The Rich Roll Podcast - Best Of 2020: Part One: The Rich Roll Podcast

Episode Date: December 24, 2020

It’s time to pause. Reflect on the past twelve months. Set new aspirations. And visualize the year to come. I think we can all agree it’s been a challenging year. All the more reason to optimize body, mind and soul to tackle 2021 correctly. In furtherance of that end, allow me to introduce what has become a tradition on the RRP—our annual ‘Best Of’ series wherein we reflect upon the previous 12 months with a 3-part compilation of clips excerpted from a handful of the year’s most compelling guests. Think of it as a refresher course for the avid fans. An anthology or digest for those newer to the podcast. A love letter to my guests. And most importantly, a way of thanking you, the audience, for taking this journey of growth alongside me. Guests featured in this first of three total anthology episodes (all hyperlinked to their respective episodes) are as follows: Chadd Wright Kelly McGonigal, PhD David Sinclair, PhD Rickey Gates Gregg Renfrew Zach Bush, MD Dan Buettner Byron Davis & Phil Allen, Jr. Charles Eisenstein Knox Robinson Compiling this auditory yearbook is both a joy and a challenge. I have great fondness for all my guests. I take no comfort in leaving anyone out. Should you find one of your personal favorites missing, I get it—please don’t @ me! The visually inclined can watch it unfold on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Here’s to an extraordinary 2021. Join me, and let’s make it the best year ever—together. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The reality is we are just the tip of biology on the earth. The microbiome is always for life. It's never against life. If it appears that the microbiome is threatening us or killing us, it's because we have misaligned ourselves with nature at a large level. And we need to realign ourselves with that, with a respect for human life, with a respect for animal life that's

not happening on the planet. People are right now saying, again, oh, China makes this happen every year because they have all these animal markets and food markets and everything else. And the reality is, yes, that actually is a problem. When we're killing 60 billion animals a year for human consumption, that's not a Chinese problem. That is a global problem that we're killing 60 billion animals. But a bigger problem that those 60 billion animals are largely being held in captivity in these extreme, toxic, inhumane levels of management. And so if we see viruses coming out of that, well, that's the microbiome's check on the reality that we live in. There are checks and balances in biology. And life is going to have to be redirected if we oppose health and ecology on that level.

That's Dr. Zach Bush, just one of the many amazing guest clips to come in part one of our annual Best of 2020 edition of the Rit Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings from the pod, everybody. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate that.

Welcome for those new to the show. This is the podcast where I endeavor to have deep, meaningful, long form conversations about things that matter with a wide variety of the world's best and brightest across many categories, wellbeing, education, science, nutrition, environmentalism, art, spirituality, what else? Literature, entrepreneurship, environmentalism, art, spirituality, what else? Literature, entrepreneurship, athleticism, creativity,

and positive culture change. I think we can all agree it has been quite a challenging year. It certainly taught me a lot. And during this period of time, I have to say I'm very grateful to have produced a catalog of evergreen content that I'm quite proud of. And I think an important part of preparing for the new year to come and getting your head and your heart mindfully aligned to tackle 2021 is taking the time to pause, to reflect, to celebrate the victories,

to deconstruct the setbacks, take inventory of where you were last December so you can better visualize, prepare, and set goals for where and who you would like to be 12 months from now. And I believe in this process. In my experience, we are all more capable than we tend to believe. And the blank slate that is 2021 And I believe in this process. In my experience, we are all more capable than we tend to believe.

And the blank slate that is 2021 holds the requisite potential energy to actualize those aspirations. And it is in this spirit that we indulge what has become an annual tradition here on the podcast to end each year with a look back at the previous 12 months of the show. Usually it's a two-parter.

This year, because there was just so much goodness, it's gonna be published as three separate episodes over the course of the week leading up to New Year's Day, which all entail a compilation of clips excerpted from many of the year's best guests. A sort of refresher course for the avid fans and an anthology or digest for those newer or perhaps even brand new to the podcast. And it's all coming up quick, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people

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go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, let's kick things off with a man who overcame unbelievable obstacles to become a Navy SEAL, and later an elite ultra marathoner. His name is Chad Bright, and he is a man of particular wisdom. Also world-class facial hair, and just one of the grittiest and most determined humans I've ever met.

So this is me and Chad from episode 490, my first podcast of 2020. from episode 490, my first podcast of 2020. So this is kind of part of your core philosophy, right? Like breaking things down into their sort of smallest components so that you can digest them one by one. I think it's essential, Rich. For me in my life, it's, yeah, it's breaking, not only breaking, say, a race,

breaking it down from, you know, a tree to tree or rock to rock perspective, but even breaking down the outcomes. You know, when I go in race, I never feel any pressure and I never really get nervous, I never feel any pressure, and I never really get nervous, man, because in my mind, I've broken that race down into two outcomes. I'm either going to break my body or I'm going to achieve victory or cross the finish line. That simplifies it so much for me. And is that philosophy advisable? Well, I don't know. I think that's a choice for every individual to make. But for me, I look at these races as missions, almost like missions in my life, and I'm willing to accept the fact that I could potentially break myself to accomplish this mission.

Right. Well, the other option is to quit. The other option is to quit. Yeah. But you just don't put that on the table. I don't put it on the table, man. And I'm not, by no means am I trying to sound super tough. I subscribe to this saying, it's be hard when it gets hard.

And in an ultra, it gets hard. So that's when I like to hunker down. Yeah, there's this ethos out there. I saw you kind of speaking about this on Instagram. Out there, like, stay hard, you gotta be hard 24 seven. And I think people in general need a kick in the pants. And that's a worthy message that I think is helpful to a lot

of people who have gotten a little too cushy or comfortable in their lives. But staying hard all the time is not a sustainable lifestyle philosophy, is it? It's not sustainable, Rich. And I really feel like, for me personally, it's a dangerous philosophy because if you think as a man or a woman that you have to be hard all the time, we said it's not sustainable. So you're going to fall short of that mark. And when you fall short of that mark, you're going to beat yourself up about it. And it just causes problems, I feel like, for me personally. And it causes problems in relationships, man. When I was active duty, I could be out on the road or be on deployment. Well, when you come back, you got to be able to love your family and love the other people around you and show compassion and emotion.

And those aren't components of being hard all the time, but they're components that are necessary to living a healthy lifestyle. What's the point otherwise, right? But they're not teaching that to you in buds. No, that's something that I had to learn. Yeah, I mean, they turn you into this, I don't want to say monster, but they turn you into this, I don't wanna say monster, but they turn you into what I guess society would call an alpha male in buds. Right, right. So stay hard when it's appropriate to be hard

or when you need to be hard. Have a place inside of you that you can go to when it gets hard and you can get the job done. All right, so you're in BUDS. Is it what you thought it would be, expected it to be? Yeah. Harder, easier?

I would say SEAL training is probably like the one thing in life that surpassed its reputation. In terms of difficulty. In terms of difficulty. Intensity, yeah. For sure. And there again, I'm talking about the whole picture right now. What is the main thing that you take away from that experience?

You know, there's so many things that we could talk about that were born in that experience. I'd say the one thing that I utilize the most right now is the lessons that we learned that revolve around, I call it the power of the spoken word, the things that we say, how the things that we say impact our direction in life and the outcome of our situations. And one of the earliest times I remember seeing this work was in first phase, my best friend came to me one day and he said, Chad, I don't think I'm good enough to make it through this training anymore. said, Chad, I don't think I'm good enough to make it through this training anymore. And I had known prior to that statement that he had been having some thoughts of doubt.

But when he kept those thoughts within his own head, he was able to continue from day to day. But as soon as he came to me that morning and spoke it out loud, that statement, he created that reality. It became real. It crushed him, man. He was crushed by that single statement, I don't think I'm good enough. And shortly after he made that statement, he went and quit. And I thought, this guy, my buddy, he was completely physically capable of doing everything that we had to do that day and every single day until graduation. But those words crushed him, man. It was like the Rubicon. Once he crossed that, there's no return. Once you give voice to whatever it is,

whatever demon is swimming around in your head, it gives it a power that you can't take back. There's something about when, it's something about the spoken word, man. And I think the written word has similar and equal power, but a lot of my stuff, lessons revolve around that spoken word. And now that's transferred, that lesson has transferred into ultra running.

And I've seen that power of the spoken word push people beyond their conceived limits. For me, something in your thought that's in your head, it's just a thought. It's not tangible to anyone else except for you. But when you speak something out loud, it actually becomes something real, something that can be measured. So it becomes something that's part of this reality that we live in. And I feel like that's what gives it the power of the spoken word. I feel like that's why it's so powerful, because as a thought, it's essentially, it's not part of this reality that we're living in, but as soon as you speak it, it becomes real. Right.

That's where I find the power at, man. Cool. All right. Well, let's end this with a final thought for the person who's out there, who feels stuck, they're in a rut. Maybe they're not happy with their job or they're trying to get off the couch and move their body for the first time in a long time. How do we cattle prod that dude or that young lady to get after it a little bit more? Like I say, I'm so hesitant to give advice or to try to tell someone what to do. I mean, I guess I could just keep it super simple and go over the things we talked about. Simplify things. Don't be afraid to put yourself in adverse situations because that's where you're going to grow as a human being. The decisions you make in times of adversity, self-inflicted or totally out of your control,

are the things that those decisions define who you are as a human. But don't fear inflicting that adversity on yourself because it's going to help you grow as a human being. So I would say, go put yourself through a little adversity. It may be only running for five minutes to start with. It may not be running. It may be something completely different than that. But don't fear it because I feel like it's essential for us as humans to experience that in life. And the last thing that I would say is if you're struggling emotionally from that kind of aspect is take a look at your body, soul, and spirit. Look at those three aspects of your humanity, each as a single lane. And think about what are you doing on a day-to-day basis to master, nourish, and maintain your body, your soul, and spirit.

And usually that can be used as a diagnostic to see, okay, I am lacking here. I'm lacking and I need to get some help with my emotional side, my will, what I want and don't want to do. Do I want to get out of bed in the morning? Do I not want to get out of it? That type of stuff. And then the spiritual side, that can be, it doesn't matter what it is. It could be spending time in nature. For me, it's spending time in God's Word. It could be anything, you know? Right. Next up is Stanford health psychologist, Dr. Kelly McGonigal, in an excerpt from episode 491 with an evidence-based neuroscience-backed primer on how movement can serve as an antidote to depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

Have a listen. Well, a lot of people's New Year's resolutions pivot around movement, right? And that's what you're writing about in this new book. So let's talk about movement. I'm super interested in hearing your thoughts that you explore in this new book. So let's talk about movement. I'm super interested in hearing your thoughts that you explore in this book about what's happening

with us psychologically and biochemically when we move our bodies. Let's start with the biochemical because some of this is so fascinating. Can I explain the hope molecule thing? Trust me, I wrote that down. Like these hormones, a recent, the myokines. Isn't it amazing?

This is super interesting. I know, when I found, so I came across this paper, I think it was maybe a 2016 paper where the scientists talk about this research and they just sort of throw out the term hope molecules. And I remember circling it. I think I like said to my husband, oh my gosh, you're not going to believe this term. It encapsulates so much about why movement

is amazing. And I feel like nobody else is using this term. It was just in this one paper. I'm not even sure the scientists have used it again, but let me explain what it is. So this is the idea that our muscles are like an endocrine organ and that when you contract your muscles in any type of movement, they are secreting chemicals into your bloodstream that are really good for every system of your body. I mean, they're great for your heart health and your immune function, and some of them can kill cancer cells, all the stuff we know exercise is good for. But that a big part of these proteins and chemicals that are being released by your muscles, which are called myokines, they have profound effects on the brain. So you go for a walk or a

run or you lift weights and your muscles contract and they secrete these proteins into your blood stream. They travel to your brain. They cross the blood-brain barrier. And in your brain, they can act as an antidepressant like irisin can. They can make your brain more resilient to stress. They increase motivation. They help you learn from experience. And the only way you get these chemicals is by using your muscles. It's like, this is part of how we become our best selves is we have to use our muscles. And then the scientists called them hope molecules because in this one study, they found that exercise could protect rodents from experiencing depression and post traumatic stress disorder if you severely traumatize them. So this idea that these molecules are giving you hope even in very difficult times.

So it's not innately human. That's right. It's not innately human. It is in other mammals. It's in, well, so I don't know how many species this has been studied in. It's like in this field, you tend to go from mice and rats to humans. There's like not a lot in the middle, but it should be pointed out that rodents are very social species. And that's one of the reasons why they can be really great models for human behavior because they look a lot like us in some of the very basic social and psychological ways.

So extrapolating on that idea, like what do you make of that? Like, what does that mean? Well, first of all, at a very practical level, it means when I go for a walk or I exercise, I will literally say to myself, you are giving yourself an intravenous dose of hope. Like, I think this is how we should frame movement,

that it's something you can choose to do to really powerfully influence your mental health and your resilience. And every time you move, you're doing that. I think to know that, to like look at your own muscles and be able to say, thank you, legs, you're tired now. That was hard work. But like legs, you are a pharmacy

of antidepressants and resilience and hope. Then sort of thinking like in a more philosophical way, again, one of the things that I feel like the anthropology and the science is pointing to is that movement is how your brain knows you are alive and engaged in life. And when you move on a regular basis, your brain basically says, I guess we have to be the best version of ourselves because we're in this thing called life. And so, you mentioned some other things too, like when you exercise,

you see increased levels of neurotransmitters that tend to increase our willingness to cooperate and the pleasure we get from connecting with others that give us hope and courage. I mean, even that lactic acid, that metabolic by-product of exercise, that lactic acid seems to have an anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effect. This is like crazy stuff. It's not just an endorphin rush. It's like at every level of our biology, when we move, our brain is like, I guess we have to do this thing called life. And so, you know, for people like me who've struggled with anxiety or depression, this idea that you can convince your brain to want to fully engage with life in a brave way or in a hopeful

way through movement is so phenomenal. How does competition play into this? Because if we talk about movement, a subset of movement is sports, sports being inherently competitive. There has to be healthy aspects to this, but also unhealthy aspects to this. I mean, I think so competition is a major human drive and there's a lot of psychological benefits to it.

So when people tell me that they love competition, like my sister is more like this than me. It's like one of our fundamental differences. She loves to compete. She loves to improve. She loves mastery. And I just sort of, I don't know, that doesn't motivate me like at all. So I think the really healthy, positive sides of competition, one is if you're competing as a team or with a group and the tremendous bonds and what you learn from cooperating in order to compete, that that seems like it has tremendous benefits. or teenagers who are engaged in different types of sports, it looks like there are more psychological benefits

to being involved in team sports than individual competitive sports, because there can often be so much pressure on the individual to be the best without some of those other social forces that come into play when you're working with others. And I think the other thing that's so helpful and healthy about competition

is when it's really more about mastery, that you have a sense of setting goals and moving toward them and that they're personally meaningful. And you sense yourself as somebody who can set goals that are difficult and work toward them and meet them. And I thought a whole chapter about overcoming obstacles. And the very definition of hope is to have a goal

that's meaningful, to believe you have the resources to meet it and there are steps you can take. And I think there are forms of competitive movement that will really allow you to access that whole experience of hope. Right. I wanna bring the focus back on to New Year's resolutions. And I think one thing that happens with a lot of people

is they're faced with this decision of like, oh, I have this goal. I want to do this thing. Do I just go whole hog all in overnight? Or do I take little bites out of this and do it slowly in a way that doesn't completely, you know, upend my entire lifestyle? I'm mystified by people who believe there's an answer to that question. Of course, it depends. You must get that question every day. And the thing is, is you start where you are and you do what you can do and you do it in the way that feels like the right way to do it for you. And whichever path you choose, you don't tell yourself that's it or I failed. Like, you know, there's some people who will take the baby steps. They get that goal down to the tiny thing they can do tomorrow and feel successful.

And then they find that they don't actually feel successful because they don't see the benefit of it, or it doesn't have a deep meaning to them. So you should give yourself permission. Okay, you need to go harder on this. What's the version of this that when you finally get to do it, you're going to feel like that's a triumph. And then you give yourself as much time as you need to, to get to that point. If you feel like you want to go all in, and then you find out a month later, this is not working the way you had intended, that it was a learning experience. I think people shouldn't believe that there are these tricks to behavior change that are beyond what your intuition can lead you to if you are clear about what you care about and you're willing to experiment and not give up the first time, it doesn't go as planned. Right, I think that's super wise. I think that these things are all about getting caught up

in some kind of future tripping or tripping over stories that we tell ourselves about the past, right? And the truth is all we have is what we're doing right now. And I kind of love the way 12 step does it. It's just like, you don't have to worry about whether you're gonna stay sober for 10 years. Like, what are you doing right now?

Are you gonna drink? Is your head gonna hit the pillow tonight? Are you gonna drink before you go to sleep tonight? Like that's all you gotta worry about, right? Like those tiny imperceptible things that in the grand scheme of things seem small, but actually are the levers that move everything. Yeah.

And I think, you know, one example I often think about, so one of the most difficult things to do is to quit smoking. There are some people who can do it cold turkey. And I've talked to people who they made that decision and they just did it. And for whatever reason, it worked for them. It was an aha moment. But there's research showing that if you can delay the first cigarette of the day

by five or 10 minutes, that that increases your chance of quitting. So like that seems totally possible. Delay the first cigarette by five minutes. And that's something you could choose to do tomorrow. And to know that both of those are pathways to the same place. And you don't always know at first which one's going to work for you,

but that, and there's a million paths in the middle that look like something else. At the bleeding edge of evidence-based longevity research, you'll find Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, PhD, one of the world's leading scientific authorities on aging and how to slow its effects. Here's a peek into our conversation from episode 498, his second appearance on the podcast. Well, let's talk about what it is that you do. In your estimation, what are the most important things that, and again, you can preface this with whatever caveats you want, but what do you think are the most important things that, and again, you can preface this with whatever caveats you want, but like, what do you think are the most important things

that people should be doing or looking after on a daily basis to kind of, you know, take out an insurance policy against aging, given the current state of knowledge and understanding? That's well put. Okay, now I feel free to speak because I don't endorse and I don't recommend. I think the most important thing for anybody

to live healthier for longer, if there was just one thing I could say, it would be eat less often. Don't eat three meals a day. I literally think that people who recommend three meals plus snacks, trying to keep your glucose levels always at a pretty high level,

are doing the world a disservice. And I'm going to go out on a limb to say that a lot of nutritionists would disagree with me, but I've been doing this for 30 years. I've seen what happens to people and animals when you restrict their food and it's all good. I mean, you don't want malnutrition or starvation, of course, but putting the body in a state of want every day for as long as you can do it. I do it, like I said, hopefully till late afternoon dinner. That's the easiest and best thing you can do. Other things are the high intensity interval training or jumping up and down with weights in a swimming pool,

almost drowning, that's pretty good. Right, you're going back tomorrow, right? Yeah, well, I will do it again, actually. Now I actually think I know not to go too far into the deep end. But honestly, we now know, we all have the power with the scientific basis to actually live at least 15 years longer. Okay. So there are actually, and I talked about this, I think, on Twitter recently, that there are five things that are pretty obvious and easy to do that'll give you 15 years. And that's just off the top of my head.

Things like exercise, the fasting, don't eat too much, eat the right foods, try to be plant-based, get sleep, have social network. That gives you 15 years. That's amazing. That's not even going, delving deep into my book, which takes it to another level of what the best exercise and supplements probably are. So that's the good news. I do list a lot of things. We could talk for hours about what I do. Page 304, you'll see more.

I'm conscious that we have a microbiome that needs to be healthy. So I make my own special yogurt, which I mix my resveratrol in. I think I'll release the recipe of that pretty soon in the newsletter, if anyone would like to make it. So these are the things. Sorry to interject, but on the,

you sort of said, you know, eating plant-based, predominantly plant-based. I mean, a lot of that is informed by the relationship between excessive protein intake and that impact on aging, correct? Well, it's both. From your perspective in the work that you're doing. Right, right, fair enough. So there are at least a couple of things to talk about.

One is, so Dan Butin is right. And I've a lot of good friends that study populations that live a long time. I think that's a very good guide as to what we should do. It's eat plants that are full of polyphenols that are stressed out. And this is what the Okinawans and the Sardinians do. It makes a lot of sense.

They're activating longevity genes. So the plant-based food, I think a little bit of meat is fine, especially if you work out and you're trying to bulk up some muscle. But I think that what we've learned is by studying the Sardinians and Okinawans, is that those diets are the best for humans. And they are mostly plant-based with a little bit of meat like fish. So why does that work? Okay, why do we think that works? Two reasons.

One is that you don't wanna overload on certain types of amino acids, which you'll find in meat, leucine, isoleucine, valine. These turn off our body's defenses through a pathway called mTOR. There'll probably be a Nobel Prize awarded for that stuff, by the way.

It's big deal, mTOR. But if you're always eating a lot of protein in terms of meat, then you'll never really optimize your body's defenses. So I try to eat plant-based foods. But there's another thing that most people miss, which is the xenohormetic molecules from plants. You get those.

You don't get those from meat as much. So what do you make of the carnivore diet? Yeah, I'm on the other side. It is an interesting phenomenon. It's good long-term. Just like sort of culturally to go, how did this suddenly happen? And there's a cohort of people who are all about just,

that's all they eat, right? This hasn't been going on for very long. This story very much has yet to be fully told. But, you know, if somebody's listening to this and perhaps was flirting with the idea of that, I mean, you know, what would be your response to that person? All right, well, so I'm a scientist, so let's talk some science briefly. What you do when you activate this mTOR pathway

is you're telling your cells in your body that times are good. You've just caught a mammoth, okay, basically. And now's the time to build your body and actually fix things, heal things and grow. And it turns out that there are two things your body can do. There's grow. And then there's, on the other hand, the other side of the balance is to protect. Growth, protect, growth, protect. And if you're always in this growth mode by telling your body, now's the time you got your amino acids grow. That's great when you're young and middle-aged, you'll bulk up, right? You'll feel good. You'll actually burn energy more. You'll lose a bit of fat. But long-term, you're going to sacrifice your longevity in my view, because you're not turning on your body's defenses, which typically are turned on when your body senses that there's adversity.

There's a need. Yeah. So being hungry and eating plants are gonna be telling your body times are not as good. We've run out of mammoth meat. Let's hunker down. But you could- We're on our own.

So we're gonna have to do the heavy lifting here. It's basically catalyzing these systems, these biological systems to protect the body, right? Yeah. And in turn promote longevity versus, oh, we got an endless supply of food coming in here. We can just shut everything down because we don't have to worry about it.

Right, think of it this way. When we're young, our defenses are on hyper alert. Our bodies don't get diseases. You don't find babies with Alzheimer's disease. Their cells know how to repair and defend against issues. By eating a lot of meat, I think what you're likely to be doing is accelerating that process towards older age. So because your body will, yeah, be in a growth state, but you won't be

turning on your body's defenses. And actually, as you get older, your defenses go down and down and down. And that's one of the main reasons that we end up getting old. Okay, so you've got to get your defenses up like you're a baby. Speaking of which, I've been on a much healthier diet the last few years, including intermittent fasting, including the supplements that I've been on a much healthier diet the last few years, including intermittent fasting, including the supplements that I've got written on page 304. One of the people say, oh, I'm not noticing anything after maybe two weeks on supplement.

Of course, you're not gonna see that. I've been doing it for some of them for 10 years, but what I've noticed most recently with my current lifestyle, all of these things combined, the biggest things that has changed for me is that I don't get sick anymore. That's amazing.

I used to be the kind of guy that would go from one cold to another. I haven't had a sniffle in years. I can't remember the last time I had a cold. And I'm on planes, people are sneezing on me. I'm shaking hands with people pretty much all the time. So my immune system must be on hyper alert. And why is that good?

If you ask a centenarian, what about your younger years in your 50s, 60s, they'll say, I never got sick, never got a cold. My father's like that, he doesn't get colds even. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the kind of underlying theme in the book and in your work is this idea that there is no biological law that we need to

age. Like we just sort of accept that as a truism, but in fact, you know, that doesn't necessarily hold water. No, no, nobody has any reason to say that we have this clock that cannot be changed. In fact, what we've learned going back to the Horvath clock, is that about 80% of our lifestyle, 80% of our health in old age is due to our lifestyle and how we live. And only 20% is genetic. And actually that's done by studying twins who some smoke, some don't,

some do all this stuff. Your genes are not your destiny. That's the good news. So what that means is it's up to you. And if you want to be frail or to be honest, dead at 80, go for it. We know how to do that. Do everything that the marketing people want you to do. Eat the cake, sit on your fat ass and watch movies.

That'll get you there pretty quickly. Yeah. on your fat ass and watch movies. That'll get you there pretty quickly. But fortunately, in part, thanks to new media like this, we can actually all talk about what we think are the ways to extend lifespan and not be frail in old age. Like my father, I talk about him a lot.

I'm very proud of him as a beacon of hope. At 80, he's still running around like he's 25. He's got no achesains, very sharp-minded, using all sorts of high-tech, lifting more weights than I can, literally. And our trainer, who's currently training the two of us together, he says, you know what?

I think my dad was deadlifting, what was it, something like 180 pounds, something a lot. And he said, the last 80-year-old that I trained was learning how to get out of a chair. Right. Yeah. You posted something on Instagram. He's like, you know, in the squat machine or whatever, like just killing it at 80. The guy's in his second career. He's had this kind of, you know, resurgence in vitality as a result of finding new purpose and meaning. And he's also somebody who's been on your kind of protocol for a while at this point.

And to see him in the gym at 80, like crushing it, it's very inspiring. Well, I think most of us can achieve that in life. You know, there will be unlucky people, of course diseases still hit us, but most of us are wasting our lives because we're basically, not you, but most people don't think about their longevity. They think, oh, when I'm old, I'll deal with that when it comes.

But now in early and midlife is the time to invest because it'll pay off dividends later in life. All right, people, are we good? Good, because it's time to meet one of my favorite people. There are athletes and there are artists, but rare is the individual that inhabits the best of both worlds. From episode 495, it's time to meet the poet laureate of running. His name is Ricky Gates. He's an ultramarathoner who ran across the United States unsupported.

He also ran every single street in San Francisco. And he's an artist, an artist that reminds us to connect more profoundly with our natural environments and communities. There's something about running and that solitude that accompanies it that gives you the space and the capacity to kind of wrestle with those things and get clarity for yourself.

I mean, there's a monologue in the film, I think it's after you've left Aspen and you're in the snow and in the Rockies where you say, you know, look, running was about competition for most of my life, measuring myself against others and a clock, but it's become a process of not just connecting with other humans, but a process of self-discovery. And that's like a huge theme in everything that you do and in this beautiful movie. Yeah, and I think that most of us that do run or walk or bike or pursue something with consistency

year after year, I think if we really look at what it's doing for us, I think that a lot of us will find the same things. Right. And this is something that I tell people and running has been my thing, but I don't think that's necessarily the thing for everybody. I think that knitting could be that thing,

crochet, badminton. Like, I just think for me, I chose this activity over 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and I've stuck with it for 25 years. And when you stick with something for that long, whether it's an activity or a person, you're going to continue to learn so much more about that. But also, and more importantly,

you're going to learn so much more about yourself. And this thing just keeps changing and changing and changing. And it's that consistency that allows for that to happen. Right, so lots of people have run across America. I just had this guy, Robbie Ballinger on the show who did it last year. He did it in like 75 days.

My friend, Mike Posner just walked across America, but most people that do this, do it with an RV and a lot of support that, and that support tends to be off camera. Conveniently. Yeah. But you, you decide to do this unsupported and for a vast majority of the entire expedition, it's just you with a very light backpack and a tarp and a ground cloth and a little bit of food. And basically that's it. Yeah. So I've been at this sport for quite a while.

I wouldn't say that I have a huge following, but I do have people that are paying attention to what I'm doing. I wouldn't say that I have a huge following, but I do have people that are paying attention to what I'm doing. And for me personally, it doesn't seem right to put this project out there in a way that I don't think is accessible to a normal person. can pull together an RV and the funds to pay for a person and gas and food for multiple people for months on end. Conversely, I do think that people, a lot of people, ideally, if you're younger and you have the physical capability, can put together the funds and the time

to do it in the same way that I did. And maybe you're not doing it. It's funny because there's a little bit of an irony in there because you're like, I'm gonna do this super extreme thing to show how doable it is for everybody. Yeah. And maybe not everybody, but I do believe,

how many people are doing the Appalachian Trail these days? You've got several thousand people starting the Appalachian Trail these days? You know, you've got several thousand people starting the Appalachian Trail these days. And I think the Appalachian Trail is awesome. Like, there's no doubt about it. But like, how much are you really going to learn about, you're going to learn a lot about yourself. And you're going to learn a lot about trail culture. But how much are you really going to learn about the United States in this greater context? It's a form of escapism.

going to learn about the United States in this greater context. It's a form of escapism. And that's sometimes exactly what we need is to escape what's going on outside of our front door. But for me personally, like I needed to explore something a lot deeper than just myself and just, you know, the physical capabilities of something like that. So I set a budget for myself. I did $1,000 a month, $5,000 total for the five months. Wow. I slept outside most nights. I'd get a hotel or a motel once a week or once every 10 days. That increased more towards like once every couple days

towards the end as I started kind of losing it a little bit. Yeah. Simply needed to go into a room and lock the door and turn the AC on and turn some mindless television on. But for the most part, what I wanted to do was to put it out there that this is something that people can do and that there's alternatives most part of what I wanted to do was to, to put it out there that this is something that, um, people can do and that there's alternatives to these, uh, to do in the Appalachian trail or,

or going to Europe for four months. Like you can just pack a very light backpack and, and see what's out there. And, and it's, it's really incredible when you, uh, you know, when people see that all you have is in your backpack and they ask you if you've got a gun to protect yourself and like, no, I don't have a gun. Just putting yourself out there in a vulnerable position, the amount of warmth and generosity that I experienced was something that I never could have anticipated in a million years. People giving me every last dollar from their wallet. There's the guy, what's his name?

James Steele. Yeah, he gives you 80 bucks or 160 bucks. I said 180, I said 80, it was 160. Right. It was $160. He wasn't taking no for an answer. No, it was 160. 160, right. It was $160. And- He wasn't taking no for an answer. No, it was amazing. It was, and that's when I kind of realized, you know, that people in their own way

want to participate in this thing. A few years ago, so this is kind of something that I think about and the best way for me to tell this is to talk about someone else running across the country, and that was Pete Kostal did mine, he did this and he was doing 60 to 70 miles a day for 44 days and broke the record that had stood for- Unsupported? That was very supported. That was two or three RVs with several people. Yeah. It was a big effort for a lot of people and he's sure to give them credit as well. Yeah. But for me personally, so I was in Wisconsin at the time and I saw that he was going through

Northern Illinois and I got in my car and drove two and a half hours just to run with him for a few miles. Cause it's like, it just felt like it was seeing this mythical creature when someone's doing something like that. And even now to this day, like now that I've done this big journey, like I still think it's a mythical creature. It's like seeing a mountain lion or something. Yeah, yeah. And so I think that for me, that's what it was for kind of when I came to realize that some people, when they wanted to give me money or just stop and talk, it was like, you know, it is something rare.

Right. There's the one guy who, it looks like he turned his car around when he saw you and he got out and he's like, my friend's going to freak out. I read about you like when you crossed the state line or something like that. So there was some awareness as you were passing through of what you were doing. Totally. In certain areas. I don't know why it was in certain areas. It was Oklahoma and Arkansas where I received the most amount of generosity and

warmth. And then when I got to California, ironically, it was nothing. It's interesting like that. Like, I think what I appreciate most is, you know, there's a vein of humility and vulnerability that infuses, you know, this effort and the other things that you've done. And this Transamericana journey is almost like this performance art piece that is part de Tocqueville, part Henry David Thoreau. Like I'm going to light out on America and learn about democracy and connect with people to try to better understand them, better understand myself, and better understand what is required to unite us and bring us together. Totally. And I- And you took your time. Like the priority wasn't the running. The priority was the connection. Yep. And, and the funniest thing that I encountered

or the most interesting thing that I encountered when I went across the country is that like, I thought I would be talking politics all the time and it never came up. It was just like, all the time and it never came up. It's just like when you're doing something like that, when people see something like that, they don't want to ask you what your political views are. They want to ask you about like what you're doing, what you're seeing out there.

And it just becomes really incredible that so much of this stuff just kind of dissolves away. And you realize that, and I think I say the same thing in the movie coming out, is that I think we're, I don't think so, I know so, we're way more similar than we are different. Yeah. It's, I think that we're 90% similar and 10% different. And that 10% difference has become inflated

so that we think that it's 90%, but it's not. Right. It's exploited. Exactly. And it's leveraged by the media to further divide us. Totally. And, you know, I subscribe to my own media and a lot that's been brought to my attention over the past couple of years with talk of fake news and all of these things is, is coming to terms with that. The media that I pay attention to is also biased and, and it's not just Fox news, like NPR is also biased. We've all got these biases and, and, you know, we like to think that we're right about, uh, our convictions,

but the reality is, is that, uh, you know, there's a million different paths out there. Yeah. And if you grew up in Kansas and on a farm in Kansas and you had that lifestyle and I just see their voting habits, their convictions as every bit as valid as mine. And that's probably the biggest thing that I gained from my run across the country is coming to terms with that. Yeah. When entrepreneur Greg Renfrew learned that the U.S. has not passed any major legislation about the safety of ingredients and personal care products since 1939, she became determined to make the business of beauty better. The result of this is Beauty Counter,

a company devoted to clean, toxin-free skincare. I love Greg. This was an amazing conversation. So here's a snippet from our exchange in episode 497. So let's talk about Beauty Counter. I mean, walk me through the inspiration for this and what gave you this idea. You know, there wasn't one specific thing, but I was actually last night, my friend Lila Rose was in town from New York visiting. And it was Lila, you know, Lila had watched An Inconvenient Truth and became super passionate about the environmental health movement and said to me, you need to watch this film. You're loud, you're direct, you are connected, and I think you should pay attention to what's going on with the environment. And so I watched An Inconvenient

Truth. And for whatever reason, that movie rocked my world. It was just the first time, I know it's almost embarrassing to admit this, but it was the first time that I truly paid attention to the fact that things that I was doing, that we're doing in my daily life, that my very existence was wreaking havoc on the earth. And so I became focused on the environmental health movement and started to really make changes in my life. Over the next year or two, I also had a situation where I had a woman who was taking care of our kids, who was our nanny. I was working full-time running Best in Company. And at 31, she was diagnosed with a non-HPV-related cervical cancer. And within 11 months, she had died. And so I was watching this young, beautiful, amazing woman die

in front of me. I was watching all these friends of mine struggle with fertility issues or giving birth to kids who had pretty significant health issues. I looked at what was happening in the environment. I thought, like like something's gone terribly awry and maybe I need to see something about it. And it wasn't about beauty or beauty counter at the time. It was just, how do I educate myself on what's actually going on there? So that can be a vocal point for change.

And there's kind of this epiphany moment when you're using products on your kids, thinking they're, because they have the words natural on them or you think you're using the right brand or whatever, and then looking at the ingredients label and doing a little research and realizing that the gap between what you're being told or sold and the truth is pretty vast. You know, I thought I was that whole foods shopper. I was the mom that was going to local farm stands. I was eating organic. I mean, I thought I was doing all the right things. I'd gotten rid of all her plastic. I was that whole foods shopper. I was the mom that was going to local farm stands. I was eating organic. I mean, I thought I was doing all the right things. I'd gotten rid of all her plastic.

I was washing my floors with water and vinegar. And then I was looking at this. And my kids, I had two kids in the tub, and it was a natural foaming oatmeal body wash from a leading drugstore brand. And I thought, I mean, it looks like oatmeal. It smelled like oatmeal kind of to me. And then someone told me about the environmental working group Skin Deep Database. And I took a look at it and I was like, holy shit, it was like eight out of nine for toxicity. And I was pretty outraged. So that really was another trigger point for me. That's when I started switching all of my family's products.

But the one thing that I couldn't find for myself was just, I couldn't find any skincare or cosmetics that I wanted to use. And there just wasn't anything out there. And the more that I learned, the more that I realized that we had laws that were incredibly outdated, the more I realized that there were harmful chemicals in our products. I wanted to do something about it, which is really why I started the company. Right. I consider myself to be somebody who's fairly up to speed on environmental issues. to speed on environmental issues. And certainly I'm the first to say that governmental regulatory bodies are not necessarily looking out for your best interest. But even I was shocked when we were

talking, I think you were telling me last year, about the extent to which the FDA is just this paper tiger when it comes to protecting people on the cosmetic and kind of skincare front. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, someone was asking me the other day, why do people feel safe in the United States in terms of the products on the shelves? And I was saying that in the food industry, there are two things I think that are different about skincare and cosmetics. And just for clarity purposes, I know you have a lot of men that listen to you talk about things. This isn't red lipstick. This is deodorant, sunscreen, body lotion, anything that we're putting on our bodies, any of those things. I think that two things are different. When you

eat something that's really bad for your body, you typically get sick. Like right away. Right. You feel it. There's an immediate direct reaction. Right. Whereas if you're putting on sunscreen or body lotion, you could go your whole life and you would never necessarily know that it was harmful to your health. And then the second thing is, I mean, yes, if you have an allergic reaction, but in the absence of allergic reactions, people would just continue to put stuff on their body. They wouldn't know about it. And I think the second thing that's different is that the FDA

in the food industry has the ability to recall product when it's known to be harmful to health. If there's a seminal outbreak or whatever it is, they can immediately pull it from the shelves. But what people don't realize in the United States is that when it comes to skincare and cosmetics, they do not have the ability to recall product. They can suggest, but they cannot take action. That is shocking to me. So play that out. There's a cosmetic product or some skin lotion that's on the shelves at every store. And it's got proven toxic chemicals that have been established to link directly to some kind of poor health condition.

And the FDA is absolutely powerless to compel the industry to remove it. Correct. So there are a couple things that are not happening with the FDA. First and foremost, we are not screening chemicals for safety before we put them into the products that we use. Also shocking. Yeah. So less than 10% of the 85,000 chemicals that have been introduced into commerce have been tested for safety. And about 10,000 of those are commonly used in personal care products.

So let's just say a solid 9,000 plus have never been tested for safety on human or environmental health. for safety on human or environmental health, then you combine that with the lack of regulation where people can claim natural, pure, botanical, whatever they want in skincare and cosmetics, and there's no regulation. So, for example, a year or two ago, there was an article about aloe-based products. They tested 38 aloe-based products across department stores and drugstores, and they found that not a single one of them had one little drop of aloe in them. And then, you know, the third type of scenario is a scenario, and an example would be Brazilian blowout, or there's one called When Hair Care, where they've had over 20,000 complaints of hair loss,

permanent hair loss, from children and women, and yet they can't- Is it a shampoo or something? Yeah, and it's still on the shelves. And same with Brazilian blowout, where the people who are administering that hair straightening treatment were getting incredibly sick, but they can't do anything about it because it had over 40% formaldehyde. And think about your heating up formaldehyde and blowing it all over and everyone's breathing it in. The FDA can't do anything about it. And that's why at Beauty Counter we're so focused on our advocacy efforts because we need to update these outdated laws. How did we get to this point?

You know, I mean, look, I think there are a number of things. I think, first of all, there was a brief moment in time in 1938 when the Federal Food, Drugs, and Cosmetic Act passed where Americans were protected, but that was prior to, you know, these 85,000 chemicals coming into commerce post-World War II. And so a lot of the leading companies that are manufacturing products, a lot of large conglomerates, started making these products when they probably thought they were totally safe. Why wouldn't they have thought they were safe? And now I think the challenge becomes, how do you undo this? And how do you, when you're sitting with relentless capital markets

and you take your share price down or whatever, you do the right thing and you take a massive hit, I think people are scared to change. And I think that we haven't updated major federal law since 1938. I mean, it's been over 80 years. The governing law that kind of covers this entire landscape is one law that was passed in 1938. One and a half pages of legislation

that govern an $80 billion industry that still allow for chemicals of concern that are known to be caused, that cause cancer, linked to endocrine disruption, all those things, neurotoxicity. Those chemicals are in our products and the government has not taken action on a federal level. So a big part of your mission and why you founded this company is this advocacy piece of getting these laws changed. And part of that has been you going to Washington, D.C. and banging on doors to get people to pay attention to this, right? There's a new bill that you're trying to advocate for vote, but this has been going on for a year, like since 2015 or something like that. So when we launched, from the you know, from the very beginning, I said, you know, there are three things that we need to do that are really important. We need to educate because we knew that less than 20% of Americans had any idea

that there are chemicals of concern. And, and look, I've always said this, we needed, no one needed another beauty brand. I mean, I'm not even a beauty. I was never even a beauty person. Like I never even, it wasn't my thing, but I, what we needed to create a movement for better, cleaner, safer products for everyone. And so education has always been a core component of our business. And using commerce as an engine for change has also been a core component. Because I do think that consumer brands can move markets faster than legislative reform will ever happen. On the advocacy side, we started from right out of the gate when I was

raising capital. I said to all of our investors, we're going to take this all the way to Washington. You need to be comfortable with that. And we started immediately. The minute we had any skill in 2013, we started to go out there and talk about it. And we started on the state and federal level. And now we do this in Canada as well. I didn't say this earlier, but not only have we not updated the laws since 1938, the EU banned or restricted, depending on the chemical, about 1,400 ingredients well over a decade ago. When I started Beauty Counter, we had 11 to their 1,400, and now we're up to a whopping 30. So we had to get out there and pound the pavement in Washington. We needed to let them know that it's time for change. It is factual to call Dr. Zach Bush a triple board certified physician. But the truth, the real truth is that this guy is a healer. One of the most popular guests in

the history of the podcast, Zach joined me for a fourth appearance, episode 508, to share his lens on this most peculiar of years. The reality is we are just the tip of biology on the earth. The microbiome is always for life. It's never against life. If it appears that the microbiome is threatening us or killing us, it's because we have misaligned ourselves with nature at a large level. And we need to realign ourselves with that. And we need to start to think about what it looks like to be within our moment, living as light beings at a high vibration in space and time with high consciousness, with a respect for human life, with a respect for animal life that's not

happening on the planet. People are right now saying, again, oh, China makes this happen every year because they have all these animal markets and food markets and everything else. And the reality is, yes, that actually is a problem. When we're killing 60 billion animals a year for human consumption, that's a global problem. And that's not a Chinese problem. That is a global problem that we're killing 60 billion animals. But a bigger problem that those 60 billion animals are largely being held in captivity in these extremely toxic, inhumane levels of management. And so if we see viruses coming out of that, well, that's the microbiomes check on

the reality that we live in. There are checks and balances in biology, certainly that work better than the checks and balances in our government. And life is going to have to be redirected if we oppose health and ecology on that level. Really what you're getting at is developing a healthy dose of humility. And the recursive theme in everything that you've been talking about comes back to having in there being like equanimity in terms of our relationship to the planet, whether it's our food systems,

whether it's how we interact with each other, we are out of whack and it's nature's way of reminding us that we need to reset and pay attention. And again, I keep saying this, but I don't wanna minimize what's happening. There are a lot of people who are scared and there are many people who are suffering and people are dying.

But I think if we can really connect with this humility, we have an opportunity to embrace the opportunity to return with a more sort of synergistic relationship with our planet. I mean, Farmer's Footprint is a perfect example of that. By returning to what is natural and cyclical with the planet, these farmers have been able to find new life.

And with that, a new happiness and a new lifeline for their families. And the domino effect of that is profound. And if we can extrapolate on that example to reflect back upon our own relationship to the planet and our behaviors and our consumer choices, I think it can be highly instructive going forward. At the same time, many of these things that we're talking about involve systems that are out of the control of the average consumer. How much impact can I

really have on our global supply chain, on our food system, on policy, on economics, on what big pharma decides to do, et cetera. But what we can do is seize this moment of solitude and sequestration to really inventory and reflect on our own behavior patterns. Because the ecosystem that resides within each of us is just a microcosm of the macrocosm that we're experiencing externally right now. And for me, I've been kind of thinking about this in terms of, you know, through that lens,

like how am I living? What in my life is not in balance? Where can I live more in alignment with nature's cyclical rhythms? Where can I find more balance in my day-to-day routine? And where am I blind or in denial about things that I'm doing that are perpetrating a problem that recurs in my own life?

And I think the more that we can all adopt that practice, I think we all kind of emerge out of this, assuming that we can emerge out of it healthy, more empowered and stronger and more capable and humble and in a better position to create that world that we all can imagine for ourselves and yet seem so out of grasp the moment absolutely that's beautiful i also you know want to just close with reaching out to the physicians and nurses and nurse practitioners and pas that are out there right now on the front lines in new york and philadelphia and all the other cities that are out there right now on the front lines in New York and Philadelphia and all the other cities that are starting to see the impact of this situation we're in right now. And I just want to acknowledge your effort and the fear that you're feeling and the exhaustion you're feeling

and the state of overwhelm that you sense and the vulnerabilities that you're so poignantly aware of right at the moment. And I just want you to know that we so deeply appreciate your commitment and your efforts in this time. We know the extremity of the situation you're in and look forward to the end of that in the coming weeks as this passes over us. And in the meantime, I just want to reflect for a moment about, again, redefining your role, just like we did with the garden. We need to let go of maybe the expectations that you're going to heal everybody and you're going to save everybody's life. And we need to really look at both sides of the physician or care team's experience. On the one side, we are all trained to be technicians.

We're trained to adjust the knobs on the ventilators. We're trained to adjust the drips on the IVs. We're trained to read all the data and we're trained to write all the notes and look at all the risk factors and fill out the insurance forms. All of that is coming to a crisis point that's not working. And that happens every day in an ICU where all the technology at hand finally fails and there's nothing more we can offer and the patients die. And then there's a second half to the journey that is the definition of that being a physician state or being a caretaker, being a nurse is when you set down the machinery and you sit down with the patient and say, we've done our best. We have done everything we know how to do. And we acknowledge that you are alive and we acknowledge that you are here with us in this moment. And we acknowledge that

you're going to likely expand to the other side of this rebirth that we call death. And in that time with your patients right now, I want you to know that we see the greatest victory right there. Because ultimately, as physicians and practitioners, we don't actually save lives. We don't have that level of capacity or responsibility. Life is something much greater than human. Life is a gift. And it's not your responsibility to maintain it. It's your responsibility to show up and bring the highest level of compassion, skill, capacity that you can, but you will do your highest work when you recognize that this miraculous life that we live, this miraculous gift of life is transient. It is temporal And it is our calling to be present with that and acknowledge

it and see the beauty in every phase of it. And when you've got a young person who's dying or an elderly person who's dying, it's easy to get caught up in the emotions of the loss, but we need to get better and celebrate the moment of acknowledging the gain. This is a life well lived. This is a person who is created life well lived. This is a person who is created in their lifetime. This is a person who's loved in their lifetime. This is a person who's really in it for the big story of what it means to be human. And this was a soul that came in on purpose and has lived some version of that purpose. And we acknowledge that. And so I hope that in the same way that the mess of a messy garden can start to look like a victory, the mess of healthcare

can be very victorious if we recognize each other's humanity in it. And if we really embrace the beauty of human life and consciousness, that becomes often most poignant and most obvious when we're about to lose it. And we let go of that human consciousness to plug into something much, much bigger. And I hope that you get to see as the veil thins with your patients right now, I get to see that other side and realize that they have no fear on the other side of that veil. And so as they're coming back and forth out of consciousness and back into consciousness in those last few minutes and hours and days, I hope that you get a glimpse of the beauty on the other side and a state of being that's free of fear, free of a sense of loss and only sees opportunity and expansion and light. Take this opportunity to let down the expectations on yourself and give up on a sense of failure.

Let go of your sense of failure in those moments when the ventilator's failing, the oxygen's failing, the numbers are going south. Don't let that define your success. Be present with your patients right now. Let them not die in vain. Let them be part of the message that this virus is trying to teach us. Let their journey be part of you. Reach out to them and hold their hands right now and give them a sense of deep purpose in this extreme thing that they've been called to. to. If they're called to pass right now, let them know it's not in vain that we're going to learn from this, that we are realizing that we have taken too many steps away from our purpose, our real nature, our real potential, and that they are doing their highest work right now in walking the journey of dying in this situation to teach us a deep lesson of what it means to be connected and disconnected and a pathway towards reconnection. and let them know that their highest victory

is at hand and, and that they are part of the rise of human consciousness and not the collapse of biology on the planet. That's, that's what I want you to grab right now. And just know that I just am in deep gratitude for your courage to keep showing up. Love you, brother. Thank you. Next up is my good friend, a national treasure. His name is Dan Buettner. He's a National

Geographic Fellow, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, a longevity expert, a world explorer with three endurance cycling world records to his name, and the man behind all things Blue Zones, hidden pockets across the world where people live longer and happier. Here's a clip from episode 504, our third exchange. First of all, congratulations on the success of the Blue Zones Kitchen Cookbook. I mean, it's, you know, once again, there you are at the top of the bestseller list. It's pretty cool to see. Well, I spent years writing deeply researched books that were, I like to think, artfully crafted when it came to the pros and only to discover what America really wants

is beautiful pictures and bean recipes. That's it, right? But this is not an ordinary cookbook. I mean, this unfolds much like one of your expeditions. You know, this is a deep dive into these cultures as much as it is about like, here's the thing you can make in your kitchen. Well, yeah, I cringe at the title cookbook because actually we tried to make it more

like a 250 page National Geographic article. So I wrote, the introductions are all science driven, the science of why these foods are helping these people make it to a hundred. I think we have the best National Geographic photographer in this genre, David McLean, shot all the photos. There's no studio shots there. It's all editorial photography. So, and the recipes, none of them are recopied down.

I sat on a stool and watched these old ladies cook and captured the recipes and then sent them here to Los Angeles, actually, where they were corrected in test kitchens. They don't have tablespoons and measuring cups up in the blue zone. You sent the actual people or just? No, just my observation. But the thing is, this is a 500-year- old food tradition that is disappearing because in all these blue zones, the American food culture is coming

and replacing this way of eating that has produced the statistically longest lived people. You know, 20 year olds aren't eating like this. So I was sitting with 70, 80, 90, even a hundred year olds watching them cook the foods of their youth. So this is almost a project of anthropology as much as a food book. Creating an historical document.

I like to think it is. When you look at these Blue Zones pillars, movement, plant-based, plant slant diet, faith, friendship, connectivity, all of these things, are they relatively evenly balanced? They're certainly interdependent with each other, but is there one that stands out? Did you write this Blue Zones Kitchen book because the diet component of it is so important

or how do you think about the interplay of all of those things? Yes, to your point, it is a mutually supporting web of factors. So people eat wisely. They move naturally every 20 minutes because their life is underpinned with purpose. They have a social network that makes this easy. Their friends are doing these things and they live in environments where the healthy choice is the easy choice. So they are definitely connected, but the most important variable there is eating. Americans probably lose six years of life expectancy eating the standard American diet.

This is at middle age, by the way, overeating, say a blue zones diet, which is largely beans, whole grains, greens, nuts, and tubers, you know, and fruits and vegetables as well. So the problem is, except for a few people like you with heroic discipline and a great community supporting you, it's very hard for Americans to go plant-based and whole food plant-based by the the way. It's not Twinkies and chips. Whole foods, plant-based diet is the most important factor. But the only way to do that

for the decades necessary to avoid a chronic disease is have the right social network, live in the right place, having that sense of purpose where it's important enough for you to be around that you're going to make the sacrifices every occasionally to, you know, not order the hamburger. Yeah. Also in this is stuff about, you know, portion size, time of day, when to eat. Like one of the things you noticed is like, well, the size of the plates that these people are using, you know, is this different than in America and how does that dictate long-term how we, you know? So I'll spin out a couple of the insights that I captured for Blue Zones Kitchen on how they eat. First of all, they're cooking, no matter where you go, they're only using about 20 ingredients

over and over and over, because they know how to combine these ingredients to create a symphonic deliciousness, but not a ton of different crazy foods or superfoods, no superfoods, except for beans. Beans is probably the superfood. Number two, they tend to consume all their food in about an eight-hour window. Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper. Number three, they tend to say something before the meal that marks a punctuation between their busy life and now we're slowing down to eat. Like a prayer, the Adventists or the Sardinians or harahachibu, which is a Confucian adage that the Okinawans say before every meal to remind themselves to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full. They tend to eat with their family. They tend to not have electronics in their kitchen, so they're not eating to their favorite song or eating to their favorite TV show. They tend to cook at home as opposed to going out. These are all things that I would argue add to the ecosystem of eating that produces

long-lived people. And the core of which being this, knowing how to make plant-based food taste delicious. It's amazing work. How's Kathy? Is she good? Kathy Freston, my cruciferous girlfriend who says hi. Yeah. She's the vegan vixen. She's been a great influence on really early pioneer in making plant-based eating cool. Yeah, for sure. Huge, huge influence on mainstreaming. What we now kind of almost take for granted, like, oh, vegan options pretty much everywhere you go.

But like Kathy played a huge part in that. Yeah, you got Oprah to go vegan for a while. I know. And Ellen DeGeneres and Crossworld Kitchens, which I argue is one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles is all plant-based. That would have been seen as a heresy 15 years ago. Well, kind of also a big influence on you personally.

Like I think even in the time that I've known you, you've had an evolution in terms of your plant-based diet, you know, relationship. Yeah, you know, I've come to a plant-based diet by observing the diets of the world's longest lived people. And 95% of what they put in their mouth is whole plant-based food. But she comes at it, you know, sort of the animal cruelty.

And I never even thought of, you know, that the occasional piece of meat I ate occasioned, you know, just horrible pain and suffering from another sentient being. My favorite statistic she told me that an adult pig has the intelligence of a three-year-old human. It spends its entire life in a cage it

can't turn around in, lives in its own feces, connects with its young the same way we connect with our young, wants to socialize, feels pain in the same way, yet lives a miserable life and has a horrible death at the end, all in the service of bacon or pork chop. And when you add that to the fact that eating a plant-based diet is probably worth six to eight years over eating a standard American diet. It's just so overwhelmingly right to that. Not to mention the environmental considerations. Yeah, it's the third prong, yes.

We still got a couple of final drops coming your way, but first. We still got a couple final drops coming your way, but first. All right, let's get back into it with my friend Byron Davis, one of my very first ever podcast guests, episode 14 from early 2013, I think. Byron is a former USA Swimming national team member. He's a former American record holder, a UCLA All-American, an Ironman. And he is joined by Pastor Phil Allen. Phil is also an author, a teacher, a poet.

He's a filmmaker behind this powerful short documentary called Open Wounds that delves into the reality of intergenerational trauma. And these two fine gentlemen joined me in episode 526 to share their perspective on the Black Lives Matter movement, the history behind it, and the opportunity for change that it represents. Here's a clip from our roundtable discussion. Here's a clip from our roundtable discussion. You know, I think a great question should be asking, how did we get here?

Because I think a lot, I listen to a lot of people speak as if they have the answers, again, because of this event and recent events. And the anger that you see is not just because of these events. This is anger that stretches back 400 years. Because as an African American, in our community, when we see something happen, it's never just about the thing that happened. It's typically about the history. This is another thing that's happening. So it's like, it's a natural thing. We don't just look at Arbery's situation. We don't just look at George Floyd or Breonna Taylor. We literally, it's like a file that you just recall the faces and names like that. Or I could go back to Emmett Till immediately. I could go back- And your own personal experiences. Yeah, personal experiences.

So I think a good question to ask is, how did we get here? And I don't think enough people ask that question. I think for one reason, it's going to force people, particularly white folks, to look at this country differently. It's going to force them to, you're talking about white fragility, what D'Angelo was talking about, it forces them to look at themselves because to be American subconsciously is to be white, right? And everything else is measured against that. I've had people say it in conversations where a guy would say yeah i was in this at this in this room and it was a bunch of people diverse you know and i you know americans were there and then he began to list the african-american or the

black folks hispanics they weren't american i guess right but he when he was saying american he was talking about the white folks that were there. And he wasn't a bad person. He was a great guy. But subconsciously, he just associated American with white. That's typically what happens. And so to look at how we got here is to now have to open up yourself to seeing this country differently. Because I always ask the question, when you say America is so great, what's your definition of greatness and when? Because if you're talking about power, military might,

and prosperity, certainly. If you're talking morally and being a just society, you have to go back and help me understand when was that because there's always been systemic and legalized oppression in this country there's never been a decade there's never been a time in history in our history that it wasn't the case and so i challenge that notion of greatness do we have the potential to be? Absolutely. And so I think, how do we get here is a great question to ask. where white people also have to confront their ignorance. When we don't know and that's exposed, that's vulnerable. And it doesn't, I mean, this goes beyond race. This is just human nature, right?

Human condition. If we're not something, if we don't know something and our current idea or point of view or answer that we thought was true is shown not to be just based on evidence, that's a very vulnerable position to be in. No one likes their ignorance exposed. But if you look at even that term ignorance from just a sheer educational definition, ignorance is the beginning of enlightenment. It's learning. You can't learn until you confront and wrestle through your

ignorance, right? That's the foundation or the fundamentals of learning. So adults have to embrace the fear and the risk of being vulnerable. What they may say out of just sheer ignorance is proven to be untrue. Well, it requires a certain humility too. And I'm uplifted because I'm seeing a willingness to embrace this conversation in a way that I can't recall in my lifetime. And that gives me hope. But it's juxtaposed against a climate and a culture that is more deeply entrenched in being right and their silos and the division that we're seeing right now. It's sort of a war between those two things right now. Social media fomenting this division across America

where people just wanna yell at each other and no one is taking a pause to actually listen and take stock and perform a little bit of forensic self-analysis. But I think these events have led us to a point where we are seeing a certain portion of the population doing that. I'm attempting to do that here today.

And I think that's really the only path to healing and to really reconstructing society around more equitable lines. Rich, I think you're totally right. You hit the nail on the head. You have to be willing to have those kind of conversations when you can get when intelligent people are are stuck in their silos and their echo chambers and and spend more energy trying to defend their position than admit that this is a multifaceted, complex problem that is going to take rigorous and consistent attention to in order to really write, in order to really solve the problem. Until we're willing to really embrace that,

problem, until we're willing to really embrace that, then it's going to be an uphill battle. It's going to be hard because we feel more comfortable when we think we're right or when we have the upper hand. And so when you have people on all sides digging in and, you know, having good points on every side, but spending most of our energy trying to point out where and why the other side is wrong, as opposed to instead of being on opposite sides of the table, coming together on one side and actually pouring all of that energy into the problem. I think that's the heavy lifting that has to be, in conversations like this, is a start. But I think what message we want to continue to really advocate is, after the protesting, after the news cycle, you know, has died down, after, you know, the shift in attention moves to something else, will we have enough boots on the ground

committed to wrestling within the trenches to right the wrong that we clearly see right now? Yeah, that energy has to get channeled into some kind of productive change that is architected around strategies and tactics to actually enact the changes that are necessary rather than just, you know, sort of outrage that just dissipates into the atmosphere. Which is again, why you hear people really pointing the spotlight on the dysfunction within the

justice system. And you get a lot of people on one side saying, you know, that's just, those are just bad apple cops and deflecting the attention on, no, this is just, if we look at it in terms of a virus, this is just a flare up of, of, of something that, you know, it's still alive on the inside. And what we're seeing is just a flare up happening. But if we don't, if we just deal with the, the surface, you know, issue and not deal with the root cause on the inside, it's just going to be a matter of time before this little thing heals. But in months, weeks, years, another flare up happens. So we definitely have to take this opportunity

to now do some deep dive surgery into the systemic issues that allow this thing to exist. Another, switching gears a little bit, another narrative that's out there is that this problem is not for black people to solve, it's for white people to solve. So what is the role of white America in redressing this? Other than, you talked about the L's

and we need to educate people, we need to appreciate the complexity of this, we need time to heal, we need a longer conversation that isn't bifurcated around political lines. Like how do the white people listening to this wrap their heads around how they can be a most productive member of this movement?

I think, I go back and forth because I believe that it's voices of color that need to lead because we feel it. You know, this idea, you can't lead me someplace you've never been, or you can't give to me what you've never had. A hundred percent. It would just, it's preposterous to think otherwise. So there's a learning from voices of color, but I think taking the power and the privilege and being a part of helping to reach the white, the broader white community. I think right now, whether it's in government, those congressmen and women using their positions to reach them, family members on the family level, reaching them, in corporations, reaching them, I think because we can't reach them. We can share, we can put pressure on, we can protest, we can do all these things.

We can write books, but they're not going to listen to us necessarily. So I think one way, this is just one, it's not the only way. This is one thing is I ask, you know, white friends, you have to be the voice to reach the people that we're not going to be able to reach on all these levels, wherever your influence is.

That's one way, because I don't know what else we can do. I really don't. If you look at literature, you look at music, you look at movies, you look at marches. We've done it peacefully. We've done it angrily. We've kneeled. We've done it peacefully. We've done it angrily. We've kneeled. We've knelt. We've fist in the air.

We've used our bodies in ways that that's how we didn't. That's one of the primary resources we have, our bodies. We've done everything we know to do. And we're still here. Not just incidents, but a culture, right? I think it takes the white allies or whatever word you want to use for that to be the voices advocating in solidarity to the white community, because they're not going to listen to us necessarily. Not all, some will, but the masses won to listen to us necessarily. Not all, some will, but the masses

won't listen to us. Next up is social philosopher, integrative thinker, and Yale graduate Charles Eisenstein, who joined me back on episode 511, definitely one of the year's favorites, where he offers a unique perception on one of the most difficult global events of our lifetimes. Have a listen. I think beyond the virus itself, it's really pulled the veil on the fragility of our systems, economic and political. The fact that everything has ground to a halt and our economy is basically frozen in time at the moment and in essentially freefall. And we're now seeing what happens when an economic system that's premised on, you know, carrying large loads of debt and, you know, businesses that are overly leveraged. This is potentially cataclysmic and could send us into a depression, at the very least a moment of repression

that we don't know how long it's going to last. And it is opening up the conversation about what a better economic system would look like. Again, this is something that you spent a lot of time thinking about. You've written a book, Sacred Economics. So how are you thinking about this moment in the context of your economic thinking? Yeah, it could go either way. Just like on the medical level, it could go either way toward doubling down on where we've already been going and finally getting rid of all that alternative and holistic stuff.

Or it could be like, wow, this wasn't working. Let's try something really different. Why are we so vulnerable? Why is our healthcare system so fragile? We could go into this big reckoning and house cleaning and reassessment of everything all the way down to the bottom. Same thing with economics. If nothing changes, if we just continue on the path we've been on, then this crisis is accelerating a long existing trend of concentration of wealth and the destruction of small business and the concentration of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands because the crisis is decimating small and medium-sized businesses. So the big ones can get bailed out. They can get supported by the government. It's a lot harder to do that for your local movie theater or yoga studio or whatever. People are getting along okay without

a lot of these small businesses. Some of them will probably come back, but we're looking at massive devastation for small businesses and the self-employed and even, you know, medium-sized businesses and everything that depends on, you know, the brick and mortar world, like the local kinds of businesses. So we could see a, um, extension of this longstanding trend of concentration of wealth. People talk about, with the stimulus checks and stuff, a universal basic income. This could be the start of a universal basic income, which could be a wonderful thing or it could be a terrible thing. It could be, well, sorry, you can't get a job anymore unless you're part of a shrinking elite, but we'll give you your monthly pittance as long as you do as you're told. Right. And, you know, don't misbehave and, you know, wear your ankle monitor to make sure that

you're, you know, your electronic hall pass to make sure you're not at some unauthorized, unessential place, et cetera, et cetera, you know? And, And so most people are kind of on the dole, except for a small elite. And they can't get off it because the independent economy that's not controlled by government and huge corporations has been destroyed. We could see that. Or we could see, analogously to a holistic revival, we could take stock and say, wow, we don't want to keep going down this road. What do we do to bring economic power back to the people, to redress the concentration of wealth? And that could go along the lines of, and this is a moment where we could take a different path. We could institute some form of a debt jubilee, debt forgiveness, student loan forgiveness, refinancing mortgages at zero interest.

There's many ways to bail out the debtors rather than bailing out the creditors and the banks and the large institutions. And I hope that, and this is one of the things I'd like to put onto the radar, is that we don't have to go back to normal. Normal sucked. Normal was like a road to hell. Things were getting worse and worse for more and more people. And not just people, but for ecosystems, for soil, for water, for the whales, for the elephants, for the oceans. We don't want to go back to normal. And now that normal has been interrupted, maybe we can make a conscious choice to go in a different direction. That's the gift. And that's what makes it an initiation. Yeah, that's the gift. Yeah, it is the initiation. I mean, you've talked about and written about

yourself being somebody who is sort of always perceived that just around the bend, something like this would be coming and it never seemed to come. And now here it is. It's this moment in time that is so unique and unprecedented and yet rife with so much opportunity. I mean, arguments certainly can be made that this is the greatest opportunity for consolidation of power and wealth in our lifetime, certainly. And we're seeing that happening right now. And the large corporations are gonna get their bailouts

and there's gonna be a decimation of small businesses across the board. And if that scale tips too far in that direction, that becomes a scenario in which revolt and revolution becomes a potential reality. Yes. Short of that, we're also seeing on the other side indicia of this gift economy. We're having conversations about universal basic income in a way we never have.

We're seeing people on social media just getting out their Venmo and sending money to people and overtipping and engaging in these beautiful acts of humanity that are casting a spotlight on the beautiful aspects of what a different type of system could produce that would bring us together and cultivate that community and eradicate some of the separation that's, you know, like you said, this is all an accelerant of these trends and things that are already, you know, happening. Yes. It's just being exacerbated right now. And that's allowed us to have a heightened level of attention. And with that, my hope is that we can take stock of that and really seize this moment where we're

forced to stop when we're in repose to conceptualize this better system for all. Yeah, I do see both of those things happening. On the one hand, this outburst of humanity, solidarity, that's what always happens when the confining routines of normality waver or dissolve. Rebecca Solnit writes about this so beautifully in her book, A Paradise Built in Hell. When there's an earthquake, when there's a flood, when there's some natural disaster that sweeps away the structures of society, it's not what one might expect. Dog eat dog, looting and chaos and the strong preying on the weak. Uh-uh. It's people getting together to take care of each other.

Whoever has, you know, a kerosene stove, they set up an outdoor kitchen, and whoever has food brings the food, and people, they start to take care of each other. This natural altruism and community and solidarity emerges, and you realize that it's been repressed all the time by our systems and ideologies of separation, but it's always laying there waiting for its moment to come back. And this is such a moment. As soon as normality wavers, people can act on their long repressed impulse to live the lives that we are in fact here to live, which are not to maximize self-interest. That is a substitute, a bribe to keep us away from the lives that we're

really here to live, which are lives of service to life and service to beauty and service to something meaningful to us. That's the only meaningful life and the only full life. And to sell that off, to mortgage that to mere survival, safety, security, self-protection, that is a poor bargain that we make that leaves us feeling that we didn't even live life. Instead, we lived the life we were paid to live. But what about my life, where I'm not afraid to die? At least, yeah, maybe I have that fear, but there's something more important. So that gets liberated in times like these. And it's also showing us when you take something that's happening unconsciously and put it starkly in front of your face by showing us a world of isolation, of distancing, of separation, of polarization, of concentration of wealth, of no human contact, of no community.

We've been silently, helplessly, unconsciously moving toward that as if it were an inevitability for a long time. And now it's like the alcoholic waking up and his spouse has left him and he's in the hospital or something like that. And it's like, wow, this is taking me to a bad place. And so it's a moment of reclaiming our sovereignty and our collective ability to choose our future rather than merely adapting to something that we see as inevitable. And what future will we choose? It's being shown us by precisely this humanity and solidarity that is breaking through the cracks in the system. That it's showing us

the future we could go to, a future where we're all in this together, where we understand that your well-being and my well-being are connected, and even the well-being of other creatures and that health and happiness and even real wealth does not and cannot exist in isolation, but only in community. And so we can say, yeah, enough of this trajectory of separation. Now is the time to rejoin the community of humanity and rejoin the community of life. That's the crossroads that we're at right now. And finally, against the backdrop of a global pandemic emerged one of the most powerful civil rights movements of our lifetime. Black Lives Matter has indelibly shaped the social fabric of our country.

So to help us untangle the rhetoric behind our country's supercharged division, eponymous curator of running culture, Knox Robinson, joined the podcast for a second time. So let's close out this part one of the 2020 Auditory Yearbook with Knox's thoughts lifted from episode 527. Enjoy. Taking pause and thinking how other people might feel, you know, is not only one of the calls to action for this moment that hopefully will go forward. But I think that that's like the work we need to do now. So, you know, really think how do I make space for other people? How do I make other people feel comfortable? Again, to say in running or something like that, like how do we create a more just space in our communities?

Yeah. I'm interested in kind of what unity and allyship looks like to you. Like I'm just sitting here thinking I'm a white dude, I'm privileged, I come from a certain background, we're in this moment and I really wanna be as open as possible and as teachable as possible. I wanna fully understand the breadth and the depth of what we're contending with right here.

And I wanna be an ally. And I'm very, you know, I find myself feeling cautious or somewhat paralytic around what to say and what to do for fear of misstepping in a culture in which, you know, a slight misstep on Instagram or in public is met with what we were talking about before. And not that I really care that much about any of that. What I do care about is getting this right. I'm interested in what that looks like from somebody of your perspective.

That's an interesting thing. And I think that's something that a lot of us are thinking about. And one of the things about double consciousness is that I wasn't really thinking about that situation you just described, you know, like, I don't think, um, a lot of black Americans that I've been in conversation with over, over my life have been really talking about paralytic white guilt. Right. Yeah. So the, the, the, this, the, the wave of communications in the past several weeks has been really fascinating. Um, let me make it about me. Yeah, right. Like I was like, here's the thing, like, it's so funny because all the white dudes are freaking out right now, trying to figure out what to say and what not to say. And my black friends are like,

relax, man. Like we've been waiting for you. It's cool. Yeah. It's just like, how do I get it right? I was like, we're not counting on you to get it right. Don't worry. Like, just chill out, you know, join in. Yeah, the whole paralytic idea of getting it right. So I didn't even know, you know, like when after the George Floyd killing when, you know, black, when before we were really aware and it was happening daily, right? You know, like our experiences and our understanding of the moment was setting in. So when there was like so much like white silence, I was like, oh, okay, cool. White people don't have anything to say. Okay, cool. And it was actually a real vacuum, a real deafening silence. It was actually really incredible because I was able to just think about the life of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd without so much noise. And I was able to reach out and connect to other black people in that space and just have these

emotional connections. And what were those conversations like? and just have these emotional connections. And what were those conversations like? You know, they were uncomfortable because, you know, you really have to, I mean, like everybody has divestment that they need to consider. So you really have to kind of like let go of machismo or you like these kind of like chauvinistic ideas of our own vulnerability and fragility. I keep coming back to this idea of love. So I know that's super obvious and basic and people have talked about it from time, but

Ahmaud Arbery's best friends say that it was weird. Every time he would like leave from hanging out, he would say like, I love you, man. And he wouldn't leave until they said it. And these are like young brothers sitting around in rural Georgia at the car wash leaving work. And like that's like a really insane and rigorous practice to do. So when I called up all these brothers and told them I loved them, it was like rigorous from my end. It was tough, you know, to reach out. And man, for all the mistakes that I've made and that I'm going to continue to make as soon as I walk out this door, I just want to keep thinking about love. And I wish that, I would hope that this would be a moment for people to reset and reflect on what that is, you know? And for all the little microaggressions that we engage in or all the times that we take around chit-chat

and anytime we just serve as a detractor to someone else for no reason, all these things are adding up to this giant feeling of psychic pain that you can just feel, whether you're feeling it in America's cities or you're feeling it in Ahmaud Arbery's killers. Like how abject were these guys that they went into like seek and destroy mode? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like, it's not too early to kind of think about the spiritual poverty, the imaginative poverty that racists feel. You know what I mean? at least consider what an ethic of love looks and feels like. If we can just kind of like reset and refer back to those basic civics that maybe we thought we were going to pursue as we got older, that's really what I'm thinking about. And I'm thinking about that honestly in like a really corny kind of social media way.

corny kind of social media way. Like it's okay to be like a white ally with, you know, 1,047 followers and like, here's the list and you're like banging on at white people. But if then you're like going and getting in the DMs and like detracting from someone else, if you're the purveyor of suspicion or innuendo or, you know, kind of things like you got to think if our own white supremacy is uninvestigated until very recently, and that's black people, like black people have a social sickness that we've inherited from 400 years of experience in this country. So everybody is on the docket right now to investigate our own internalized white supremacy. This is our chance to see beyond the speeches that politicians are making. This is our chance to think a little bit beyond what our mainstream media is telling us? And what does it mean for us?

And strangely, this opportunity has been a reset on so many levels, but it's been a reset on like my mindfulness practice. And going back to the beginnings of that, and then just thinking about the ways in which a mindfulness practice helps us just think of things more clearly. It's interesting. You kind of think that meditation is like about how you become a guru on a mountaintop or something like that. But I've been reading and hearing some things lately that it's like it's not even about this nirvana state of an empty mind.

It's actually about more practical than that in some ways. And it's about like being able to navigate thoughts and like see things clearly. And I think that that's a tremendous gift that that is at our disposal right now to work through. And I think that kind of work on a personal level is what's going to equip all of us to kind of work our way through. And that's what we're seeing in the comment section, right? To take it from like a spiritual idea down to like a super, you know, absurd example. But before you might see all comments sort of unified, but now if you're seeing all these kinds of disparate voices, you're seeing like the fragmentation of people thinking their way through it in the past few weeks, you know, in 1992, rioting was bad or why would these people burn their own neighborhood?

Well, in Los Angeles, it was an update of 92. They weren't burning their own neighborhood, it was like a strategic move to burn non-black neighborhoods. The conversation that's happening with white people about like the difference between protesting, peaceful protesting, looting and rioting, that's an interesting conversation to have instead of just kind of like watching your TV screen glow in the night and like kind of like making assumptions. What an incredible year.

Hope you enjoyed this look in the rear view. Links to all the full episodes and the social media accounts for all the guests excerpted today can be found in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Parts two and three with a bunch more awesome excerpted conversations will be up later in the week. So Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. If you would like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media is of course awesome and always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page

at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis. Portraits by Allie Rogers and Davey Greenberg. Graphic elements, courtesy of Jessica Miranda. Copywriting by Georgia Whaley. And our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, appreciate the support.

Thank you for listening. See you back here soon. Until then, peace. Thank you.