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

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Meaningful conversation matters. Now more than ever. Allow me to indulge this truth by introducing Part II of my annual yearbook—a means to reflect on the past twelve months by revisiting some of the year’s most compelling podcast guests. It’s been an honor to share my conversations with so many extraordinary people over the course of 2020. Second listens brought new insights—and more reminders that these evergreen exchanges continue to both inspire and inform. For long-time listeners, approach this episode as a refresher to launch you into 2021 with renewed vigor. For those new to the podcast, my hope is this anthology will stir you to peruse the back catalog and explore episodes you may have missed. Guests featured in this second of three total anthology episodes (all hyperlinked to their respective episodes) are as follows: Andrew Huberman, PhD Margaret Klein Salamon PhD Will Bulsiewicz, MD Darin Olien Dr. Alan Goldhamer Julie Piatt Chris Burkard Laird Hamilton Blake Mycoskie Caroline Burckle The visually inclined can watch it unfold on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you for taking this journey of growth alongside me. The third and final installment of this series will post on New Year’s Eve day. Here’s to an extraordinary 2021. Join me, and let’s make it the best year ever—together. Peace + Plants, Rich

Gut health has never been as important as it is right now. There is a direct connection between your gut microbiome and the strength of your immune system. Our gut is where we are actually interacting with the things that we choose to put in our mouth and swallow down, basically indicating that we trusted enough to include it. And our gut is where our body is basically interacting with it. It's our place of most vulnerability. And for that reason, it becomes imperative that we take care and nurture a healthy gut microbiome. We're a super organism. We are carrying life within us. And they're a part of the story. And yes, they are completely capable of altering the cravings that we have.

capable of altering the cravings that we have. And it's important because it also means that if you change the microbiome, you will change your cravings, you will change your taste buds. You can't separate the two. Your brain's best friend is your gut. If you have an unhealthy gut, it is going to affect your brain. And if you have a healthy gut, you have a brain that is being optimized. That's Dr. Will Bolsiewicz, and this is part two of our very special Best of 2020 edition of The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Happy holidays, everybody. Welcome. I must say, it has been fun revisiting these conversations.

And part two of this anthology tradition does not disappoint. We're going to dive in in a sec. But first... in in a sec, but first... We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. 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 at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide.

Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, 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. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. 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 at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you.

Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, 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. I also should say that compiling this anthology every year is a challenge because I love all my guests and there is certainly no joy in leaving anybody out. So if one of your personal favorites is missing, I get it. Please don't at me. This is simply my way of trying to help honor all of you,

a way of saying thank you, all in the spirit of positive change. I do believe in the power that we all have to do and be better and to own and actualize our best, most authentic selves. So let's make that happen in 2021. And with all that being said, what better way to kick things off than by sharing the wisdom of Dr. Andrew Huberman, the most popular guest in the history of this podcast. The YouTube version of this episode alone has over 2.1 million views. This one is great. So who is this guy? Well, Dr. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist.

He's a tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. And he specializes in neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to reorganize and repair itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. So this is me and Andrew from episode 533. from episode 533. Well, I think that in terms of value of understanding the nervous system and where it can be steered, it's absolutely clear that the nervous system can change in response to experience.

So this thing we call neuroplasticity is really that. It's the brain's ability to modify itself in response to experience. And I think it's important to understand that from birth till about age 25, the brain is extremely malleable in a kind of almost passive way where kids are exposed to things

and the brain is just wiring up. I mean, the brain is really designed to adjust itself in order to be in concert with its surroundings and to optimize that just the way we described a minute ago. Like a way that a child can learn a language very quickly. Or three languages. Or play the guitar or something like that. Yeah, without an accent. Three languages without an accent.

It's remarkable. You try and do that after age 25, it's very challenging. And so the brain is basically designed to be customized in the early part of life and then to implement those algorithms and that circuitry for the rest of its life. And so the brain can change in adulthood and it can change provided that there's an emphasis

on some perceptual event. So in other words, if you wanna change your brain as an adult, let's say you wanna be less anxious, you wanna learn a new language, you wanna be more functional in some way, presumably. The key thing is to bring focus to some particular perception

of something that's happening during the learning process. And the reason for that is that there's a neurochemical system involving acetylcholine. And it comes from these two little nuclei down in the base of the brain called nucleus basalis. All day long, you're doing things in a reflexive way. But when you do something and you think about it very intensely, acetylcholine is released from basalis at the precise neurons that were involved in that behavior. And it marks those for change during sleep or during deep rest later. So for people that want to change their brain, the power of focus is really the entry point and the ability to access deep rest and sleep.

Because most people don't realize this, but neuroplasticity is triggered by intense focus, but neuroplasticity occurs during deep sleep and rest. And we can talk about how to optimize those different brain functions. One of the things that's really important, also think about how the brain works in terms of plasticity and all this stuff

is what the brain really wants to do is also pass as much of what it does off to reflexive behavior as possible. So when we're talking about focus, I think it can get a little bit vague, but it might be useful to think about like what exactly is focus and what triggers plasticity? So the brain loves to be able to just do things,

pick up coffee cups and drink and walk and talk and do things and not put much energy into it. When we decide to focus, what the brain really does is it switches on a set of circuits, the frontal cortex and nucleus basalis and some others. And it's trying to understand duration, how long something's going to last, path, what's going to happen, and outcome, what ultimately is going to happen. So duration, path, and outcome. You know, the events of early 2020 are a good example of this. One of the reasons why it's so exhausting to be alive in 2020 is because we are now having to pay attention to duration, path, and outcome. How long is this

thing going to last? You know, when are they going to open up all businesses? Did I touch that door handle? Does it matter? You know, who are the experts? Are there any experts? There are a lot of questions, whereas normally we can just move through life without having to do all that analysis. So if it's a simple example, like trying to learn a new language or a new motor skill or a new way of conceptualizing something, maybe somebody is in a therapeutic process and they're trying to work through a trauma or something like that, Duration path and outcome is built into the networks of the brain. We can do that very easily, but it takes work. And it almost has a feeling of underlying agitation and frustration. And that's because the circuits that turn on before acetylcholine are of the stress system. So when you or I decide

we're going to learn something and really dig in, norepinephrine, which is adrenaline, is secreted in the brainstem and in the body, and it brings about a state of alertness. Then our attention, which is mostly a diffuse light, is brought to a particular duration path and outcome analysis. This would be thinking about what somebody is saying. What are they really trying to say?

A hard passage of reading, a hard set of math problems, a challenging physical workout. When you do that, these two systems have to work very hard and the adult brain doesn't really want to change the algorithms it learned in childhood. But if you do those two things, you have alertness and focus, the acetylcholine and the norepinephrine converge to mark those synapses for change. So the way to think about neuroplasticity if one wants to change their brain is bring about the most intense concentration

you can to something and then later bring about the least amount of concentration of that thing. So I'll talk about that in a second, but there were some studies that were done at Stanford by a guy named Eric Knudsen that showed that plasticity in the adult brain, any age can be as robust as it is in childhood,

as fast and as traumatic. Wow. Provided the focus is there and it's all contingent on this acetylcholine molecule coming from nucleus basalis. So you say, well, how do you do that? How do you get it? Exactly.

Well, I've got friends that chew Nicorette thinking that's gonna get them there because Nicorette is a nicotinic acetylcholine agonist, but that's going to globally increase acetylcholine. So I always tell them that's not the right approach. The right approach is to bring as much focus to a behavior or to a thought or to an action pattern. And there has to be a sense of urgency. So what Knudsen lab showed and another lab at UCSF, Mike Merzenich's lab showed is that if there's a serious contingency, like in order to get your ration of food each day, you have to learn this thing.

The degree of plasticity is remarkable. But if there isn't an incentive, it just isn't gonna happen. So these circuits in the brain that mother nature set up are designed to be anchored to a real need. And people always say to me, well, should I do something out of love and a real desire to learn, or should it be out of fear?

But either one works. The sense of urgency is just acetylcholine. It's norepinephrine. That's all it is. The brain doesn't have a recognition of whether or not something is pleasurable or not until later. Once you start accomplishing your goal,

the reward systems like dopamine start kicking in. But I think if people are interested in modifying their brain for the better, at least some top contour understanding of how urgency and focus must converge for that to happen can be useful because I think there's a lot of attention paid to whether or not something feels like flow or whether or not it's the,

what I call highly desirable states or whether or not you can eat a plant out of the ground that will magically put your brain into a state of plasticity. And the answer is yes, such plants exist, but what's missing is the focus component. If that work is not done with a particular end goal in mind, you'll get plasticity mind, you'll get

plasticity, but you'll get plasticity in a kind of across the board. It's like learning a little bit of nine languages all at once is not going to make you speak coherently in any one of them. So focus is the key. Right. I mean, this idea of flow is so much in the vernacular now. And you know, my, my sense is that people are trying to measure their level of engagement against some sort of theoretical idea of what it's like to be in that flow state. And if they're not experiencing it, they feel like they're doing it wrong or they feel guilty or they beat themselves up. And for me, a lot of it is just hard work. Like right now, I'm trying to finish this book

and I should have been working on this book for like the last nine months, right? And I just couldn't get it together. Like it's a collaborative project. So there's a lot of different people that are involved in this and they've been working diligently, sort of daily, you know, putting this thing together.

And I've just been focusing on the podcast and been unable to immerse myself in this project because I know from past book projects, when I go in, I go all in, like the addict in me kicks in and it's like, it just becomes my universe. And I've been completely paralyzed from taking that on. And so I've dithered away most of the quarantine without

being productive on this project. And then about 10 days ago, we had a meeting and we established this deadline at July 10th to turn this thing in. And it was like a switch got flicked and I went all in and it's all I can think about now. And in fact, everything else feels like extraneous and a distraction. I just wanna get back so I can focus on this thing. And 10 days ago, I couldn't get myself into that position. And it's made me think about like, what is going on in my brain that,

it's such a drastic state change. And what did I do to switch that? Well, a deadline was imposed upon me and whatever happened neurochemically with that set in motion like a chain reaction of events that got me into the chair. And once I began the project, for me, it's all about like momentum, right? It's like getting to the starting line and beginning is so hard. Like I will just go forever without doing it. And then I'm in, and then I'm all in 110%. And I'm like, why can't I just, why can't I be that person who just worked on it,

you know, an hour and a half every day for the last three months? Well, I can offer some potential explanations. I can relate. And none of it involves a flow state. Right. It's all hard. Yeah, and you know, I'm friends with Steven Kotler.

I think flow, and I think the Cheeks and Mahai who originated this thing of flow is really interesting. But I say right now, the most we can say about flow mechanistically is backwards, it spells wolf. We don't really understand flow. People have come up with these theories. It's like hypo, hyperfrontality.

I haven't seen the data and I'm not picking on anybody. I'm putting that out there as a prompt for people to discover this. I think that, and to work on it. I think it's a really interesting, highly desirable state, but I think we need to get comfortable as a culture in trying to understand our species and how we work, that the early stages of hard work and focus

are gonna feel like agitation, stress, and confusion because that's the norepinephrine and adrenaline system kicking in. None of us would expect to walk into the gym and do our PR lift or, you know, a performer go do something without warming up. The brain also needs to warm up and start to hone in which circuits are going to be active. And it's unreasonable for us to think, oh, I've got an hour. I'm going to plop down and write beautifully for an hour of my best work. We need to accept that there's a period of agitation and stress that accompanies the dropping into these highly concentrated states. Next up is climate psychologist, Dr. Margaret Klein-Solomit. Margaret is a Harvard graduate, and she's the founder and executive

director of the Climate Mobilization, which is an organization dedicated to initiating a transformation of the economy, politics, and society to respond to the climate emergency. Here's a snippet from episode 535. Here's a snippet from episode 535. I do think attentional bandwidth is a real issue. But I also see a lot of opportunity coming from these two, and our reaction to them, um, with the central thing being just that normal is over. And I, I am very glad about that because normal was leading us straight to catastrophe. And, you know, we, this is, I think this is an opportunity to create a new normal with, for example, a green new deal as the stimulus that puts people back to work. And also the fact that the public has experienced an education about emergency situations, about

how we can act together in order to protect life and radically alter the economy in order to protect life. Yeah, just what is possible for an emergency response. Suddenly Congress comes up with $2 trillion. Suddenly everyone can work from home. Suddenly people don't have to fly across the planet. Like these changes are possible and they can happen very quickly. Uh, the public's also getting an education about exponential risk and exponential acceleration of existential risk. The fact that these things happen on a curve and you have to respond as soon as possible or else they can get away from you.

Hmm. Yeah. I think that's certainly a lesson that everybody is taking from this. And there's definitely this sense of being awakened from the sleeping self, I guess, on some level. And so with that, let's take it back a little bit. How did your awakening occur with respect to your advocacy around climate? I mean, I know it had to do with Sandy. So if you could just like, you know, tell that story, I think it would be informative.

So I came to New York City in 2009 to pursue my clinical psychology PhD. And Hurricane Irene happened, Hurricane Sandy happened or super storm Sandy. And as I was walking around my neighborhood in the days following and just seeing all of this destruction, so much, uh, damage, I, there was a car with a smashed windshield and someone had put a sign on it that said, is global warming the culprit? And when I saw that, it's like my stomach dropped, you know, because I knew. And that's what's so amazing with the climate emergency is there's so much awareness about the emergency and so little both discussion and action. So that sign helped me become actually aware of what I already knew, if that makes sense. already knew, if that makes sense. So yeah, the process of becoming aware of the emergency happened through those events, as well as for many years, I was in denial and especially had

practiced willful ignorance, meaning I knew that this was a scary situation. So I just would avoid it at like, sometimes I would read the first few lines of an article on climate and then say, oh my God, I can't handle this, you know, X. And, but as I was, you know, getting older and also through my own psychotherapy, I was just getting, you know, internally stronger and more able to not do that, to actually look at this. So my awareness was kind of growing, but what really changed my life from which there's like, it's a clear kind of before and after, and there's no going back is my good friend said to me, I was planning, I was very alarmed and I was planning to do some writing. I was planning to, yeah, be kind of a climate commentator and author. And my friend said to me,

don't start a blog. Discourse isn't enough. Think what could you do to actually solve this problem? And it was like my brain exploded because it's like it had, I had never thought about it like that. I was an academic. I was a, you know, yeah, a student at the idea of, I've been a little bit involved in politics, but not really. So the idea of, oh, actually try to solve this huge global emergency, it's just too big to think of. But when he threw down that gauntlet, I just realized, oh, that's it for me, right? That's the only thing that I want is to, as we say at the climate mobilization, cancel the apocalypse. And I've been on that mission for the past six years. Right.

And I've been on that mission for the past six years. Well, what's interesting is that you've been able to leverage this specific skill set that you have, you know, towards that solution. And when we kind of canvas the climate emergency, there's many on ramps here. You could have been a commentator, a journalist, a writer, an author on this subject matter in general. There's political battles that we can pick. There's technological innovation that can help solve this problem. But fundamentally, if you want to get to the root of what's arresting the level or the rate at which we can address and overcome these problems, it really does boil down to our psychological makeup and how we're thinking about this issue, because that's the true barrier towards us actually doing anything about it. You know, I come from addiction recovery and there's a certain

architecture in your steps that remind me of the 12 steps, specifically, you know, acceptance and breaking these chains of denial that are so important to solving any personal problem. But on top of that, I'm also like plant-based, I'm part of the vegan community, and I'm very aware of the various strategies that are deployed within that subculture to try to convince other people that becoming vegan is a good thing to do with varying degrees of success and failure. And I think in the Venn diagram, there's an overlap that's applicable to the conversation around environmentalism because your entry point and on-ramp is so relatable. It's not that we're not aware that there's a problem. It's the extent to which we're really

willing to face it and then translate that increased level of awareness into some kind of tangible action that potentially can actually make a difference. Absolutely. And I would just add to that, it's awesome that you're vegan and a leader in that movement. vegan and part like a leader in that movement that's obviously extremely important for animal agriculture and industrial agriculture is such a huge contributor to the climate emergency and just general ecological emergency and you know there's been such huge movement towards being plant-based and all sorts of meat alternatives going more mainstream. I mean, so that is a really exciting development. And the truth is there's lots of really exciting developments in the climate space.

Bicycling is resurgent and solar panels are continually getting more efficient and cheaper and new technologies are being created and so forth and so forth. But it's about scaling it all up at like by a thousand times. Something that only federal governments have the resources to do is the kind of system change. It's all there. It's all ready to go. We just have lacked the political will to implement it. And I agree with you that that is significantly because of psychological factors. And I think what the climate emergency movement is doing is intervening in that, realizing that our enemy is not just fossil fuel companies and their huge network and industrial agriculture,

but also denial, that denial and passivity are also enemies. 2020 was the year of the microbiome. Well, it was the year of a lot of other things too, but the microbiome is one kind of good thing that we thought about and spent a lot of time considering in 2020. So let's talk about it because Because Dr. Will Bolzewicz is here, and he is the gut health king. Dr. B is a lauded gastroenterologist whose life's work is devoted to better comprehending the mysteries of microbes and the crucial role they play in all facets of health. This is an excerpt from episode 538.

This is an excerpt from episode 538. In terms of the protocols that we should all be undertaking to, you know, buttress our microbiome, you're not necessarily advising a very, a specific type of diet other than to say plant diversity is king. Like this is, this is the vector of all vectors for you, right? So it's not about, oh, it's vegan or, I mean, it's a predominantly plant-based or plant-based diet, but the diversity of plants is really what's important in terms of making sure that you're doing everything you can in the interest of your microbiome. Well, I think the critical piece to me, so the book is called Fiber Fueled and that's because I feel like fiber has been this ignored superfood.

Well, it also needs a new publicist. It desperately needs a new publicist. You are that publicist. You are, yes. You're hired. I'm the guy. So yeah, no, I'm here to fight on behalf of fiber and get it back on the map and part of the conversation

because we've been ignoring it. And part of it is that we've been thinking about it as this orange drink that grandma stirs up so that she can poop. When in fact, it's incredible, the connection between fiber and our gut microbiome. Fiber doesn't just go in the mouth and shoot out the

other end. Soluble fiber is a specific sort of general category which feeds the microbiome. This is their preferred food. And when we give this to them, they consume it. They grow stronger. Our microbes actually multiply, grow stronger. And then they turn around and they reward us. And the way that they reward us is by releasing short-chain fatty acids. And these short-chain fatty acids have healing effects throughout the entire body. So we've been emphasizing a little bit the immune system. Short-chain fatty acids optimize our immune system. There are studies that we could talk about if you want to connecting short-chain fatty acids in terms of protection from respiratory viruses. They can have their effect in the lungs on the immune system. Short-chain fatty acids reverse leaky gut, which is dysbiosis. That is the root cause of these

digestive issues that I take care of on a daily basis. They directly prevent colon cancer. They lower our cholesterol. They prevent and reverse insulin resistance, which is type 2 diabetes. They travel throughout the entire body having their healing effects. We think that they can actually reverse coronary artery disease. We think that they can actually repair the blood-brain barrier for people that have brain fog. They actually travel into the brain through the blood-brain barrier, and they have their effect. They affect our mood, our memory. Believe it or not, we have studies that suggest that they prevent Alzheimer's disease. These are incredibly powerful. And the way that you get them is through the consumption of fiber in your diet. And here's the problem. 97% of Americans are not

getting an adequate amount of fiber in their diet. And that's creating issues for us. Everybody's worried about their protein intake, but they don't give a second thought to their fiber intake. 97% of people are fiber deficient. I mean, that's a shocking statistic. You know, and that's, well, and that's with both standards. I mean, the expectation or the standard that we're holding is 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men. And the average American is somewhere in the 15 to 18 gram range. And, you know, you see the problem exists, Rich, when we try to do academic studies looking at fiber.

And the way that we'll set the study up is we'll say, okay, let's take the high fiber consumers in the United States and compare them to the low fiber consumers. And next time you guys, if you ever read any of these studies, I mean, I'm a nerd, so I read these studies. If you ever read one of these studies, take a look at the high fiber consumers. Even the high fiber consumers are deficient in fiber. Wow.

Unlike the Hunza, which you talk about, right? Unlike the Hunza. Yeah, the Hunza, which is this tribe that lives in Tanzania, which is, they're fascinating because they are modern hunters and gatherers. They don't farm. They don't have organized agriculture. They live off the land. They eat whatever is available.

Yes, they eat some meat. But they eat mostly plants. And these hudza are consuming 100 grams of fiber per day. And critical piece, like, Rich, let me ask you a question. I'm just curious. So I know you eat a very healthy diet. If you had to estimate in a given week, how many plants do you think you have in your diet? Give me a general idea. Yeah. I mean, it's probably, I mean, it's going to be higher than most, but it can't be more than, I mean, 30, 40. Okay. And I would challenge the people listening at home right now. If you have to hit the pause button, take a minute and think about how many plants you actually have in your diet. Okay? So most Americans are definitely less than 30. The majority are around 15 to 20.

And the Hadza are consuming 600 varieties of plants in a given year. Right. Like 600. 600 because they live off the land. There are literally 300,000 edible plants on the planet. The problem is that we've narrowed it down to the point where 75% of our diet is from three of them. And we're ignoring this diversity. We've put pressure, unfortunately, on our farmers, where the farmer has no choice but to opt for high yield breeds of crops. And so we are narrowing down the biodiversity within our diet through our food systems. And so with the HUDSA, I presume that they have lower incidences of all of these chronic ailments as a result of this biodiverse plant forward diet. They have their challenges.

They don't live in the United States with the healthcare system. They don't have access to a guy like me, right? But when we actually look at their microbiome, what we look at is the diversity of species. Okay. So biodiversity is a really important word these days. And the biodiversity within your gut microbiome is a measure of health. The more species that you have, the more that your gut microbiome is resistant to sort of disturbances. It has all the different players that are available. You know, they're not all the same. They have different roles.

So when you have that diversity, you have all the pieces that you need. No matter what you throw at your gut, it's ready to step up and do the job. And so we want that biodiversity. And when we studied the Hadza and we compare their biodiversity within their gut microbiome to that of a person that's, say, in the UK, we see that they have 30% more diversity than a person in the UK. And I hate to break it to all the Americans who are listening right now, but we're even worse. They have 40% more biodiversity than we do. And the connection that's really important for people to understand, and frankly, if there's only one thing that you take away from this podcast listening to us have this conversation today, this is what I want you guys to hear. The way that it works is this.

Fiber is not just fiber. There are millions, if not billions of types of fiber in nature. It's so incredibly complicated from a chemistry perspective that we're not even capable of creating an estimate to how many types of fiber there are. But every single plant has its own unique types of fiber, multiple different types within that plant. Every single plant is going to have prebiotic fiber that feeds the microbiome. This is their preferred food, these prebiotic fibers. And the key is that they are picky eaters. They're like us. You have different food preferences than I do. Even though I'm sure that many people would label us as having the same diet, you eat differently than I do. We have our own preferences. And they do too. They have specific food preferences in terms of the different types of fiber.

To put it in perspective, take a black bean. You give these microbes a black bean, and there are certain specific species that are going to multiply and thrive, and they're going to be stronger and be more prepared to help you because you just fed them. They're energized. But the opposite is true. You take that black bean away. You say, I'm going black bean free. Those same microbes that were thriving because you were feeding them are starving and they're not getting what they need. And so, you know, Rich, looking at the HUDSA and comparing it to Americans and seeing 40% more biodiversity within their microbiome, that's interesting. That's okay.

That's cool. But to me, I wouldn't write a book based upon an idea. And that is not enough for me to say with confidence that the most important thing for our gut microbiome is the diversity of plant species. I need something more. And where you find it is the American Gut Project. The American Gut Project is the largest study to date to take our diet and lifestyle and connect it to the biodiversity within our gut microbiome. It is actually an international study, even though it's called the American Gut Project. They have people who are participating from over 40 countries from around the world.

And there is no study more positioned to answer this question. what is the number one predictor of a healthy gut microbiome? And when they analyzed this, it was clear cut. The number one predictor of a healthy gut microbiome is the diversity of plants within your diet. And so when we set off this question, you said, well, you're not necessarily ascribing to a specific diet. Well, here's why. So I'm vegan, you're vegan. Okay. But in this study, diversity of plants was more powerful than being vegan. Because if you are vegan and you eat the same 10 or 15 foods every single day, you are not feeding your microbiome. And there are alternative diets that you could do where if you really focus on diversity of plants within your diet, you're going to feed your microbiome and do a better job. So to me, it's not about the label

that we apply. It's about understanding the concept, which is that it's critically important to the health of our gut microbiome that we incorporate as many different varieties as possible. And in the American Gut Project, the line that they drew in the sand was 30 different plants per week. That doesn't mean, by the way, that there's a magic difference between 30 and 29, or that 35 isn't better than 30. The point is we want as much diversity as possible. And that's the critical piece. All right, we're back in it. Hot on the heels of Down to Earth, the number one hit Netflix series in which he co-stars with Zac Efron, my superfood hunting, Barucas slinging brother from another mother, Mr. Darren O'Lean,

once again graced the show on episode 542. Here's a slice of that experience. Of all the places that you went, what was your favorite episode or location? I've only watched the first three, so. Oh man. I know. You're gonna cry. I'm unprepared. That last episode, you're gonna cry.

Is that the one where your house burns down? Yeah. I cried. Both on the show and off when I watch again. But it's hard to know because they each had this own special place. I think, I mean, Iceland, just from a personal perspective, I wanted to just explore infinitely more. That certainly was.

And then you go to Sardinia and you see the true village life, centuries old, this simple way of living, which is flying right in the face of everything that we've grown up with. And yet we're trying to reach back to it, to give us the gems so that we can live long. Yeah, everybody in the village dating back 500 years

can be traced to just five families, I think, right? Yeah, yeah. And we both got to, one got cut out, but I interviewed this hundred year old lady too. And I literally could sit there all day. The wisdom, the just pouring out of these people, not that they are eloquently giving you the meaning of life, but there's these simple, it's this, it's almost like

powerful contentment that you just don't feel from anybody. It's just this, I haven't left my village. I have this one lady that I interviewed that wasn't on the show. She's never been married. And I said, really? You just, I didn't think about it. What do you mean you didn't think about it? She was like, I just was living my life and I didn't think about it. I didn't feel like I needed a man. And so it just never happened. And I was like, wow. Like she didn't buy into anything because her village was also not impressed

upon these made up ideologies. It was, this is the simple way of living. I'm content in such a degree. I'm blowing apart things that we think we need to accomplish. Yeah, and what is the half-life on those experiences, right? Like you've had many of these over the course of your life, but then you come home, how much of that sits with you

and changes how you live on a daily basis versus, you know, fading away. Like that's the trick, right? You go and you're like, we got it all wrong. Look at what these people are doing. And then we go back and then we just do what we always do. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, largely I've, I mean, you know,

I'm pretty, I'm pretty content in my, in my now year that I had to construct after the fire and on the land and under the trees. So on one respect, all and every trip that I've taken has influenced me into the kind of life that I want. whether it's education, inspiration, connecting things and making certain things possible to contribute to things that I think we need to on a bigger scale, whether that's health, whether that's the environment, that's the wrestle. So I have a huge desire to contribute in that way.

I wouldn't say I'm content with that because it's driving me, but I'm content in saying yes to it. It fuels me through, you know, going back to like the population of people loving the show. I look at it as like, yes, keep coming. Keep coming to what I'm doing. Keep coming. There are things that I'm creating that I can't reveal yet, but I am not stopping. And I'm not okay with sitting in Swayalo, in Sardinia, becoming 100 years old.

Right, that's not gonna work for you. No. That's not your blueprint anyway. It's not my blueprint of the blue zones. But I think that's also the contentment of finding you, finding me, finding what drives me, not from an ego perspective, but from the heart of everything I want to do. And it really comes down to two very simple things. I care about the health of people.

I believe a healthy person has more choices and can really kick ass in their life and not have to drag around this body and then be kind of this victim of a body that's failing. So I believe in health of the individual, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. And I believe in the intimate connection and the health of the planet. So if we can contribute in those ways, anything else, you know me, anything else, I just don't care. Well, I can't let you go without leaving people with a couple of things that they can take with them.

The show did such a great job of talking about a lot of the stuff that you care about in a very macro sense, like we go to Iceland and we see how they're generating sustainable power, but it's like, all right, well, what can I do? How do I translate that into something actionable in my day-to-day life? So I think it would be great

through the lens of sustainability and personal health to leave people with a couple simple practices that they could think about and perhaps integrate into their lives that would help them? Well, I think that's more clear. Thank you. And I think more clear than ever, people need to be healthy. They need to stop distracting themselves and eat more plants and figure out a program that's going to work and get healthy because we need strong people to do that. Give me a little vegan bicep flex right now. There you go, come on, dude.

So we need strong, healthy, happy people, non-judgmentally kicking ass in their life. And I really believe that's the purpose of health so that you can kick ass in your life and have the fulfilling life you want so you're not miserable with a chemistry set that isn't working. So find a different way.

If it's your app, if it's my app, the 121 tribe, if it's finding a group of people, even online or whatever that you can move and explore and just find recipes that work, eat better, hydrate yourself. Without a doubt, that's the easiest one. I think environmentally, and it may feel like people have heard this before, but single-use plastic, my God, we need to stop. People have heard this before, but single-use plastic, my God, we need to stop. Quit buying cartons and containers and water bottles that you're literally just using and throwing away. Unless you have a technology that you're able to use pyrolysis and break down the plastic and turning into fuel for your Tesla, which actually exists.

So I'm mentioning it for a reason. Unless you have that technology, stop using the single-use plastic. Do everything you can. And this goes hand in hand to that is start being aware of the unsustainable business practices of companies and big companies and support and maybe pay a little extra money for your food, for your conveniences, to support companies that are doing things right, supporting companies that are being transparent with what they're doing and what they're offering. And that is absolutely something you can do right now and demand that. Support those small, of course, right now, support the small businesses right now. And if anything, I know so many more from all of them reaching out from the show that there's great people doing incredible things that people don't

know about. So look at your dental floss, that glide dental floss that is creating, putting toxins in your liver by this chemicals of PGAs and all of this other, stop using that company because that company doesn't give a shit about you. Use a bamboo string or whatever. Like that's literally what I'm saying. Stop the toxic exposure to yourself and your life and support companies that are actually giving a shit about you. I think those are a lot of things that we can do to put attention on what needs attention and stop putting your hard-earned money and attention on companies that don't care and have never cared. How does one effectively transition to a healthy diet?

Well, according to Dr. Alan Goldhammer, a great place to start is with fasting. An iconoclastic pioneer in his field, Dr. Goldhammer is the founder of True North Health Center, one of the first facilities in the world that specializes in medically supervised water-only fasting. We had a great conversation. So here are a few of his thoughts lifted from episode 541. Walk me through the experience of this journey that you see with the typical patient. I mean, you're demanding a lot of them. They're going through something they've never done before. What is that like for that individual when they're on day three, day 10, day 30?

Yeah, so the first few days of fasting are actually the most difficult because you're adapting off a glucose metabolism into a fat metabolism. So the brain is changing fuels from burning sugar to burning largely beta-hydroxybutyric acid, which comes from the ketone bodies from the fat breakdown. So there's an adjustment there. You're detoxing oftentimes a lot, although we've learned to minimize the effect of detoxification

by getting people to eat a fruit, vegetable- only diet for a few days before we start fasting. That's made a huge difference. So they're not coming off caffeine addiction at the same moment that they're trying to adapt to the fast. They've already gotten that stuff out of their system. And that's actually the most difficult stuff, getting the cigarettes, the caffeine, the alcohol, all the meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, processed foods,

all the host of chemicals that people are putting into their body with over-the-counter prescription medications. So we've gone through a weaned down process and then we start fasting. And their mouth may coat up and taste like something crawled in there and died. And they may have some skin rashes or elimination, they may get mucus discharge, they may get some vivid dreams, they may have aches and pains and they may have difficulties with all kinds of adaptive process, but they go away.

And then something else comes along and then it goes away and then it becomes very empowering because they realize that they're able to get through this process, that just because they had a headache doesn't mean they have to rush out and try to suppress those symptoms with a pill. It goes away, the body is able to heal itself. And then once you get into four or five days of fasting, the body is pretty well acclimated to the fasting.

At this point, there's no hunger. People are going to cooking demonstrations. They're coming to lectures. They're going to the dining room to socialize with people. They're five days, ten days into a fast. You think, oh my God, you haven't eaten for ten days? No, I just enjoy being there. That's crazy.

Not a problem. So then depending on the patient, sometimes they start getting relief. Their pain, maybe for the first time in years, the pain that they've been suffering with is going away. And they may find that, you know, some people have these chronic debilitating problems, start resolving, things start falling off,

tumors start shrinking, They start getting excited. Like, oh, maybe there's something to this idea of the body healing itself. And, you know, we're monitoring these patients to go through the process. And then at some point you get to the point where there's a limiting factor. Maybe their electrolytes start to drop a little bit

or their energy is not acceptable. They're not able to maintain accurate ambulation or maybe they've just got, that's how much time they've got. Cause you know, some people have jobs and lives and responsibilities. So we only have so much time here for 40 days. So my life completely craters on the outside.

But for many people, this is an intense epiphany experience because they've got this intense education that they're really open to. They've seen these other people, sometimes what looks to them like miracles going on. Cause they're seeing people that they have no expectation that that could get well, getting well. They're experiencing themselves sometimes for the first time

a sense of empowerment because they're able to actually reverse these processes. They were told nothing could be done, learn to live with it. What do they expect at their age? That's just how it is. And now they're thinking, wow, if they were wrong about that, maybe they're wrong about other things too.

And they start looking at all aspects of their life. The empowerment aspect of it has gotta be huge. Like even if you set aside all of these physical benefits that are a result of this, simply the fact that they did something that seems impossible, very, very difficult and get to the other side of it has to sort of make them feel like,

okay, now nothing is impossible. Like I just did this thing that almost nobody does. Now what's the next challenge that I can tackle? You know, the idea is that many people think that if you fast, you die. They believe if they got on a plane in New York and they were to fly all the way to California, they would die over Colorado, except they ate the peanuts. You know, that the pretzels saved their life.

What do you eat when you fly? And somehow if you fasted for 10 days or 20 days, sometimes the idea that you might have to skip a meal because there was nothing healthy to eat, doesn't seem quite so overwhelming. There's definitely empowerment. And I think that the other thing that happens is when you start feeling what it feels like to be you instead of what you'd become, that's very powerful.

I think the same thing happens to athletes. When people first start exercising at first, it's not pleasant. They got aches, they got pains, they're fatigued, they're not getting the success, they can't do what they want. But as they do it, they get to the point where not only do they tolerate, they're not just doing it because they want to maintain the weight or get the figure or whatever it is, they're doing it as they start realizing they're getting real intrinsic benefit

from engaging in this consistent activity. And now they don't want to give it up. And I think the same thing happens when people really get into a healthy lifestyle. They don't want to go give it up and feel like everybody else feels because of some greasy, slimy, convenient food. They're willing to pay the price of trying to do the planning and do what it takes to try to ensure that they can get their needs met. Just like I think people that get into a regular exercise regime

realize that now this is so beneficial, they will literally structure their schedules around making sure that that's an important part of their activity. And the same thing happens with sleep. When you realize how important sleep is to health and maintenance and energy, you start prioritizing that and you don't compromise your sleep, you don't compromise your exercise, and hopefully you learn to not compromise your diet and lifestyle.

I tell people, here's what you need to do. First, get enough sleep because it's your most critical activity. Then engage in regular exercise so you can dissipate the tension, you can build fitness and have the time to prepare and eat healthy food. If there happens to be any time left, well, fine, you go to work. And so what we're encouraging people to do is a really radical departure from what they're currently doing,

but that's to adopt a whole plant food diet that's free of this added chemicals, free of the salt, oil and sugar. And what you're left with is things like fruits and vegetables, raw or cooked, minimally processed greens, beans, nuts and seeds. But you don't have the meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, oil, salt, sugar, and highly processed fractionated foods that make up the majority of the people's diet in industrialized society. And it's that diet that makes them fat and sick and develop the disease of dietary excess. And that what makes you vulnerable to infectious disease.

You know, when you look at what are the vulnerabilities about why does some people get an influenza or a COVID or an infectious disease and you know, they recover, they survive, they have minimal consequence. Other people it's devastating or deadly. Well, if you look at the risk factors associated with what makes people vulnerable to these diseases, as well as the disease, the chronic diseases,

the heart disease, the cancer, the stroke, it's the same metabolic syndrome and all of its associations. It's the same obesity and diabetes and high blood pressure and all the consequences of dietary excess. These are reversible and preventable conditions. People don't have to have these conditions. And even if they have them, they can largely reverse them by taking responsibility to control what they put in their mouth. Look, it just wouldn't be a best of episode if I didn't give a shout out to the

ever wise and always ethereal Julie Pyatt, aka Srimati, my best friend, my in-house spiritual guru, the co-founder of our children, and the sole founder of Srimu, the next evolution of plant-based cheese. Here's some wisdom from this accomplished and beautiful artist, entrepreneur, and radiant human. Well, let's shift gears a little bit. We have a little bit of a show and tell here. If you're watching this on video, you can see like all this plant-based cheese here. But before we even get into the latest with Shreemu, I think one thing that gets lost in your story

as somebody who's been on this podcast a million times and is always sharing, you know, deep thoughts and, you know, these spiritual practices is the fact that, and you alluded to it a minute ago, the fact that you're like this serial entrepreneur and always have been, like you're a powerful business woman, like setting aside Shreemu, which we're gonna get into.

I mean, you had this garment line for years and years and years, like pre-internet where you were doing direct to consumer before it was a thing and you had this robust interior design business. Like you've had a lot of chapters in your business career that have delivered you to this place to, you know, create this new venture that you're working on right now. So I thought it would be cool to share that side of you a little bit, because that, I don't know that we've really fully explored that on the podcast.

Yeah, cool. Thanks for that. It's kind of interesting to hear you describe me like that. Thank you so much. I receive that. You're a startup founder. I kind of am. No, I actually am. You've had multiple startups. Like there's a whole career, decades of experience that you garnered doing difficult things in the business world and succeeding and failing and trying again. So when you look back, when you reflect on those experiences, you know, what did you learn that has informed your approach to, you know, Shreemu and what you're doing now? Well, I mean, I think what I've learned is that in order to create something that's very powerful, the vision has to be very unified, like very, very true and very real. So I knew when I was creating Shreemu, it was sort of had to be this expression of

beautiful design, highest quality, purest ingredients, and really done in the way where I consider Shreemu to be a beauty brand. We haven't seen it. There's more going to be coming. Cheese is leading, but it's really a beauty brand. I'm offering Shreemu as an invitation to a beautiful life. And that beautiful life comes from eating a high vibrational not cheese product, which I call the next evolution of cheese. So I'm not asking us to give up our love of cheese. I've just made it better. So it's better for our health, our bodies. It's better for the animals. It's better for the planet. And it's ultimately better for our children. And so for me, you know, meeting Brian O'Hara, who is the amazing artist who did this coding, which I have these tattoos

go out with Shreemu shipments. And this coding, Brian has written backwards and read backwards his entire life. And so he developed this branding for me. This says devotional offering. This is what is within this coding. And it's part of my label and my brand. And so I guess for me, it's like I had to start at the peak of the artistic expression, knowing that this is a global brand. And I have over 40 recipes of cheese where I can tell you anyone that ate them would be falling on the floor in ecstasy or being very excited about the flavors. But Shreemu now is at the top of that.

And then as I go, there will be more mass products and there's many more aspects of the business in the vision. So perhaps I'm overestimating how aware the audience is about what you are doing at the moment. It probably is worth providing a little bit of background. So you co-authored a couple of cookbooks with me, which were really your cookbooks. Like my name is on them.

Let's just be honest. You know, if we're being honest, like you in solidarity with my decision to go plant-based and train for these races, you showed up and infused our kitchen with a tremendous amount of creativity to initially to support me, but then it became its own creative inspiration for you.

The result of that is everything that we've co-created together, including the Plant Power Way cookbook, the Plant Power Way Italia cookbook, which is a nod to the retreats that we do where wecreated together, including the Plant Power Way cookbook, the Plant Power Way Italia cookbook, which is a nod to the retreats that we do where we take these groups of people to this beautiful agriturismo in Tuscany and have a seven-day experience of food

and meditation and community. And in addition to that, you authored another book called This Cheese is Nuts. You became obsessed with trying to figure out how to create plant-based cheese. And this was many years ago, this wasn't yesterday. And you basically went into the kitchen, treated it like a lab and set about cracking the code

on trying to create like the next evolution, the next level of what a plant-based cheese could taste like. Because at the time, there were plenty of brands in the store, most of them not so good. Most of them taste kind of the same, relatively bland. And you thought there's gotta be a better way to do this. And over many years and a lot of experimentation,

you really figured, I have to say, like you completely figured it out and you created this book, which basically tells people how to do this themselves at home. You continue to iterate and learn and experiment and grow. And then it got to this place where people were like, well, I love the book,

but I'm just never gonna do this at home. Like, can you just make, cause you would make it and we would bring it to dinner parties or we would share it with friends and people would just flip out. Like they would just lose their minds. They just couldn't believe that there wasn't dairy in this cheese. Cause this isn't just, this isn't like American slices of cheese. This is like high end, very fine artisanal wheels of cheese that are reminiscent of the Parisian flavors that you're so familiar with, whether it's a brie or a camembert

or those kinds of exotic, very cheesy iterations of cheese. And people would say like, I'll buy it, I'm too busy, I'm not gonna make this. Will you just make it? And you were like, I'm not gonna do that. But then it dawned on you at some point, I'm interested at what that point was where you just decided, okay, maybe I can do this. And you set about like creating this line of cheese called Shreemu, which is now a full-fledged startup. We're going to get into

what's happening currently with it, but you've turned it into this really beautiful direct-to-consumer product line. Yeah. So, well, it took... Super proud of you. Yeah, thanks. I mean, it took... First of all, I mean, I have friends of mine that live in Paris half the time, Lucy and Jan Welters, and he's a fashion photographer, she's a stylist, and they eat French cheese. They speak French, their kids you know, they eat French cheese. Like they speak French, their kids speak French. Like they live in Paris half the time and they were freaking out over my cheese. So they would just be, you know, inhaling it saying, you have to make this, you have to make this. And, you know, I took a long time. You know, I have to say I had a lot of pain over what I attempted or what I experienced with Julie Pye Collection.

And I was like, I know what production is. I'm not at a loss at what that is. And I started to sort of meditate on what it would take to launch this food company. And quite frankly, it's a lot simpler. It's a lot more direct. And it has a greater capacity to make a global impact that will be a legacy for me. I mean, something that would actually transform people's lives from within their kitchens. And I've done that with my cookbooks and I know that food is an energy, recipes are an energy.

And I believe that when I infuse these recipes with my love of source connection, that this somehow makes it into whoever is eating the food. And so with Shreemu, the vision was to make a beautiful brand that was crafted in devotion with the best ingredients and was made with the purest intentions. So truly, truly made for the purpose of supporting animals, supporting creating more love on the earth, supporting our bodies. I have a very sensitive stomach. I can't eat dairy. I can't eat a handful of nuts. I mean, I can eat dairy, but I have a stomach ache after. So let's be clear, you know, before when I wasn't vegan. But even if I eat a handful of nuts,

I have a stomach ache right away. So working with these cheeses and curing them and soaking them and adding the cultures and processing them, I never had a stomach ache any of the time. And I was absolutely stunned at the quality of cheese experience that I've been able to create. And the reason I think that I was able to create it is that I literally worked on my own in an experience of exploration and I just went for it and tried things. There were a lot of fails before I figured it out, but I've really figured it out. Yeah, well, a couple of things.

The first thing is there were a lot of people who said, well, why don't you just go to the farmer's market and set up your booth and like sell it? And you're like, I'm not doing that. Like I did a version of that when I had my fashion line. I'm not interested in that. I'm only interested in creating something that I can scale. And secondarily, there's this idea

when you raise the issue of like a plant-based cheese, people immediately think fake cheese and their mind turns to all these processed you know, processed chemicals that a lot of these companies use as binders to create the flavor and the texture that people are used to with cheese, right? And that's like a hurdle that you've had to address and overcome because there is none of that in what you do. I mean, there's actually very few ingredients in this product. Yeah, they're very pure. This is not a gooey, creepy vegan cheese that tastes horrible that you wanna gag.

It's very pure and authentic. And I think if I, you know, what I've learned as a designer, you know, you asked, what did you learn? Well, I think what we learn as designers or painters or fashion designers or writers is you get to a level of maturity where you understand that less is more. In fact, it's the simplicity

that makes something extraordinary. And so if my recipes stand for anything, they stand for the ability to be simply showcasing what mother nature provides with some alchemy and design and flair and definitely taste, but it's really in the simplicity of what is done and trying to preserve purity in the product. Yeah. Convening with Chris Burkhardt, photographer, filmmaker, world explorer, accomplished endurance athlete, and dirtbag surfer extraordinaire was just everything I thought it would be and so much more.

Definitely 2020 highlight for me. Here's a portal into Chris's world. I'm really delighted to meet you. I've been a fan for a long time, have so much respect for your work, not just your work, but like how you live your life, how you comport yourself. your work, not just your work, but like how you live your life, how you comport yourself. I'm excited to unpack all of it with you today, man. And I've also said this before with people who have, you know, a social media presence, there is that sense that you feel like you know somebody. I definitely have that with you, but it's different. I do feel like a level of connectedness to you that I don't have with other people, even though we've never met. And I think that speaks to what I think is your greatest talent,

which is that you're a storyteller. You're always telling stories and you do it in a way that, that is really brings people into your experiences and makes them feel like they're right alongside with you. That means a lot. I mean, that's really the goal. I mean, if there's a way to compromise this entire life story into one sentence, it's like, I really wanna tell meaningful stories. And it's a funny thing not to dive straight in, but that started with just my immediate family,

my mom, my dad, right? And then evolved now to millions of people. But the reality is like the, I think the effort and the intimacy is the same. Like I oftentimes, you know, can be at fault for wanting to share too much because I just really enjoy bringing people into what that experience is like and being honest and real as much as you can in this day and age. Well, there's a tension there because everything that you're about is about being present in the moment and really immersing yourself in the environments that you're in. But to share that

is to take you out of that experience, right? So how do you like wrestle with that aspect of what you do? That's so hard. There's boundaries that, that I think life creates, um, in just in general with how we, how much we can share, how much it's, it's available to people, you know, and then you have this whole, you know, kind of, I think issue nowadays of like the relatability and people understanding you and everything's gotta be so like, you know, synthesized down to like very straightforward terms and how you say it because you don't so like, you know, synthesized down to like very straightforward terms and how you say it, because you don't want to, you know, offend anybody nowadays. But there's a rawness and a realness to, I think, bring people out on the road and bringing people with me into those experiences. And I think if anything, I've really relied upon my wife as a guiding source of that.

relied upon my wife as a guiding source of that. And also, I think just understanding that, you know, and this is a funny thing, because I, to be honest, I kind of hate talking about social media in many ways. I've always seen it, but I also love it, right? So I've always seen it as all it is, is a glorified texting platform. And you have this beautiful opportunity to get to know the people that you're communicating with. You know, it's not this thing where you're just opening the door to someone's house, blurting out a message, then before they have the chance to come to the door, you just close it, right? Like there's this reciprocation. And so I feel more than maybe most really tuned into like the needs, the questions, the ideas, what they want to see. And then a lot of times that can in many ways direct almost like the projects, the stories, the things I want

to tell. I can adhere to the needs of young parents because I'm a young parent and it's a scary thing and it terrifies me every day. And then making films or books or whatever that can address these things or addressing climate or environmental issues. But through my lens, I guess kind of to get back to the core of that question, I feel like learning to listen to what the needs of this audience is, because that's really who you're serving, right? Like as a person who's putting work into the world, you're trying to serve a broad group of people. And obviously you can't do it perfectly, but you're trying to kind of tune into those who really understand you. Yeah. You know, to your point about social media, I mean, you're a guy who,

you've got like, I don't know, 4 million people on Instagram who follow you, which is insane, right? And that has to induce some level of vertigo, right? Like, how do I manage this? And how do I, you know, shoulder the responsibility of communicating at such a mass level and in trying to deconstruct like how you got to this place where so many people are interested in experiencing, you know, life through your lens. There's a lot of really technically talented nature and adventure photographers out there who are doing amazing things. So why is it that you have 4 million and somebody else who's, you know, perhaps equally technically skilled has, you know, a middling size audience. And the only answer that I can

come up with is really your superpower, which is this capacity for bringing people along and the humanizing storytelling aspect of it by, you know, capturing these austere environments and translating the meaning of that through, you know, your emotional landscape in a way that connects with people that makes them feel like, you know, as I said at the outset, like I feel connected to you because of your ability to storytell in that way. And that means a lot. And I appreciate that. And I would just say that with that, like I aim, I've realized early on in my career that I really prided myself on trying to document experiences, sports, places, locations that felt approachable, that felt accessible. And yeah, occasionally I'll shoot somebody, you know, highlining through an

eclipse or a moon or something just off, you know, crazy. But for the most part, like I'm just a, you know, five, eight short dude with no athletic background who gave the time and commitment to something and did it. And I want people to realize that absolutely, I am not the most technically sound photographer. Absolutely, I'm not the most creative. I'm just the person stupid enough to commit themselves to something enough to see it through. And I think that's always been my strength and that's always been my goal. And I want others to understand that if they come from an impoverished situation, they come from an unlikely situation. And if they're willing to work for it, they can be in the situation. And I think that's kind of been something I've prided myself on is trying to tell stories that

feel approachable, trying to tell stories that feel real. And with this bike ride, again, it's like, that's a real and or approachable story that people can relate to. And whether they want to be in that situation or they just want wanna root along the sidelines, like that's a really awesome experience to share with somebody. The vulnerability of how we present ourselves online is I think so important for people to understand and relate to.

And I've really tried to put emphasis on what I say as much as what I share visually. That being said, we're in this day and age where it's so easy to just strip some beautiful quote off the internet or tell people that the mountains are calling and they must go. And really that means nothing. Like this is the place you make your own quotes. The books, the films, the social media, what have you. This is the place where you tell people what it felt like to be there. Because to be honest, you only do people a disservice by describing what they can see in the photo. You have eyes. This is a visual platform. You have to engage

with it visually. I don't need to tell people that it's cold and the person's surfing in cold water and there's mountains. And guess what? We're in Norway. I need to tell you the visceral experience of what it felt like to be there because that's all I can offer. Because as a photographer, as a storyteller, what did it feel like for the snow to hit the back of my neck? What did it feel like to feel the crunch of it under my feet? What did it feel like to push the trigger of the camera? What did it feel like to document this moment and why? And so I think that in many ways, those are the questions I'm seeking. And whenever I'm doing any,

like, again, whether it's taking a picture, whether it's making a film or speaking or riding a bike, like I wanna share those things because that's, I think, what people connect to. Next up is the legendary master of the big wave, Mr. Laird Hamilton himself, water sports pioneer, and one of the world's greatest athletes. Laird graced the podcast back on episode 564, teaching us that to be human is to push our limits, to seek out fear, and ultimately approach our lives as art. Here's a glimpse. I want to talk about water and your relationship

to water and the ocean. Like I'm, in certain respects, like a different kind of waterman. I'm a swimmer. I grew up swimming. Swimming is my passion. And it started in pools. And I've done interesting things in the water, like monofin swimming, things like that. And now it's about ocean swimming. And then I got into ultra endurance triathlon and all of that. But I have a very deep and emotional connection to the experience of being in water and underwater that overlaps with yours a little bit, I would suppose. So I'm interested in how you think about your relationship to the ocean and how you articulate what that means. Well, first of all, that's my grand master, right? Like if you said, who's your, people say, who do you look up to or who's you, who do you, you know,

who influenced you? I mean, I'd have to say that the ocean probably has had the biggest impact on shaping, you know, the way I behave more than any, any one person, except maybe my mom, because she birthed me and she had a huge influence, of course, but the lessons that you learn from the ocean, the relationship that you have with it, it just, it covers so many things. And I know that, you know, my reverence for the ocean, just my reverence for its power, its beauty, you know, its magnitude, like it's just the massiveness of it. And it's our space, right? Like the ocean is our space on earth. Like if you want to know what space is like, you just go to the ocean and that'll tell you what you can go the edge of the space or you can go deep into space.

But that gives you, in my opinion, that, that gives you, it was a great escape for me when I was a kid to, to leave kind of the, the, the cares of the land behind you and all the worries and all the stresses. When you're underwater, all of that gets muted, right? And it's just between you and the elements. Yeah. And maybe just a giant shark that may be lurking in the distance. There's always that in the back of your head, like, hmm, let me see. I'm not a big fan of swimming out in the middle of the ocean with a mask that you can't see very well, but, but the, but you know, so I think I, I, you know, so the, so the, the relationship with the animals in the ocean,

with the way, just with the, with how it makes you feel like, like it, like the therapy of the, it's like being back in the womb. It is, you know? Yeah. And you get healed from it. Like you can go and be in the water. And, you know, now we get all these science, I say science follows instinct, but, you know, you get, you have these ideas like, hey, this really, like I go there and I feel different.

Everything's different. Then they get some data and they're so like, yeah, well, that's because you're getting negative ions and the thing and you're grounding and your compression and all this stuff. But Andrew Huberman shows up and validates what you've been telling yourself for 20 years. No, it's true. It's true.

And that's kind of, I mean, that's pretty amazing in this time, you know, in the world that we can do that, that we're getting to do that. But it seems like your instincts, you know, your gut instincts and your intuitions and all those things, those serve you right. And I think there's a karmic thing. I mean, obviously the ocean is the most conductive element on earth. And so, you know, sound travels through it, sound waves, but also wave energy, what we ride. So, you know, and I know like karmically, whenever I'm in the ocean and I have some negative thoughts or some feelings or something, I usually just pay instantaneously.

I crash, the wave comes and hits me and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. I was supposed to, I gotta shed that stuff. I gotta clear my mind. Again, like a deeper level of humility. I mean, there's this idea that you're conquering these waves. You're not conquering these waves. You're trying to exist in symbiosis with them. Harmonious.

That's how we talk about the harmony. Riding the wave is an act of harmony. You're trying to be harmonious with it. You don't conquer waves. You have the fortune to ride them for a moment and be part of them. And, you know, if everything goes right, but yeah, you don't, there's no conquering the ocean. No, and I, you know, my sense is that it gives you this deep appreciation for the natural world, right?

It does. Like I've had Alex Honnold on here, I've had Killian Jornet and like the themes, you know, it's just this, this like the majesty of nature is just so profound when you're, you know, it's, it's just this, this, like the majesty of nature is, is just so profound when you're, you know, in the midst of trying to do your thing in harmony with that harsh, natural environment where the stakes are very high. The observant, you know, being observant. I think that's, even today, like I was at my house and there were some hawks that fly by my house and just,

and they come and, you know, and the more aware you are, it seems the more connected you become to it. And all of a sudden it's almost like they come over and say hi to you and you're like, hey, how's it going? They go, and they turn away. And I mean, you could go, yeah, okay, the hawk. But did the hawk, I mean, you're connecting with the hawk. The hawk came and, but you have to be observant to even see the hawk, but did the hawk, I mean, you're connecting with the hawk, the hawk came and, but you have to be observant to even see the hawk. Then you have to actually put the energy

and the thoughts to, to the hawk in a way that you, that you're, how you're observing it and what you're, what it means to you. And that happens with the dolphins that happens with the, you know, the whale that happens with all the, the, the creatures of creation and ultimately nature. I mean, nature is just, it is creation, right? So we talk about creation, the great creation, well, nature's creation. So, so you get to observe it. And I think, I think being aware of it, being aware of the sunrise and the sunset and the movement and all that stuff connecting to it allows you a deeper relationship with it.

You just can't, because you can't have this deep relationship without it, without connect, without having the, you know, the observation and being aware of all these things. As you become, the more aware you become, the deeper that relationships become. And then the more it shows itself to you. It's like people talk about going on these journeys and reconnecting with nature. And I'm like, if you're already connected, then that's not going to be so profound. It's like people talk about going on these journeys and reconnecting with nature. And I'm like, if you're already connected, then that's not going to be so profound. It's just that so many of us have grown so far away from, hey, it's hot. I'll turn the AC on. Hey, it's cold.

Turn the chill on. Hey, it's dark. Put the lights on. Hey, it's bright. Put the shades on. It's like we're insulating ourselves from it. And, you know, and obviously the ocean is the king because it's alive and moving and has, I mean, all the things it can do,

just freezing and liquid and steam. And just, I mean, we just, it's like the un, you know, the unexpressible element. It just has too many. And still so mysterious. Mysterious. You know. Mysterious. Mysterious.

But on the hawk example, I mean, I think the hawk example to me is an illustration of the fact that no matter where you are, you're still in nature. Like we have this bifurcated idea, like right now we're not in nature. Like if we need to go down to Point Doom to be in nature, but we're in nature right now. Oh, absolutely. We're always in nature. And we always have that opportunity to be more connected to the environment and the energy and everything that's going on if we can be still and observant. Amen. I think that that's one of the things that will help everyone, will help humanity the most is if we can continue to, to re because we have it right. We have a, we have an ability to really be, be connected to nature in a way that, that we don't, it's so profound. We don't even fully understand it. The depth of what we're, we're capable of and what we, and the depth of that

relationship. Cause you know, I always, you know, we are it and it is us. I mean, we're, we're so, you know, if you think you're not connected to the sun, if you think you're not connected to, you know, everything and you're not, and it's not you and you're not it, then that's, you know, and that's the big separation right now. And it seems that in the present that, that we've been, we've become so insulated that that's, what's leading to people being, you know, either depressed or having physical ailments or whatever it is. A lot of it is because they're not fulfilling, I believe, they're not fulfilling, you know,

this void, which is what nature was fulfilling. Like nature was filling this void in them through just even observation, even just looking and connecting that way is filling this. And then all of a sudden you have this void and then you're just putting stuff in it that the body, you know, and the soul and everything can't connect to. Probably not a lot of, not an epidemic of anxiety and depression in, you know, indigenous tribes that are, you know, dealing with survival and connected fundamentally to the world in which they live. You know what I mean? None. There would be none. No allergies either. On top of that, to engage in, you know, the high risk kind of adventures that, you know, light you up, gives you, you know, it puts you in this contact with the fragility of life or

what death means that I think enlivens your daily experience, right? Like, how do you think about risk and death? Well, I mean, first of all, I think is the most honest way you can live is to know that dying is very easy and you can die any minute. And then how would you conduct yourself? You know what I mean? And I think for me, that's a daily challenge and a weekly challenge and a monthly challenge and a yearly challenge is this, to always have that kind of awareness that death is ever present. And then the truth is that right now, death has a name and it's walking around and it's

affecting people severely because their relationship with, is so insulated through just the way life has become that it's, we're not living honestly like we would if we were out in nature being threatened constantly by stuff, then we'd be, our awareness would be so heightened. But I, you know, I, I feel that you don't know what being truly alive is unless without that relationship to that edge, you know, to knowing where that edge is. Like when you're a kid, like, hey, where's this place where, you know, where do you fall off? It's just a big, it's if you take the evolution of what's dangerous when you're a little kid and you grow into a mature adult, then you go, okay, well, that's the same relationship. It's just everything's become, the scales have become bigger, but it's still honest. It's just so honest. I know for me, it makes me a better person if I go in those situations and in the environments

and around the strength of it, the strength of vulnerability, right? The strength of true vulnerability. And, you know, the highest end of vulnerability is death, right? I mean, there's all kinds of vulnerability, like, hey, get your feelings hurt. And, you know, the tribe might accept you, public speaking. I mean, people fear that more than death because they're worried about acceptance. So vulnerability, right? Being vulnerable. And that makes you just feel so alive. And that's honest. That's it. Most famously known as the founder of Tom's Shoes, 2020 granted me the opportunity to sit down with social entrepreneur, philanthropist, changemaker, father, and seeker, Blake Mycoskie. That was episode 561, wherein we discuss his extraordinary career, his unique spiritual perspective, and how it applies to everything from business to opportunities to personal growth. I woke up one day or a series of days and didn't really think that my future was going to be better than my past.

And that's a really scary place to be in. I think that leads to a lot of mental health issues and devastating situations for people. And it wasn't that I didn't like my life or my situation or my business, or I wasn't proud of what we accomplished with Tom's, but I realized that if we, anyone, and me specific in this situation,

if we are looking to external accomplishments, external praise, anything, anything, even your kids' love for your sense of peace and joy, ultimately you will realize that it doesn't work. And that is a really scary place to land. And that's where I landed. I had accomplished everything.

I'd been on the covers of every magazine. I'd helped, you know, at that point, 80 million children get shoes. I'd made hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, I literally had kids. I had everything that I possibly could have been told was the key to not just a happy life, but actually a meaningful life.

Like I, you know, it wasn't like I, you know, just chased after like the, you know, these hedonistic pleasures. And it wasn't just a company that was profit above everything else. Like there's such a built-in massive service aspect of what you were doing, which you would think would buffer you against that.

But actually I think it in some way made it worse. Well, the guilt and the shame of feeling that way. That, but also there was nowhere to go. So if you think about it, if you had a traditional businessman or woman and they built a huge company, made a bunch of money, had all this and they realized, it's really not what it's cracked up to be. Now I can be a philanthropist.

And so they can spend the next 20 years doing that. But I'd already done that. And I realized it wasn't any better than, you know. And so I reached a point where, and there's this amazing teacher who I love named Sad Guru. I don't know if you know Sad Guru. Yeah, I do. But we got to spend some time together. We have a very shared passion for golf and we've golfed together and he's stayed at my house in Wyoming. And he said that in the yoga sutras,

there's this one book and I forget which one it is, but the very first line is, and now yoga. And what that meant to him as he explained, cause he knows quite a bit about my life story is that moment was when my yoga really started. It was, I had to accomplish all those things. I had to do all of that in my life to realize that the joy and the peace and the sense of connection to the great mystery

that I've been searching for would never be found in those external things. And that's when I could start my yoga practice. Yeah, to reframe it as an opportunity, but ultimately to have to basically experience all of that on the grandest level in order to understand fully that it isn't the solution, right? Because anybody who's listening or watching,

they're like, screw you. Myself included, there's a little bit of that, but there's also like, yeah, maybe he says that, but that's not gonna be the way it is for me, right? And it's like, it doesn't matter how many successful people sit across from me and tell me their version of that exact same story. It always holds true, right? And yet it's so difficult to wrap the human mind around that. Like, how could that possibly be true? Because it's so contrary to everything that we've been

hardwired to believe since as long as we can remember. Totally. I mean, I actually had a very prophetic conversation where I was told this was gonna happen. And it was by Ted Turner. So I looked up to Ted Turner a lot as an entrepreneur. As I said, I read all every biography and there's a few great ones on Ted Turner. And Ted Turner had some similarities with me. He started an outdoor advertising company

before starting CNN, started a network. I lived on a sailboat for six years. Ted Turner was a huge sailor, won America's Cup. Started a cable TV channel. Started CNN. So I was asked to interview Ted Turner maybe seven or eight years ago at the UN. And I got to spend the morning with Ted Turner.

And he was a real hero to me. So like, this was a really special experience. And so I spent, you know, just months preparing for this interview and read every book again. And, you know, I was really excited to do this interview with Ted. But right before we went on stage, we're having this conversation. And Ted said to me, he said, you know, we're talking about life. And he said, you know, in life and in business, especially in business, it's like this ladder. And it's not like the corporate ladder like you're about,

but it's like this ladder of like believing that if you climb up this ladder, that at the top, there's something magical and something that's going to give you everything that you've ever wanted. And as you start to climb the ladder, you see this beautiful bag on the top of the ladder. And you can only think what's in the bag

when you get to the top. And he said, I spent so much of my life climbing that ladder to get a peak into that bag. And he says, and I've seen inside the bag. And of course, at this age, I was like, maybe, I don't know, I was 38, 40 years old. I said, what's in the bag? And he goes, I'll tell you what's in the bag.

The bag is empty. And even though I've told you, you still need to climb the ladder and look for yourself. He knows well enough to know that just him telling you that ain't gonna do it. And I'll never forget that conversation with Ted. I mean, it was one of the most beautiful life, like when we watched the movie of our lives,

it will definitely be in the highlight reel of my life because he told me, he said, he saw me, he saw himself probably in me and saw exactly the path I was on and wanted to tell me, but also wanted to tell me that I still had to go down the path. So was there a specific moment where it dawned upon you or was it a kind of a slow realization?

Slow realization. Did you pick up the phone and call Ted? I've arrived. I've arrived. And the bag is indeed not full. It's not full. No, it was really more of a slow process. And I think that in a lot of life transformations,

I think happens, you know, kind of over time, you know, I think things just start losing their luster. You start losing a little bit excitement or energy around things. You start realizing that something's a little bit more shallow than you realized before. And over the cumulative effect, you start just to energetically wake up and not have that same passion and enthusiasm and optimism that you built your life around.

And that can be a pretty scary place. So, yeah, it was over time, over about two-year period of time for me. The things that were holding me back was not paying attention to the little things in my life, the internal things. I was so externally focused that I wasn't really taking care of myself, not just in some of the traditional self-care ways, you know, we kind of spoke about the beginning, but some very specific practices that there have been,

you know, kind of double placebo studies at universities show have a benefit on how people's energy levels are, how their sleep is, or their, you know, kind of mental outlook of the future being better than the past. And so what I found was, even though I tried so many different things and met with so many different people,

what made the biggest difference was actually working on the simplest things and just like really dialing in some simple things like the power of my breath or spending time in nature and why that's important for my brain or how your mindset can change through neuroplasticity. And those little simple things that I worked on is what had the biggest effect. And over time is that really started to kind of give me

and ground me in feeling like I was more in control with how I woke up and felt every day. That's what led to, and I think it's where the disposition that I had that caused me to start Tom's like, okay, how can I help as many people learn this too? Because there are a lot of people, I mean, out there suffering. I mean, you can read any headline in the news now

and you see that we have more people on antidepressants than ever in the history of America. And you know, more people taking sleep aids just to get a night's sleep. I mean, we are as a society suffering and having experienced some of that suffering really motivated me to, you know, wanna do something to help people not have that suffering if it's not necessary.

Yeah, 100%. All right, let's land this ship. We're gonna do it with one of my favorite people, Caroline Burkle. Caroline is an Olympic swimmer. She's an empath, an artist, a beautiful human, a changemaker on the forefront of shaping and protecting our next generation of youth through her work with Rise Athletes. Consider episode 565, a playbook in the Power of Vulnerability, Listening to Your Body, and Ultimately Finding Your Voice.

about my worth as a human being and my body and my, like I was just tired. I just needed to get away. Like it was so exhausting to always feel like I was like an object of, or a project or, you know, something that I couldn't, I couldn't figure out how to find my love for it again. So like, why not just run away? I don't wanna keep trying and forcing this if I'm just gonna feel angry at it. And that was my reason for stopping. I was tired. I was tired of what was going on. I was tired of feeling like I was just,

like I said, this object or this project or not enough or needed to be somebody for these coaches or these people. I just like wanted to be. And it was such a powerful feeling within me that I was just so tired of that. And so I just ran away. And that's when I had a lot of different things happening. Right.

But I fully ended my career on a very intense, like bodily feeling that I had to go. Right. Like I had to go, like it was just too much for me. And also like I got out what I put in that I got what I came for. I did what I wanted to do as a little girl.

You left it all on the pool deck. Yeah. But oh, I just feel it in my body when I talk about that. Yeah, I can see that. That moment was so powerful. It was, I was sitting on the side of the pool and I was ending this thing. It's like, you're breaking up with this thing

you've been with for 25 years or whatever. And it was just this, this is how it is. This is how it's gonna end, just kind of petering out in a local meet. Yeah. And subpar performance. Yeah, subpar performance, really not good. And proud of myself for continuing,

but I just wanted to prove myself. And when I realized that I just didn't need to be in it anymore. I needed to find something else and I knew that I could, and I knew that I could be rebirthed in my life. And I had that feeling that that would happen. I just didn't know how. I had no idea how, I had no idea what I was gonna do. I had no idea what I was gonna do. So that process of, you know, on some level, reliving those experiences or just, you know, emotionally confronting them. I mean, that's required if you're gonna heal, right?

Like you've gotta walk through that process. So what was the methodology or the technique? Like, was it a specific, like is it behavioral cognitive therapy or what kind of vein were you exploring this in? So it's called Somatic Experiencing SE and Peter Levine started it. I don't know if you've ever heard of Peter Levine.

I feel like you would love this field, by the way, if you kind of dive into some of the SE stuff and more of the- Well, I had Andrew Huberman in here talking about some of the techniques that they use, like with the way that you move your rapid eye movement and stuff like that, and how that helps you rewire some of your neurochemistry.

Exactly, so you're basically rewiring your entire nervous system to think and to feel something different that you haven't ever felt before. And your body is gonna wanna not do it. You know, you're not gonna wanna do it. So half the time we have to stop and start over, but it's a lot of rapid eye movement stuff.

It's a lot of like, would be like ventral things where you're like holding different parts of your body. You recount, you say the event again out loud and she like take notes on what parts of your body were tensing during that process. So that you can then on what parts of your body were tensing during that process so that you can then realize what parts of your body you're holding onto that trauma and then you do work on like releasing that area and letting that go because that's real i mean it's stored in specific parts of our body minor hips and feet and like lower extremities. So that's a big part of it.

Also just essentially, like I did a lot of like actual active work. So when I would go in with Sarah, I would stand on the opposite side of the room. She would stand on the opposite side of the room. I would walk a little bit closer and she would do certain things to like come toward me or act a certain way. And whatever happened, I would have to stop and explain what that, what showed up for me in

that moment or like what happened. And it's, I mean, there's days when I would just be like, like just sobbing my eyes out. But like the whole point of this is to let your system get rid of it so that you can then create space for it to rewire. So you have to start by like sweeping, like getting rid of it, bringing it up, letting it out and then rewiring it. And so now I'm like, I see her like once a month. It's, you know, so we've really weaned down, but you know, rewiring.

At your peak, how often were you having these sessions? Three days a week. Oh really? I was like, well, I'm either gonna pay for it now or pay for it later. So I'm sick of running. I was sick of my own bullshit.

I was sick of getting injured. I was sick of seeing all these symptoms pop up when really the issue was that I hadn't chosen to heal myself. I had chosen to run. I had chosen to continue to follow the same pattern I did since I was a little girl. And it's just, where can I run?. I had chosen to continue to follow the same pattern I did since I was a little girl.

And it's just, where can I run? What can I do to just not be seen and just make everybody happy and do all these things? Like, no, I need to choose myself for the first time in a really long time. And I can't make excuses anymore. I can't just be like, oh, this happened to me. It's like, no, it's not working for me anymore.

It's super powerful. And I love how basically, you know, your life directed you towards this by stripping you down, right? This was your divine moment. Like you were being compelled to confront this one way or the other. And had you continued to be in denial

or refuse to engage with this, you know, some kind of therapeutic process, your life was gonna continue to decline. Like your body was gonna continue to break down. It just was a matter of how much pain are you willing to sit with before you're actually gonna engage with this and like grapple with these issues.

And here's the thing is, as women, as men as well, that you pass on everything that you have not healed. Your system and your cells actually hold trauma and they will actually continue to carry that on. I don't wanna have children

and pass that on to them. I don't wanna be harboring resentment and anger and all of it and pass it on to the next generation. I don't wanna do that. So I sort of view my purpose in life as being able to heal so the next generations can continue to heal, regardless of if I have my own children or not. That's my whole mission is how can you create space for people to know that they're able to be whatever they can be if they can really work on healing their mind and their body together.

It's possible. It's just weird for people to understand at first. It's not, it's nuanced. It's not to the forefront. It gives the work that you do so much more resonance now, like with Rise Athletes and these young athletes that you and Rebecca are mentoring. Now that you've undergone this experience,

like there's so much more depth to what you can convey in these relationships. And everything has started to make sense. It's all been the same thing. It's just shown up in all of these different ways and different places, which I think if we look at our lives and we see a thread tied through them, it's usually that thread is one thing that everything keeps mirroring whatever it is in one way or in one direction or another. So for mine, it was this people-pleasing thing

that needed to be fixed. But then as it started to heal, it was this people pleasing thing that needed to be fixed. But then as it started to heal, it's this mind body thing where, okay, your whole life has been surrounded about being a feeler. So now let's use that to your advantage instead of using it as you can only please people. Let's use it as a way to be in this world as a way to change and make change.

What a relief. What, and it finally all made sense. I was like, I'm not weird. I'm not weird. It's just who I am and that's okay. And I don't need to apologize for it anymore. And what a gift that your body broke down or that you had the traumas that you had so that you were given the opportunity to confront this

because short of that, you can live your whole life kind of babysitting these character defects on the back burner, but nothing severe enough ever happens that compels you to look at it to the deep extent to which you have. So ultimately you become this stronger, better person because of your pain. Yeah, and I've had some people ask me things like, the deep extent to which you have. So ultimately you become this stronger, better person

because of your pain. Yeah, and I've had some people ask me things like, well, what if nothing's really happened to me to where it's like allowed me to see certain things? You know, it's like, I know they're there, but nothing's really happened to push me into that place. That's like really bad to where I need to figure this out. And it's a great question.

And I don't necessarily know that it has to be that way. I think what we- It makes it easier. It makes it way easier. The thing people ask me that question, I'm like, I don't know what to tell you because like I just was in so much pain. I didn't feel like I had any other choice.

That choice is available to all of us at any moment. It's just harder to make that choice when you're not suffering. Because who wants to do that kind of work? Suffering really does lead harder to make that choice when you're not suffering. Because who wants to do that kind of work? Suffering really does lead you to that. And if you feel like you don't need to, it's like, I got shit to do.

And so I guess the only thing that I could really think to say to someone in that position is like, maybe you're just trying to think about it too much. And you really have to see what your body is telling you because our bodies are actually giving us so much information that we completely ignore. Good stuff.

Hope you guys enjoyed that. 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. The third and final installment of this anthology series will be up by New Year's Eve. So you have that to look forward to. If you don't feel like going out, you can't go out anyway. So might as well tune in. If you would like to support the podcast in general,

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and other subjects, you can 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 show was created by Blake Curtis. Portraits by Allie Rogers and Davey Greenberg. Graphic elements, courtesy of Jessica Miranda. Copywriting by Georgia Whaley.

And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, appreciate the support. Thank you for listening. I will see you back here in a couple of days with part three of our best of 2020. Until then, be well, peace, plants, Namaste. Thank you.