The Rich Roll Podcast - Best of 2016 – Part II

Episode Date: December 29, 2016

Welcome to Part II of our fourth annual Best of the RRP Anthology series. If you haven’t already, I suggest listening to The Best of 2016 — Part I first. This is a compendium of excerpts from some of my favorite conversations of 2016. It's our way of saying thanks, giving back, expressing gratitude and catapulting you into the new year with the information and inspiration required to make 2017 your best year yet. I appreciate you. Here’s to an absolutely extraordinary 2017. Enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich * RRP #242: Neal Barnard, M.D. On The Power Of Nutrition To Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease, Diabetes & Alzheimer’s * RRP #248: From Crack Addict To Running The Sahara To Prison Hero — Charlie Engle’s Third Act * RRP #252: Dr. Michael Gervais On Elite Performance & The Psychology Of Self-Mastery * RRP #262: Kerri Walsh Jennings: Lessons On Mindset From One Of The Most Dominant Olympic Athletes Of All Time * RRP #256: Chris Hauth: Building Better Athletes, Training For Optimal Performance & Achieving Fitness For Life * RRP #254: Julie Piatt On How To Build An Authentic Brand * RRP #223: John Joseph Wants You To Wake The F*ck Up * RRP #217: Gary Vaynerchuk Works Harder Than You Do * RRP #209: Rhonda Patrick On Longevity, Epigenetics & Microbiome Health * RRP #243: Coach George Raveling Is The Mentor You Wish You Had * RRP #226: Moby On Transforming Electronic Music, Elevating Consciousness & Saving The Planet * RRP #236: Andrew Morgan On The True Cost Of Fast Fashion: The Ethical & Environmental Price Of Clothing * RRP #244: Alexis Fox & Micah Risk Are Igniting A Social Movement To Help The World Eat Better * RRP #253: How To Be A Minimalist: Joshua Fields Millburn On The Power Of Living Deliberately

The good news is that these diseases are often reversible, even quite late in life. Dean Ornish's work, you know, Dean Ornish is, in my view, a genius. When he was a medical student, he set out to see if you can reverse heart disease. And you can, but with a combination of a healthy diet, plant-based diet, dealing with stress, getting exercise, throwing out the cigarettes, and just getting some support for this. So for anyone who thinks, no, no, no, I've been eating badly all my life. There's nothing I can do.

Wait a minute. Those arteries can open up again. Your blood pressure can come down. Now, you never know how far you can reverse this process, but let's get started. And I don't care if you're 95 years old. Those arteries can open up again. That's Dr. Neil Bernard. And this is part two of our fourth annual best of 2016 edition of the Rich Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Holiday greetings, everybody. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome or welcome back to the podcast where I do my best, my very, very best to have probing, meaningful, insightful, compelling conversations with some of the world's best and brightest across all categories of positive paradigm-breaking culture change. Thank you so much for tuning in today, for listening, for subscribing, for spreading the word. And of course, big love to everybody who has made a habit of always clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases.

To everybody out there who employed that for your holiday gift giving. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I put a lot of wind in our sails and I just wanted to thank you. Very grateful for that. Okay. I trust whoever is listening to this has already listened to part one of this best of 2016 anthology edition of the show. So I'm going to dispense with most of the introductory stuff and

just say, once again, at the risk of sounding repetitive, that I'm very grateful to all of you who have chosen to spend a few hours with me every week over the course of the last year or the last four years, depending upon whenever you tapped into the show. In any event, it means so much to me. I can't tell you how thankful I am to have you guys as an audience and to be able to get to do what I get to do here. And this best of 2016 is sort of a way of saying thank you, of giving back. This is my yearly snapshot. It's an anthology of some, not all, but some of my very favorite podcast conversations over the course of the past year. These excerpts are packed with insights, with inspiration, with tools, with resources.

And they're all intended to really help you set your focus to hone your intention heading into 2017. So as always, I've provided links to all the individual specific episodes for all the guests that are profiled in this show. You can find them in the show notes on the episode page on my website. And I encourage you to go back and listen or re-listen to those guests, those episodes, those conversations that stand out or resonate the most with you. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. So without further ado, let's just dive in, shall we? First up is Dr. Neil Bernard, at Dr. Neil Bernard on Twitter. He was the one who introduced this episode with his beautiful quote. Dr. Bernard is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at George Washington University,

as well as the founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, PCRM.org. Dr. Bernard is a prominent advocate of preventive medicine and higher ethical standards in medical and scientific research, as well as a preeminent authority on the impact of diet and nutrition on everything from heart disease to diabetes to cancer and Alzheimer's. This was a really powerful conversation, one of the most downloaded of the year. So let's tap in and have a taste of Dr. Bernard's wisdom. So there's a distinction between prevention and reversal. I think people have an easier time understanding the link between the foods that you eat and preventing the onset of some of these

conditions. But when you start talking about reversal, people's feathers get ruffled here, right? So how does the mechanism of actually, if you have diabetes and you start treating it through nutrition, how does the reversal start to occur? Well, when people begin a plant-based diet, it's surprising. You start the diet on Monday. And by about Thursday, my phone is going to start to ring from a patient who got out of bed at 6 a.m. and they are shaking and they're sweating and they feel terrible. And they take their glucose monitor and they check their blood sugar. And it's really low. And they call me up and say, wait a minute, I have never had a low blood sugar ever since I was diagnosed with diabetes. Well, they got it now because when you get the fat out of your diet,

your insulin sensitivity comes roaring back and they're still on as much insulin as they were on before. And so the combination of a healthy diet and all the medications they're taking, it's so powerful. So you've got to cut them back on their medicines. And of course, they're thrilled with that because they're on less and less and less medicine. And this is four days in. Oh, yeah. Now, with different people, it's different. Everybody gets their own trajectory. And there are some people where they have had diabetes so long that their pancreas is just not making insulin anymore. And those people are going to continue to need medication.

So everyone's different. But yeah but yeah oh it can happen within a matter of days and you have to warn the patient that this diet we're talking about is super powerful anyway so as time goes on what we believe is happening in the cell is that the fat droplets are just dissipating their insulin sensitivity is returning, and as they're gradually losing weight, and their blood pressure is improving, and their cholesterol is improving, the assault on their blood vessels is diminishing. So suddenly they can protect their eyes. The blood vessels to the retina, the blood vessels to their kidneys are all being protected,

and the disease process is reversing. Now, for some people, the diabetes will become undetectable. Not for everybody. There are others where they're going to still need some medication, or maybe they won't need medication, but their blood sugars aren't quite in the normal range. But get to this as soon as you can, and just kind of come back to what you were saying, Rich. What if I get to this diet when I'm 10 years old? The likelihood you will ever develop diabetes is cut dramatically. When you look at large populations, the Adventist population has been studied

because they're supposed to be on a healthy diet based on church teachings. Among those who ignore the church teachings and eat meat, the risk of diabetes is several times higher than those who follow even a rather casual vegan diet. So the point I'm making is you can prevent diabetes in the vast majority of cases. Right. That reminds me of the Blue Zones and all the work that Dan has done in those areas where there's relatively no incidence of diabetes whatsoever. You can also prevent type 1 to a degree, I believe. That was my next question. What is the distinction here between these two? Different disease process. In type 1 diabetes,

the cells in the pancreas, the pancreas is right behind your belly button, and it makes insulin. The pancreas is right behind your belly button, and it makes insulin. And that insulin goes in from the pancreas through the bloodstream to the cells and then acts like a key to let the glucose inside. In type 1 diabetes, those cells are dead, the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. They're gone. But decades ago, researchers figured out why they're dead. They've been killed by antibodies. Something is, these little torpedoes, these antibodies have destroyed those cells. So then the question is, why do I have antibodies in my own body,

killing my own cells? And it was 1992, in the New England Journal of Medicine, if I'm remembering correctly, researchers looked at a large group of kids, all newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and they found that there was an antibody to a foreign protein in their blood. The foreign protein was a dairy protein. And suddenly, every single child had this antibody. And it suddenly raised this issue. Okay, antibodies are there to attack foreign proteins, like viruses or bacteria. And what foreign proteins am I introducing

into my body? Well, food is the biggest one. And some of these proteins we're tolerant to, but the cow's milk proteins, they're not the same as mom's breast milk. And so some kids don't tolerate them. Well, they develop antibodies. And the theory is that those antibodies turn around and destroy the pancreatic cells. So does that mean that breastfed kids have less risk of type 1 diabetes? That's exactly what it means. Right.

And when you look, it's true. So could I weigh in? And the statistics bear that out. They clearly bear it out. That's amazing. They clearly bear it out. So what I would do, now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there might not be other causes. There could be. Some people say there are viruses or other things, and genetics plays a role here too. But I would suggest that parents should never give their children cow's milk. Now, you grew up with it, and I grew up with the idea that, of course, you should give your child milk. Wait a minute. Nature cannot get it through her head that human beings have the bad judgment to take milk from a cow and put it into this primate body which is your

your baby and that's what we do and some kids tolerate it but a lot of kids don't and you see asthma you see in older people joint inflammation you see people with all kinds of issues that they never connect to the dairy exposure. There have been a number of studies on this, and the best evidence is that if you avoid dairy products, a lot of these problems are just not going to occur. There was an amazing research study from Australia that showed in newborns, newborns within the first week of life, they have arterial thickening if their mother was on an unhealthful diet. That's the bad. So yeah, no, it happens right away. The changes aren't huge, but you

could see them right away. The good news is that these diseases are often reversible, even quite late in life. Dean Ornish's work, you know, Dean Ornish is, in my view, a genius, wonderful, wonderful human being, who, when he was a medical student, he set out to see if you can reverse heart disease. And you can, but with a combination of a healthy diet, plant-based diet, dealing with stress, getting exercise, throwing out the cigarettes, and just getting some support for this. So for anyone who thinks, no, no, no, I've been eating badly all my life. There's nothing I can do.

Wait a minute. Those arteries can open up again. Your blood pressure can come down. Now, you never know how far you can reverse this process, but let's get started. And I don't care if you're 95 years old. Those arteries can open up again. That's a beautiful thing. those arteries can open up again.

That's a beautiful thing. So when someone says to you, I eat pretty well, you know, I'm eating the paleo diet, what is your typical response to that? Because paleo is such a popular, you know, so purported, you know, healthy diet to eat these days. It's a romantic notion, isn't it, that we're in our loincloths with spears and running around and capturing a gazelle and bringing it home to our appreciative family who's going to chow down on this meat for the rest of the week.

It's really not based in anything other than fantasy. And there's a wonderful anthropologist from Oklahoma named Christina Warner. I saw her presentation at the conference. It was fascinating. Just fascinating. She's looked at the fossil record. And the paleo diet is clearly just imaginary. I mean, human beings did go through a paleolithic period, but what they were eating was plant-based foods for the most part. It's true they weren't having dairy products. They weren't having very much meat, and they had really quite a high intake of plant-based foods. And if you look at our other biological cousins, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, they're not eating ice cream. They're not eating cheese. They don't have dairy products

at all except mother's milk. And meat is really not their thing either. Next up, we have my good friend Charlie Engel at Charlie Engel on Twitter. Charlie is many, many things. He is a prominent ultramarathoner, perhaps best known for running all the way across the Sahara Desert. Imagine that. They made a documentary about it called Running the Sahara, narrated by Matt Damon. You should check that out. He's also a recovering alcoholic and addict who speaks quite knowledgeably about sobriety. And Charlie's also the author of a great new book called Running Man. It's a book that I really, really love. It's his memoir. But I think Charlie's greatest talent is storytelling. This guy is a master storyteller, especially when it comes to many of his life's foibles,

including his ill-fated stint in prison, something he calls his federal holiday. In any event, he's oozing with enthusiasm for life. I love this guy, and his story is just nothing less than amazing. So without further ado, here's Charlie. Throughout all of this, running is very much a part of who you are. And I'm interested in what that relationship looks like for you. Because I think it starts out as you describe it in the book.

It's like this self-imposed purgatory, right? like this self-imposed purgatory, right? I need to feel that pain to atone for this great sin that I've perpetrated by disappearing for four days and going down the drainpipe on drugs and alcohol. And if I can feel myself and punish myself through that visceral experience of running, then somehow that evens the playing field. But then it sort of morphs into this way of feeling more alive, right? So can you describe that evolution? I can. And I mean, and you actually described it very well, but it is a, you know, running became,

well, first I should say, you know, I still had an ego. I was, I was certainly a drug addict with, with enough ego to not want to look like a drug addict. And so running of course has this way, you know, it's a, it's a, it's to me, if you want to get fit, if you want to lose a few pounds, if you want to, whatever, I mean, nothing, nothing does it like running. And so, plus it doesn't take any equipment. I could do it like that. So I'm in my running shoes, even when I'm still hung over and wasted sometimes. And it was- But that also fuels the denial as well, because as long as you can keep doing that,

and you can go out and do that, then everything's cool. I'm not an addict. You're not one of those guys in a church basement. I can run a marathon. How can I be an addict? I can run a marathon drunk faster than most people, and I can do it on two hours of sleep hungover. Yeah. And so, but what I did start doing was using, I guess I used running almost as penance,

as self-flagellation where I would, you know, if I could, right, if I could have taken the thing and whip it over my shoulders and make my back bleed, you know, I would have done that. But this was my version of that, one that I understood. And the interesting thing about it, every runner has felt that you do get control of the burning in your lungs. When you understand how to run, you can run just hard enough to like cause yourself with lactic acid buildup and, you know, oxygen depletion. And of course, not to mention an unbelievable amount of dehydration after the things that I would do. I actually knew that I would, like squeezing a sponge, my desire was to squeeze dry everything that I had done. And I wanted it out of me.

Of course, that's not how it works, but that's how I pictured it. And so when I ran, you know, I ran as hard as I was capable of running under those circumstances. And I felt like I was purging my, not just my bad behavior, but the, man, the deep seated, painful insecurity and shame. I mean, it's shame, right? It's because that's where I lived was in this shameful place where, you know, I knew how bad I was. And I knew like most addicts that if other people knew how bad I was, they would hate me, despise me, whatever.

And so I wanted all of that out of me. And I found, you know, running, okay, I wasn't running for the right reasons, but running still saved my life. Running is this gift. And I'll tell you this one story. I told it to a guy today, in fact, who asked me here at Google about what it was like, because I showed a little scene in my talk of going into this village, Foshee, this oasis town that's in the film. And it's this beautiful scene and all these kids are around us and we're running in. And it really is. It still gives me goosebumps to think about it. A year earlier, I had driven into those same kind of towns in a scouting trip when I'd gone to do some scouting for the film and try to figure out logistics and whatever

you drive into that same little village in a land cruiser and you get out and the first thing that happens is everyone is looking at you and then maybe a couple of kids or people come up with their hands out and they've learned that people that drive into their town you know they're foreigners they're white people, whatever they might be. And so there's a routine and everybody plays their part. Well, they've never had anybody run in from the open desert. These three white guys, I mean, Kevin's Asian, but basically very different guys from them running into their village from the open. Certainly then, this is eight or nine years ago now, they don't have cell phones.

It's not like somebody called and said, hey, there's some guys coming down the road. You know, we just appear out of the desert and we don't speak the same language and they don't care and they're laughing and having fun as kids and their behaviors. Not one single person had their hand out for anything. They weren't asking and they needed stuff. You know, this is, you know, this is an oasis and they have water, but it's still, you know, not exactly by any standard. It's impoverished. And, you know, we leave, we run out of the town and, you know, we leave, we run out of the town and, you know, many towns that we'd run out of under those circumstances, we got like kids running with us. And I mean, for five or 10 K, it just imagine somebody running, you know, what if, what if a couple of guys ran through your hometown and your kids just ran out the front door and just headed down the highway with them

for like a couple hours? I mean, we'd be calling the cops and saying, oh my God, my kids are gone. And it's just so different. And that is the experience that I want to keep having for the rest of my life. Which is what? Well, it's just this connection, this human connection. And especially without, it's interesting when you can't speak the same language. I mean, this was totally Arabic there. There were some French speaking. So Ray, you know, Ray Zahab could talk to, you know, some of the kids, but generally speaking, it was all Arabic. I didn't speak any Arabic, but there was this joy, this laughter. And I mean, holding my hands and, you know, touching me and not being afraid of the difference of this person. And these are in places where, I mean, tourists don't come to these towns. So they're not like,

they don't have some vast experience with Europeans who are much more prolific as far as their travel in this area. There's no Yelp reviews for this. No, exactly. Hey, which restaurant should we eat in? You know, and then there's, you know, there's none of that. And so, I mean, that's, that is the, you know, sort of the epitome of what I would like to keep having in some fashion as long as I can do it. All right. My next guest up is Dr. Michael Gervais at Michael Gervais on Twitter. My next guest up is Dr. Michael Gervais at Michael Gervais on Twitter. Michael is the go-to guy when it comes to high performance psychology. This is a guy who specializes in mastery and mindset, working with some of the world's

most elite, most prolific professional and Olympic athletes, including the Seattle Seahawks, the Red Bull high performance team, athletes like Kerry Walsh Jennings, and just much, much more. Michael just oozes great insights. He's an amazing person, one of my all-time favorite guests on the show. So if you enjoy this clip, then please go back and listen to our full episodes. And also, please check out his podcast. It's called Finding Mastery. You guys are really big. So without further ado, here's Michael. Having a grounded, clear philosophy that is unique and true to you, and it feels really authentic when you say it out loud and you say it out loud a lot. And so that you can pressure test it, you can asset test it, you can make sure it still works.

That is really rare. And it takes a lot of work to get that thing just right. But don't the greats have that? Whether it's Vince Lombardi or Pat Riley or, you know, Pete Carroll. That's what defines, you know, who they are, right? And so a philosophy is a decision-making framework about how you make decisions in your life. And we know the philosophy of the most dynamic changers of the globe. We know what they are. Martin Luther King Jr., we know his philosophy. Eleanor Roosevelt, we know her philosophy. Mother Teresa, we know her philosophy because she talked about it and she walked about it and it was really clear. And yes those that shift and influence individuals at scale and that's an interesting i think way to think about it they definitely know what they stand for

right all right so um you know a lot of people not everyone who listens to this podcast contrary to popular opinion is an elite athlete at the Olympics. You know, a lot of people are just trying to, you know, to coin Dan Harris's phrase, be 10% happier. Like, how can they be more productive? How can they be more mindful? aspect of their life, but to perhaps bring a little bit more purpose and vitality and health and satisfaction into their, you know, daily existence. So, you know, what is your kind of message to that person? Well, I think that mastery is, it feels like it's really for the rare elite, which is raw. Mastery of self, mastery of craft. How do you define mastery?

Maybe we should start there. Yeah. I'm still working it out. I'll tell you where I am with it now, but I'm still working this thing out. I want to talk about, there's so many variables in my head that flood when we talk about it, but I really do think it's an understanding of the nuances better than you did before. And mastery is playing in the nuances in a way that is exceptional. And the nuances really, like for thinking, the nuances of a way that is exceptional. And the nuances really like in,

in for thinking the nuances of thinking or the space between thoughts and the space between words and the space, like that nuanced place inside is really beautiful and rare. And for a basketball player or a chef or somebody, it's like playing with ingredients or playing with time and temperatures in such a way that it is exceptional and it's beautiful and it's amazing. And it's, it's hard to reproduce.

So it's the nuances that I'm most interested in right now. So anyways, I don't want to get too lost on that because I want to talk about this concept that I think mastery is available for all of us, especially the journey of self-discovery. And that's really what mastery of self is about. This journey of self-discovery that is available for everybody. Some people use a craft to better understand themselves and to better understand people in general, the craft of sport or music or whatever business that craft is really just as really rich experience to learn

more about who you are or an external manifestation of wherever you are in your journey right so whether you're you know uh standing on the starting blocks at the olympics or a ceo or suffering through a job that you hate in a cubicle we're all on that journey of self-discovery, whether we're consciously pursuing it or not. I 100% agree with that idea that self-discovery is the process of becoming masterful of your experience in life. But you need to have some basic commands of some things to do mastery right. And so it's not for the elite.

It's this is for all of us and this is stuff that 5 000 years ago as people were talking about this is no different than the ancient thoughts of the of from great philosophers what is the meaning of life what are we doing guys what are we doing here and answering that fundamental question i think is really important for every person what are you doing and if you have an afterlife cool important for every person. What are you doing? And if you have an afterlife, cool. If you don't, okay. What are you doing here in physical form while we're together?

And why are you doing it? Well, yeah. So, all of that, you know, and getting really clear. It's hard to answer that now. And then there's the other question, one of of the most fundamental questions is who am i so answering that stuff and using your daily experiences and the awareness that you can bring to those daily experiences which requires training awareness requires training unless you're two and you know or before where it's just you're purely aware of everything all day long that for for most for adults we need to

train our mind to be aware because busyness and distraction are real um so i think that for all of us uh understanding how the mind works better there's only three things as humans we can train and train your body your craft and your mind there might be an asterisk that you can train your spirit um i'm not willing to put that in right now, but you can, if you can train your mind and I bet you most of your listeners have trained their mind in some kind of way, because that's why they're listening to, but doing a formal structured investment in training one's own mind is the return on investment is wild. So if you own a television

and it was turned on for even like a moment this past summer, then chances are you know Kerry Walsh Jennings. At Kerry Lee Walsh on Twitter, Kerry is the world's all-time greatest Olympic beach volleyball player. In fact, she is one of the most dominant Olympic athletes of all time in any sport. She's got five consecutive Olympiads under her belt, three gold medals, and of course the bronze that she took home this past summer from Rio. Carrie is just, she's just delightful. She was a pleasure

to talk to. And I think this is a really great glimpse into the habits, the practices, and the mindset that make her great. Yeah, well, I just, I mean, that's why I play, is I don't, I love that pressure. And I love, I love training every day so hard with my crew so that when I get to the game time, you just press play. Like, that's the ideal. That I've, you know, I've addressed every situation that come at me in practice so that I'm prepared to play. But I just, I adore it. It's like

halfway, you know, last year with April, um, just on a side note, I was like starting to get really stressed out and I'd be a little bit aggressive and I'd kind of bark. And, um, it was more like a fear of, of losing. And I was talking to Mike about it, to Doc about it. And I'm just like, you know, he's, I was like, you know, we're in these tight moments. I feel this. And when it's tight, I feel this. He's like, hold up. He's like, just take a moment. He's like, we need to reframe this because you're making this a tight moment. He's like, look at it as a competitive moment. I swear to God, right when he said that, I was like, like there was so much load unburdened. So I feel like just your mindset in certain situations is, is everything really, you know, especially at the highest level, everyone's physical, everyone can jump and hit and have, it has a skillset.

But if you have this mental framework where you can be, you know, have these tools to kind of chill out a little bit, that's ideal. Um, but for me leading up to Rio, I felt so good, you know, in Rio, I felt so good, obviously the intensity and there's nothing like it that I've ever experienced. Um, it's just a constant. It's kind of like parenting. It's just constant. The energy is constant. You know, there's no break. It's not like old hat, like, oh, here we go again.

I'm used to this. No. Oh, my gosh. Right. No. I mean, do you feel like that with all the races you've run? No. I mean, I'm not even going to like go there in terms of comparing my experience to what

you've experienced. But I can, you know, you go in with so much more, so much more like you're going into your fifth Olympics, like, you know, the drill, right? So like opening ceremonies, things like that might not be as heightened in experience as it would be for a 19 year old at their first Olympics. But I really have appreciated every Olympics for their own unique flavor. And Brazil was a different beast all on its own. And they did a really,

really great job. I, for the first time I didn't walk in opening ceremonies, most, mostly because logistics, like it was going to be hours and hours away driving and then standing on my feet. And we played the next day at midnight.

So plenty of time to rest and recover. But the, like I, you know, I've, I've been there, like you said, I kind of took the pressure off myself.

I watched it on TV. But know, I've been there. Like you said, I kind of took the pressure off myself. I watched it on TV. But no, I love it. Like the Olympic spirit to me is one of the most beautiful things ever. It's so amazing. Oh my God. It's everything. It's so unifying and inspiring. And, you know, when you have a down moment, you look up and then you're inspired again.

And it's really, really special. And this pressure that you enjoy shouldering so much, do you feel like, and this is another Gervais type question, but does the drive and the motivation or the sense of purpose come from an internal pressure or is that more of an external thing? 100% internal. Yeah. I mean, as I've kind of gone through the ranks, it's changed.

Because it used to be, I used to let the noise get to me. And, you know, newspaper article gets to me or other athletes, you know. And I would compare myself a lot to other people being like, I want to do what she does. And I want to jump that high. And at some point, I just dropped all that. Because that's just, A, it's limiting. B, it's, you know, you're defeated right away because i'm not that person and so that was a great lesson for me it also seems like it would be unsustainable over

the long run because you're you're you're subject to the whims of other people right like if you're if you're driven internally like you can keep out a constant flame absolutely yeah and you have a little bit more control over i love being being accountable to myself. I love being, you know, self-sustained. Like I don't, I don't want to have to rely on everybody. I have a rad, rad team around me that I do lean on, but like I pride myself on being, being able to take care of my SHIT. You know, I really, I really want to do that. And I want to do it at a very, very high level. Um, and so the internal drive is, is important to me. I mean, sometimes I'm having a tough day. I don't want to get out of bed early and it the internal drive is, is important to me. I mean, sometimes I'm having a tough day. I don't want to get out of bed early and it's like, okay, who am I doing?

Like, who am I doing this alongside? And you know, my team is so rad. I can't let them down. That stuff comes in once in a while, but 99.9% of the time it's like, I, I'm doing this cause I, I absolutely love it and I want to be the best that I can be. Um, and if I do that and work my ass off in all these different areas, then I like our chances. And if I do that and work my ass off in all these different areas, then I like our chances.

I'm interested in the dance and the flow that takes place with with your partner that, you know, exceeds anything in order for you guys to accomplish what you seek out. It's so special, you know, kind of growing up in the team sports world for my whole life and getting to beach volleyball. And I was 22 a little bit later. I was,

I was so ready for that change and I beach volleyball is so special because it's just you, yeah, you and your partner, like you said, against the world. and so it's like i am i need to be so legit and so on point for myself right um but i also have to rely on my partner and so that level of intimacy and communication and willingness to be vulnerable with this person and to you know bust through walls with this person that's like the my most favorite part about it it's pretty empowering

and it's rad and i've been so blessed in my career to play alongside just the best. I love it. I like, this has been my vehicle for personal growth. I mean, sports has been my whole life. I was basically a mute until I found volleyball. And then I found my voice and I found some confidence. But you found volleyball very young. I was 10.

Yeah. But I mean, I literally, yeah. And I was pretty shy, you know, for a while after that. But it just gave me a sense of self, you know, and I really love the team atmosphere. And I just, I've learned from all these people I've been around from all these situations I've been through traveling the world. I mean, I have, I have some pretty good perspective and it's come at the hands of this sport. Okay. So now it's time to talk to my friend and my coach, Chris Howlath. At AIMP Coach on Twitter, Chris is the guy that I really credit with all of my ultra

endurance success. Chris is a sub nine hour Ironman. He is the current age group Ironman world champion. He's a former Olympic swimmer and really one of the world's most respected endurance coaches, a guy who mentors everyone from first-time marathoners and Ironman athletes all the way up to Ironman and Western States top finishers and Ultraman winners and much, much more. Chris is full of insight and wisdom, so here's a taste. What are the biggest common mistakes that you see in the athletes that you coach? Or maybe not just the athletes you coach, but when you go to these events and you observe.

Yeah. Like you're going to Kona, you know, in a couple of days, right? Yeah. When you go to Kona and you see all these athletes gearing up for Ironman, you're just sort of taking it all in, the circus. Well, they're at the event already. Right, so they've already made it but like what is you know what do you what are things that like people who are listening who maybe they've done a couple races maybe they've done an ironman i don't know um

but things that you just go well it applies actually across all spectrums of athletics and in a cliche way across in life too um You know, not training with an outcome in mind is one of the biggest aspect. A lot of people just work out. They go out, they're doing the motions. And while that's good in the beginning, you know, you are getting fitter if you just do the swim, the bike, the run,

or just the run or so on. But eventually you get to a point where you're no longer improving and there's no deliberate training happening you know there's no outcome in mind and that's that's very important that training with intent um you know another another thing is the the classic piece that we spoke about i bet you last time and that is not training hard enough on hard days and not training easy enough on easy days, you know, no, not enough changes in speed. Another thing I find with a lot of athletes these days, and let me just qualify athletes,

to me, an athlete is not some elite athlete that has the results or achieved certain times or placings. Being an athlete is just a mindset. It's your ability to think about what you're doing, how to be successful, how you're progressing, and setting yourself up for the best next workout, the next day, today, whatever. And so even if you're a beginner or you're a world-class athlete, you're thinking the same way. What am i doing now

to improve myself um so i think uh one of the things uh another thing that athletes overlook or make mistakes with is that they take too much time off in the off season so they have these goals they have these endeavors that they want to take on this coming season. And then they take off a lot of time in the winter. And, you know, it takes them six, eight, 12 weeks just to get back to par fitness. Right. And the older you get, the longer it takes. Exactly. So you get into this early summer, finally getting back to fitness you had late the previous summer, and you're expecting a different outcome of your results by doing the same cycle of training so understanding what am i doing in order to maintain

some sort of connection to that fitness no you don't have to always be completely on it but finding an activity finding some training cycle that keeps you close to par, your best fitness, so that two, three weeks of good training puts you almost right back at it. Right. One of the things that I always see and that I catch myself in is wanting to always train my strengths and overlook my weaknesses. Yeah. There's different theories on that, especially being a triathlon coach. And you would understand this as a swimmer.

There is a lot of wasted time for triathletes practicing swimming. It's just not a good use of your time. No matter how much you swim, you're not gonna be a 53 Ironman swimmer or a 23 half Ironman swimmer. You can spend all the time and you want in the pool, you'll maybe gain in the next six months, two, three, four minutes.

Whereas if you spent that time from logistics of getting to the pool and that training time and getting home and so on, and you spent that biking and running, you're probably better off. You'll find a half an hour. Right. It's easy for you as a swimmer and myself as a swimmer to say that. It's harder to hear that when you're somebody who's afraid of swimming or doesn't have that much experience and feels like they have a lot of room for improvement. But the truth of the matter is, is that in triathlon, the swimming is so de minimis, right? But the other mistake that I see people, that I see triathletes making, triathletes that don't have a robust swimming background, is they go to the pool and they're so focused on getting the yardage in, getting the volume in, and they just refuse to work on stroke and you can look at their stroke and you're like

dude like if you took a month off and just did drills and got your stroke catch up freestyle over and over and over again you would have a quantum leap and improvement but that requires the leap of faith and some trust and they're so afraid of like not being fit you know that they can't allow themselves that that you know you know, that type of focus. Looking for a certain yardage and not thinking about, you know, again, what we said, not training with a workout outcome in mind. What is it I want to gain today versus just swimming laps in the pool, continuing to reinforce bad habits.

So yeah, you're totally right. The other thing I find is that athletes often sign up for events that are not realistic in their current lifestyle. And that is whether it's a hundred mile run and they realize a couple weeks in that training is just not going to work. They don't have the hours. They don't have the job. They don't have the family to support that.

That bet that they made with their buddy at the bar, you this hitting enter too early enthusiasm around that's starting to wane quickly and it's it's it's frustrating it creates a lot of anxiety and then you either give up or you're only a shell of yourself trying to keep up with the training so i think that's a very important aspect before you sign up for the event. Know more about the training and what time commitment or what your own expectations might be from, are you just finishing? Which is totally fine, but know that. And so when you have anxiety about the workouts or about how you're going to get it done, you can remind yourself, oh, wait a moment.

This is just the finish. This isn't for some, you know, crazy result. If you had some words of wisdom to the guy or the woman out there who's listening, who's maybe having trouble getting off the couch, but is interested in perhaps dipping their toe into this world. Maybe they've never run before. Maybe they're getting ready for their first big intimidating race. never run before? Maybe they're getting ready for their first big intimidating race. Like what are the, you know, what are some doable practical tips that you could give somebody to get started?

The first thing is always, always a little something every day. Get a little something started every day, whether that's 20 minutes, whether that's 30 minutes, whether that's an hour, and progress. Just gradual progression. A lot of us are too focused on perfection. There's a training plan. I missed two or three workouts, therefore I'm failing. That is not how it works. You did 7 out of 10.

Great. Next week, let's do 7 out of 10 again, maybe even 8. Progress, not perfection. You're always the guy who says, you know, if you miss that workout, it's gone. It's vanished into the air. You don't go and then try to make it up and do two workouts the next day. Like that's a big mistake. Just keep moving forward.

Always moving forward. How am I progressing as a person, as an athlete tomorrow better than today? And so getting up off that couch, it's just about doing a little something better fitness-wise today than I did yesterday. Whether it's I walked to work, I walked to the subway, I rode my bike, or anything to just make you a little tiny bit fitter, healthier than yesterday. a little tiny bit fitter, healthier than yesterday.

This anthology would definitely not be complete without some choice wise words from my biggest teacher, my biggest mentor, that would be my wife, Julie Pyatt. At Srimati on Twitter, S-R-I-M-A-T-I. Julie is many things in addition to being my wife and the mother of our four kids. She's an incredibly talented artist, an adept musician, a yogi, a vegan chef. She's, of course, my co-author

on The Plant Power Way. She's the one who has come up with all this food art that we enjoy and share with you guys. And she's just a wealth of knowledge and somebody with an in-depth experience-based spiritual perspective on how to live authentically. So this clip is all about that. It's all about getting real and taking responsibility for your path and your growth

and your evolution. It's about resolving imbalance so that you can fulfill your mission. And it's about devoting yourself to something greater than you. So enjoy. So it's all about yoga. It's all about yoga and meditation. And I think all of the bounty, you know, the fruits of the pain that we've suffered, the hardships that we've gone through are a result of of of that commitment you know and you've been leading the charge like i'm the

i'm the sort of reluctant you know complaining kid that gets dragged into it and then goes oh why wasn't i doing this all along and then i'll relapse and revert back to my old default ways and then i go oh yeah I felt better when I was doing that. And then I go back in. You're like a constant. And this is where we are like the yin and the yang, because you're the one who's always been, you've never wavered in that commitment. You're very, you know, your curve does not go up and down that much. It's pretty constant, right? You're able to hold that space. And that's a unique, I think that might be your most profound talent is your just consistency with this.

I'm less consistent. And it's that thing where knowledge will avail you nothing. It's like, I know what's right for me. Sometimes I struggle with getting into that place of doing it consistently, but it's always drawing me back. And I think giving myself, like not flogging myself and beating myself up for not being perfect or as consistent as you has been a struggle that, you know, I've been constantly, you know, trying to overcome to get to a place where I can be okay with myself, but also aspire and work harder towards that level of consistent practice. Well, I think, you know, I think along with, yeah, not beating yourself up and not being judgmental, there also comes a responsibility because, you know,

at a certain level when you've reached a certain level of maturity, you know, it's time to stand up and take responsibility basically. So I'm not, I'm less, I'm, I'm less in the energy of, oh yeah, you know, it's time to stand up and take responsibility, basically. So I'm not, I'm less, I'm less in the energy of, oh yeah, you know, it's okay to waver a bunch. It's like you- I'm not saying that. Yeah, but you, you know, you have enough experience now and it's kind of like for all of us, and this is like a planetary thing right now. I mean, the game is getting amplified up.

You're going to start to see everything get like a kind of more intense, more amplified. And spiritual practice is required of us. It's not a choice. It's not like a pastime or a hobby or a cute little idea of taking a picture of meditating. It is a necessity to be able to fulfill your mission. And I'm talking for all of us. It is a necessity to fulfill your mission. So if you don't know who you are, start practicing yoga so you can find out who you are. Because we need you to be all of who you are,

everything that you were created in your divine blueprint. We all need you. We're waiting for you. We're waiting for you to come online so you can join us. So, yeah, now things are getting a little bit more intense. You know, now it's like, no, you need to make a decision and you need to devote yourself to something greater than yourself. And, you know, one of the things in Jaya Yoga practice that I designed in there is

the first thing we do is lie down in pranam, meaning lie down on the floor and offer your life over to something greater than you are. Because we're just not in kindergarten anymore. You know, you saw the mass shootings in Orlando this week. This world is not all unicorns and rainbows. It's just not all happening. I wish it was, but it's just not. So how do we manage? How do we maintain our light? How do we maintain our mission and keep our energy balanced and in a good place so that we don't get sick. We don't get disease. I mean, all this going up and down and the extremes, it's hard on your body. It's hard on your system. So it's affecting you physically. It's affecting you spiritually. And also it's affecting the

environment because other people are receiving any imbalance that you're throwing off. And so again, it comes to us understanding that we are spiritual beings having a human experience and the spiritual practice is essential, right? Especially right now, especially right now. And so thoughts are things and emotions are things and our inner space affects people around us. So it's not just about your own experience. It's about the greater experience. And so I'm going to be speaking up and sort of requiring and calling for and holding the space that we all up our game a little bit. I'm upping mine. So I'm not staying in this place.

I'm going to another level. So my spiritual practice is heightened right now. I have, it is very, very in the forefront of what my life is. And I'm sharing that on my podcast, Divine ThruLine, and amazingly getting the most extraordinary letters from people all over the world who are having real human life experience happen to them.

And I'm honored to be able to hold space for them and speak to those type of issues. But I feel like we've hit a tipping point. I feel like it's kind of a different game now. And we're all being required to step up and, you know, take action and make a commitment on a lot of those things that we've known for a while, you know, are kind of in the field. But we haven't really taken responsibility to step into them. Everybody has those things. Everybody has something that's in their blind spot

or that they're sort of semi-consciously aware they need to deal with. Yeah, and it's your life. This is your life right now. You don't know if you're going to be alive tomorrow. So what are you waiting for? I think that's a good place to close it down for the day. Okay.

Thanks for having me on. The powerful Julie Pyatt laying down the mad crazy truce at the end. Just got inspired a little bit there. That was fantastic. Thank you. I'm inspired. There can be no best of anthology without hearing from my brother from another mother, John Joseph.

At JJ Cro-Mag on Twitter. John is the front man of the iconic punk band, the Cro-Mags. He's a legend in punk rock. He's the lead singer in a brand new band called Blood Clot, based on his nickname, Johnny Blood Clot. He's also a plant-based Iron Man.

He's just a spiritual cat who's got a lot of wisdom, a lot of knowledge, and he just tells it straight. He's a guy who was reared on the mean streets of the Lower East Side in the 1970s. He got taken under the wing by the guys in the band Bad Brains. And that really changed his life. And he lives to tell about it. So this guy is just, he's an American original. He's got a powerful message. He's truly one of my favorite people in the world. So I implore you, if you have not already,

to go back into the catalog and listen to at least one of the four times that John has been on the show. He's been on episode 41, 66, 95, and this is an excerpt from his latest appearance, which is episode 225. So without further ado, Jonny Bloodcloth. For somebody who's listening, who's perhaps not vegan,

they're dancing around the edges of it, what's the message? What are you advocating specifically? You know what I tell people here? And I'll tell you, I was hanging out with Chris Garver from Miami Inc., right? So his mother started taking up meditation, so they went to this Buddhist temple in Korea, in South Korea. And Chris's father said to the monk, why should I meditate? And the monk goes, you meditate for one month. And if you don't like it after one month, never meditate again. Well, guess what? The father's been meditating ever since. So that's the same thing i say get off the processed food get

off the gmos get off the dairy get off the poison start eating right exercising have that pma do your meditation do whatever your spiritual practice is and after a month if you don't feel amazing go back to eating fucking schnozages what What the fuck do you want me to tell you? But I can guarantee you, like all these dudes with health problems, come on. Like look at the documentaries, Forks Over Knives, all these movies that are coming out on health and people reversing like cancer and all kinds of shit. The food that we're being fed is when you guys talked about this a lot last night, it's poison. It's, it's pure fucking poison. And, you know, the pharmaceutical companies have a hand in putting this poison out there because they're

capitalizing off of you getting sick. So it's like, you know, end the insanity. Like, remember Susan Powers, the crazy workout chick with the blonde spiky hair? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. End the insanity.

That's like, that's what I tell motherfuckers. I'm like, yo, get off the fucking wheel, man. Like, get off of that ride

that they got you on, man. I think most, I saw some statistic that like, most adult Americans or the average adult American is on something like four to six medications. There's a great book called Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher.

And she was a big time pharmaceutical executive with Pfizer and these other companies and she just fucking hey her niece I think passed away or something from a reaction from did one of the drugs that got recalled and then she's like I'm this we're doing this to fucking millions of people so how the fuck does a drug get approved by the FDA and then get recalled because it's killing people if it's really safe so she said straight up like the the goal of the drug companies is to get everybody on medication from the moment they leave the womb to the moment they go into the grave that's their goal they're the biggest things pharmaceutical companies most powerful things traded on wall street just like the prisons it's a business they want you sick they go out and and they're

destroying like you know they just banned like uh metal like the oil from uh i just was reading today like the cannabis oil uh yeah i mean i i don't i don't take that stuff but it's been proven to help kids with seizures and and this one family um gave their kids cannabis oil and the kid was having like 30 seizures a day and it stopped the seizures completely so there's benefits and alternative medicine has a lot of benefits too you know herbs and stuff like that and and it's just totally shunned but i i believe that if you eat a real healthy diet and you take preventative measures too uh which i think is important i drink wheatgrass every day i do all this stuff to detoxify my system because i live in new york

i think you have a good chance i mean look i'm 50 i'm turning 54 in a couple of months and i'm out there crushing it you know and everybody could be doing that i'm not i'm not a special case i just happened to invest in my health you know 36 years ago but it's been a roller coaster too like i said during that time i i did crack i was fucking crazy i did drinking. I like, you know, but you can't never give up. No matter what you go through, you have to keep the fight going. And we have ultimate power. And that power comes in where we choose to spend our dollar. Like, what are you putting in your fucking cart?

What are you giving your kids? putting in your fucking cart what are you what are you giving your kids if you care about your children you better start and like you know look at the obesity rates heart disease showing up in eight-year-olds cholesterol high blood pressure like that's not normal like you if you go like i travel all the time like you do man go through Go through the airports in the Midwest. Holy fucking shit. It's like a new breed of people. There's people in their 30s that are in wheelchairs. The most fun. We played punk rock bowling two years ago.

What's that? It's in Vegas. And it's this punk rock festival that takes over Vegas for like three days. But it's like you walk into those fucking casinos. And there's dudes hooked up to oxygen tanks in their wheelchairs and they're fucking got drinks in the front they got their cigarettes and they're fucking hitting the one-arm fucking bandits non-stop gambling eating the shittiest fucking food it's like this country at point, they're just a battery for fueling the system, the status quo.

It's like, it's madness. And, you know, that's why I think it's up to each of us to get the message out and try to help people. And for me, the first real. You know what sparked all the change in my life. Was when I changed my diet. Everything followed from there. And awareness opened up.

I started getting into other stuff. You know I was around. Like the Bad Brain Sound Man. J W. R I P J. Love you. He was a raw foodist and hit me to that. And Victorus Kovinskas, I saw him speak and like all these guys from Hippocrates and Wigmore. And then the meditation, I worked at Integral Yoga's health food store, got free yoga classes.

free yoga classes so when you take that first step in the journey man the universe just responds with like unlimited mercy to bring you down your path and that's what i try to tell people it's up to us to take those first steps and you go through this clearing stage when you first go vegan and all this stuff there is the temptations you know i slipped up in the beginning but i didn't give up that's a difference slipping up and giving up is two different principles. We're all going to get knocked on our ass in life. That's what life is about. But we have to learn from it. First class intelligence, you know, you hear and you never and you change and never go back. Second class, you hear you got to keep getting kicked and then eventually you wake the fuck up. And then third class is

most of what america's doing man they're getting fucking disease they're getting pills and they keep going back next up is none other than gary vaynerchuk at gary v on twitter gary is a serial entrepreneur he's an investor he's a social media expert. He's a multiple New York Times bestselling author. He hosts a wildly popular show on YouTube and on iTunes called Ask Gary V. He's the CEO of a company called VaynerMedia, which is one of the fastest growing digital ad and marketing agencies in the world. What can I say? Gary's a kick in the pants. He's irreverent. He's unconventional, but he's also a legit business and marketing genius. He's just bouncing off the walls with ideas and insight and energy and practical career business and life advice. So check it out. You know, most people are stuck in jobs. They can't stand. They're sitting in cubicles. You

know, they basically feel stuck in a life they're not even sure they consciously chose for themselves. And a message like yours or the other people out there that are entrepreneurs that are sharing kind of transparently online is very inspirational. So when you're speaking to that person who really wants a way out, they're not necessarily going to go found the next Twitter, but they're trying to find a better way this is what i wrote and this is what i'm trying to do right now on the bookends of kind of my career so far as a public figure is you're damn right and honestly those are the people so shit man you're really hitting something important to me let's let's break that you know we got a little bit of time now this isn't my usual 15 minute interview so so I got a little time. Let's really, really break this down.

So you've got Rick, he's making $62,000 a year in his cubicle, he's got $100,000 in student debt with a huge interest rate that's about to kick in, he can't get out of it, and I understand why Instagram photos of some dude with chicks in Vegas or cash on a bed is very enticing. Let's really break this down. What Rick is getting fed right now by 90% of this market,

all that a lot of people think looks like me, is like me, says the same things as me, that I'm trying to very much clarify is the following. Rick is being sold, in his mind, or Rickette, in her mind, that they're gonna make big money. See, that's the problem. The problem is most people are not buying into the practicality of entrepreneurship. They're buying into the romance and the high end of entrepreneurship.

Well, they're buying into the destination or the result as opposed to the daily grind and the journey and the process. Here's what I think. I think the far majority of people that are listening right now, understanding a little bit about your audience actually should become entrepreneurs or do entrepreneurial tendencies but they need to understand they're trading their sixty two thousand dollar a year job for a business that might make them sixty two thousand or maybe what my hope is and i my belief by the way with the internet now is an eighty to ninety thousand dollar gig which is going to probably take more time working, not less. Oh, most certainly will take more time.

But will be a hell of a lot more fun because at least it's on your rules. Like you can actually work 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. if you're not a morning person and you don't have to wake up at 6.30 anymore to be at the office at eight and sit in traffic for an hour. I just wish there was a bigger conversation

R squared around making 80,000 a year on your terms versus making 65 on theirs. Or how about this one, which I think is actually the wild one of the whole bunch. How about you're making a buck 10, but you're miserable, but it's paying your bills. How about making 87 instead of a buck 10, but being happy as shit. I take that trade all day long i think so you know and i think what you're saying really but really what to distill it down really what you're saying is there's a distinction a very profound distinction between um the sexy ipo versus somebody who's stuck in a dead-end career or something that is not personally satisfying and trying to find a way by leveraging the incredible power of the

internet and the democratization of of you know sharing content to be able to have a little bit more control and domain you're also you're also talking to a guy who truly believes that if you go to the dollar store the goodwill store and garage sale on the weekends and sell it all on ebay on the arbitrage between what you're buying and what you can sell it on ebay literally most people if they discipline themselves and learn four or five genres, video games, clothes, artifacts, paper goods, can literally make 100K a year. I mean, if I ever made my bullshit ebook,

that would be it because I really understand all the pieces of how to make 100K on eBay. And that's a lot more money than a lot of people listening right now making in their year. Here's the other thing,. And that's a lot more money than a lot of people listening right now making in their year. Here's the other thing, and this one's probably even more important. Okay, let's take a step back to where I was.

You're gonna try to make 100K instead of 80K. By only going for 100K instead of a million, you're gonna make the biggest, single, important decision of your life. And here's what it is. Most people right now, because they're going from 60K to try to go for a million, are doing very impatient behavior in their first 24 months out the box. In what respect?

They're looking for fast and cheap dollars. They're signing up for things that are not as noble. They're trying to sell people things they don't believe. Do you know how many people sell supplements that they have no idea what's in those supplements? Most. I have some familiarity with how that industry works. It's crazy. So between that, between Ponzi scheme activity, between trying to sell an e-book for $400,

which is just five blog posts you found on the internet and they're free. When you're trying to rush, you start cutting corners and you start doing wrong things to other people. And what you start doing is you start tarnishing your name and your leverage and your long-term capability. You're running a sprint versus a marathon because you're trying to make a million instead of 60,000. But how do you reconcile that against this idea that you should dream big and hold high aspirations for yourself? I think you should. But you should understand that there's not a single fucking person on earth that ever made it big in four minutes. Mm-hmm.

I mean, like, got it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's real. Dr. Rhonda Patrick is next up. Rhonda is at Foundmyfitness on Twitter. She is a research scientist with a PhD in biomedical sciences who specializes in nutrition, metabolism, aging, cancer, epigenetics, microbiome health, and much, much more. She's super whip smart, totally amazing.

So if you enjoy these geeky deep dives into science and nutrition, then go and listen to the full episode. And I think you'll absolutely love her blog, her podcast and her YouTube channel, all of which you can learn more about at found my fitness.com. So here's Rhonda. Yes, inflammation is the driver of the aging process itself. In fact, very recently, in the past six months or so, a Japanese study published a study that involved elderly individuals that were like 80 years or older, centarians which were 100 years old semi super centenarians which are 105 and then super centenarians which are 110 and so they had all these different age

populations and a variety of biomarkers were looked at tons of different biomarkers and they looked at telomere length dna damage inflammatory markers cellular senescence which occurs what does that mean cellular senescence occurs when so here's like the temporal chain of events oxidative stress dna damage dna damage causes the telomeres to shorten because your telomeres take the hit your telomeres are what protect your dna and the reason they do that is because if your DNA gets damaged, it can potentially lead to cancer. So your telomeres take the hit.

But before we go any further, and I don't want to take too much of a left turn, but I feel like we need to, like telomeres is a big thing that I wanted to talk to you about today. I thought we were going to talk about inflammation, but maybe we can talk about telomeres, at least to the extent that we can define it so we know what we're talking about.

Yeah, so basically it's a biomarker for aging because as we age, they get shorter. But they're basically like the tail ends of your DNA strands. They're kind of like the caps on the end of your chromosomes, which contain your DNA. So yes, exactly. So these Japanese people looked at all these different biomarkers and they looked, what they found was that

in every category of age, so elderly, centenarians, semi-supercentenarians, and supercentenarians, the only thing that was positively associated with aging, was the driver of aging, was inflammation. That was the only thing so inflammatory markers so yes you are

right inflammation is is at the root of aging and to answer your question what is inflammation which is you know I completely agree with you it's just kind of thrown around and you know I don't think a lot of people really do understand exactly what inflammation is. So what inflammation is referring to is it's a consequence of your immune system being activated. And once your immune system is activated, they start firing off all these chemical weapons that are called inflammatory cytokines cytokines and these inflammatory cytokines are damaged damaged cells inside your body

damaged DNA inside your body damaged pretty much everything inside of your cells but what's confusing to me about this is that essentially inflammation is an immune system response to something wrong in your body, right? It's your body's way of saying, let's send the ambulance out to fix whatever's wrong, whether you cut your finger or you sprained your knee, your immune system gets activated and mobilized to then kind of visit that either localized area or general if it's stress related or something like that, I suppose. But the idea behind it is to fix the problem, right? So on some level, doesn't it make sense that like some inflammation is good because it's your body

reacting to a problem in order to fix it? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, that one of the, you know, major effects, downstream effects of having, you know, these inflammatory cytokines and molecules being produced is they recruit other repair factors. It, you know, allows, it increases genes in your body that then start to repair damage, fix things. So it's an essential part of repair and recovery system. to fix things. So it's an essential part of repair and recovery system. However, there is a difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation would be something like your four-hour marathon run, you know, or your two-hour training session when you're, you know, running and, you know, you're causing inflammation. There's, you're causing inflammation there there's no inflammation you know it occurs after intense exercise that's good because you the inflammation signals to various you

know genes in your body that turn on all these antioxidant genes they turn on genes that repair muscle damage they turn on all these good so it's like a stress response sort of mechanism we're turning on all the good stuff, but you need the bad stuff to turn them on. So it's kind of like, here's a little dose of this bad stuff to turn on the good stuff. Right. So there's sort of the exercise-induced oxidative stress that triggers the immune system response versus somebody who's just smoking cigarettes all day long and that's causing some kind of internal damage in a number of ways that's creating just a chronic immune system response that is literally just burning your engine out, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, the chronic smoking or actually the major, major source of all inflammation in the body is actually

the gut. So you're talking about people that are eating unhealthy, they're not getting enough fiber, and they're doing damage in the gut. And that's causing a lot of immune cells to become active chronically every day, you know, the food you're eating, people eat, you know, three times a day or even more. So in your experience, what are the foods that create the worst sort of inflammatory response? Well, I think it's actually more a lack of foods. Lack of the good foods. Than eating bad foods. Because, so, your gut hosts the largest number of immune cells in the body.

So most of the immune cells in your body are found in your gut. You've got them in your spleen, your thymus, and you're obviously in your blood stream. But the largest number of them are actually in your gut. The reason for that is because your gut is exposed to the external environment. The food you eat, your gut sees it. And that can be pretty lethal if you get some bad, nasty stuff. So your immune system has to be there and ready to react to that, right?

To make sure that you stay alive long enough to reproduce and pass on your genes. So in addition to immune cells being in your gut, you also have a lot of bacteria in your gut. And those bacteria play a very, very important role in regulating your immune system. So you have to feed those bacteria the right types of foods. This next guest goes by just one word, coach. George Raveling is a guy who's basically synonymous with basketball. In fact, he's one of the most respected and revered figures in all of sports. He's an inductee into several halls of fame. He was the first African-American collegiate basketball coach at a whole slew of universities, including Villanova, the University of Maryland, Washington State, and the University of Iowa before he closed out his

unbelievably storied career here in the Southland at USC. He's also a civil rights activist, and now at 79, or maybe he's 80 now, I'm not sure, he is the current director of international basketball for Nike. Incredible, right? But more than anything, Coach is a world-class educator. He's basically the mentor you wish you had. The guy's a national treasure. And so it's an honor and a privilege to share a little slice of my conversation with Coach with you guys here today. At the end of the day, nobody's going to row our boat for us but ourselves. We either, our lives are going to be lived in a relatively orderly manner. And so either our hands are going to be on the steering wheel of our life or someone else's hands are going to be on the steering wheel of our lives.

And I prefer that I govern my life and the way I think. And I've been actually, you're probably the first one that I've talked to publicly about this, but I've been working on this theory that I'm going to continue to work on over the year until I get it really well defined, but I call it environmental control. And the theory behind this is if you can control the environment in which you live, then you can create the necessary environment to live a peaceful, productive life, to be happy, if in fact happiness is something that's important to you. And so the idea is to create a community within this universal community. And I can control the community that I live in. I can control the people I associate with, the books I read, my values, what I watch on television, how I think.

We have a lot more control over our lives than we realize that we do. I just don't think that our thinking is maybe as sophisticated as it could be or would be if we decided, if everyone decided once and for all that I'm gonna be the captain of my ship. I'm gonna control my destiny. I'm going to create a path to success for me. And if they started to control the people that they choose to be around, what they listen to, what they watch, their values, I think it's very easy to do.

what they watch, their values. I think it's very easy to do. And I didn't actually think about this a whole lot until the last four or five years, but I really have put that into play. I'm very watchful of what I eat, where I go, what I do. And I try to create an environment in which I feel that I can exist and feel like I'm making progress. I'm not a person that believes in happiness. I think, to me, happiness is, if you spend your whole life chasing happiness, I think you're going to be chasing a goat because the bar is always going to be moving. And most times, happiness is validated by someone else. And so to me, rather than go through all the anxiety of being happy, I never thought, this is the first time actually in a long time that I even talked about happiness because I try to eradicate that word from my vocabulary. The idea of happiness as some sort of destination.

Yes. But I would presume that purpose and engagement, you know, sort of supplants the idea of happiness in terms of being a contented and directed individual. I'd be more great. You picked a perfect word as it relates to me. I'm more interested in being contented than I am being happy. that these are momentary existences, but you're always reaching, and you get to a point that you live and manifest something I learned at Nike when I was working there, and their mantra is there is no finish line, that you're constantly asking yourself what's next.

I remember Phil Knight saying to me one time, the minute you think you've won, you're starting to lose. Yeah, nothing is static. And in between the lines, what I'm hearing you speak to is this idea of self-determinism, right? The idea that you can control your environment, the adage that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and the extent to which we can control some of these factors. And that is an idea that I believe in wholeheartedly, but it also butts up against this kind of victim narrative that seems to populate the news and, you know, our culture at the moment. The idea that everybody is a victim and, you know, there's a lot of finger pointing and blaming other people for the circumstances of our lives and on some level you're a rebuttal to that,

I would say. Is that – Dr. Well, you know, as it relates to me, and the minute you start to try to reach out into these other communities and connect with them, even if it's by way of conversation or just mentally, I think that you now run the risk that they're going to try to validate who you are, what you say, or what you do. And I'm really, I think I'm perfectly capable of validating myself. I don't have to live by someone else's norms or standards

for validation. I used to say in a talk that I did that the hardest battle that a person has to fight in their lifetime is to live in a world where every single day someone's trying to make you be someone you don't want to be. I think I know who I want to be. I don't need someone to try to make me be who they want me to be or to live by their values. I respect their values. I respect their way of life, and I hope that they would do the same for me. So when you think about, you had mentioned earlier, we all have a role to play.

How do you think about and articulate how you see yourself like what is your role like how do you how would you define what your role in this grand play is i see myself as a servant leader i think at this joint juncture in my life i'm kind of on the other side of the mountain now at 79 and so i i fully recognize it's no longer about me it's about them and so i have to reach out and try to uh positively affect as many lives as i can and so my mission every day is to be a positive difference maker and as many lives of people as I can, black folks and white folks. And I try to target young people and share with them my life lessons in hopes that, and my grandma used to say, if you listen to me, I can help you avoid some of the bumps and

potholes in the road. me, I can help you avoid some of the potholes in the road. And so, to this day, I still feel that that's my mission to help other people avoid some of the potholes in the road because I've lived the life that they have to live. And so, I'm going to spend all of the rest of my remaining life trying to be a positive difference maker in as many lives as I possibly can. Okay, next up is musician and activist Moby, who goes by The Little Idiot, at The Little Idiot on Twitter. Most know Moby as the eclectic and introspective DJ musician behind the album Play, which was an album that sold over 12 million copies and elevated dance electronica from the clubs of lower Manhattan into this full-blown mainstream

phenomenon. But for me, far more interesting is the story of Moby himself. It's a story about art. It's a story about authenticity, survival, perseverance, and the search for what is truly important. So I really enjoyed this conversation with Moby. If you haven't done so already, make a point of picking up his new book, Porcelain. It's a phenomenal read and enjoy. So let's get into the vegan thing. Okay. So that starts early for you. 1987.

So almost 30 years ago. And what happens? Like you just have sort of an inbred kind of genetic predisposition to not be into meat or be extra sensitive? This is pre-Morrissey, right? I grew up loving my American diet. Like when I was 15 years old, I ridiculed the vegetarians at my high school. I loved McDonald's.

I loved Burger King. I loved Steakums. I loved pepperoni pizza. Steakums, I haven't heard that in a long time like i loved the american diet so much like and i thought everything about it was just perfect like chocolate ice cream like yellow american cheese yellow american cheese like i thought that you know like i remember eating sitting down with like a can of like duncan heinz frosting and eating the entire thing right and wondering why don't people do this every day because it's so great and so i wholesale fully

embraced the american diet 100 and and i didn't know why anyone wouldn't and my mom who was like an erstwhile hippie would occasionally try to feed me brown rice or tofu. And I thought it was child abuse. I just couldn't understand why when there was a world of meatloaf and pizza, why she would try to feed me vegetables. I have more vegetables. So you weren't a candidate. You weren't a candidate for this movement at all. Not in the slightest no i i

remember we had one vegan in my high school and she refused to play softball because the gloves were made out of leather and i really i just thought that was the dumbest thing i'd ever heard so but i also loved animals so i was a quintessential american in that way of like i loved animals and i loved eating animals. And then when I was 19 years old, I was petting Tucker, a cat that I'd rescued from the dump, who I loved. And I was petting Tucker. And all of a sudden, I saw that like Tucker had two eyes and a central nervous system and fur and a profound, rich, you know tucker loved doing things tucker loved people tucker loved being outside like tucker was a fully formed life form who just

had his own rights and his own will and it suddenly dawned on me oh if i love tucker the cat and his two eyes and his central nervous system and his rich emotional life i was like that means all creatures with two eyes and a central nervous system have rich emotional lives are deserving of having their own lives and are deserving of my love and care and protection and so basically at that moment that's that was my conversion it was really like one moment where the lights went on like that and that was it it was like going to the chiropractor and getting adjusted and like suddenly i was i felt aligned meaning up until that point i had been okay loving animals and eating animals and

at that moment i suddenly realized no imposing human will on an animal is wrong like it's just simply like as wrong as anything can be so when do you become this activist when do you start getting vocal about these ideas well there was a health food store near where i was living in connecticut and i would go in there and ask them essentially how to be a vegan you know this is 87 88 and I would buy my organic carrots and my organic I was also as I said making four thousand dollars a year so I had to be a very frugal vegan and so I would make brown rice and I started sprouting my own beans i started making my own bread because it was just like i was living on ten dollars a week in terms of food which you can quite easily like carrots onions brown rice black beans lentils real easy to be like a super broke vegan as i was and one day

i was in this health food store and um a woman behind the counter told me about a diet for a new america by john robbins and so I bought it and I took it home and I pretty much read it in one sitting and I when I finished I was like that's it I'm an activist like I'm done this is my life you know it just clicked in like this was the this was the thing that you could connect with that and then reading like pita magazines and every time you'd go to the health food store there'd be like a different flyer about something and so i basically got indoctrinated via john robbins and a health food store interesting a lot of people are asked me you know how do you how do you make the switch?

And, you know, how do you kind of weather the cravings and all of that kind of thing? Because I made that switch later. But I find that like the principles of recovery are highly applicable because it's sort of like it removes the decision fatigue in the sense that

like you're either drinking or you're not, right? You're either sober or you're not sober. Like there's no gray area there. so in a dietary sense to say you're either eating animal products or you're not like it's kind of pretty basic and simple you know it's like just that's the one rule that you don't break and also i mean this is i'm really going to sound like an old person now but like i want to say like kids these days the you know, being a vegan in 1987, your options almost didn't exist. Your options were carrots. Soy milk did exist.

Tofu and tempeh existed. But nothing else. There was no vegan ice cream. There were no vegan donuts. Are you kidding? nothing else there was no vegan ice cream there was there were no vegan donuts there's like kidding yeah the three vegan restaurants natural food market was like just a weird warehouse with some bins in it yeah you know that and it looked frightening and the people in there did not look healthy that was prana on first avenue i used to go to all the time and i was like are these people look unhealthy because they're eating this food or are they in here because

they need this food to get healthy yeah it was never clear and now i mean the fact that like you can go online and you have countless vegan resources and there's so many great vegan organizations and there's countless vegan restaurants and i know that i'm stating the obvious but it's just it's it's so mind-boggling that like we are subsidizing animal agriculture and in the process destroying our climate destroying the rainforests and destroying us you know not to mention the fact that we're killing trillions of animals if animals weren't used for agriculture famine would disappear rainforest deforestation decreases by 90 ocean acidification decreases by 25 water use decreases by 40 percent

cancer heart disease diabetes now we have andrew morgan at andrew underscore morgan on twitter andrew is the filmmaker behind a really phenomenal documentary called the True Cost, which is all about the environmental, the economic, and the very real human cost of something called fast fashion, which is the increasingly rapid pace at which these global fashion houses are pushing new trends at deflated prices. And I think this movie and this conversation is going to forever change how you think about the consumer choices that we make, the clothes we wear, where these clothes come from, how they're made, and the impact of this cycle of lunacy on the planet that we share. Here's Andrew.

So 80 billion items of new clothes are produced a year. That's a 400% increase from like 20 years ago, right? That's right. And a lot of these clothes are actually manufactured so that they don't last like purposefully, right? Is that correct? Yeah, it is. I mean, the fast fashion business model is basically, you know, trying to get something that you had and held onto for a long time to transition in one, really one lifetime or one generation into a commodity that we view as a disposable good. And that's a phenomenal thing. So yes, number one, you're going to make it so cheap that it doesn't hit a certain thoughtfulness threshold when I'm purchasing it. And then also it doesn't

last. And I began to look at my own wardrobe and ask these questions. And sure enough, I realized I was, I was buying into that. Like I was, I was purchasing a lot of cheap things that felt great at the checkout that really were falling apart at the end of the season, the end of the year. It was, it was almost like clockwork. They just a few washes in fundamentally begin to deteriorate. Right. and there's a couple sort of ramifications of that the first of which is i think you say that each every person on average produces 82 pounds of textile waste per year 82 pounds for every person and that amounts to 11 million tons of textile waste from the u.sS. alone. That's the U.S. alone.

Yeah, and what's amazing about that is when you think about that waste, that waste is oftentimes toxic waste. And that's a whole other health side of the consideration. But actually, when the trimmings are cut off of the finished pieces that are going to you in the factory, I would watch them be put in hazardous waste. So there's chemicals in the product, you know, by nature.

It's also, we're making a lot of synthetic clothing. So that's plastics, that's, you know, petroleum-based. And so a lot of that stuff does not break down. Like that, this is not a case of, you know, throw it in a landfill and in a couple of decades, this stuff will just biodegrade. It's quite the opposite to that. And those dyes, that material is just having a profound impact. And the really dark irony to that is a lot of this waste

comes from the production side, so it's in these developing countries. So I spent time walking through landfills in countries all over the world where clothing waste stretches out as far as the eye can see. Some consumer, mostly production, like the excess cutaways. And that just has a profound, uncounted cost. Yeah, you have these scenes in the movie where there are literally just mountains of textile waste. They're like giant hills of just black, like wasting away toxic materials. But it's very clear that this movie is not about making you feel bad. It's inciting. It's

hopefully inciting you to think more deeply and to perhaps make more conscious choices, but not to guilt you into making you feel like you're a bad human being. So, what was the process of coming up with walking that tightrope and crafting that balance? Well, I think for me, it's been a process of trying to understand where we are at this moment in history. And I think where I believe a lot of people are is more aware of some of the profound issues facing humanity than at most other points in our history, actually. I think a lot of people are is more aware of some of the profound issues facing humanity than at most other points in our history. Actually, I think a lot of people are beginning to be very aware of some huge challenges and unfinished work and systemic injustices that still are rooted in our world.

So I don't think you have to hit people over the head with something's wrong. I think what people are looking for is an invitation to be a part of a more meaningful life in a more beautiful, just world. And I think I, from the beginning, this issue of transitioning out of just being a bystander to being a participant to with, you know, in my relationship with my wife, my children, like beginning to think about the things that were coming into our home in a more thoughtful way, it was enriching my life. It was connecting these things that I care about on a big picture level over here

to some very immediate choices I was making. And that's what I wanted for other people. And I think that's the moment that we're in. It's not like we're at the end of awareness, because there's a lot more awareness needed, but I think we're at a moment where we have the tools and the ability to make some profound change to the world around us. And a lot of people just need an invitation.

So if someone watches the film and they walk away feeling excited, watches the film and they walk away feeling excited um maybe angry but but excited of just how much is at stake and how much their little life gets to be a part of this bigger thing that that's to me that's what i'm after i think we are at a cultural tipping point with that kind of awareness and consciousness and i think that's being driven by people of your generation. You're a card-carrying millennial, right? And I think that people of your age and a little bit younger even, you're 29, right? That's right. Yeah, so people in their 20s are, and I think this is being driven by the Internet age, are demanding transparency in their consumer goods and in the rest of their life.

It's just not acceptable. Because the internet fuels transparency, because everything has to be transparent that's online, the idea that a company would not be transparent in their chain of processes is becoming quickly and for the betterment of society like an intolerable idea. We want to know. And I've often said, you know, we have food label, we have labels on our food that tell us, you know, the nutrients, is it organic, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. I feel like every consumer goods product should have some kind of similar label

that tells you, you know, where it was produced, how it was produced, you know, the materials that were used in it, is it fair trade, you know, what are the toxins in it, and what is the carbon, you know, footprint materials that were used in it, is it fair trade, what are the toxins in it, and what is the carbon footprint of that product? I feel like that should be something that every product should have, right? Certainly our clothes. Absolutely. And I think that's the sort of common sense nature that a lot of people are waking up

to. And I think more broadly, the idea of the true cost is really that we're continuing to externalize all the true impacts and costs of making the goods and services that we enjoy every day. So, that's sort of on a one-way collision course. That's just inevitably problematic, you know, that a company could be producing something and using 10 times the water. They could be polluting 10 times more than another. And the only thing we're counting in this system right now is profit. So as long as there's continued quarter-on-quarter growth, all of those other things, impacts to human rights, labor,

and all of the scores of systems that our planet has carried out at great resilience up until this point that are being threatened aren't factored into that equation. They're not in the boardroom. They're not at the table. They're not getting counted. And I think there's just a lot of people who maybe, you know, building on the shoulders of the previous generation and work that has come before us are just standing up to say,

I think it's time that we could invent a better system. And I think there's a growing feeling of anti-inevitability. Like, why is it that so much of the way we were taught was that we've come through all these ups and downs in human history and then we've arrived at this point where everyone, and you only have to turn on your TV or open a laptop or get a ticket and fly somewhere to realize that's not true, that the world's still fundamentally in need. All right, how are you guys doing?

Are you still with me? Come on, stay with me here. We're just getting revved up. It's just getting good. I don't want you to miss these next guests. They're so great. Next up, I've got Alexis Fox and Micah Risk, who are two badass, powerful female entrepreneurs who have devoted their lives to solving our health epidemic, what has been created as a result of our standard American diet, our standard American lifestyle. And they're doing it by way of this new powerful online platform that they created called Lighter. And Lighter aims to help the world eat better by

leveraging leading health and wellness experts and influencers to provide consumers with customized solutions like grocery lists, flexible weekly menus, and ultimately even grocery delivery. But beyond that, beyond LIDAR, this is just a really great talk about food policy and the importance of community building to catalyze positive change. I love these women, so please enjoy. Well, we've started to create this community that welcomes people in. We've been celebrating and trying to spread this celebratory message of what it means to or how it feels to live a cleaner life and eat better. We've built tools to help people make that transition a little bit easier. We have over, I think, 1,400 recipes, so in the thousands of recipes tailored to different kinds of preferences,

food allergies, cooking time, cooking skill, all of those different elements. And we try to match up these tools, this set of tools, to people who are struggling with this transition or at the beginning of this transition and are kind of overwhelmed by all of the options out there, trying to make that transition easier and in a way that is much, I don't know, much cleaner, more fluid. I think one thing that the paleo community has done really well is they've branded what they're doing and what their message is in a really clear way. And like you said, we're kind of fractured. The plant-based community is kind of fractured in how we're communicating, what we are, what we believe in, who we are, and the kind of effect we want to have on the world and our motivations for that and whatnot.

that and whatnot. So being the next step in that, creating a tool that fits really everyone, anyone and everyone, to make that transition a little bit easier, trying to address where those fractures are and give a complete toolbox or package for people is, I think, what we've really been focusing on building the last couple of years. Right. And one of the things that we talk about a lot at Lighter, one of our original website was Lighter Culture, and now it's just lighter.world. But one of the reasons we use the word culture is when you're asking people to reject standard American diet, you're essentially asking them to reject standard American culture. Asking them to reject standard American culture. And you can't ask people to reject our dominant culture and then be alone. Humans don't do that.

We're tribal creatures. That's such an important point. We want to be with people. And so we need to give them an alternative community to belong to. And I think that's what's so important about plant stock and other community events like this. We're not just giving a one way message. You should change your behavior and reject everything you've ever known and all the people you've ever known and all the traditions you've ever known and be alone. We're saying, if you want to save your life, you probably should not be eating that way. But guess what?

Now you get to join this incredible other culture, this joyful culture, this community of people that is healing themselves and is changing the world and it feels much more like you're a part of something bigger than yourself and I think people who get there, who get to connect with the successful stories, that get to connect with leaders in the movement, that get to meet other people who are on this journey, that's when you really can ensure that they will be able to make the change. But if you create the right atmosphere, you can enable people to really open up. And I think that are needed to change the world. So in medicine, it's, you know, looking at the science and being able to read the science, for instance, but we don't necessarily

look at the softer skills of what it really takes to change the world. And I do think that bonds between people, enabling people to be vulnerable and open with each other, just gets us so much further. And honestly, in business, you learn a lot of this. So when you, a lot of the leadership books that exist in the world are for business leaders. And one of the things that astounds me is, um, at a very, I had a brilliant person this weekend. I won't name names, but I mean, a brilliant doctor saying to me, oh, I couldn't do business. And I said to him, you, you, God, you went to medical school. That is very hard. I went to law school, which is like kind of hard going, no offense to the MBAs,

but learning business is intuitive because we interact with business all day. And most of it is about just dealing with people and enabling people to do their best work and creating situations where they can do great work. It's very, very human. And so in business, we talk a lot about how to facilitate communication. We talk a lot about how to get people to bond and create the right culture and the right work culture. We should be doing that collectively as a movement as well. And I do, I want to add that you don't have to be a CEO of a tech company to change the world. You can be an average person and have a huge impact on the world. You know, as a consumer,

we vote with our forks three times a day, essentially. Three times a day, we decide to participate in a system that is aligned with our values. We can choose to act on our empathic values and choices. And we have that opportunity as consumers and citizens to participate and support systems that are aligned with those or not. Next up, we've got Joshua Fields Milburn at JFM on Twitter. Joshua comprises one half of The Minimalists, which is a dynamic duo. It's Joshua and his compadre, Ryan Nicodemus. And together they write, they speak, they make films and generally espouse the virtues

of how we can better reframe, reshape our relationship to material things so that we can focus on life's most important things, which actually are not things at all. So this one is great. Be sure to check out their new documentary. It just became available on Netflix like a week ago, I think. It's called Minimalism, of course, and I really love that documentary. I really think you guys should check it out,

and please enjoy this little sliver of my talk with Joshua Fields Milburn. Yeah, I think most of us probably aren't candidates for the show Hoarders, right? I mean, that is an extreme mental illness and there are a lot of problems around that. But there is, as you said, this sort of dis-ease going on. The average American household has more than 300,000 items in it. It's a stat from the LA Times. That's not me going around counting people's stuff. Which is absolutely insane. That's the average. That is the average.

And most of us are average. We like to say that I'll be different. But really, if I follow the same recipe, I'm going to bake the same cake as you. And so I certainly had achieved a lot by my mid to late 20s. And it was after a very humble beginning. Ryan and I grew up really poor, food stamps, welfare, drug abuse, alcohol abuse in the households. And I thought for me, the reason we were so discontented growing up is, well, we didn't have a lot of money, right? And that was certainly an ingredient there that will lead to some discontent if you can't fulfill your basic needs and even these sort of basic comforts. And so by going the other direction, you know, when I turned 18, I skipped the college route, went and got a sales job and started climbing that corporate ladder.

And I realized you can make pretty good money if you work six or seven days a week, 70 or 80 hours a week. And by age 19, I was making $50,000 a year, which in Dayton, Ohio is unbelievable. It's more than my parents made. And of course, I was spending $65,000 a year though. And so I had my first encounter with debt. And then I said, well, maybe I just need to adjust for inflation. It's not $50,000 a year. That's going to make me happy. It's 75,000. And when you get there, of course, you're spending six figures. When you start making six figures, it's this cycle that is never ending.

I'm always spending toward the next promotion, buying the next thing that is supposed to make me happy in some non-existent hypothetical future. I think it's an old idea that is a response to a new problem. I mean, Thoreau's writing about this like crazy, right? Like he's trying to tell us back then. Yeah. And even, you know, 2000 years before that, you can go back to the Stoics or any sort of major world religion. There are certain aspects of simple living or intentionality or whatever you want to call it.

I think minimalism as a lifestyle is a reaction, though, to this post-industrial, post-marketing, post-TV age of overindulgent consumption. of overindulgent consumption. Never before in world history has the everyday consumer, using that word deliberately here, had the opportunity to be so overindulgent, and not even just the opportunity, but almost the expectation now.

The average American sees 5,000 advertisements a day day so it's over a million a year and when you're exposed to that repeatedly i mean none of us are immune to it even me the guy who is you know the minimalists i think we all get we we see this barrage of discrete bits of input and realizing that we have to find mechanisms to be able to deal with that. Otherwise, we're just constantly grasping. The material possessions were simply a physical manifestation of what was going on inside. This external clutter was just a representation of all this internal clutter, emotional clutter, spiritual clutter, mental clutter, just inside clutter, what's going on inside me. And so by dealing with the stuff that I had been so focused on, I was able to start looking inward and actually just being more aware of what was going on inside. And I mean,

that was a whole process, but yeah, it started with this stuff. But it's not like just renting a dumpster and throwing all your stuff in it is the answer here. You could do that and still be utterly miserable, go home to an empty house and sulk after removing a bunch of pacifiers. There's this beautiful idea in the movie that I think encapsulates everything

that you guys are and do. And it's a question. And the question is, what if everything you ever wanted isn't what you actually want? Right. And I think that in a nutshell kind of says most of what you guys do. Is there any additional thoughts that you have on that? Yeah, I think we strive for a thing that we don't we don't ask ourselves why we're doing what we do and i know i certainly didn't i was following a template because i believed that success was always right around the bin happiness achievement whatever you want to call it was always right around the bin but of course once i got there i was already moving toward the next achievement marker or whatever and by stepping back and asking

why why do i want this what's the purpose behind this that will help me in one of two ways it'll help me realize maybe i don't actually want the thing that I want, or if I do want it and I'm able to formulate a good why, well, that gives me much more leverage to continue to pursue the thing instead of just blindly going down the path toward, toward the thing. So asking myself why has helped me, has helped me figure out that, that I can, figure out that, that I can, it gives me the, the, the motivation or, or, or the inspiration that I need to, to continue to pursue the thing I want to pursue. That's beautiful, man. I think it's a great way to end it here. But I think the last thing I want to ask you before we completely wrap it up is, um, you

know, somebody is listening to this and they're digging where you're coming from and are interested in perhaps, you know, maybe doing their own packing party or at least entertaining the thought of getting more minimal. What is the, what are the suggestions that you make, you know, as initial first steps? Sure. Well, I think there are a bunch of things you can do. The packing party tends to be too extreme for most people. Although I can tell you, we've had dozens, if not hundreds of readers who have sent us pictures and they've done their own packing party. Also, a lot of people do like

a one room packing party. So you're like, I've got that third, that third bedroom, the guest bedroom that's become really a guest storage closet. You can start with that. The thing that I really recommend because it gives you the momentum you need is something called the 30-Day Minimalism Game. And you can find it at theminimalists.com slash game. But here's how it works real quick. Basically, you decide to let go of some stuff with a friend. So over the course of a month, you decide we're both going to let go together to inject some friendly competition into decluttering because I think decluttering is kind of inherently boring and so at the beginning of the month you each get rid of one item on day

one day two two items day three three items so it starts off really easy you get that momentum you need but by day 15 you're like oh 15 items today right day 16 16 items day 2020 items whoever goes the longest wins if you both make it to the end of the month, you both won because you've both gotten rid of about 500 items. And I think it's a really good start, but it's also a great way to help keep you accountable and make it a little bit more enjoyable. Right. Make it fun. And I like how it builds. It starts off easy and it quickly starts to get tough. Yeah, it definitely, it builds, but it also, it gives you, it definitely builds, but it also gives you the ability you need to start somewhere. Because most of us don't know where to start or how to start, or it's overwhelming.

300,000 items, what am I going to do? Okay, last up, but definitely not the least we've got steven and david flint these guys are identical twin brothers they go by the happy pair at the happy pair on twitter and instagram uh these two are at the very center of ireland's movement. They are successful, best-selling cookbook authors, as well as food entrepreneurs. There's so much I could say about these guys, but suffice it to say that they're just infectious. They're positively the most charismatic and enthusiastic advocates for healthy living I have ever met.

I feel blessed to have them in my life. I wish everybody could sort of be exposed to their energy on a daily basis uh if you want that in your life i would suggest following them on instagram and on snapchat where they just basically vlog their entire day and you can't help but feel better watching them they're just amazing so check them out and enjoy this little uh excerpt from my conversation with steven david she's gonna say that's right the first real podcast do we get to hear i do that little excerpt from my conversation with Stephen David. Rich is going to say his lines. That's right.

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. Do we get to hear it? I do that. No, I do the intro later. I'll say it for you, though. Just do it. Do it there. All right.

I'm going to get this. Come on, Rich. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. Oh! I love it. Boom! Totally honored to be here. Yeah, cool. So let's break it down the happy pair you guys

are huge in ireland and in the uk there's a lot of uh u.s listeners to this show though so they might not be as familiar with who you guys are i mean in the vegan movement everybody knows you guys but but tell us a little bit about what the happy pair is and you know your kind of mission statement and then we're going to backtrack from there beautiful um what the happy pair is and you know your kind of mission statement and then we're gonna backtrack from there beautiful and what the happy pair is I guess it's in essence is probably a movement you know it's trying to create a happier healthier world and build community that'll be it in a nutshell but to break it down to physical realities we started with a little vegetable shop 12 years ago and a dream of making a happier healthier world uh-huh I think you're succeeding

in that so for people that are listening that are inspired by your message or they're kind of tiptoeing around the outer edges of this whole plant-based idea or it's new to them or maybe they're scared or intimidated, like how do you you know, what is it that you say to people that are just trying to dip their

toe in and get started? I would think it's go one step at a time. Like it's really not an all or nothing type thing. It's not like you eat a piece of chicken and you're off the team it's like make simple little changes and it's not an it really isn't an all or nothing type i would say be kind to yourself be gentle have a laugh you know this is a long journey let's enjoy it and i got a good one on that one there's no destination in terms of health like because i think we really tried that we really pushed it out we went really raw food. It's got into class fasting cleansing It's like enemas colonic all this like really really went neurotic on it became like where it was like

We were trying to seek enlightenment true food Like it was really see how does this stuff you make you happier? But we found it just made you kind of more neurotic or whatever. So we found that there's no destination in terms of health It's like what works for you. Yeah, there's a point where you've kind of like you're but but i guess no one can argue with you know eat more veg yeah it's always been eat more veg always works eat more veg and by veg it's like fruit veg beans legumes and whole grains you can get obsessive though you see that with people when they get i mean they step into their lifestyle and and it works so well for them they become such an evangelist and they want to talk about it all the time,

but it can become almost like a mental health issue if people get too stuck on that and they're not living their life outside of that, right? You guys seem to do a really good job of being really balanced. Yeah, and I guess it comes from making mistakes. What's the biggest mistake? I've been living in a small town

and being a bit righteous and kind of realizing that people don't really like that. They're not going to allow it. People don't like small town and being a bit righteous and kind of you know realizing that people they're not gonna allow it yeah they're gonna people don't like it so you quickly adapt and you kind of go oh actually it feels a lot better when i just tell people you know you're a burger but try to eat more chips you know or try to eat more vegetables you know to be just a bit gentler and more supportive and encouraging and inclusive rather than that must be a vegetarian like me because i'm better than you right or you're gonna you're gonna suffer and and live this life of deprivation but it's gonna be worth it because you're gonna lose you know a little weight and i think that's one thing that i've recently realized or i've read stuff on where you know with the kind of religion kind of in one sense having less of a hold in

ireland anyway in catholic ireland that uh people are looking to other things like they're realizing that food they're getting obsessive with it and getting, I even saw a phrase where they were calling it orthorexia, you know, I was reading about that recently. And it's like, in our experience, we've realized that it's just part of the solution, like food is one part of it. And I guess there's a greater lifestyle in terms of community, exercise, and how kind you are to yourself. You know, that's, they're just as important as the food. So it's, it really is is a whole package and i guess that's why we don't focus exclusively on the food it's very much eat more veg and move you know yeah i mean one of the things that that that we were talking about the other night at the event that you hosted for us uh was the idea of health beyond the plate right

yeah so you could eat a raw vegan diet you can do everything perfectly but if you're you know if your relationships are all screwed up if you're impossible to be around if you know you're just you can't hold down a job or you hate your whatever all of that stuff is you know equally if not more important than the broccoli and the veg on your plate right and and when i when i said earlier you guys have set up your own little blue zone. Like, I mean that seriously. Like, you don't really drive a car. You walk down to the beach in the morning. You're doing yoga in the yard. You're saying hi to everybody. You know everybody in the town. You're eating at the Happy Pear. I mean, your whole, your world is very much about community. You're living it on a daily basis. And community is something that, it's a

term that we throw around a lot. We all know that we need it more. I mean, I live in Los Angeles. Everybody's in their car or at their job or at their house, and community's very difficult there. Everyone's very much spread out, and it's hard to connect. It's hard to connect. And it's only when, you know, we travel and we go to a small town like yours, and I'm like, oh yeah, it can be like this. You know, I think that's so important in terms of your overall lifestyle equation. So, you know, if somebody is living in New York City or Los Angeles, they don't live in Greystones, you know, they don't live,

how do you help foster and cultivate community? Say hello to the people. I think I was even saying that today. It can't be that simple. I was saying it to the camera this morning, vlogging, I was saying, one of the things I love most is walking down the street saying hi to people, even if I don't know them.

Oh, hello. Good morning. You know, hello. And even when we're in London on the tube, I always find it fun saying hello to people, striking up conversations. And it's like sometimes people blank you, but sometimes you have these really wonderful little conversations where people, you see them like their face lifts from a frown into, oh, there's a human in there. Oh, hello. How are you? You know, and I think that's.

I think it's simply just acknowledging other people, you know, and it can start with even just saying hello to one person a day, you know, maybe. And I think, I think mom always drilled it into us. Give a smile, get a smile. And it's like, you know, you got to give to get like, so it's like, go say hi to people. I don't know. I think it's bed and test from young ages. Share the love, dudes.

So how can somebody who's listening to this contribute to the movement? Start eating vegetables. Do it with your love. That would be my thing. Do it with your love. Try one thing. Try and do something that makes you a little bit happier.

I would think that's it. Be nice to yourself. Say hi to someone. There's so many different things. Maybe it's jump in the sea. Maybe it's go to the gym. I don't know. Everyone has their own difference.

Maybe it's go have a pint. It doesn't necessarily have to be all this kind of clean living simple little things and just do you're probably going to feel better from it and i think it's almost like a self-fulfilling cycle that tends to compound and like a snowball just get the snowball started and before you know it you can end up somewhere you never thought you'd ever be a 23 year old long-haired hippie starting up a vegetable shop yeah exactly yeah yeah from a meathead jock caveman 19 year olds you know what is the biggest uh misunderstanding about you guys like for people that watch you on youtube but don't really know you i mean you're pretty transparent i mean you guys are in real life are pretty much how you appear at least in my opinion

you know online uh but is there is there something that that people are not getting or some record you'd like to correct no i think at this stage i'm very comfortable people not liking you either it's like you know do you get a lot of hate do you get some haters no no but there's bound to be plenty out there you know they just maybe don't voice themselves as much so i think we've become very comfortable with just being ourselves and it's like i'm really comfortable with who i am and i really don't mind if you don't like me you know I'm sure I'm sure we can relate to another somewhere but how do you think you've got to that place of being so comfortable with who you are um I think putting yourself out there enough I think really exploring who you are and what

you're interested in getting bruised All right, we did it. I hope you guys enjoyed that. This concludes part two of the 2016 Best of the RRP Anthology Edition. Thanks so much for tuning in. I appreciate it. And I hope you guys enjoyed it. Before I go any further, I just want to acknowledge two guys, Jason Camiolo and Chris Swan. Both of these guys, I work with them.

They put in a massive amount of time and effort to help produce this show. It took just a tremendous amount of energy and insight and focus to comb through a full year of podcast episodes, to excerpt out the nuggets and to find a way to curate all of these conversations in a way that would be most beneficial and entertaining for you guys. They did a great job. So thanks so much, guys. As always, please make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. I've got hyperlinks to the full episodes of everybody featured in this edition of the show. So that's worth perusing. Thank you so much for sharing the show with your friends and on social media with your family members over this

holiday season. If you haven't done so already, please leave a review on iTunes. Helps us out a lot. Subscribe to the show on iTunes. Subscribe to my newsletter at richroll.com. And thank you so much for using the Amazon banner ad or just by typing in richroll.com forward slash Amazon before going to Amazon. That helps us out a lot. And mad love to everybody who is supporting us on Patreon. I love you guys. We still have spots available for Plant Power Australia, February 20th through 27th. It's going to be amazing on the West Coast, Smith's beach resort. Uh, if you want to learn more about that event, seven days of transformation, go to plantpowerworld.com. Also, if you go to richroll.com, I got signed copies of finding ultra of the plant power way.

We've got t-shirts, we've got tech teas, we've got all kinds of cool sweet merch and swag. Again, thank you to Jason Camiello and Chris Swan for their help on this episode. Also, mad love to Sean Patterson for his help on graphics and theme music by Annalima. Thanks for the love, you guys. I will see you in 2017. I've got an amazing episode with David Goggins that's going to kick off the new year and it's going to blow your hair back. So I can't wait to share that with you guys. Until then, be well and enjoy the new year. Peace. Plants. Thank you.