. And I hope that the interview at the same time will be entertaining and enlightening.

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  And for those of you who have not bought the book, maybe you'll think about picking it up. Father's Day is coming out. And hey, the paperback's cheap. I think it's like $13.50 on Amazon. So wham bam, thank you ma'am. Done. Get something for dad. It's a no brainer. Inspire dad to get off the couch, get him moving, change up his diet, whatever, man. It's a simple, easy, quick gift. And I'm doing my best to get the word out. Actually, it was cool. Last night I was walking home to my hotel from The Seed. And you know, when I'm in New York, I like to walk everywhere rather than take the subway. And I was walking all the way uptown and I passed The Strand Bookstore, which is my

• 14:27Rich Roll?

  favorite bookstore in New York City, legendary bookstore. Popped in and sure enough, saw my paperback in there, even though it doesn't, the on-sale date isn't for a couple of days. So that was really cool. I'm glad to see that it's getting out. My publisher informed me that Barnes and Noble is going to give it some good placement right up front in the stores. But I'll believe that when I see it. And that's what they say. I haven't seen it yet. Hopefully, that's the case. So if you've enjoyed the content that I've been providing you, if you've gotten something out of it, if you've been inspired or been informed, this is the time that I'm asking you to please do me a solid. Pick up the paperback, get it for a gift for somebody. I'm really trying to get the word out.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  So tell a friend, tell a friend about the book, tell a friend about the podcast. And I owe you big time. All right? Enough with the hard sell. I think I've said enough and beyond. One thing that I did want to mention before we get into the episode is my buddy, John Hirsch, who is a... Professional triathlete living here in New York City. He's a great guy. I've gotten to know him over the last couple of years. I got to know him initially at Brett Blenner's Zen Triathlon Training Camp. He has, he's also a coach and he runs a team here in New York City called Team Continuum.

• 15:56Rich Roll?

  If you want to find out more about that, it's at www.teamcontinuum.net and Continuum is spelled C-O-N-T-I-N-U-U-M. He has some entries for a couple of the premier triathlon races on the circuit, the most blah, blah, blah prestigious races, the 2013 Ironman Lake Placid Race and the New York City Triathlon, and he's got entries for that. So if you're interested in participating in those races, which I'm sure are sold out already, you can check out Team Continuum and they will provide you with one-on-one coaching.

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  And if you know me, you know how much I believe in one-on-one coaching. You'll get coached by John himself, a top pro triathlete and coach, and you'll get a kit and you'll get a weekend full of awesome activities for the team. So they have some fundraising goals that they want you to meet in exchange for that. I think it's $1,500 for the New York City Triathlon and $2,500 if you're going to do the Ironman, but you'll race knowing that you help people with their direct needs as they battle cancer. So, check it out. John's a great guy. He's a great coach. Those are two great races. It's pretty much a win-win-win.

• 17:21Rich Roll?

  So go to teamcontinuum.net to find out more and if you have any specific questions you can't find there, you can email [email protected]. So enough for that. What else? Let's get into Mishka. If you didn't listen to my previous interview with Mishka, He is a recovering alcoholic like myself. He's a writer like myself. He wrote the number one Kindle single called The Long Run. He also wrote one called Shipwrecked and a couple other there's others, other Kindle singles, which are great short reads, which you should check out. You can just pick them up on Amazon. He's also hosted at The Moth, which is a

• 18:06Rich Roll?

  personal favorite of mine, listening to spoken word from The Moth. And just an overall inquisitive, interesting, compelling character. And thanks, Mishka, for picking me up at the airport the other day.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  So let's get into it, everybody. I hope you enjoy this episode. And there'll be more coming from me, from New York City later in the week. Enjoy. Mishka Shubaly.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  What are we gonna talk about?

• 18:57Mishka Shubaly?

  Do I get to do the intro today because I'm doing the interviewing?

• 19:00Rich Roll?

  You can do, yeah, you can do that. You can do whatever. Hey, this is your show. I'm just, I'm just a guest today, so.

• 19:07Mishka Shubaly?

  I mean, I have a couple of different intros that I've prepared.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, you prepared? That's scared. That's, that's frightening, actually.

• 19:14Mishka Shubaly?

  So I can do, hey, welcome back to the Rich Roll Podcast. I'm Rich Roll. I'm an author of the number one bestselling, Finding Ultra.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  This is already going south.

• 19:28Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm a plant-based nutrition advocate. I am a, an ultra-distance endurance triathlete.

• 19:38Rich Roll?

  Something like that.

• 19:39Mishka Shubaly?

  Happily married man, father of four, recovering attorney. Did I hit all the aces?

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  I think that's it. Yeah, let's, this is, shorter's better, dude.

• 19:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, then the alternate one is, you know, welcome to, welcome to Counterpoint, hard-hitting journalism with Mishka Shubaly. We're going to be looking at the seedy underbelly of the ultra-distance triathlete world, searing expose on Rich Roll. Who is he? And is that really his name?

• 20:08Rich Roll?

  Now I'm really scared.

• 20:11Rich Roll?

  This is, uh, this is retribution, isn't it?

• 20:17Mishka Shubaly?

  This episode will be called the big payback.

• 20:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, man. Are you, you're making me already regret doing this.

• 20:25Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, my, my theory is to front end load the regret to get the as much regret out at the beginning. And then at the end, when it's not so bad, you'll be like, oh, man, I got off easy.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  That's your idea. We'll see how that goes.

• 20:38Mishka Shubaly?

  That's how I'm selling it. That's the, uh, that's the marketing pitch.

• 20:41Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Come at me.

• 20:44Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, one of the, I mean, as a, as a fellow Amazon author and as somebody who has put their private life in the public sphere, um, you know, a big question for me is how you deal with those one star reviews. I mean, I think for, I think for an aspiring author, that kind of thing is so intimidating because people, you know, people take you to task, not just for what you've written or for what you're, you know, is in your book, but like what your hair looked like that day or something like that.

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, you really do come out of the gate with the, the hard, the nerve splitting, you know, question. Well, yeah. I mean, I think, uh, you know, it's the first time that I had done something on a real public scale, uh, where you're open to, you know, that kind of criticism from people. And I guess I would first say that the book got like over, it has like over 300 Amazon reviews and, you know, they're overwhelmingly positive. You know, there's like 290 of them or whatever are five stars, something like that. So I'm not complaining, you know?

• 21:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, the thing is though, is the, the nature of the human brain though, is the, we don't, we have a tendency to de-emphasize the positive stuff and then the negative stuff really sticks.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Oh, of course. You go right to the one star reviews and you read those and then you walk around all day thinking about that and grinding your teeth over, you know, what that guy did, you know, he didn't understand or whatever. Um, yeah, it's, and it, and it, and also it's not like you put out. An album that was just an expression and people didn't like it or they liked it like it's what you said it's you're exposing your life you know so it's not they're not they're not just judging the book they're judging you as a human being so it definitely cuts close to the nerve and I knew that going in you know I remember and I've told this story before I can't remember if I if we talked about it last time we talked but you know when I first turned in the manuscript I was like oh my god like am I sure I want

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  to do this like is this the right thing like it's scary and it's a very vulnerable feeling and and you know it goes with the territory it's like hey you're great you're writing a book and then here you deliver it it's part of the package so I accept that and I welcome it and I actually have no problem whatsoever with criticism if people didn't like the book or and and some of the some of the criticism we can get into that a little bit I go ah fair point you know I can see that like you know I could see that objectively but when they sort of started to take your life to task and and judge you as a human being that's that's a little bit different and it's it's hard you know it's hard to block that out I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me emotionally

• 23:33Rich Roll?

  because it definitely does.

• 23:34Mishka Shubaly?

  Well you know one one point that I would make on that is that when I read a one-star review of my stuff I you know a point I made to someone when I was you know griping about it is if I was a fiction author it would be a criticism of my book and that would be easier to take you know I can handle criticism of my writing but it's a lot harder when it's criticism of your life especially when you've when you've worked really hard to do an unsparing unflinching evaluation of your faults for the you know strangers in the world at whole but it was pointed out to me that though the one-star reviewers feel that they're reviewing your life they're still just reviewing your writing.

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I guess. I mean,

• 24:20Mishka Shubaly?

  It doesn't feel like that.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  Well, first of all.

• 24:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Receiving end, but it's, you know, that's the truth is that they are, they're reviewing the words that you wrote, you know, and I share that, you know, less for you than, um, you know, for other aspiring writers who, you know, may have read your stuff and think, man, that was a great book, but no way am I ever going to open myself up to that.

• 24:41Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I think you, you make this sort of choice to be vulnerable and say, here are the, here's the dark side of me. Here's the part of me I'm not proud of. Here are the mistakes that I made. And then to get a one star review where somebody's criticizing you for having those traits or expressing them when you're the one who's calling yourself out on that is a little bit. That's an interesting thing, but I think also what you have to bear in mind is there's also a lot of transference. Like somebody's really, they're, they're talking more about themself and where they are and where they're coming from and what's going on with their life than they are. Just as much as they are sort of, you know, levying judgment on your life. You know what I mean?

• 25:21Mishka Shubaly?

  I, oh, I totally agree. I mean, my, you know, I, the analogy that I always make is when you're, when you write about your own life, it's the equivalent of standing naked in front of a crowd of strangers. And I, I feel like that's a good faith gesture that you're making that you're going to say, I'm, I'm going to stand here naked in front of you in all my deformity, you know? And if there's somebody who says, oh, man, that dude could really use, you know, use to lose five pounds or something. You, that's on you, man.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:56Rich Roll?

  Well, right. I mean, you know, you would hope that somebody would applaud your courage for saying, you know, I'm going to kind of step out and, you know, pull the curtain back a little bit on this and, you know, not everybody does that. But I think that you, you know, you've said that originally, when you were writing the long run, that you didn't think anybody would be interested in that kind of a story. And, and, you know, what a surprise to you it was to find out that you were wrong. So the majority of the people, you know, really can kind of tap into that kind of thing emotionally. There's just, there's always going to be the outliers who, who don't like it or, or, you know, whatever. It's fine. And. You know, I struggle with it. I mean, you'll read people, you know, they're sort of these life coach kind of people on the internet or otherwise, and you know, sort of these people

• 26:40Rich Roll?

  that hold themselves out to be, you know, inspirational, motivational speaker kind of people. And they'll say, you know, you gotta embrace your haters, you know, you gotta embrace your haters and love them. And like, you know, I'm not there yet. You know what I mean? But I also, it's like, we're talking, you know, like between you and I, it's on a pretty small stage, you know, compared to somebody who's really in the public spotlight, who has to deal with that, you know, as a daily aspect of their life. Like, the amount of kind of Teflon shield that you have to walk around with, like, I can't imagine that.

• 27:10Mishka Shubaly?

  I remember the day after, you know, Britney Spears shaved her head and was like attacking her car with an umbrella and stuff like that. And my heart went out to her, because I was like, Britney, if, if you can be such a mess that you elicit sympathy in the heart of like, an anonymous drugie, you've really made a mess of your life.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, we live in this culture too, where everything is so instantaneous. And, you know, talking about pulling the curtain back, or, you know, removing the veil on celebrity, like, you know, everybody's got a cell phone. And, you know, people are fallible and make mistakes. And, you know, we hold people up to a certain standard and love to see them kind of fall from that podium a little bit. And that's what, you know, why TMZ is on every night. And that kind of thing, you know, we like to sort of revel and celebrate in those foibles. That's just, you know, kind of what are, you know, that's a big part of our culture. So you have to accept it. If you try, I mean, you can't engage it, really, you know, you gotta just sort of accept it and move on. And I think it

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  forces you to look within yourself and say, well, you know, like, you know, if I'm not feeling particularly spiritually fit, you know, I'll get resentful and I want to lash out or get into some kind of dialogue with somebody online about this and that. And that's, that's a no win situation. You know what I mean? But when I'm feeling good about myself, then, you know, it's like, eh, whatever, move on. Like, I know who I am. And they want to feel that way and think that way, you know, that's their prerogative and they're entitled to that. So, but I think it is that it's that drawing that differentiation between the work and the life, you know, like, what is the writing and what is the personal attack?

• 28:55Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, a huge thing is perspective as well. I mean, especially, you know, it's, you can say that we live in a culture of lowest common denominator, but that's sort of TV culture. And there is a whole bigger culture than that. And, and, you know, to look, and I do this, and I think other people do this in their lives as well as, you know, the negative thing gets blown way out of proportion. And the reality is that far more, far, far, far more people have seen, you know, have been witness to your story and see themselves in

• 29:34Mishka Shubaly?

  your shortcomings and your failings. And, and the admirable thing is, for a lot of us, is less the, the, the distance that you've traveled in the, in the races, but the distance that you've traveled in your head. And the, you know, more the courage it takes for you to take on your biggest obstacle, who is Rich Roll, than it is to take on the Epic Five. It's the Epic One.

• 30:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right? You know, um, yeah, it's true. It's true. Uh, I had a great point I was gonna make that just eluded me right now. Oh, yeah, I was gonna say, um,

• 30:18Mishka Shubaly?

  What did I say about Rich Roll being your biggest?

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that threw me off of my thinking. A couple of weeks ago, I, I, I don't know what came over me, but I decided I was gonna tweet my favorite one star review of my book.

• 30:31Mishka Shubaly?

  That's awesome. I totally support that.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  And then right after I did it, I was like, why did I do that? But it was, it's so classic, like the headline or the sort of tagline for the review on Amazon, I'll put it in the show notes because I can't resist. But it was like, this is a great book, but only if you're George W. Bush. And the guy went on to this sort of like point by point, you know, analysis of, of, you know, why he found me so distasteful as a human being, which was

• 31:02Rich Roll?

  I read it out loud to my boys, you know, and they were like laughing. They were like, they thought it was hilarious. And so it's like, I'm okay with that, you know, like, I'm like, all right, he's, you know, and the guy, it was long, right? The guy actually took a lot of time to like, write that thing. Like, he took time out of his day to do that. And, you know, personally, I've never gone online to write a negative review of anything. I'm also not going online and writing a lot of positive reviews about a lot of stuff either. Like, I just try to remain neutral on that stuff, generally.

• 31:31Mishka Shubaly?

  I mean, I would leave Hitler a negative review. Like, I would, I would be brutal with him on Yelp.

• 31:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on Yelp, right.

• 31:39Mishka Shubaly?

  But, um, that's, that's the thing. When somebody devotes the time and energy to write a thousand-word mon-, you know, sort of manifesto about what a crappy person you are, not just a bad writer, but like a lousy human being, you got to wonder what else is going on in their life.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  Well, that's why I said, you know, there's a lot of transference going on, you know, and I think that's true. Um, you know, the, uh, the, you know, you can't, you know, as a creative person, as a human being, as an artist, or what have you, you can't believe the, you know, all the positive stuff, and you can't believe the negative stuff. You know what I mean? You just have to be, you kind of have to immunize yourself from that. That being said, you know, yeah, there's some low blows in some of those one-star reviews, but there was a couple of things that I read. There was a consistent theme in, in the kind of, you know, lower-ranked reviews of my book, which was that, um, I was advertising products, like, throughout the book.

• 32:43Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, let's talk about that.

• 32:45Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and you know what? Like, I'm like, you know what? That's legit, that's a legitimate critique. That's a legitimate criticism. And had I had the opportunity to rewrite the book or do it again, I would have not have put in all those parentheticals about like, hey, if you want it, you can check out my protein powder, whatever. Like, they, they took, they, they, they took people out of the narrative, and it came off like a sales pitch, and that was not my intent.

• 33:11Rich Roll?

  But I can see why people came away with that. And, and because, you know, there were more than a few people that raised that point. It's like, all right, I see that. Like, you know, I shouldn't have done that, you know, and, and it wasn't my intention to like, be trying to kind of like hard sell my products or whatever. I was trying to be like, here's a, here's a roadmap to how I did it. And then, you know, if there's a reference like, hey, if you want to learn more about this, this is what I did. And here's the link. I should have just pushed all that stuff into the back into the appendix and just tell the story like, you know, so I get that. I'm fine. And I'm fine with people pointing that out.

• 33:47Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, I mean, Rich, I gotta say that it's like, it's great for you, for you to, to come out and say that. I mean, I think we, I do think we live in a world where apology is forbidden. You know, it's, it, we, it, the only way you can say you made a mistake is if you're caught doing something and, and then you go away to some rehab for 30 days and you come back and you're, you know, you've been redeemed.

• 34:14Rich Roll?

  You hire a really good publicist.

• 34:15Mishka Shubaly?

  Exactly, exactly. But it's another thing else. It's a, it's a different thing to come forward and say, I did this thing. I thought it was going to work. I've gotten negative feedback from, from voices I value. It was a mistake. It was an error in judgment. If I had it to do over, I would do it differently. I mean, I totally agree with you and I agree with your critics that for, you know, for me as a reader, the experience of reading the book was frequently interrupted. And, and the worst thing for me was that I was like, man, this is a really good story. And these little parentheticals aren't, are harming the story. And the story is what I care about the most.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And look, it's the first book I've ever written. And, you know, I happen to have a really good editor. And, and for the most part, he, you know, my editor at Crown really helped me improve the book. But I also feel like it was sort of incumbent upon him to kind of say, you know, as somebody who does that for a living to say, hey, you're a first time writer, like, you probably don't want to do this here. Like, that might not be a good idea. But like, nobody ever pointed it out to me. And it was like, you know, I didn't do, you know, I should have done it differently. So, you know, that's all.

• 35:24Mishka Shubaly?

  That's awesome. That's about, that's all I have to say in rebuttal. I think it's great to, for someone to be able to admit a mistake in a public forum. I mean, I, I go back and I read the long run and I'm like, I can't believe people bought this.

• 35:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Just can I have it back for a day to work on it and then I'll give it back to you.

• 35:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:46Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, I look at it and it's like.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  Can't you do that now with Kindle singles? Like you could actually update it and then people's Kindles get updated automatically?

• 35:53Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I actually, I have an alternate ending. I want to work into where like a Jedi X-wing fighter comes down, picks me and Luis up and then we.

• 36:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Mishka Shubaly?

  But yeah, you.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  I was just reading on the plane, I was reading Vanity Fair magazine about the perils of World War Z and all these problems they had making this movie and how they basically started shooting before they decided what the third act was. You know, so it's sort of like that. You can bring in a new third act, completely change the ending. But it's like, you don't even have to, like somebody who's already bought it and has it on their Kindle, like the next time they open it, it'll just be there, right? Isn't that how it works?

• 36:29Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, and I, and I fear that because I think that for, for, you know, for a control freak author like myself, the tendency is to.

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, you'd just be working on it all the time.

• 36:40Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  Could you imagine if a musician could constantly be like retooling a song? And then every time somebody played the MP3 on their iTunes, it would be a different version?

• 36:50Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, yeah, that would suck because, because as readers and as listeners, what we love is the imperfections. What we love is the stuff that the artist goes back to and think, oh, man, I gotta take that part out. You know, and it's no, that's where it's slow there and then it speeds up. That's the best part of the song, you know?

• 37:05Rich Roll?

  And I also think that, you know, I don't know how much people really realize or understand this, that you're never really, you're never really done with something. You just basically decide you're not going to work on it anymore. Or there's no, you know, it's time to work on something else. So it's like when you're, when you turn your book into the publisher or you publish your Kindle single, or you record an album, or whatever it is, it's never done. Or, or a movie, you know, a movie is never done. They just run out of time to continue to work on it and edit it. And time's up, so they put it out. But, so you're always going to look back on your work. And I certainly do with my book and go, why'd I say that? Or I should have changed that. Or I, you know what? This would have been a lot better if I'd done this and that.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  And you just, you know, you learn from it and, you know, it's good that you can look at the long run and kind of go, oh, you know, like, I don't like that or this. It shows that you're still interested in growing as an artist and as a writer. And that will just be expressed in your next work.

• 37:59Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I think I think that that keeps you moving forward as a writer when you can look at an older work and reflect on it and say, oh, man, I would do this totally differently. Or this, this isn't the type of storytelling I want to do at all. Or, you know, and that all it fuels, you know, further projects.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:17Mishka Shubaly?

  You know.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you look at it and you go, that was awesome. I wouldn't change a word. Well, you know, then are you really, are you growing?

• 38:23Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, if you're high fiving yourself, then it's not necessarily

• 38:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:27Mishka Shubaly?

  Forward motion.

• 38:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:28Mishka Shubaly?

  But I mean, I think, you know, you and I are both in similar situations here. So we're sort of, uh, our first big thing, you know, the first like step out into, uh, into the spotlight or whatever, you know, and your first book and then my first exposure.

• 38:46Mishka Shubaly?

  You get some things wrong and you know, and there's a lot that you want to change and you the learning curve is really steep.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. And plus, I didn't think anyone was going to read my book. You.

• 39:01Mishka Shubaly?

  Are you more relieved that people read it? Or would you be more relieved if no one had?

• 39:07Rich Roll?

  If no one had, maybe I'd be relieved, but I'd also be horribly depressed. So I'll take, I'll take less relief and less depression.

• 39:18Mishka Shubaly?

  That's good. That's good.

• 39:19Rich Roll?

  You know, all right. So what else didn't you like?

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  Come on, let's get it all out.

• 39:25Mishka Shubaly?

  Would you want to, you want to get it all out of the front? Or I figured I was going to sprinkle it through like.

• 39:29Rich Roll?

  Hey, man, it's your show.

• 39:32Mishka Shubaly?

  Again, welcome to the Rich Roll Show.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  That's right. When are you starting your podcast? There were some people on Twitter. I were like, when are you doing a podcast?

• 39:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich, look around. Once this room gets clean, then we can talk about other projects.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  You don't have, you don't have to have a clean room to do a podcast.

• 39:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Don't, don't tell me that, though. I'm already in danger of like, uh, death by hoarderification, where like one of these shelves, the guitarist is just going to topple over on me.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  You're just, you're just a Brooklyn writer, musician, artist.

• 40:03Mishka Shubaly?

  I like to think of this.

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  You've got some crazy shit on your walls in here.

• 40:07Mishka Shubaly?

  Don't look too closely.

• 40:10Mishka Shubaly?

  One, uh, one thing I want to talk about is I feel like reading Finding Ultra, we see you not just going on one path and then taking a steep right turn. You seem to be reinventing yourself. Uh, there like there are several transformations over the course of the book. Um, you know, I mean, there seems to be a big change that takes place in your life when you discover swimming and that that, that that's something that you're good at. And then another change when you discover alcohol and then obviously another change when you undiscover alcohol, when you get that out of your life. And then

• 40:50Mishka Shubaly?

  another transformation when, um, you know, when you realize you're 40, you're overweight, you're out of shape. Um,

• 41:02Mishka Shubaly?

  are, is there another transformation in the pipeline?

• 41:06Rich Roll?

  Hmm. You characterize them as transformations. When you, when you describe that, I'm thinking it's a series of, of going from one obsession to the next, you know, like transferring obsessions along the way. Uh, but I guess transformation is a better word. Um, yeah, I hope so. Listen, you know, um,

• 41:33Rich Roll?

  one of the things that I learned, the first things I learned in recovery that I think about a lot, uh, is this idea of, you know, progress and regression. Like we have this idea that, you know, if things are going good, you can kind of cruise or that your life is static, you know, and that it's not, nothing is ever that way. You're either moving towards recovery or greater recovery or growth, or you're regressing and moving towards relapse, or your life is devolving. You know, it's a very elastic thing that is constantly in motion at all times. And I've, I have to always kind of bear that

• 42:13Rich Roll?

  in mind because I want to just cruise, you know? Um, and I have to push myself to continue to expand and grow. Um, because my kind of default setting is to devolve. You know what I mean? If left to my own devices and, uh,

• 42:33Rich Roll?

  And I try to be forward thinking about what I'm doing, but also be open, you know, and not try to plot the course too thoroughly ahead. So now, and I'll keep this a little bit short because I talked about this with Asher last night a little bit, but you know, people keep saying to me, well, when's your next race? And what are you training for? And you know, what's the next big thing? And I certainly want to race and I want to challenge. And even you picked me up at the airport and we were talking about that on the way over here. And my life has become gratefully, has become a lot more busy, you know, as a result of the book and the things that kind of revolve around that. And it's,

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  it's really kind of shifting my interests and my priorities. Like I still want to race and be relevant and push myself and see what I'm capable of, for sure. And I love that. And I love the daily training, you know, I'd love the, I love being in the process of doing that. And I actually need it to ground me. But now, like that kind of energy and enthusiasm, that really like laser focus that I had to like prepare for Ultraman or Epic 5, that shifted a little bit away from racing and performance and on to, how can I take this message, you know, to the next level? Like, what is a way that I can sort of step up what I'm doing to help more people than I'm currently helping,

• 43:59Rich Roll?

  you know? And that's where the satisfaction comes from. That's the growth opportunity. That's the challenge. So that kind of next obsession, if you will, or transformation is to find a way to be of, you know, greater service.

• 44:15Rich Roll?

  And, and so unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily allow me to go out and train as much as I would like, you know? And also, you know, I, I want to be, you know, I'm there for, I want to be there for my kids and my, my girls that are at a tender age right now. My teenage boys are getting ready for the next phase of their life. And, you know, it's kind of a key time in their development. And, you know, I don't want to miss that, you know, like I'm, I'm, you know, I'm showing up and present for that at the same Time. So I'm juggling all these different things. And, and again, and I say it all the time, like balance is my final frontier. I'm always trying to get that mix of how I can make everything work and fit. And, you know, I'm constantly failing and, you know, going back to

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  the drawing board on that. And so, you know, the 25 hour training week is, is, you know, not as feasible as it was a couple of years ago, when my life looked a little bit different than it does now. And that's fine.

• 45:16Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, part of me is, part of me is sad because I keep turning over this idea in my head of you and I doing our first 100 mile race together. And I feel

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, that'll happen.

• 45:27Mishka Shubaly?

  I feel like that is the late 30s, early 40s sober version of the wild and crazy road trip, Cancun or something.

• 45:37Rich Roll?

  We can make that, we can, we can make that happen. I mean, the one thing that I have done is that I've kind of reconfigured my training to be much more running focused. The cycling is what takes up, you know, the, the, the large percentage of the time, so many hours on the bike. So I'm spending less time cycling, more time running. And, and, you know, I've been traveling a lot. And that's something I can, I know I can always do. And it's easy, you know, it's easy to do wherever you go. So I'm more focused on like the ultra running than on the, you know, the, the cycling and the triathlon. So we'll, we'll make that happen. I just

• 46:09Mishka Shubaly?

  Great.

• 46:10Rich Roll?

  I gotta pull the trigger on a race.

• 46:11Mishka Shubaly?

  So you, so you're basically declaring now while we're on the air that you're gonna run 100 miler with me.

• 46:16Rich Roll?

  I need a little time to get ready. As long as there's a sufficient prep window, you know, I think you can count me in.

• 46:22Mishka Shubaly?

  All right.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  And I'm gonna have my first, you know, legitimate ultra running experience because, because I'm gonna crew for Dean Karnaz's at Badwater.

• 46:30Mishka Shubaly?

  Awesome.

• 46:31Rich Roll?

  In July.

• 46:33Rich Roll?

  And so

• 46:33Mishka Shubaly?

  That will be trial by fire.

• 46:35Rich Roll?

  Well, it's gonna be cool because I'm there just to help, you know, I'm not racing, I'm there to help him. But it'll give me that, you know, experience of, of what that race is like and kind of what, you know, a running race of that distance entails, which, you know, yeah, I've done Ultraman and Epic 5, but I've never participated in anything like that. That's a completely different animal.

• 46:54Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. I, it's, you know, to hear your answer that.

• 47:01Mishka Shubaly?

  That your that your life has become that you welcome the complexity that has come with becoming a bestselling author, but that, you know, you can't do as much training and time on the bike as as you had been and as you enjoy doing. Totally resonates with me because there was a point in my life where I had a girlfriend who was saying like, oh, all you care about is running like you just do it all the time. And I was like, all right, well, really, how much time is spent running? And I was like, well, you know, the weekends are pretty much totally shot and then, you know, like between five and 10 hours during the week. So basically the same amount of time I was losing to drinking.

• 47:39Rich Roll?

  Right. So yeah, exactly. And except without the hungover part where you're discounting that aspect of it where you're just kind of checked out of everything for, you know, two days or whatever.

• 47:52Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. Watching watching the early Bill Murray's classics on VHS.

• 48:00Rich Roll?

  Right, right. I mean, you know, yeah, I think that, you know, listen, when you, you know, when you're kind of at your bottom with drinking and drugs, like your life's real small, right? Your life revolves around like, you know, in my case, it was a bare mattress on the floor of essentially an empty apartment and teetering on, you know, unemployment and homelessness and the phone wasn't ringing.

• 48:28Mishka Shubaly?

  And also just mountain nutrition, like, like rickets, things that have been cured, scurvy, the doctor's like, I haven't seen this since 1875.

• 48:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And and then you get then you get sober and your life gets big. You know what I mean? And and that's, that's a beautiful thing. And as it continues to get bigger and bigger, it's easy to lose sight of what allowed it to get big. And you always have to kind of remember, you know, and, you know, kind of be in touch with, you know, how you got to that place. And so I guess the point I'm making is, you know, my life continues to expand and I welcome that, even if it, you know, becomes more complicated and tricky.

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  But you know, you have as a, you know, as an alcoholic, you have these sort of alcoholic fantasies. And they used to be, they used to be, you know, sort of, hey, I want to isolate myself in a hotel room in Vegas, you know, and, and have nobody talk to me for, you know, whatever, like,

• 49:28Mishka Shubaly?

  The downward spiral.

• 49:29Rich Roll?

  For example, for, yeah, for example, the movie Leaving Las Vegas, you've seen that movie, right? It's the alcoholic anthem.

• 49:36Mishka Shubaly?

  When, when he goes shopping, when he's in the liquor store, like I got a boner.

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  Well, see, this is my point. Like, most people see that movie and they're absolutely horrified. And they're like, I don't understand.

• 49:48Mishka Shubaly?

  And it's like pornography.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  How terrible. And I watch it and I'm like, he's just having a good time. Like, like I'm right there with him. And I'm like, I could see myself doing that. Yeah, I'm just watching it like riveted to like, what's he gonna do now? It's like, oh yeah, I could do that. I could, I could see myself doing that. And then you get sober and like, kind of those, that kind of alcoholic fantasy starts to fade a little bit. And it's, but now as being an athlete, it's replaced with this sort of fantasy of like, living in a, living in a shed in the woods, Ted Kaczynski style, with just my bike and my running shoes and just going out and training all day and never talking to anybody and isolating into that, you know, into that zone, which is equally, you know, maybe not equally, but you know,

• 50:32Rich Roll?

  that's not a healthy life either. That's a small life, right?

• 50:36Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. I mean, you and I started talking last time about alcoholic behavior, you know, addictive behavior that doesn't involve an illicit substance. And then I was going back and looking at Finding Ultra again. And there are, you know, there are times there where you're just sort of like living on the bike. And I was like, oh yeah, he, Rich is doing it too. I know I do it in parts, but it was, it was eye opening for me because I missed that the first time around.

• 51:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:02Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, and it was only you drawing my attention to, to sober alcoholic behavior that then I could see, you know, that you had that, that's a similar level of obsession. Like, you know, like a drinker, like squirreling alcohol.

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, you, you can engage in a whole variety and endless variety of behaviors that are alcoholic in nature without drinking or using drugs, you know? So sobriety now is about keeping that in check and, you know, being aware of when things are out of balance in that regard.

• 51:34Mishka Shubaly?

  That's, that's a big tricky one, man, because I feel like I've been having a dialogue with you in my head since we did the last podcast about addiction and alcoholic behavior and what's healthy and what's unhealthy and stability and stuff like that. And I totally thought myself into a rabbit hole the other night where I was just thinking like, oh, is it that doing anything that I want to do that I enjoy doing is that behavior that like, if I, anything that makes me feel good, is that an addictive behavior and?

• 52:08Rich Roll?

  No, I think that the litmus test or the barometer of that is, you know, is it, is it, is it impacting other areas of your life in a negative way? Like, is it interfering with your relationships? Is it derailing other things, you know, in your life that's undermining the overall quality of how you live?

• 52:27Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. After I quit drinking, a bandmate came to me and he was like, oh, it's great that you quit drinking and stuff. And I was like, well, it's okay. And

• 52:37Rich Roll?

  It's okay if you never want to have fun again.

• 52:38Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I was, I was in that phase. And he was like, you know, should I quit drinking? And I, and I was like, well, is it causing, causing problems with your girlfriend? And he was like, no. And I was like, is it causing problems at work? And he was like, no. And I was like, do you still enjoy it? Like when you have a drink and like the bad things happen? And he was like, no, I, I have a blast and like, it's fine, you know? I was like, quit wasting my time, man. You know, like, have, have fun, you know?

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  But also there's something behind that because why would he ask you that question? You know what I mean? Maybe there's more going on than he wanted to admit to you or what, or whatever. But yeah, I mean, you know, people say that, things like that to me. And I'm like, you gotta, you have to diagnose yourself, man. I can't diagnose you.

• 53:20Mishka Shubaly?

  You know? Well, I'm really glad you're bringing that up because I think that you and I both get, probably get a bunch of, you know, emails, Facebook messages, Twitter, am I, am I leaving out any other social media that people reach out through?

• 53:35Rich Roll?

  Instagram?

• 53:35Mishka Shubaly?

  Instagram, Pinterest.

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  Pinterest. Are you on Pinterest?

• 53:40Mishka Shubaly?

  Maybe.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  I want to, I'm going to come and visit your pins.

• 53:44Mishka Shubaly?

  I, I don't have a problem with it, Rich.

• 53:46Rich Roll?

  I'm on there.

• 53:47Mishka Shubaly?

  I can quit anytime I want.

• 53:49Rich Roll?

  All right, yeah.

• 53:51Mishka Shubaly?

  I, uh, so you probably get a lot of the same emails and messages that I do, which, you know, of people who have found that they're in trouble in their life, you know, whether it's with alcohol or substances or, or food, anorexia, bulimia, overeating. And they, they want to change or they say they want to change and they ask you for help.

• 54:19Mishka Shubaly?

  I suspect you probably have a similar response to that, that I do where you don't know what to do.

• 54:28Mishka Shubaly?

  Cause I want to help everybody, man. I want, like, I want to, I'll save everybody if I can, but I'm just a dude. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm not an addiction counselor. I'm not a therapist. I obviously still have tons of shit to figure out in my own life.

• 54:42Rich Roll?

  But that doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to help somebody else that's asking for your help.

• 54:47Mishka Shubaly?

  It's true. And I, and I do try to help people and, you know, I give them all the caveats of my, my list of zero qualifications and then, you know, try and say, well, from what you've told me, I think, you know, that this, this might be able to help you. But the, the larger question for, which I want to burden you with is how do we know when someone is actually ready to change? When they're ready to quit, um, to quit drinking or quit drugging or, um, combat their food addiction or just change anything, you know, I mean, how do we, how do you recognize that? Like that crystal moment where you have that clarity where you're like,

• 55:29Rich Roll?

  Recognize it in somebody else?

• 55:31Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. Or, or how, I mean, how can, can you and I talk about it so that other people can reckon, can say, oh, you know, I, I recognize that in myself. I am now ready to change. I don't expect you to actually answer this.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I think that, I think that, you know, if somebody is, seeks out your advice or counsel and is asking for help, you can guide them in the best direction that you, you know, feel like you can. And then you have to kind of detach from the results. And whether somebody or not, somebody is willing to change or not, will be reflected in the subsequent actions taken, not in whatever words come out of their mouth, right? So if somebody says, you know, I really want to change my diet, and then you say, okay, well, why don't you read this book, or watch this documentary, or, you know, start your day off with a green smoothie. And then they email you two weeks later, and they didn't do any of those things. And they say, I really want to change. And I'm like, all right, well, I gave you, you know, five or six things to do, but you didn't do them. So are you,

• 56:30Rich Roll?

  you know, maybe you're not really, maybe you need to go further down. And maybe you need to suffer a little bit more before you have that willingness. Like, I don't know, I don't know. You know what I mean? But the point being that it's, it's the actions that reveal where somebody's at far more than, you know, the words coming out of their mouth.

• 56:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. And you've, you've seen it from both sides, because it's, you know, it sounds like you went to rehab, totally kicking and screaming. And then

• 56:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:58Mishka Shubaly?

  You're, you know, the awareness of the garbage you were putting into your body. And the decision to change was totally self-started.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  It was self-started, but that was on the heels of, you know, a lot of other stuff that preceded that, you know. For a long time, Julie, you know, who was, who had always eaten, like, just in the context of food, I guess, Julie had, you know, had always eaten way, you know, way healthy compared to me. And, you know, she's always, she's this spiritual seeker, and she's always reading this book and that book about, you know, how to expand your consciousness. And she's, she's practicing yoga, and she's meditating and doing all of these things that I wasn't doing. And I think she had some frustration. You know, she'll say, I could see a better version of you inside of you that you couldn't see. And she's trying to facilitate that.

• 57:52Rich Roll?

  Coming out and she'd say, why don't you read this book and she'd put it on my bedstand or why don't you do this or, you know, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I wouldn't do it, you know, like I wasn't ready. I didn't have the willingness. And she had an attachment to a result, you know, she thought if I give him this book and he reads it, then he'll change. And it was never like a nagging pressure thing. She just kind of, you know, wanted, she could see that things could be better if I could just take her hand, you know, but I didn't want to take her hand. And then she got to a place in her own kind of spiritual journey where she really like let go of all of it. She let go of all expectations that I was going to change. And she just said, she made peace with it and said, I love him the way he is.

• 58:33Rich Roll?

  No matter what, I don't need him to lose weight. I don't need him to eat differently than he's doing. I don't need him to do anything different. I accept him completely. And she let it go and she didn't just give it lip service, like she really did let it go like, and that's when I started to change, you know, and, and it's because, and I think she never announced to me any of this. This is, she's told me this in retrospect, that this is what was going on with her. And I think, you know, I wasn't consciously aware that she was doing it, but on an unconscious level I could tell. Like when she kind of decoupled from it, then it was like, oh, it's on me. Like she's not telling, you know, cause, cause there's always that resistance, like somebody wants me to change. So I'm like,

• 59:15Rich Roll?

  no, I'm not going to change. Screw you. I'm going to do it my way. And then when, then when that was gone, then it's sort of like my reflection in the mirror became a little bit more crystal clear. And I was like, oh, wait, like she's not bugging me to do that anymore. Like, you mean, I have to take responsibility for this? And then that was when, you know, I was, I started the process of becoming ready to, you know, take stock a little bit more than I had.

• 59:41Mishka Shubaly?

  If I ever get to meet Julie, I'm going to like wash her car.

• 59:46Rich Roll?

  Actually, the car needs washing.

• 59:49Mishka Shubaly?

  Not your car, her car. Whenever you, I mean, whenever you talk about her, write about her, it's, uh, it's awesome because you can really see that, you know, in a lot of ways she was your sort of north star, you know, that she was.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  Very much so.

• 1:00:04Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, she was the, very much the point of reference and like, oh, things, things could be different. And it's funny because you described the way in which she, Checked out or surrendered or sort of released you in a very positive light. And after the last time we spoke, I was thinking a little bit about what, you know, sort of set the stage for for me making the decision to quit drinking. And for me, it was people releasing me in a much more negative light.

• 1:00:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Mishka Shubaly?

  Where people just.

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  Well, I've had that too.

• 1:00:43Mishka Shubaly?

  And it wasn't like dramatics of like, oh, if you don't do this, then I'm going to leave, or we're going to kick you out of the band, or we're going to fire you or whatever. People just wrote me off in their minds as that's who he is. You know, he's an animal, leave him alone and just, and just leave him to his pursuit of devolution.

• 1:01:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:09Mishka Shubaly?

  And that was really scary.

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  Well, that's almost, that's almost.

• 1:01:13Mishka Shubaly?

  All alone.

• 1:01:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's almost worse because if somebody's going to come at you in a rageful way, then there's, that's backed by emotion, you know, that that's backed by somebody who has some kind of investment in you being different. But when people are just like, whatever dude, you know, then, then you're, then you're really by yourself, right?

• 1:01:33Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. And when, when people started making the death watch jokes, when, where it was, it was just a betting pool as like, well, does he have six months? Does he have a year? Does he have 10 years?

• 1:01:42Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's heavy.

• 1:01:43Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. That's, I, I don't want to die, man.

• 1:01:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Mishka Shubaly?

  Especially now, you know?

• 1:01:54Rich Roll?

  How is it, how is it different now than it was, you know, in the early stages of sobriety for you now? Like what's changed in terms of how you approach, you know, your life or not drinking?

• 1:02:07Mishka Shubaly?

  I mean, in, in the first six or eight months, I was in shock and awe that I could do it at all. And then, and also I was starting to run and starting to rack up my mileage. And I was like, oh man, this like tired old body can actually do this. This is interesting. I was also just enraged all the time and painfully awkward around people because I didn't know how to, didn't know how to string a sentence together without a beer. And.

• 1:02:36Mishka Shubaly?

  It was just, it was a novelty. It was like, oh, this is, here's this weird thing that I'm doing. Let's see how long it lasts. And I, and I couldn't bear to tell anyone that I'd quit drinking. It was just, people noticed that I wasn't drunk. I couldn't bear to tell anyone that I was an alcoholic. And I couldn't bear to tell anybody that I was quitting drinking for good. Um, I actually, I told some drinking buddies that, uh, I was just gonna quit drinking until I was 70. And, no, this is good. It was, whatever you have to do to make sense of-

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  Let's just stick with getting through the week.

• 1:03:16Rich Roll?

  How about that?

• 1:03:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, because to say forever, to say I'm never gonna take another drink is terrifying when you're an alcoholic. And if I could, if I said to my, if I just removed that never, and said, I will be able to have a drink again at some undetermined point in my future. Um, but I think my dad's like 68 and he's still pretty spry, totally sharp. Um, he's got a lot of life ahead of him. He still schools me at the gym. Uh, 70 is too early now. I may have to bump it back like 10 years.

• 1:03:48Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. But why do you, like, I don't think about that. You know, I don't, I don't think about like, you know, I'm never this, or I'm never that, or, you know, when I'm 70, this. I just focus on what I'm doing right now. And that makes it man, more manageable.

• 1:04:04Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm, I'm gonna turn around on you, something that you said last time, which is, you're more spiritually evolved than I am.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  No, that's not true. And let me be very clear, like, in case there's any confusion. I am not putting myself on any kind of sobriety pedestal by any stretch of the imagination. Sobriety is very difficult for me and I've had, you know, pitfalls and struggles with it and it, it doesn't come easy to me. And I'm not like the guy who's working, like, you know, the greatest program in the world. Like, I'm, you know, I'm- I'm doing what I can, but you know, I'm just, you know, I'm a, I'm a worker among workers in that, in that world for sure. So I get uncomfortable when it turns to, you know, me sort of sitting here like when there's like a, you know, this expectation that I'm going

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  to pontificate upon sobriety from, you know, Mount Olympus or something because that's, that's definitely not where I'm coming from.

• 1:05:02Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, no, I mean, I, um, I, I, I didn't say you have it dialed and I don't think you have it dialed because I think that the minute you think you have it dialed, you're screwed. And I think, you know, I think, you know, this is a, you know, people say, oh, you know, what are you quitting this week? Are you quitting sugar? Are you quitting caffeine? Oh, you're going to be a Mormon. You're going to like, and, and they sort of, you know, dig at me for that. And man, I'm just trying to get better, just get incrementally better, just a little bit better each time. I'm not shooting for perfection. And I think that if you're, if anyone is trying to, to do anything, whether it's carpentry or sobriety,

• 1:05:45Mishka Shubaly?

  or, you know, being a triathlete, if you're shooting for perfection, yeah, you're always going to fall short. You know, I think you always just want to like, just, just try and get a little bit better. And I, and I, um, I mean, I said, you're more spiritually evolved, both as a dig and totally seriously because, and, and I do have a lot of respect for you because it's obvious that you have done, um, you know, sort of brutal self inventory. And, and you spent a lot of time, uh, doing your own homework on this of trying to get yourself better.

• 1:06:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it's not a, you know, constant progression forward. It's, you know, one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back, you know,

• 1:06:31Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  It's jig jagging, you know, all over the place.

• 1:06:34Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Rich Roll?

  It's not like this smooth, you know, Parabolic curve upwards.

• 1:06:40Mishka Shubaly?

  And I mean, and that's, that's one of the things I try and tell people is, you know, people are like, oh, you know, you stopped drinking, you started running, your life is great. And I was like, ah, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's, you know, that's not it at all. Sobriety is always tricky, man. I mean, I think that as, as you get some time behind you, it, it gets easier without ever getting easy.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, it's, it doesn't get easy. And I think that people run into problems because they, you know, you sort of get sober and then you have this initial pink cloud. And then, you know, life kind of moves on and it's, you know, you're, you know, life is not without its difficulties and problems. And it's like, hey, man, like, what's going on? I got sober. Why is this happening to me? And, you know, well, you know, at least you get to navigate it without being drunk. And, and so, you know, my life is full of, you know, complications and, and problems, but they tend, my problems tend to be higher quality problems than they used to be. You know what I mean?

• 1:07:43Rich Roll?

  It's like, I'm not getting pulled over by the cops all the time. And, you know, but I still have post-traumatic stress. Like every time there's a policeman behind me when I'm driving, like, I feel like, you know, I start to sweat and I get panicked.

• 1:07:56Mishka Shubaly?

  I feel like a criminal whenever I see a cop.

• 1:07:58Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:01Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, there's, that's the thing is there's always work left to do. It's not about the destination.

• 1:08:09Rich Roll?

  There is no destination. The work continues. You know, that's why, that's why I gave you a little bit of shit when you sent me that email and then you, then you subsequently wrote a blog post about how, you know, you graduated from therapy. And I was like, really? You're cured? Like, how does that work? Like, you know, I can't imagine graduating from any kind of process of self-discovery because we were talking earlier about like alcoholic behavior patterns. Like, you know, I'm always, you know, reeling in this behavior pattern or that behavior pattern and, you know, having to check myself here and there. And that will continue till the day I die. And hopefully I improve along the way and get better and start to, you know, develop a mastery over.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  You know, patterns that don't serve me or what have you, but I don't anticipate graduating from that or getting to any place where I feel like I have complete mastery over everything. And so I was making light of it. I was, I was just, I was just giving you a hard time because I understand where you were coming from in terms of, you know, what you were trying to achieve with your therapist.

• 1:09:16Mishka Shubaly?

  No, but I mean, it's, it's absolutely something that we should talk about though, because I mean, I do think that, um, you know, um, graduation may have been the wrong word choice, but, um, you know, I mean, the, the reason that my therapist made the decision to, uh, I mean, if you say, you know, the, the technical term is discharge, but that sound makes it sound like, um,

• 1:09:39Rich Roll?

  You are institutionalized.

• 1:09:40Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. Either something biological or something.

• 1:09:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Mishka Shubaly?

  Neither one of which have good connotations. So I came up with the word graduated, but,

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  um, Matriculated. A matriculated is when you go to, when you matriculate, is that graduate? No, that's when you, you matriculate from, from, nevermind.

• 1:10:00Mishka Shubaly?

  Here's where we're both going to be outed for not being as smart as we think we are.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna look it up later.

• 1:10:09Mishka Shubaly?

  The, um, no, I mean, the way that my therapist, my, the way my therapist put it is, um, you know, he said, you, you met all the goals of the program and, um, and, you know, in that program it has, um, you know, it works with people who, um, are sort of very base, non-functioning alcoholics, you know, and he said, you know, when you came here, um, you had very few sober friends, you had very few friends you could trust, you spoke to almost no one in your family, um, you know, almost every, you know, family or important relationship had been compromised by alcohol. You, uh, were working two nights in a week

• 1:10:47Mishka Shubaly?

  or two nights a week in a bar, um, no health insurance and no, just no, I mean, you know, we, we talked about this, like, you know, when you're, when you're drunk, your life is very, has a very finite limits, you know, it's like you're living in, uh, the RV of the soul. And, uh, you know, and he said, you've reversed everything, you know, that, um,

• 1:11:13Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, now the writing, my writing, the writing that I've done and writing about sobriety and recovery and getting myself better has been so successful that like I can sort of do anything from that now. I have, my relationship with my older sister Tatiana is, it's not that it's returned to its former glory. It's better now than it's ever been. Like, we never got along as kids the way that we get along now. You know, Tashina and I have always been, you know, pretty good, but, you know, but that's improved my situation, you know, my, my relationship with my mother, you know, has always been, she's always, you know, shown me unconditional love, but we're, we're much better friends now. My dad and I like, you know, talk more than we ever have.

• 1:11:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:56Mishka Shubaly?

  Everything's gotten better.

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  Right. So the journey continues. You just, the, the need to go and see this person on a weekly basis or whatever you were doing is not, is not as.

• 1:12:08Mishka Shubaly?

  It's not as urgent.

• 1:12:09Rich Roll?

  Urgent. Yeah, that's the word I was gonna use.

• 1:12:11Mishka Shubaly?

  And, and, and I think that that's something that we see again and again in, you know, both in your journey and in my journey is that it, at best, it's cyclical. At its worst, it's erratic, but it's never steady forward progress.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  No, no. And nothing in life is. But you know what is getting ready to be steady right now? My need to go to the bathroom.

• 1:12:38Mishka Shubaly?

  I knew that was coming.

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  That wasn't very poetically articulated. Hold on a second.

• 1:12:47Rich Roll?

  Sorry about that. I'll take a quick bathroom break.

• 1:12:50Mishka Shubaly?

  A quick matriculation.

• 1:12:54Mishka Shubaly?

  One, one of the things I wanted to bring up was, you, you said you, that the earlier draft of your book had a, a much more extensive drunkalog. Is, did you think about featuring any of that in the paperback version?

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  I didn't get an opportunity to do an edit for the paperback. Essentially, it was just, it was, I was just informed that there would be a paperback coming out. It wasn't, and that that was a good thing. So it wasn't like, hey, is there anything you want to change for the paperback? Actually, that would have been great. I wish they had said, you know, you want to make a few changes, we can do that. But I, I wasn't given that, that option. So.

• 1:13:40Mishka Shubaly?

  Are you open to it ever seeing the light of day? I mean, maybe on your blog or something like that?

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think that, that, you know, we talked about this last time, but, you know, I kind of had to condense the drunk log a little bit because there, you know, like we, like my book is sort of three different books, you know, and that was just one aspect of the book. And I, you know, I painted the whole picture on the first pass just to get it all out there and see what I had to work with. And some of the kind of gnarlier, you know, more, you know, desperate kind of times got weeded out to just convey the kind of flavor of where I was at without getting into specific incidences. Cause and then this happened, and then this happened.

• 1:14:24Mishka Shubaly?

  Is it, is it weird that I want to read about that? I feel like I'm some like torture porn enthusiast or something.

• 1:14:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there was some colorful stuff in there. I mean, it's not, you know, um, you know, I've read other recovery memoirs and, you know, obviously I know lots of people in recovery and I will, I will tell you that my story doesn't stand out. You know, it's pretty garden variety in terms of like my, my escapades, you know, and, you know, that's another level of vulnerability. Like, I don't know, you know, some of that stuff is like, you know, it's, it's, there's some dark stuff in there and, you know, I kind of laid out, you know, the general picture without getting overly graphic about the whole thing. I don't know if anybody needs to know about that. I don't know if anybody's interested in that, except for you, maybe. But, you know, I can tell you this story. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll write about it. I don't know.

• 1:15:16Rich Roll?

  We'll see.

• 1:15:17Mishka Shubaly?

  You should take it.

• 1:15:18Rich Roll?

  But it's like, I'm not, I'm not, you know, uh, you know, Jerry Stahl or, you know, Foley, right? Or is James Foley, right?

• 1:15:26Mishka Shubaly?

  James Fry.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  Fry, yeah.

• 1:15:29Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Rich Roll?

  Like those guys are dark dudes, right? And their, their recovery tomes are, you know, super intense.

• 1:15:37Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, if, if you do anything with it, you should take it to the moth.

• 1:15:44Rich Roll?

  The moth, yeah.

• 1:15:45Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, that would be the, uh, that might be the perfect form for it.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that could be good. I feel like you have to be like Mike Birbiglia to get up there though. And you know, like I have this idea of this sort of like

• 1:15:57Mishka Shubaly?

  This is the thing though, like-

• 1:15:58Rich Roll?

  Highbrow comedy that goes on there.

• 1:16:00Mishka Shubaly?

  This is the thing, before Mike got up there, uh, before Mike Birbiglia got up there to do that, he was just Mike.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:07Mishka Shubaly?

  He was just some dude.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  He's supremely gifted in that medium though.

• 1:16:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, and also sometimes the microphone brings out greatness in people. Um, there's, there's, I mean, there have been times where I've seen people get up there and it's, you know, they're a, uh, they're a food service worker or they, um, you know, they're a CPA or something. And then they get up there and they're in front of people and the mic's in front of them and they just grow wings. It's awesome. It's so cool to, uh, to watch.

• 1:16:35Rich Roll?

  Getting up and doing the moth scares me a lot more than doing a hundred mile race.

• 1:16:40Mishka Shubaly?

  All the more reason why you should do it.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  Maybe that's why I should, uh, try to do something like that.

• 1:16:45Mishka Shubaly?

  You just committed with that.

• 1:16:49Rich Roll?

  Like I just think about Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia and like, you know, like they're sort of these, you know, hollowed, you know, talents that are, you know, kind of made for that. And, and I've, you know, I've listened to plenty of them and they're like, it's, I'm always like, wow, that's, that's some chops to be able to do that.

• 1:17:10Mishka Shubaly?

  Uh, I mean, but you and I both know that chops are often the result of training.

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:17:15Mishka Shubaly?

  You know?

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  That's true.

• 1:17:25Mishka Shubaly?

  I have a couple of points I want to hit, uh, while I've got you here, as long as I can, I can stick a couple of needles into you.

• 1:17:31Rich Roll?

  All right, come on, man. You, you, I told you, you can come at me.

• 1:17:36Mishka Shubaly?

  Um, one of the, one of the points that I wanted to raise, which I think is valid, is the sort of, um, The first worldness of being a triathlete and being an Ironman. I mean, the fee alone for an Ironman race is what between $600 and $1,000?

• 1:17:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty, it can be steep.

• 1:17:57Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, $5,000 to $10,000 for a bike.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  Well, that it doesn't, that doesn't, yeah, five to 10,000, well, you don't, you don't have to spend $5,000.

• 1:18:06Mishka Shubaly?

  Maybe, maybe a thousand to 5,000.

• 1:18:08Rich Roll?

  The bike that I rode Ultraman in the, in 2008 was, you know, off the shelf, mid-level track, I think. You know, it wasn't like 500 bucks, but I think it was under, it was like $1,500 or $1,800 or something like that. So it wasn't nothing, but it wasn't like a $10,000 bike.

• 1:18:30Mishka Shubaly?

  I mean, I, I bring it up, not just because that's one of the, it's one of the things that keeps coming up in the one-star reviews that I, that I, I mean, I do want to raise some of these, those questions, but it's, it's something that's kept me out of trying triathlons is just that like, dude, you know how long a $2,000 bike would last locked up in front of my house here? I'd say like 15 minutes.

• 1:18:53Rich Roll?

  Oh, well, you would, first of all, you would never leave a bike like that outside. You leave, you keep it in your apartment, preferably in your bedroom.

• 1:19:00Mishka Shubaly?

  Preferably in your bed.

• 1:19:02Rich Roll?

  You develop a covetous relationship with those kind of bikes. You know, I think that certainly there's no getting around the idea that like participating in, in Ironman is, is, you know, an expensive endeavor.

• 1:19:20Rich Roll?

  And that's just the way that it is. I think that, but, but that's only one slice of what triathlon is. You know, that's a very small fraction of like the triathlon world. And, you know, for somebody who's interested in exploring it, rather than to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and go, well, you know, you, you see Ironman on TV and you see these crazy fancy bikes and all this kind of, and it's intimidating, right? And you go, well, I can't do that. And that's out of my reach. Like, forget it. But every town has like a local triathlon, you know, every other weekend or something like that within driving distance. And you know, you show up at those races and you'd be amazed that, you know, 99% of the people are on just, you know, crappy bikes and stuff they, you know, pulled out of their garage and wrenched together, what have you. And

• 1:20:05Rich Roll?

  I think if there's a will, there's a way. And if somebody's interested in pursuing that, you know, there's a way to to kind of get a foothold in it and, and begin without really spending very much, if any money. I mean, you know, you need a pair of running shoes. You need a swimsuit, you know, if, if you need a wet suit, you can probably borrow one. You're not going to need that to train for one. You know, you can ride, you can find a stationary bike at your local gym and borrow somebody's bike to do your first race. And there's no need to go out and spend a lot of money, you know, once you, if you develop an appetite for it and you enjoy it and you want to explore it further, like you can slowly kind of upgrade over time, you know, and that's kind of what I did, you know, I didn't, uh,

• 1:20:46Rich Roll?

  you know, and I had to save, you know, put away quite a bit of money in order to be able to kind of underwrite and fund the first Ultraman experience, but you know, I'm not going around, you know, racing every weekend because there's a lot of travel involved with that. And, you know, I can't afford that. So, you know, I'm sympathetic to that. You know, in many ways, it is kind of a first world. I mean, it's, you know, in the same way that golf or tennis is, I suppose.

• 1:21:14Rich Roll?

  I don't know, but, but

• 1:21:18Rich Roll?

  I think that it doesn't have to be that way. And I think if you erect that barrier and say, well, it must be nice to be able to go and do triathlons, but I can't afford that. I think that's kind of a cop out too.

• 1:21:28Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I agree. And I, I mean, I think that I think that, you know, there's, there's two different, you know, there's two different worldviews there. If you look at something and say, why can't I do that? That's one worldview. The other worldview is how can I find a way to do that?

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Right. That's two entirely different ways of looking at a situation.

• 1:21:47Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, I mean, you know, like you, I'm sort of a top down guy. So if I ever was going to do a triathlon, it would have to be an Ironman. Just because like, I, I, you know, I want to like, just, you know, give me the toughest thing you have.

• 1:22:00Rich Roll?

  And knowing you a little bit, if you set your mind to do it, you'd find a way to get a bike somehow, some way, you know, you'd work it out. And you know, maybe it's not going to be a $10,000 bike, but you don't need a $10,000 bike. And, you know, a lot of, it's like the business, this, the, you know, the bicycle industry.

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  Profits tremendously from sort of, you know, a lot of, a lot of guys with a little, you know, dispensable cash who get interested in triathlon and they want to have the best bike and they buy these bikes that are like these wind foils, you know, that are, that are made for, made for speed, but are so, it's sort of like somebody who's never ridden a motorcycle, buying a motorcycle that's just way too fast for somebody with that sort of aptitude to ride it, you know what I mean? Like if you're a professional and that's your job, then you know, you want the Formula One racer, but if you want to just finish one of these races and you know, do your best, there's no need for all that crazy equipment and it's easy to get caught up in all that kind of stuff. And it's like,

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  you know, like Lance Armstrong said, you know, with an asterisk, I suppose it's not about the bike, you know, but it's, you know, despite everything that's occurred with him, I mean, that, that sort of precept remains true. It really isn't, you know, and

• 1:23:17Mishka Shubaly?

  That's, that's one of the things-

• 1:23:18Rich Roll?

  But it's easy to get hung up on that.

• 1:23:19Mishka Shubaly?

  That's one of the things I find really frustrating about running these days is that there's this gotta get the gear mentality and you see people in this, these sort of shoes you'd expect to see on astronauts in a movie or something like that. And they have, you know, they have the, the gels on a band like, you know, like artillery, like there were some Mexican revolutionary and stuff like that.

• 1:23:41Rich Roll?

  It's true of anything. I mean, look at yoga. What do you need to do yoga? And now there's like all these crazy expensive mats and the special towel and the, you know, like you can get these, I mean, there's no end to now the amount of gear that you can buy for something that essentially you need nothing in order to do.

• 1:23:58Mishka Shubaly?

  Tot- I just can't, could not agree more. I mean, the other thing is what that gear does is it functions as a means to prevent you from doing the thing that the gear is supposedly designed for, you know, it's like running, oh, you know, I saw, well, I can't run without my whatever, my Reebok pumps, or I can't run without my spandex tights.

• 1:24:21Rich Roll?

  Or my garment. Like if I don't have my garment on then, and I go out and run, then did it count?

• 1:24:26Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, or my, my Body Glide or my iPhone or what it, just whatever. And like, you can run in anything, man. When I was a kid, my, uh, my foster brother would kick anybody's butt running in flip flops. You know, he's a Vietnamese, uh, Vietnamese refugee who came to live with us. It's his birthday today.

• 1:24:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:24:46Mishka Shubaly?

  And, uh, yeah, he's, he's turning 40. And, uh, it's funny because we have pictures of us when we were kids and we're the same height and then he, he didn't grow anymore. And now with pictures of us together, it looks like, uh, Chewbacca and Yoda.

• 1:24:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 1:25:00Mishka Shubaly?

  But he could outrun anybody, you know, barefoot or in flip flops. And, and, and that's the thing is that, um,

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  Like the Taramara that they, the Taramara Indians, they talk about, I'm born to run when they show up at Leadville. I mean, they don't, you know, they've never had any of that kind of stuff and they don't need it. And it sort of puts a microscope on, you know, how excessive um, and obsessive we can be about that stuff. But I think it, it also goes towards this sense of identity, like creating an identity for yourself around the gear and the, how the gear kind of fuels that, like, you know, whether it's the, your Oakley shades or, or whatever it is that sort of says, this is who I am and this is the team that I belong to. And, uh, and, you know, people can take comfort in that and, and like that. And, you know, if it's a healthy pursuit, I have no judgment about that, but I think it's, you know,

• 1:25:49Rich Roll?

  it's, it's always important to kind of check yourself and go, well, you know, do I need this? Do I really need, you know, do I really need this $2,000 carbon wheel for my, for my bike? You know, like,

• 1:26:01Mishka Shubaly?

  To ride to the store.

• 1:26:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When, or, yeah, I mean, you know, it, it can get crazy and it's, it's the same with, look, it's the same with, um, audio files and their stereo gear. It's the same with, you know, golf and your golf clubs or what, you know, whatever your thing is, you know, there's, you can, you can, uh, you know, you can go all the way to the wall with it in, in terms of money, but it doesn't need to be that way.

• 1:26:25Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, I mean, exhibit A, look around my apartment and look at the zillion, you know, guitars.

• 1:26:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, do you really need all these guitars, dude?

• 1:26:34Mishka Shubaly?

  I have, I have like $3,000 guitars here and when, when I'm making a record, the guitar that I use, I paid 190 bucks for. You know, that's, that's it. I only need one.

• 1:26:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would look around here and go, well, well, you know, I can't be a musician because I don't have 45 amps and like 50 guitars like you do, so it's out of my reach.

• 1:26:53Mishka Shubaly?

  Exactly, exactly. And, and, I mean, that's one of the things that it's important to me when I'm, you know, when I'm hooking first time guitar players up with their first time guitar or something like that. Or when I'm talking to people who, you know, the guy at the corner store, he wanted to get into running. He was like, what do I need? And I was like, nothing dude. Do you want to go running right now? Do you have a break? We'll go run around the block. You know, like you have your, you are born equipped with everything you need to go running.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  Well, in the same way that the gear can fuel an identity, it can also act as a barrier to prevent somebody from doing something and, and you can create a comfort zone around that. So for example, you can say, well, you know, I'd love to, I'd love to, you know, ride a bike, but I just can't afford it. And so, and you can kind of say, that's your excuse out of doing it. Or, you know, I'd love to, you know, run a marathon, but I can't afford a $130 pair of shoes. So, you know, it's not going to happen for me. So you can erect these, these obstacles that are really just projections of your imagination that are set up to make you feel better about, about, you know, not getting out of your

• 1:28:04Rich Roll?

  comfort zone and trying something that, that probably scares you because that's, when somebody says that, it's like, oh, I hear the, there's, oh, you're just, you're afraid. There's this fear there. Like, let's talk about working through that fear. Forget about the $130 shoe. Let's, let's focus on that. And like, then suddenly if you can overcome that, like the shoe issue disappears.

• 1:28:24Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, the, I guess the fear is the invisible accessory that you see with some of those people who are over equipped or people who use the equipment as a, as a reason not to do something.

• 1:28:35Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And look, you know, I know how, like I've, I've showed up at triathlon races. Everybody's incredibly fit. They have all those crazy gear and I remember when I showed up to do wildflower, the wildflower race, and I think that was 2006 or seven? I talk about it in the book. It's a race that I DNF'd at. It was really kind of the first triathlon that I was undertaking and I was ill-prepared and brand-new to the sport and I didn't know what I was doing. But I was like, determined to go and do this thing and I had, you know, a crappy bike and I didn't have the right gear or anything like that. And I remember being there and seeing all these incredibly fit people and being like, and fancy bikes and all of that and being intimidated, you know?

• 1:29:18Rich Roll?

  And so I see how that goes, you know? I see how that can work.

• 1:29:22Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich, I, I feel like you're missing an opportunity here because thus far I've needled you into agreeing to run a hundred miler with me and doing the moth. And I think you're missing your opportunity to-

• 1:29:34Rich Roll?

  I don't, I think we can rewind. I'm not sure I agreed to do, I definitely didn't agree to do the moth.

• 1:29:40Mishka Shubaly?

  I'm just saying you're missing an opportunity to grill me into agreeing to do a triathlon now that I-

• 1:29:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, you're right, right. Well, because you gave, you, you were giving me such a hard, you, you felt like I, I was like, hard on you last time, so I'm letting you do, you know, the question, so.

• 1:29:55Mishka Shubaly?

  You weren't-

• 1:29:56Rich Roll?

  But I think being, doing a tri, after what you've done, you know, I think doing a triathlon is, is a no-brainer and something that would be fun and easy for you.

• 1:30:06Mishka Shubaly?

  Okay.

• 1:30:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, he just agreed, right? Alright, do I get to pick the race?

• 1:30:12Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, sure. I mean, if I'm in, I'm all in. You know me.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  Alright, we'll talk about it after this.

• 1:30:19Rich Roll?

  You can do it, it'll be fun, man.

• 1:30:20Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, no, I'm, I'm like, it's, listen, it's been something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I, I'm, you know, I, I, I always loved swimming as a kid, but I wasn't a great swimmer. I got kicked off the swim team for my bad attitude.

• 1:30:34Rich Roll?

  But you were on a swim team and you know how to swim, so-

• 1:30:36Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, well, yeah-

• 1:30:37Rich Roll?

  Then and there, you're like, ahead of most people.

• 1:30:39Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm, you know, I'm running out of excuses.

• 1:30:44Rich Roll?

  You are.

• 1:30:46Rich Roll?

  Speaking of- Like, oh, I don't want my bike to get stolen. You can, you hang it from the ceiling over there.

• 1:30:52Mishka Shubaly?

  I, but that's where I put guitars, dude.

• 1:30:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:30:57Mishka Shubaly?

  I was completely spaced on my thought there.

• 1:31:03Mishka Shubaly?

  Oh, speaking of shameless product placement, we were talking about putting obstacles in front of doing stuff, running a marathon, doing a triathlon, getting sober, doing things you want to do. You know, I've told you about this, but I wanted to sort of bring it up again. I, a buddy of mine was like, I'm 37, I'm in lousy shape. I wanted to be doing what you're doing. Like, can you, but I don't have any money. Can I trade you a painting for whipping me into shape? And that gave me the idea of, I mean, I feel like, you know, for a lot of us, real or imagined, money is a big obstacle to doing this stuff,

• 1:31:46Mishka Shubaly?

  whether it's money in the, in the shape of time or paying, you know, especially in Manhattan, paying for a hundred dollar a month gym membership or something like that. So one of the things that I started was, was just doing barter camp where my, my friends who are my age, who are both fat and skinny, you know, I just, they show up and I train them for, for whatever, you know, whatever.

• 1:32:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's awesome. You know, I think that's fantastic. So where's the painting?

• 1:32:17Mishka Shubaly?

  Well, I guess.

• 1:32:19Rich Roll?

  You haven't collected yet?

• 1:32:20Mishka Shubaly?

  That's, that's Tim's self-portrait right there. The, the naked woman with her breasts hanging out. That's my friend, Tim.

• 1:32:27Rich Roll?

  So that's what he looks like?

• 1:32:28Mishka Shubaly?

  Good looking guy, huh?

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I guess. Wow.

• 1:32:31Mishka Shubaly?

  Real men have curves.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  No, I think that's super cool, man. And, and that's something I could see, you know, being kind of a viral concept. I think it's really cool. And, and you, you know, I think especially in, you know, sort of economic downturns, you're seeing more and more of that, you know, this, this barter economy and even online, you know, there are sites that are springing up where a friend of mine started a, has a startup. It's called Tradya, T R A D E Y A, tradya.com. And it's like, hey, I have this and I need this. And somebody, you know, it's like basically just this online barter system. And there's a bunch of little things like that online and. And it's it's cool. You know, I like that. There's like an authentic, genuine, you know,

• 1:33:17Rich Roll?

  give and take with that. And, um, you know, you have something to give and it probably makes you feel good to be able to kind of relate, you know, what you've learned and help these other guys out and they can give you something in return. It's it's cool, man. I could see that like springing up in all sorts of metropolitan cities.

• 1:33:33Mishka Shubaly?

  That's, I mean, that's one of the things that I've found with, you know, having written about, you know, sobriety and recovery and exercise is that

• 1:33:43Mishka Shubaly?

  readers don't realize how much they inspire me. I think that I think that, you know, your readers probably see you as an inspirational character and they're and they're right to. But I know that there's there have got to be readers and reader stories that have inspired you.

• 1:34:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, absolutely. You know, that's like the whole, like, the emails that I get, you know, that's what it definitely, it doesn't just inspire me. It like spurns me on, you know, like, that's why, you know, I've made the decision to kind of shutter the law practice and step into this world and, you know, try to, you know, take what I'm doing to another level because they're inspiring me to get the message out more for sure.

• 1:34:28Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, it's, it's great. It's really a positive feedback loop, you know, I, um, there have been times where I'm feeling unmotivated because everybody feels that way sometimes, particularly when you're training for a big event, you know, and, uh, you know, I'll get an email from somebody and they're like, all right, you know, I started getting up at 5:30 every morning and, you know, to run, you know, seven miles each day before work and it's all because of you. And I'm like, man, I don't get up at 5:30.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  No, I know.

• 1:34:55Mishka Shubaly?

  I don't get up at 7.

• 1:34:57Rich Roll?

  Keep you honest. Like now, you gotta, you gotta get up and do it because you can't, you can't, you know, you can't have them doing it and you, you know, you're gonna feel lousy if you start sloughing off, right?

• 1:35:07Mishka Shubaly?

  Exactly, exactly. It's great. And, you know, and starting to do the barter camp thing really was like, okay, now I need to be able to know how to train people and I need to, I need to design a workout that I can get through, you know?

• 1:35:21Rich Roll?

  How many guys are, do you have showing up?

• 1:35:23Mishka Shubaly?

  We've done one so far and I had, I think I had five guys come out, which was great. It's open to women as well, of course. I can't wait and you know, for a woman to come out and just school all of us and it won't, it won't take much.

• 1:35:38Rich Roll?

  Right. You should like set up a face group, Facebook group page or something like that.

• 1:35:44Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:45Rich Roll?

  I mean, you can like post times and things like that. That would be cool.

• 1:35:48Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I gotta get on that.

• 1:35:52Mishka Shubaly?

  So the paperbacks dropping on this trip, you have the big vegan

• 1:35:59Mishka Shubaly?

  talk festival thing.

• 1:36:00Rich Roll?

  All right. Yeah, yeah. I'm speaking on Saturday.

• 1:36:03Mishka Shubaly?

  What, what's next in the pipeline for you? I mean, we talked a little bit about it on the way here.

• 1:36:11Rich Roll?

  The, yeah, so I'm starting to think about the next book.

• 1:36:17Rich Roll?

  I talked a little bit about it with Asher yesterday, so I don't want to rehash too much for the listener. But yeah, it's, it's, I'm sort of been thinking out loud for a while now about, you know, what I want a follow-up book to be about. And kind of looking at the landscape in terms of, you know, the diet nutrition books that are out there. The plant-based nutrition books and sort of saying, well, you know, what can I, what can I bring to this dialogue, to this discussion that, that is, you know, really kind of growing,

• 1:36:54Rich Roll?

  gaining a lot of momentum. I mean, I said this the other day, like Rip Esselstyn's follow-up book to the Engine 2 Diet came out this week. It's called My Beef with Meat. And as of yesterday, it was like, at one point it was number 13 on Amazon. It probably even went, you know, into the top 10. I don't know. But you know, that's enormous, right? It's huge, right? So that just shows me that there's a ton of interest in this kind of lifestyle and eating and, and that's a good thing. But it also, you know, makes me say, well, you know, is there anything else to be said? You know, I don't want to write another book that's a retread of information that's already out there.

• 1:37:35Rich Roll?

  And I'm not going to write another book if I'm not bringing something that I feel is valuable to and helpful to people. So. I've been putting a lot of thought into that and you know, I'm not ready to like fully articulate, you know, kind of what it, what it's going to be, but I have some ideas about it. And I think it's, you know, it starts with the plate and what you put on the plate and what you put in your body. And, but I'm also interested in, in what happens after that, you know, for me, that's a starting point to a journey that can take you in many different directions. And from a holistic point of view, that, that means really addressing the mental and spiritual aspects of your health. And how to kind of, you know, the, the big theme of my book is becoming more self-actualized

• 1:38:19Rich Roll?

  or kind of unlocking a better version of yourself and developing a better relationship with who you are and, and diet and fitness are a big aspect of doing that, but that's not the end of the story. So I'm, I'm interested in kind of picking up where the diet books leave off. You know, a lot of these diet books, they'll say, here's why you should eat this way. Here's how you eat this way. Here's a bunch of recipes and now go enjoy your life. And that's the end of the story, right? And for me, it's like, well, well, now what, you know, that's, that's the beginning of the story for me. And I don't see a lot of books out there that kind of follow up with the next chapter.

• 1:39:02Rich Roll?

  And so that's kind of what I've been putting some brain power into. So we'll see.

• 1:39:08Mishka Shubaly?

  When, when I quit drinking, for me, it was just, it was just subtraction. I was just, I, I'm going to remove this thing from my life and then I will be me. I will continue to be, to remain the same guy and everything else will go, go forward as planned, just without the alcohol. Didn't work out that way.

• 1:39:31Rich Roll?

  Shocking.

• 1:39:34Mishka Shubaly?

  But.

• 1:39:37Mishka Shubaly?

  I've, I'll come out and say that I've done as little to grow spiritually as possible. That that's one aspect of sobriety and recovery that I've really dragged my feet on. And it's, I mean, I'll be honest, it still scares the shit out of me. And um, one of the things that's abundantly clear, reading Finding Ultra, is that you really went on a, a journey through memory, an emotional journey, a spiritual journey.

• 1:40:16Mishka Shubaly?

  Um, you really, um, tried to reinvent or rediscover, or get a new perspective on your entire person, not just your fitness, or your, you know, alcohol intake or lack thereof and stuff like that. I mean, when I, whenever I, whenever I'm thinking about the book, I always think about this guy on his bike, biking like he's possessed. And uh, just the inside of his skull and what's, you know, I mean, also like dude, Epic Five and you know, Ultraman and stuff like that, like,

• 1:41:00Mishka Shubaly?

  your brain must go to amazing and terrifying places.

• 1:41:07Rich Roll?

  A lot of the times it's just blank too.

• 1:41:10Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah?

• 1:41:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, um,

• 1:41:17Rich Roll?

  I mean, I talked about this a little bit yesterday too. Asher asked a similar question and it's, you know, it's like, what are you thinking about, you know, when you're in that painful place or you're doing that like a possessed person and, and uh,

• 1:41:32Rich Roll?

  you know, I said the same thing to him, which was, you know, I don't know. You know, like a lot of it is like, I don't know. I mean, I would say that, that um,

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  I'm always trying to get to that place of like no mind, you know, uh, particularly in, I guess in a training context, like where,

• 1:41:52Rich Roll?

  where it's an active meditation and, and I said this yesterday too, uh, you know, where time becomes elastic and you kind of lose time and, and uh,

• 1:42:07Rich Roll?

  And the thinking brain, you know, starts to turn off because the thinking brain is not always my friend. You know, quite often it's attacking me with negative impulses and messages that don't serve me. And I work really hard to kind of, you know, redirect my thinking and to make the choice to not listen to those messages. But the real kind of peace comes when you can actually turn it all off. And that comes through practice. You know what I mean? It's like you read these stories of these Tibetan monks that sit in these caves for days on end and they don't eat food and they don't, they don't have water and they're in this, you know, blissful state of samadhi. You know, it's like, I want, I want, I want

• 1:42:49Rich Roll?

  to achieve that. You know what I mean? And like my means for exploring that is a little bit different. But I think the endpoint is the same. It's, it's, you know, it's a, it's, it's a spiritual quest as much if not more so than a physical, you know, a fitness oriented kind of thing. And, you know, when you're in those really long sessions and you kind of can start to approach that place, time does become elastic and you kind of lose time and that, you know, eight hour ride doesn't feel like an eight hour ride. It feels, it feels, you know, like a dream.

• 1:43:28Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, I mean, my experiences with losing time are usually on the other side.

• 1:43:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Mishka Shubaly?

  But, you know, the other side of the sobriety coin, but.

• 1:43:38Rich Roll?

  Well, I know what that's like too, you know?

• 1:43:40Mishka Shubaly?

  The, the last marathon that I, I went out to run, I mean, I went out to do like 15 miles with my friend Dave. Dave was my drinking buddy when I was 20 and we used to live in this unheated basement together. And the thought that he and I would ever be running like 10 miles or something together.

• 1:43:56Rich Roll?

  It's preposterous.

• 1:43:58Mishka Shubaly?

  It's mind blowing. I mean, I love being able to reverse like the old darkness from my past like that. But, you know, we went out to do, you know, 10 or 15 miles and I ended up doing a full marathon. And when I got home, like.

• 1:44:15Mishka Shubaly?

  It really didn't seem like that many miles or that many hours. It just seemed like, you know, we had a good laugh.

• 1:44:23Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's crazy, right?

• 1:44:25Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's, it's your perspective on it, you know? I remember when, um, you know, during Epic Five, the, the fourth Iron Man on Maui was so difficult and it just, you know, I really met my maker on that and had reached a level of exhaustion that I just didn't even think I was capable of. Um, and, uh, and, uh, you know, there was one remaining, right? There was another one to do to finish and I got a really good night's sleep and I got a couple of really good meals in me and woke up and I remember approaching that day and enjoying that day as if that Iron Man was just a celebration

• 1:45:09Rich Roll?

  of all the four that had preceded it, like this sort of victory lap, um, or like an afterthought. I was like, oh, we're gonna go out and do this Iron Man in Kona today. It's gonna be awesome. We're just gonna have a good time, you know? And like, I had no like, oh, it's gonna hurt or it was none of that. It was like, this is, we're just gonna breeze through this. We already did four this week and I actually feel pretty good because I actually got a good night's sleep finally in the middle of this thing. Um, no problemo, you know? And it's like, that's insane, right? That's insane. And, and so my perception of how long it was gonna take, my perception of how it was gonna feel, all of that, you know, had, had shifted from the way that I'd felt even a couple of days prior. And I remember, you know, it still took all day, but you know, it was, we had a good, it was like the most

• 1:45:53Rich Roll?

  enjoyable of all the Iron Mans, you know? And it didn't, and, and when we were done, it was like, ah, we're do, all right, we did that. Cool. We're done. Like, it was the same kind of, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is I relate to what you just said with that, that marathon story. It was very similar.

• 1:46:08Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. It's, I mean, it's funny, the, the picture of, uh, of you and Jason Lester at the end, like, you guys look, uh...

• 1:46:16Mishka Shubaly?

  You guys look cashed, but it's almost like, you know, you and your cousin ran out to the hay barn and back.

• 1:46:23Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, that was it too. We were the only one. There was like one other person standing there that took the picture. There wasn't anybody around, right? You know, I mean, we had, uh, you know, a couple of friends cheers to the end, but you know, that was it. It wasn't like a finish line or anything like that. It was like, all right, I guess we're done. Like, you know, I'm hungry. Like, we need to go to bed now. What, what's going on?

• 1:46:41Mishka Shubaly?

  It's, you know, it's funny. Like a lot of my friends who don't run, they're like, you know, I was like, oh yeah, you know, I'm a little, little beat in kickboxing class today. Cause I ran a marathon two days ago. And they're like, oh, which marathon? And I was like, you know,

• 1:46:53Rich Roll?

  Just ran around.

• 1:46:54Mishka Shubaly?

  This one. It's out there waiting for you to go and do it anytime, you know? And the, uh, the marathon that I did for Boston of like, of all the races that I've ever done, that was probably the most rewarding because I like, got to the end and there was no finish line. I was just, I was in the middle of Manhattan and like, some guy was walking by with his girlfriend and I was like, yo, look at my garment. And he was like,

• 1:47:17Mishka Shubaly?

  get away. Do you need a dollar? Like get away from me. And I was like, no, look. And it was like 26.2 on the dot. And he was like, what? And I was like, yeah. And he gave me a high five and that was it.

• 1:47:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. That's what it's about, man.

• 1:47:29Mishka Shubaly?

  Getting, getting,

• 1:47:30Rich Roll?

  It's about.

• 1:47:30Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah. Getting a high five from a random stranger. And it was just, it was, you know, it was so personal. It was like just, it was, you know, it was, it was my thing. It was our thing.

• 1:47:40Rich Roll?

  And that's the great thing about running too. You don't, you don't need the big race and the entry fee and all that kind of stuff. You can just go out and do it and do it for your, do it for yourself. You don't need anybody to, you know, send you a, a race number, you know, you, you can give yourself permission to go out and do it on your own. You know, and sometimes there's, that's, that can be more satisfying than the race.

• 1:48:04Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, man. I, yeah, I totally agree. It's, um,

• 1:48:09Mishka Shubaly?

  You know, and that's, uh, to me, that's the best thing about running is that it's, it's so democratic. It's, you can just, you can just go out and do it. And it's, you know, it's, it's available to almost everyone. I mean, unless you have a physical disability where you actually can't run, um, you can afford to run.

• 1:48:30Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:48:31Mishka Shubaly?

  You know?

• 1:48:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:33Mishka Shubaly?

  When, uh, when are we going to go out running together, man?

• 1:48:36Rich Roll?

  I don't know, dude. You're going out of town tomorrow, right?

• 1:48:38Mishka Shubaly?

  I know, I know. It's a shame.

• 1:48:40Rich Roll?

  The timing's off.

• 1:48:41Mishka Shubaly?

  I would love to give you a tour of like, we can run through the crappiest neighborhoods.

• 1:48:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, when I come to New York, I, I, I, you know, I do, I go to Central Park. Obviously I do the, the full loop and then I, and I go around the reservoir. I mean, I know, I know the park really well. And I know the, um, you know, West Side Highway, what do you call that?

• 1:49:02Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, West Side Highway.

• 1:49:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just along the West Side. I mean, I'll, I'll run, those are the two places that I run. I'm sure, and I've run over the Brooklyn Bridge and all of that, but I've never really run through, through Brooklyn or, you know, like the, the outer boroughs are, are unexplored territory. So next time, man.

• 1:49:18Mishka Shubaly?

  Yeah, we'll run down.

• 1:49:19Rich Roll?

  When are you getting, when are you getting back?

• 1:49:21Mishka Shubaly?

  I get back on, uh, Monday afternoon.

• 1:49:24Rich Roll?

  Oh, we can run Tuesday, maybe if you're not cashed.

• 1:49:28Mishka Shubaly?

  I, I will be cashed, but we can, we can run down to, uh, we can run down to Fort Tilden. You can give me a swimming lesson.

• 1:49:34Rich Roll?

  Uh, we can do that. I leave, I leave, uh, Wednesday morning. So.

• 1:49:38Mishka Shubaly?

  All right, let's do it.

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. Are we done here, man?

• 1:49:42Mishka Shubaly?

  I think so. I mean, I, uh,

• 1:49:44Rich Roll?

  I think we're it, dude. I thought you were gonna, I thought you were just gonna hammer me.

• 1:49:47Mishka Shubaly?

  No, when, when you said the last thing about running, I was, I was almost like, reach over and turn the computer off. Cause I was like, I'm never gonna say anything better than that. That was beautiful. That was like our sort of hopeful epitaph for the entire conversation.

• 1:50:00Rich Roll?

  All right. Yeah, good, man. I think we did it.

• 1:50:02Mishka Shubaly?

  Awesome.

• 1:50:03Rich Roll?

  All good.

• 1:50:04Mishka Shubaly?

  Rich, thank you so much for being a guest on the Rich Roll Show.

• 1:50:07Rich Roll?

  Thanks for, thanks for guest hosting today, Mishka, indulging, uh, indulging me in this, uh, experiment, podcast experiment.

• 1:50:16Mishka Shubaly?

  It's, it's, it's always, it's always a weird blast.

• 1:50:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Good. And I'm going to get you to, uh, start your own podcast. I'm more interested in that than in you doing a triathlon.

• 1:50:29Rich Roll?

  So we'll see. All right. We're out of here. All right. Thanks, man. Peace. Plants.