The Rich Roll Podcast - Dublin Live: Cultivating Community with The Happy Pear

Episode Date: September 7, 2018

This episode features the audio from a live event I hosted this past summer at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin with Stephen & David Flynn of The Happy Pear. Long-time listeners will well remember David and Stephen from #RRP 233, one of my most popular episodes of 2016. Since then the lads have made two subsequent appearances on the show in episodes 331 and 380. For those newer to the show, The Happy Pear are the joined-at-the-hip identical twin brothers behind a family run chain of natural food stores and cafés in Ireland as well as a line of organic, locally harvested plant-based food products available across the UK. The face and voice of Ireland's quickly growing healthy food revolution, the twins are omnipresent on social media and the bestselling authors behind a series of runaway smash-hit plant-based cookbooks, including The Happy Pear* (of course), World of the Happy Pear*, and their most recent release, The Happy Pear: Recipes for Happiness*. Today's exchange opens with an extended monologue on the power of decisions by your truly. Extends to embrace the innate power we all possess to change and grow. Pivots to the importance of community. And opens up to audience Q&A on everything from healthy eating habits to how best to catalyze change in others. I talk about the power of decisions. The importance of community. And the fact that we are all capable of positive change – and how to be a beacon to catalyze change in others. This event inspired me to host more live experiences. At home and beyond. If you're in favor me taking the show on the road, I'd love to hear from you. I sincerely hope you enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich

Ultimately, self-care is the ultimate selfless act, because when you invest in yourself, your own personal development, your self-care, you then step into a better version of yourself, because you cannot serve others unless you serve yourself first. But we need to remember that we are a holistic organism. There is no physical and mental. These things are integrally intertwined. That's me, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, people. How are you guys doing? What is happening? How are you?

My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Pull up a chair, get comfortable, relax, which might be a little bit challenging if you can hear all that street noise out there. I'm in New York City, so there's not much I can do about that. Delighted to be here doing all sorts of things, not the least of which are collecting a few amazing podcast conversations.

I just came from interviewing Yuval Noah Harari, who you may know as the author of Sapiens of Homo Deus and a brand new book that came out this week called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. We had an amazing exchange. I also interviewed Knox Robinson, who is a runner and running coach. He's the founder of a running collective here in New York City called Black Roses New York City, NYC. And that was a really dynamic conversation about running culture. So you have both of those conversations to look forward to in the near future. But today, today's episode is lifted from a live event I did when I was in Dublin this past summer with our good friends, Stephen and David Flynn of The Happy Pair. Now, at this point,

most of you are already quite familiar with these guys who are at the very center, epicenter of Ireland and the UK's healthy food movement. If you are new to the show, you can listen to their previous appearances on the show in episodes 233, 331, and 380. I strongly urge you to do so. This episode features a little bit more from me, including a bit of an impassioned monologue up top and at the very end. And of course, some great wisdom from the twins and plenty of audience Q&A. And there's a few more things I want to say about the episode to come. But first, we're brought to you today by recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, so this live event covers a lot of ground and topics. I talk about the power of decisions, the importance of community, and the fact that we're all capable of positive change and how to be a beacon to catalyze change in others. We talk healthy eating and lifestyle habits, how to stay on track. We talk about authenticity. We talk about love. The twins love to talk about love. And we field a wide variety of audience questions. So, without further ado, this is me, David, and Stephen Flynn, live from Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin.

Welcome to Smock Alley Theatre. Thank you so much, all of you guys who showed up tonight. My heart is just exploding. I had a chance to meet a lot of you before the event, and I'm really thrilled to be here tonight to share the stage with the lads, the boys themselves, the super twins, Dave and Steven. So thank you, everybody, for coming out tonight. Yeah, thanks.

Give yourselves a hand. So it's a super honor to have Rich here, it really is. He was here to do a talk the other day, so it's really amazing to have him back here and share his message. He's an amazing speaker and articulator and someone that's inspired us so much and I'm sure most people here. So I think what we'll do tonight is Rich is gonna do he's gonna tell a story for maybe 20 minutes or something and I figure at this stage Q&A is the most relevant because then it gives context to everything. So I think to have it that everyone can ask questions to Rich or us or whoever

and then it makes it much more context and we can, does that sound okay? I want to hear from you guys too. Yeah, okay, we can talk whatever you can say. Yeah, cool. So yeah, exactly. Like I'm going to share a little bit, but what I really want this to be about, and we kind of talked about this beforehand, is to make this an inclusive experience and we want to make it about Q&A and kind of orient this evening around community because at the end of this event all of you guys are going to go home hopefully you'll be a little inspired you'll have some takeaways and some information some things that you can incorporate into your own life to

improve your own life your health your nutrition and all that kind of stuff but ultimately the way that we're going to shift culture is through community. So before we even start, I want everybody here to look to their left and look to their right and introduce themselves to whoever's sitting next to each other. I love it. That's amazing. Hopefully, you'll make some new friends tonight, exchange contact information, stay in touch with each other,

because truly, you know, and this is what the boys are all about, it's about cultivating community, because alone, we can't make the change that we all seek. We're all like-minded people here tonight. We're all here because we have, there is an alignment of values around healthy living and nutrition and diet and exercise and all of these things that I love and the boys love. But ultimately, we're here tonight because we want to be able to catalyze that kind of change, that kind of activation in as many people as possible.

And we can't do it by ourselves. It is through you guys and the example that you guys set in your families and in your communities that is really going to make that shift. So again, I urge you guys to get to know each other here tonight. So thank you for that. I'm going to stand. I'm just a little more comfortable standing up, and I'm just going to share for a couple minutes who here listens to my podcast. So cool. Fair number of you. All you people that are not raising your hands, I'm confused, but we'll get into it on a one-on-one basis later. I have a running joke with my wife, Julie. How many of you here have listened to podcasts that I do just with my wife, Julie?

So a little fewer of you. We have a joke. And I'm very, like, organized, and I like to prepare, and I like to know what my talking points are every time I go into a podcast conversation. And my wife doesn't function that way. Like, that is just not how she operates. are every time I go into a podcast conversation. And my wife doesn't function that way. Like that is just not how she operates. Like she just shows up and like whatever is channeling through her, her, her being happens to be what comes out. And I've learned to trust that because that ends up

being the perfect thing, but it requires me to let go a little bit. And this evening, David and I, and Steven and I had a couple conversations leading up to tonight. We're like, well, what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? What are we going to talk about? We're like, yeah, we should get together. We should really figure that out. And then we just had three more conversations that kind of went like that, and then we never really decided what we were going to do. So I am trusting my vessel to channel through whatever happens to come to me tonight, right? So bear with me. But what I wanted to focus on this evening,

I mean, I've told, I've gotten up in front of groups of people, I've told my story. I gather that most of you kind of already know the basics of my story. So I wanted to kind of set that aside and focus on just a couple germane points about my story and my experiences and what I've learned. And what I've come to discover in speaking with groups of people is that the essence of my experience, what I've discovered and how I've grown can really be boiled down to basically a couple really key core decisions that have changed my perspective, my experience and really have deposited me into this place

where I get to get up in front of people like you and give talks. So I wanted to focus on those decisions. When we talk about decisions, I mean, we all make decisions. We all make thousands and thousands of decisions every day. But I think in the making of all of those micro decisions about how we're kind of navigating our careers and our families, you know, our loved ones, we tend to overlook or forget to pay attention to and to really cater to the biggest decisions, the decisions that really are the Archimedes

lever on how we're living our lives in a very macro sense. And in my case, like my first big decision was when I decided to get sober. It was actually almost exactly 20 years ago, June of 1998, when I woke up out of a blackout in rehab, which I can tell you was not the plan for my life. It wasn't what I had in mind when I embarked upon my career, but alcoholism really got the better of me, and it really brought me to my knees. It deposited me into a place where I was alienated from my friends and my family. I was unemployable. I was untrustworthy. My elevator had gone all the way to the bottom, and I was left with no other avenues to pursue other than the one that I wanted least, which was to actually get sober. But that decision to stop drinking, to quit drugs and alcohol, was really this huge decision,

as obvious as it was at the time, because of course I knew I was an alcoholic and I knew that I needed to stop, very obvious and basic and simple, but quite profound when I actually made that decision and followed it up with consistent action over time. And as I was walking around Dublin over the last two days, you're very welcome for the Los Angeles weather that I brought to you guys, you can thank me later. It's so great to see so many people outside just so enthusiastic about the sunshine and I know it's you know it's sort of a rare thing here so everybody is so exuberant about it and it's kind of shocking to see people

at the pubs at like 10 o'clock in the morning you know and as an alcoholic a recovering alcoholic I'm like oh my god you know it kind of looks good and maybe I can have a beer you know it plays tricks with my mind but ultimately I can kind of think my way past that, and I just have this profound sense of gratitude that, like, I don't have to go to the pub, that I don't have to medicate myself, that I can be lucid, that I can be present, and that I can share the experience of sobriety with others, you know, 20 years later after, you know, with others, you know, 20 years later after, you know, a long road of personal growth to get to this place, but super grateful to be lucid and to have made that profound decision at that time. The second decision that I made was around food, was around nutrition, was around self-care,

and when we're talking about these big decisions, self-care is a big one, right? In our busy lives, we're focused on trying to do a good job at work. We're trying to do a good job for our boss, for our fellow employees. We're thinking about how we can cater to and serve our families, our loved ones, our partners. And when we get to the point of thinking about taking care of ourselves, self-care, basic self-care, a basic human need, we tend to overlook that because it feels indulgent, it feels unproductive, it feels a little bit lazy even. But ultimately, self-care is the ultimate selfless act because when you invest in yourself, your own personal development, your self-care, you then step into a better version of yourself

because you cannot serve others unless you serve yourself first. My decision around self-care and food and nutrition happened after a decade of workaholism in the wake of getting sober where I was trying to repair all the wreckage of my past to become once again a respected, responsible member of society. And I was successful in that. But by the time I was 39, I had like all the good stuff. You know, I had a fancy car in the driveway. I had a really successful law career on the partnership track at this law firm where I was working. I'd

met my wife. We built this beautiful home together. I had all the shit, all the good shit. I was golden on the outside, but on the inside, I was still dying. I'd come a long way since getting sober, but there was still so much about my personal growth that I had been overlooking. Self-care wasn't part of the equation, because I was trying to achieve something external. And it all came to a head shortly before I turned 40 when I had this episode on a staircase, walking up a simple flight of stairs in my bedroom, where I had to pause.

I was winded, out of breath, tightness in my chest, really fear in my heart that I was on the precipice of having a very serious problem with my heart. Heart disease runs in my family. And it was a very crystallized, specific moment in time that reminded me very much of that day that I decided to get sober. And I was able to appreciate, I had the awareness to understand that once again I was being visited with another opportunity to make a profound decision, another Archimedes lever that could really shift my life experience. And in the wake of that, that's when I reframed my relationship with food top to bottom. I ended up adopting a 100% plant-based

diet and that revolutionized my health, it restored my vitality, and really reminded me of the words of Hippocrates said so long ago that I'd learned in and that revolutionized my health, it restored my vitality, and really reminded me of the words of Hippocrates said so long ago that I'd learned in school but never really paid attention to, which is that food truly is medicine. And by reframing my relationship with food and recapturing this sense of vitality, I was able to then channel it into other areas of personal growth. It's not just about the food. It's not just about the restoration of health. It's what you then do when you're revisited by that sense of vitality. How can you channel that to live your life

with more purpose, with more fulfillment, and ultimately in the service of others? with more purpose, with more fulfillment, and ultimately in the service of others. In my case, I started getting fascinated with the potential of the human body because I had been able to repair mine in what seemed like a pretty rapid fashion. And I started to think about other areas of my life that I'd been blind to, other areas of capability, untapped reservoirs of potential that I'd just always ignored. And that's really what lured me into the world of ultra endurance sports because it seemed like this incredible template in which to explore my ongoing development not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. If you read my books or you

listen to my podcast and you know I went on to perform well at these crazy Ultraman races and Epic Five where I did five Ironmans on five Hawaiian islands in under a week. It's all very well documented, but I think what gets lost in the kind of narrative around that is that for me it really has never been an athletic journey. It's always been a spiritual journey. It's not about what I could make my body do, how I could perform physically. It's what I learned along the way. It's the lessons that I learned along the way and how I then incorporated them in my life to reframe how I live on a day-to-day basis to build back in more of that fulfillment, more of that purpose. The third big decision that

I made in the wake of those experiences was a decision to take these experiences that I had and channel them for the betterment of others. In other words, a decision to make my life about service. So the theme, the sort of vibe that I want to set tonight, how we kick this off, it's about community, right? It's about community. And for me, what has given my life the most purpose and the most fulfillment is taking what I've learned and what I continue to learn through the podcast and these amazing guests that I've had on is extracting from all of these amazing people the lessons that I can then use to better my own life,

but in service ultimately to everybody else. And in making that decision, about making it not about me, but about my guests and the other people that I have on my show, that has enriched my life in ways that I can't even begin to explain. It has been the largest, the most impactful Archimedes lever on my

on my life on a day-to-day basis. So I want to wrap this up by saying that we cannot underestimate the power of these core decisions to really move our lives in fundamental ways. So my call to action is for you to develop a sense of awareness, a presence, a mindfulness about how you're navigating your day and your lives on a daily basis, to try to understand, to have the vision, the ability to see what areas of your life you have been blind to and what big decisions lay out there for you still to make. And in the making of them them to start to put together

the actions that can really transform your lives your lives in profound ways and then to then share what you've learned in service to others so tonight is about food it's about nutrition it's about healthy lifestyle it's about vitality but again it's about community. So whatever you learn tonight, take it home with you, share it with your friends, share it with your family members, and together let's cultivate greater, more in-depth community around these ideas. Because there is a whole world out there, we're in our bubble here, we are the healthy eating, you know, fringe in this room tonight, but there are a lot of

people out there that are still suffering and suffering terribly. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, as Henry David Thoreau once said, and I think about that quote all the time. So many people are leading lives that are unfulfilling. They're in jobs that don't serve them. They're not taking care of themselves physically. They're medicating their lack of enthusiasm for their life with food, with drugs, with behaviors that are leading them further and further astray from their truest, most authentic self. My story is about the search for that better, more authentic self, and I think that's a worthy journey for all of us, and it's something

that is available to each and every one of you. The changes that I made in my life are forged through pain, but the truth is, change is always available to everybody. You know, people say people don't change, and I think that's bullshit. I see people changing all the time, all the time. Change not only is possible, it is your prerogative, it is what you have been put here on earth to do, because we all need all of you to be more of who you really are. So that's my big speech tonight. Thank you. if oh he's buying time okay so what do you want to talk about okay

okay we're not going to tell any stories but we do lots of talks and we usually kind of wrap them up with our five tips for happiness because ultimately you know I've got two daughters Stephen has three kids they're not together

they're separate obviously but ultimately we all want to be happy. You know, underneath everything, happiness is, we all want to feel good, we want to have energy, we want to have vitality, as Rich was saying, and we want to feel, you know, a sense of community and feel good in ourselves. So I guess we've been, we've started our business 14 years ago,

and here's five things that we've learned that kind of make us happy and make us feel better in our own skin. Beautiful. Thanks. thanks okay point one uh the only research in ireland is that eight out of ten irish people do not eat enough whole foods or fiber don't get enough fiber the equivalent in the states is 97 of the u.s population don't get enough fiber and fiber i guess i'm speaking to the converter because most people probably here eat a whole food plant-based diet but for those who don't the equivalent statistic in the states men between the age of five and fifty zero percent were eating enough fiber so fiber really important nutrient most people think it's just for going to

the toilet it is definitely but there's more to it fiber really important for weight loss which most people are quite interested in if i eat 500 calories of say burgers and chips and pizza and you know refined foods typically my stomach is half full if i eat 500 calories of whole plant foods my stomach is full and satisfied yay so whole foods they will fill you up and they will help you keep a i guess a natural weight point number three in terms of fiber is it's known as a prebiotic it's the food that your microbiome or the bacteria that live in your stomach feed upon. So it kind of encourages a more biodiverse and healthy microbiome or immune system. So fiber, really good. We get fiber in fruit, veg, beans, legumes, and whole grains. So it's in fruit and

veg. You don't get it in any animal food. So we all need to eat more fiber. And I'm sure most people in this room eat a lot of fiber. So we need to encourage other people to eat more fiber so point one fiber point number two um i guess once again we're probably speaking yeah you were the same okay uh point number two i think is uh once again we're probably speaking to the converted here but it's uh we're all mammals you know hands up who is a dog here okay what what happens when you forget to walk your dog for a day? Yeah, he or she does his business around the house and he's very hyper. And if you forget to walk it the second day, what happens? Goes bananas. Okay. Okay. Well, by day three, the dog typically starts looking a little sad. And by day four, you need to give a Prozac. It's just, it's miserable looking.

So we are mammals too. We forget we're mammals. We live in such a convenient world where we get sad. You know, and by day four, you need to give a Prozac. It's just, it's miserable looking. So we are mammals too. We forget we're mammals. We live in such a convenient world where we get up, we turn on the light, we cook our breakfast, we sit in the car, we do jobs where we sit at desks and like life is set up to be convenient for us. But as mammals, we really need to move. We really do. So on that note, like, you know, if everyone thinks about the afternoon slump, what do most people turn to? Chocolate, you know Alcohol cocaine whatever drug of choice that will make us feel a little better So so most people think our primary fuel source to shift that stale stagnant energy is some form of

Something that goes in our mouth, but on that note, can everyone just stand up just that we won't rob your stuff So if everyone just jump up and will just jump up and down. Just jump up and down, just for a sec. Okay, great, you can sit down, you can sit down. Okay, what's our primary fuel source as mammals? Oxygen. Oxygen. What's our next primary fuel source?

Water. What's our third primary fuel source? Food. And even if you think about it contextualized, the longest recorded period of time, is that better? Yeah, a period of time, a human in a medical environment

living without food was 368 days. Without water, typically it'll last a week. Without oxygen, you might get five minutes. It just shows the importance of oxygen. So on the topic of movement, oh yeah, okay. On the topic of movement, hands up who has a smartphone here? Okay, pretty

much everyone. Hands up who counts their steps? Okay, yeah. Okay, quite interestingly, our mom, she's 67, the great Ismay Flynn, she got one of those Fitbits things a couple of years ago, you know, one of those little Garmin things that you wear on your wrist, and I thought, ah, they're just for elders, you know, that's for my mom, you know, counter steps. She's, you know, she's 67. She needs to count them. And she was telling me, oh, I did 25,000 steps and I did 30,000. I was like, oh, good on you, mom. And then I realized my phone was counting. And I started looking at it and I realized, you know, we are driving a bit more in the car and whatever. And I started realizing my phone, oh, I needed 7,000 today, mom. Okay. Oh, 8,000. Oh, wow.

Okay. So I realized even us that live a really physically active life, there's days when we are busy and I don't get 10,000 steps. But I think the first thing, if you can get 10,000 steps a day, at least that's really a baseline thing. And I know Hans, it was an office job here or sits at a desk. Oh, wow. Okay. So quite a lot. So certainly leading science now says it's not exercising vigorously for one hour a day. That's not the holy grail in terms of longevity and health and well-being. What leading science is now saying is sitting is the new smoking. So it's consistently moving throughout the day, leads much more towards your long-term well-being.

So if you sit at a desk every day, if every 50 minutes you can get up and go for a walk, if you can make your phone calls walking, have meetings walking. Or a really good tip is drink loads of water, so then you've up and go to the go for a walk if you can make your phone calls walking have meetings walking or a really good tip is drink loads of water so then you got to go to the toilet load so it means you get up you move and you're rehydrated and try to go to the toilet if you work in a building where there's multiple floors go to the toilet a few doors but you might make a new friend go to the toilet a few floors above you or i don't know go for a walk but it's gonna be better for your health your well-being and it'll probably be better for the people around you. So point number one, fiber. We need to eat more veg.

Point number two, move. We're mammals, albeit sophisticated mammals that wear clothes, do things called work to get money so that we can self-actualize. But we are mammals. And we need to move. Beautiful. Point number three? I don't know. Okay, community. We're all weird. We're all idiosyncratic. We're all unique.

We need to express our uniqueness and we need to get other people to support our uniqueness because we all have crap days. I remember when we went away traveling, we left as kind of two meatheads that played semi-pro rugby. We were doing male modeling, finished degrees and masters in business.

We were all about money. And we came back stinking hippies that were all into health, happiness, and community. And I was a vegan. And I remember calling up a friend uh Dave went to college with a good friend can I add something to that story so we came back and none of our old friends wanted to really be our friends anymore as you could imagine because all our old friends like getting drunk and then we came back oh you're getting drunk and you know playing rugby and we we did yoga now and we didn't drink anymore so obviously none of our old friends wanted to be our

friends anymore. So we came back and we had to cultivate a whole community of new friends like we had to almost you know seek out new friends. As Stephen was gonna say, I went to college with Gavin Kelleher and it was his brother, was the only person I knew that was a vegan. This is like 16 years ago and I remember calling him up and going, how are you Andy, it's one of the Flins here Yeah, Gav's friend. We've become vegan. Is there any chance we could hang out and like talk about what it's like being a vegan? And this was like weird because he was like five years older than us. And you know, we'd grown up, he was older than us. And we hung out and we became, we like had a little vegan meetup. Best mates? Well, no, we didn't become best mates,

but yeah, community I think is so important. I think the more you can get support around your own around your own different perspective because everyone in this room is special and unique and to get more people that support us because we all have crap days and we all need to be propped up so community is really really important can i sorry as as rich was saying tonight is as much about community because like i think everyone here tonight is probably on the avant-garde or what's that word the yeah you're doing good avant garde of health and like opening really open to these ways of eating healthier and moving and positive living and whatnot so I think building community and really trying to catalyze it amongst our own family and friends because that's what's going to make the world a better place and it's going to make our kids be healthier and happier

and keep this environment alive beautiful point number four I'm going to layer our kids be healthier and happier and keep this environment alive. Beautiful. Point number four, I'm going to layer it. The general one is the topic is health, but I'm going to get into just two areas. First one is sleep. You know, we grew up in a society that's really macho and very kind of patriarchal and like sleep is for pussies. I'm a man. I can excuse that word. But it's kind of like, we for many years believed that the less sleep you got the more manly you were. Like I had four hours sleep and I still did my day. It's this kind of idea that sleep is something that we don't

require and the less you require the more evolved you are. However, listening to kind of recent podcasts and recent research sleep is so fundamentally important and even one thing totally stood out to me, like I'm 38 now, and listen to that, a man that typically gets six hours sleep

kind of over a long period of time typically has the testosterone level of some of 10 years their senior. I have small kids and I struggle to get eight hours regularly, so it frightens me to think that. Because testosterone is really important for being a man and for our muscle mass

and it's a great hormone for everything in our body. Quite interesting. Like most people, hands up if there's kids here. Okay. So quite a few. Okay. And I know what my kids, uh, like hands up was a bedtime routine for their kids. Probably the same amount of people that have kids. Um, and hands up as adults who has a, has a bedtime routine. Oh, wow. Yeah. Does someone read your story? Well, I know what my kids, like I've got a bedtime routine. Oh, wow. Yeah. Does someone read you a story? Well, I know what my kids, like I've got a bedtime routine.

We have a bath and we read books and I start talking a little quieter and no, we shouldn't bounce on the beds. No, no, no, take that down. And we start talking a bit quieter and we calmed down. It takes about an hour and a half. But as adults, you often hear people,

they're sitting in bed watching Game of Thrones with some lad hacking some other person to bits. And then we think, just turn the light out and, ah, she'll just go to sleep now. But, like, I find it fascinating in terms of sleep. Like, we've got really into it over the last while. And as Stephen said, we've come from the background of sleep is bad. And as competitive males, it's like, no, I need four hours of sleep. No, you know, that was kind of, that was, gave us, made us feel powerful or strong. But we've really realized that three things that we have. Number one is consistency is so important. So when you go to bed, if you can try to have that the same

time or as close to the same time, and if you can wake up the same time, that's what they say is so important. And if you do go out drinking and go partying and whatever, try to wake up at the same time as you normally do and just have a nap or whatnot. Yeah. Second thing about sleep is temperature. A bedroom should ideally be slightly lower temperature than the rest of the house, you'll sleep better. Third thing is lights. Most people typically they go to bed around 10 o'clock. You bring them out to somewhere where there's not fluorescent artificial lights and typically they go to bed two hours earlier because their melatonin levels are much higher.

So try to dim the lights or else where Tony, our friend Tony Riddle, the natural lifestyler, he'll always wear amber glasses just to kind of block out the blue-green spectrum. And it sounds a little crazy, but it really does. I know myself, when I don't have the lights on, and sometimes I do wear those glasses, it really helps build up melatonin in your sleep, superfood, and helps you sleep better. Last thing I'm just going to say about sleep is typically those who get six hours sleep or less will consume two or three hundred extra calories a day. And those typically extra calories are not whole foods they're typically donuts croissants they're refined foods because you're tired people in the research were given a full big kind of table full of lovely food lots of like cucumber and hummus and a donut and

what did everyone pick that was underslept typically went for the donut so if you're under sleep you're much more can I say one more thing on sleep? I know we're gone. We'll wrap this up now pretty soon. But they were talking about this same research which I was reading about. He was talking about that there's a study done twice a year with 1.3 billion people on sleep

and it's called Daylight Savings. And he was saying that typically in spring, you know where the clock goes, it springs forward. Where the clock springs forward, we all lose an hour of sleep, there's a 24% increase in cardiac arrests on that particular day. And in October, where it falls back, where we all gain an extra hour, there's a 21% decrease in cardiac arrests. So it shows you immediately how impact in 24 hours how sleep can have. So I know in our our own lives we've really tried to cultivate sleep typically i get up around 4 30 but i go to bed about half eight or nine

so yeah that's and i do my best far from perfect uh the other thing i think is that i just want to talk about which i've learned lots of it is authenticity you know we have a business called the happy pair we grew up in this super positive world where you know we're all happy and we're chipper and like my wife's a clinical psychologist and she'd ask me, so tell me your range of emotions. I'd go, okay, I'm happy, I'm tired, I'm horny. And that's it. And hungry. And hungry.

I'm hungry. Yeah, that's the fourth emotion. Yeah, that's it. I don't suffer from none of those bad ones. I don't suffer from any of that. I'm good. I'm a good human. And she was kind of telling me that emotions, every single one of them is so important.

And we all experience them all. And anyone you suppress will just grow and get bigger and bigger. So recently I've had to come to terms with like, oh yeah, okay, anxious, stressed. What are these? Disappointed. These other words that is like,

I just totally reject it. And even in Ireland, like how many times a day were you asked, how are you? You know, as a form of greeting, instead of saying, how are you? How are you? And everyone just goes, grand, great. Oh, lovely weather, isn't it? Something that I've

consciously tried to be more real and authentic. When someone asks, how are you? I go, I feel stressed or I feel tired and actually say something that isn't positive. It's like, wow. And in doing so, I think we give other people that because they say that one of the leading causes of disease is down to depression and aloneness and people not being honest because we all meet people that are hey how are you and you know underneath it they're feeling miserable and it just feels inauthentic we all yeah anyway anyway i think we all need to be more honest and i think the more we're honest the more it gives other people the permission to do so that was point four point five at point five i think is and then we're gonna wrap up we're gonna do q a at point five is really um and I think it's the most important one of all.

I think we're all going to die at some point, you know, supposedly. That's what we're all told anyway. So while we're here, I think it's about having as good a time and really enjoying ourselves. And I think ultimately every song and poetry and story,

love is at the core of everything. And I'm going to get a bit cheesy here now, but work with us. Mom used to, back when we were little, mom used to make us go to mass as good little Irish Catholic boys. And we used to go to mass and we'd sit there and Steve would fart and we'd both giggle away and we'd both be giggling away the whole mass. But the one bit which we

really did enjoy was the old, how are you? Peace be with you. How are you? Peace be with you. You know, that bit was the one we kind of loved, the sense of community. So on that note and on the team of tonight, if everyone could just stand up again. Oh no. Oh here they go again, Jesus. This, it's like up and down. So if you can turn to the person beside you and just give them a hug. Just give them a hug. And you can sit down now.

And then turn to the person on your other side and give them a hug. And now we're all going to make love. Okay, that was a joke. All right. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. Lovely. I think now we're going to do Q&A,

so it's much more trying to be relevant to everyone here. So if there's any question... Can I ask the first question? Yeah. I want to know why Dave has glitter all over his shoulder. Is there something you want to tell me, Dave? There was some girl, we were outside there, and some girl covered in glitter asked Could you take a photo with us? And I guess it went in my arm.

I like it But please just raise your hand and I'll run the mic down or else I think we have a third roving mic. I think we might. This could be the roaming mic. This could be the roaming one. We can use this one. Yeah, yeah, Luca do you want to be helping with the mic? Or I can be the runner. I'll be the running one we can use this one yeah yeah luke could you want to be helping with the mic or i can be the runner i'll be the runner there you are jamie thank you um boys thank you very much for sharing that that was really special so thank you um i'd love to get your perspective on a sensitivity that comes from really investing in yourself so for me over the last couple of years i find the more I invest into

the quality of my diet, the quality of my mindfulness, the quality of my overall health and wellness, the more sensitive I become. And I'm not too sure if that's echoed around the room, but something I see, I suppose I get really frustrated with is, yeah, when I'm thinking I'm as healthy as I can be, I'm all the more sensitive to bad foods. I'm all the more sensitive to bad thoughts. Is that just me? Or is that similar with you boys as well? Are you talking about just physical sensitivity

or also becoming emotionally sensitive? Actually, more so physically. But the emotional one is an interesting one. So I would cycle and I would trial diet types. So 12 weeks ago, I did 12 weeks of quite an intense vegan diet. And one thing I actually noticed was that I became very emotionally sensitive. Now, over the last, I'm 11 weeks into a pretty intense keto cycle where there is meat, please don't attack me. And what I noticed is actually I would feel I have a greater stress

capacity and a greater emotional strength. Now that just again might be me and what works for me, but that completely aside, I'm really, really interested in terms of you guys who are absolute beacons of health and wellness. Do you suffer that same sensitivity? Because I look back on years previous with my diet and gone, when I think back, I don't remember being as sensitive as I feel I am now. That's a great question. The first thing I would say is I would reframe how you're thinking about what you're experiencing right now because you've couched it in this negative light. It's something that you're suffering from, right? When in truth, I find it to be a marker of progress and growth. When you're eating crap food, when you're not taking care of yourself, you become so divorced from your physical well-being, your emotional well-being,

that everything is kind of flat. You don't even notice when you feel good or when you don't feel good because you're kind of just feeling lousy a little bit all the time. And then when you make that leap and you start investing in your self-care and you're eating better food and you're exercising and you're taking care of yourself, yes, of course, you're going to become more attuned to how you feel because you're starting to connect with your physical well-being in a way that you hadn't previously. So it's your awareness that's truly developing. It's your awareness that's becoming more sensitive.

And as you start to eat more clean, your body is going to be less excited when you eat something that's not so good. And it's going to let you know. And because you have developed that greater connection with yourself, you're going to feel that and see it and experience it in a way that you wouldn't prior. So I would think of it as a positive development in your evolution. It's just an awareness, right? It's like the difference between, you know, a crappy old car and you can just put whatever gas in it and it runs just fine, but it's never gonna run great. Then you get a fancy sports car, you put the really fancy gas in there, but if you put the lousy one in, it's gonna revolt, right?

Your body is doing the same thing. It's letting you know, hey man, like this stuff you're doing is really good, no more of that, right? And I think we like to think of our physical well-being as something distinct from our emotional well-being, but we need to remember that we are a holistic organism. There is no physical and mental. These things are integrally intertwined. And so whatever sensitivity you're experiencing physically, of course, is going to cascade into your mental and emotional body as well. So when you start to experience that emotional sensitivity,

I see this all the time. I've experienced it myself, and I see it with a lot of other people. When you start to take care of yourself, you're starting to own your emotional self in a different way and you're beginning, you're going to develop that same awareness, that attunement to how you're feeling on a moment-to-moment basis, whereas before it was just kind of, you weren't open to that dialogue with yourself. So I see these again as all markers of growth to be embraced, rather than something that you're

suffering through so pay attention to them and I would suggest maybe even journaling how you're feeling and what is impacting how you're feeling physically and emotionally and make tweaks along the way but I see it as a good thing I was just going to say that I think you're kind of talking about resilience and how diet affects it. Is that kind of, like that was what I got from it anyway. And like I think diet is one aspect of it. And sometimes when I go too neurotic, when I go too detailed and too focused on trying to eat perfectly, I'm much more resilient when I'm not really focused completely on my diet.

And I'm relaxed in myself and I'm less,, you know I'm more relaxed and I eat and centered in myself and I think what goes on externally in in our environment like whether we're stressed how we're dealing with those kind of things has just as much an effect if not more as food so I think there's more than just the food aspect to your resilience in at any moment in terms of emotional and and all those reactions. And I just had one small thing I was gonna pick up on what Rich said just about sensitivity. You kind of framed it in a negative thing. I think it's an incredible thing because sensitivity brings greater awareness of others and the

ability to be more empathetic and actually sense what other people are feeling as opposed to what they're saying, which I think is a great skill set. So just to turn it on you. Sorry. Sorry. This is great getting all three of you. It's fantastic. Thank you, sorry. Sorry, this is great, getting all three of you. It's fantastic, thank you so much.

Look, that's actually, I suppose I kept telling myself, I look into frame things in that manner myself as well, but I was just really, really interested to see how you guys would interpret it. So it's very reinforcing, and thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thanks. We have Luca with the mic.

Oh, there you go. Sorry, I. Yeah. No, let him go, he's with the mic. Oh, there you go. Sorry, I... Yeah. No, let him go. He's got the mic. Go for it. Sorry, I actually have to go back to work in about 10 minutes.

So I really just wanted to ask a quick question. Rich, after your last endurance race, the Otillo, whatever, how do you now relate to endurance events? Is there a next big one you want to do? Or how do you see yourself now in relation to endurance events? Is there a bigger one? Is there something else you want to move into?

Yeah, the question is, for those who couldn't hear, I did this race last year called O2LO. It was the Swim Run World Championships. It was about a year ago. So what is my relationship to endurance racing now? How has it evolved? I'm not doing any endurance challenges this year. This year is more about like doing these kinds of events

and travel and working on other projects. So, and I'm cool with that. Like once you kind of dip your toe into the world of ultra endurance, you realize like you can easily get lost in that funnel because there's always going to be a crazier race, a harder race, somebody who did something that's never been done before. And you can chase that dragon forever. Personally, like I'm content with my performances. I don't feel like there's anything that I need to prove to myself or to anybody else about my capabilities.

I still enjoy it and I go out and I train. Right now I haven't been training very much lately. I'm not as fit as I was last year at this time and I'm okay with that as well because you can only do so many things in a 24-hour period. There's something that I want to do next year, so it's going to get crazy around preparing for that, and I'm not ready to say what that is right now, but this year I've given myself permission to just be a little bit more relaxed about my day-to-day training. So next year, something big. This year, not so much. And for me, being a recovering alcoholic, I can get obsessive about things so

the challenge for me isn't how do I gear up and get motivated to tackle something like this the challenge is much more difficult for me to have a more balanced healthier relationship with these extreme activities so that other areas of my life important areas of my life, important areas of my life, don't suffer as a result of my pursuit of them. Hi, again. Thank you for all those tips and that fun. That was great. I'm really passionate about school food, and I found myself embarking on a PhD where it's going to be my main focus,

and I just wondered what your take on if you could be in a school and actually change things. I know, obviously, Rich, you've got a bit of experience of this with your kids going to the plant-based school. But what would be your first thing if you sort of pronged in a school and they said, right, help us. How would you start? I wouldn't start in the canteen. I'd probably start with getting them involved in gardening and probably get them to try different veg and understand the bigger picture because I know we regularly go into schools. I remember we went to one in Tullamore recently. We went in and there were kind of 12

year olds. We started off with kind of six year olds and you're just like a court jester juggling apples. You know, name the veg and it's a bit of a laugh but then the 12 year olds came in and you're kind of like okay here we go Dave and they were all, most of them were lads and you kind of ask them what's your favorite veg and the first thing they say is chocolate and then it's like I like jellies you know this type of thing so they totally just want to take the piss out of you but then after kind of playing different games and actually getting them to make smoothies and different things and engage with it suddenly they're kind of stealing fennel and they're fighting over wanting to try chili and wanting to try different vegetables so it's amazing to see

the impact of just education first and kind of someone who's really enthusiastic about fruit and veg because I imagine if you just go in and you change the food straight away there's going to be massive resistance and they're going to hate it so I think it's rather than going to be an all or nothing thing it's to do it gently and gradually and work with what they like as opposed to them going I hate vegetables yeah as a food teacher obviously I've had that experience and that's completely agree with that. That's what I do. And it's really important to do that. But there's only sort of one of me in the school. And obviously, I would like to have a larger impact.

So what would you do if you had to have sort of the next level? Because there's only two of you. If I was thinking if we were told there was one school and we had to try and focus on that and we had six months or a year to try and do it, I'd certainly do talks to the parents. I'd try to host things for the parents because they're going to have the biggest influence on what the kids eat. And if you can get them on board and even try to put a screening of what the health or one of these kind of documentaries that reframes eating more fruit and veg in a positive kind of frame rather than the animal agriculture kind of aspect because that usually gets people more interested in it first. And then I guess with the kids, like really trying to inspire the kids

and try to show them different role models of people that aren't eating 10 chicken breasts a day and are still alive, you know. Yeah, well, I've shown them you when we did a recipe book from the Happy Pair. So yeah, that was great. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. Yeah, if I could just add one thing to that. You know, the school lunch situation in the United States we did a recipe book from the happy pair so yeah that was great thank you thanks kelly yeah if i

could just add one thing to that you know the school lunch situation in the united states is an abomination and we talked a little bit beforehand like i i'm gathering that it's not so good here as well um it's a huge massive problem it is a black stain i think upon our personal culture uh because we're talking about the future generation. And when we're raising them in an environment that is conducive to them becoming addicted to these foods that are making them sick and impacting their health in such a profound negative way, in many ways it's not controversial. Like even the average person can look at it and say, yes, this probably isn't so good for these kids. So there's a general

awareness that this needs to change, but there is a political and bureaucratic and financial incentive to keep it the way that it is. So how do you combat that? How do you produce change with school lunch? I think it's a worthy battle to fight, and I think it's a battle that needs to be fought on two fronts. The first front is what the lads talked about from the ground up. Getting the kids interested in healthy food, teaching them how to make healthy food, teaching them about where their food comes from, educating the parents so at least the home environment can be sorted out a little bit better. But then you also have to fight that battle at the highest level from the government entities that are

controlling, you know, the basically the way the laws work and the way that the food vendors get these contracts and all of that because it's very political and it's very bureaucratic. I remember several years ago, like I guess Jamie Oliver made some good progress in the UK and then he came to America to do a TV show with the hopes and aspirations of shifting the school lunch in the United States. And it was a disaster because he came up against such fierce political opposition that he really couldn't make any headway. And I think it just gives you a sense of just how powerful these vested interests are. There's so much money being made in these contracts to keep it the way that it is.

So change is going to happen through lobbying at the highest levels of government in a persistent way, and it's going to come at the bottom through education of kids and parents. One last thing, Kelly, there's Ed over here. He teaches in a school in Sheffield, and he does lots of cookery courses and all sorts of stuff, so he might be someone for you to talk.

Thank you. That's amazing. The main focus will be behaviour change and policy changes as well. So it will be the two things that I would focus on. And it's exciting times because you've got the social sciences, the psychology and nutrition meeting each other for the first time ever. So there are real promising things happening. So thank you for that. Yeah, it's not all doom and gloom. There is change happening.

My kids go to a school where they serve a 100% plant-based lunch, which is insane. And there's a couple pilot public school programs, particularly in New York. There's an organization that's getting public schools on board with plant-based lunches and doing hanging gardens in the school playgrounds and the like so we are seeing it we're just we just need we need more of it and we need it faster thank you so much thank you hi guys hi

rich it's amazing see here in Dublin fantastic what a great venue I'm a doctor who recommends plant-based diet to my patients. And I'm part of a growing network. Well, I think the applause is for that guy up there because I'm part of a network of doctors across the UK and Ireland who recommend plant-based diets. And you probably know already, but most of them, lots of them, do so because they were fans of your podcast and they heard great world famous plant-based doctors like kim williams and garth davis and all those guys

and then followed the evidence and now they're recommending it um i just wanted to ask you because you know for us all of us people who to eat like this now we read those books and we've become fans of those guys, and we look at their content, and we apply it to our own lives, and you've been through the same journey, you know? So what's it been like for you getting to know these guys, these guys who are changing the world, and do you think they're winning?

Do I think they're winning? Well, first of all, getting to know them has been amazing. I mean, that's really, on a personal level, like the gift of the podcast is it has given me permission to connect with so many incredible change makers in all categories of health and well-being. And then these people get to be part of my life, which has just been remarkable and has enriched me in so many ways. And then to be able to share that and have it impact people all over the world. I mean, you change the way you practice medicine as a result of that. I mean, that's, I can't, you know, it's the greatest gift to hear you say that. It's really quite something. And in person, you know, basically, I think when you listen to what these people are

like on my show, that's what they're like. You know, my whole thing is I'm going to present these people as they really are, so it's not like, oh, mic's on, they're one person, then mic's off, and then they're an asshole. It's not like that. What you hear is what you get. They are all remarkable people who are fighting to change a paradigm. Like school lunch, it's a paradigm that doesn't want to be changed. There is a lot of energy and interest around keeping things the way that they are, so I think it takes a very bold and courageous person, medical practitioner,

to butt up against that system and suggest something that requires us to shift our perspective on something as fundamental as food and nutrition. And in the United States, it's very provocative. It's a conversation that is as sensitive as religion and politics. And we all know what's going on in politics in America right now. It's very heated. It's very emotional. And each one of these medical practitioners has a very different strategy for how they navigate that. You take somebody like Joel Kahn, he can be very, he can be very politic, and he's very consensus oriented, and then you take Garth Davis, and he's a bulldog,

and he's going to take on any fight that comes in front of him by somebody who's challenging what he knows to be true. So I think for yourself, as somebody who's carrying this message, what I'm gathering, your real question is, how do I be this lighthouse? What's the best way for me to evangelize or spread this message? I think you have to find what is authentic to who you are. You know, are you a firebrand like Garth Davis? Are you a bridge builder? Like you know yourself better than anyone else and you know how to best carry this message in a way that will be as impactful for your patients and beyond. There was another part of your question though.

I just want to say thanks, I think you covered it. And you know, I think the argument is winning, you know, because the evidence is there. I was just a couple weeks ago at a big international gastroenterology conference, a mainstream conference, not a plant-based medical conference. And plant-based diets on the agenda. You know, that was appearing on slides, papers are appearing. So I think the mainstream medical opinion, certainly in my specialty, is moving this way. Yeah.

So thanks for guys like you for putting that information out there, you know, in the mainstream so we can hook on to it. Cool, thank you. Yeah, the second part of your question is, are we winning? I think we're in for the long way, you know, we're in for the long haul, so we're not winning every battle, but I think, you know, what you alluded to is a sense of general awareness in mainstream culture and in medical culture that didn't exist even a couple years ago. And the truth will always prevail. And like you said, the evidence supports this. And ultimately, that is going to rise to the surface. So it may take a little bit longer than we would like. But I do think that we are gaining ground and winning.

You know, we're having to compete against whatever fad diet of the day happens to become popular in the moment, but ultimately what you see is a lot of these popular diets, they kind of raise in prominence and then they sort of slide back down again, whereas the plant-based movement is on a slower upward trajectory but it's continuing to grow and expand hi um i just want to ask rich i was interested um there's been a bit of science research that shows that ultra running can have some problems particularly strain on the heart and i've heard you mention it with a little bit of nervousness a couple times but I just want anecdotally do you find that you would recover

faster from an ultra race or an ultra event than a meat eating or um or paleo or whatever athlete I don't know if you've really noticed the difference. Personally, I'm pretty well almost completely plant-based, and I have run a couple of marathons recently, and I found that I recovered just straight away. I didn't have any recovery issues. So the question is about recovery. I'll take your question in two parts, but the first part is about recovery. Do you think I've recovered more quickly from an

ultra eating plant-based than eating meat? Well, I've never competed or raced in an ultra eating meat. So from my own personal experience, I can't gauge that differential. I can only tell you that since adopting a plant-based diet and undergoing the training that I put my body through, I can tell you that the recovery that I was able to experience was something that I never experienced when I was swimming in college, when I was eating the standard American diet. And if you poll elite plant-based athletes, they will all have the same refrain. They'll all say the same thing. Their recovery increased when they adopted a plant-based diet. So it's not that eating plant-based inherently makes you a better athlete,

but it does, there's something about it that does expedite that recovery process. It's a very anti-inflammatory diet. It's a very hydrating diet. It's a very alkaline-forming diet. And all of these things allow the immune system to operate at its optimal functionality, which allows your body to resuscitate itself in between training sessions. So as an athlete, the holy grail is recovery because you don't get better during your training session. You get better in the periods in between your training session. And the more you can enhance and expedite that recovery where your body is repairing itself in between your training sessions,

it will allow you to then train harder, go longer, push yourself harder, be less likely to over-train, to get injured due to overuse, or to get sick because you've pushed yourself too hard. And so over a period, an extended period of time, that's going to translate into performance gains. And that's what you hear with all of these plant-based athletes, which is amazing. Your second point about these studies, about the long-term impacts of ultra endurance on cardiac health, Joel Kahn keeps sending me these articles. I think he's concerned for my well-being. So yeah, I take it under advisement. You know what I mean? I think it is important to pay attention to that. And it's also one of the reasons why right now I'm very casual about my training.

I still go out and run, but I'm not out there trying to do anything extreme at the moment. So as I get older, it's less about performance and it's more about longevity. Yeah, my point about recovery is just that I feel that recovery must be a reflection of the fact you haven't done too much harm to your system. If your cardiac system is affected badly, it will take you a long time to recover. But if you're recovering really fast, I think it probably indicates that you're not doing too much damage. I will take that as a vote of confidence. I was just going to give a quick example of that. A friend, Russ Edgley, he's swimming around the UK at the moment.

I love Ross. He's a huge, massive framed guy that is not a plant-based, typically a plant-based eater. He loves chicken wings. He loves everything. I think he eats probably reasonably healthy. At the moment, he's eating 10,000 calories a day. He's eating 10,000 calories a day. And for this swim around the UK, he's eating the vast majority plant-based because it helps him recover quicker,

and that's all based on data and science. That guy's a beast. He's literally swimming around. He's gonna circumnavigate Great Britain over 100 days of swimming, and you should follow him on social media because he's posting videos. It's really quite something.

He also did a marathon dragging a mini. He also did a thing called a triathlon, a 50-kilo tree on a triathlon. The full thing, like swam with it, dragged with it, cycled with it. So incredible dude, very different. Like he's massive, he's like the modern day Hulk, but yet does endurance sports.

Yeah, very interesting guy. Yeah, boys turn to Luca. Luca, your choice. Let's hear it for Luca. Come on for Luca. Thanks for the talk guys, Rich, Flinners, thank you, it was great. Just a question on drawing from your last point, so community. What would be your suggestions and tips how all of us here can build smaller or bigger communities around us and try to speak to people? I'm not talking about converting or posing or anything like that just you know passing the message

how would you go about and what would you suggest um because sorry yeah go for it because sometimes like myself uh i'll find it difficult for some people especially older to even start the conversation because they were brought in or brought up in a certain way and they have their way of eating and everything and looking at stuff. So what would you suggest for either older or younger people? Yeah, I think like about your question

about building community, I think first of all, we're all going to die and because we eat a vegan diet, we're not going to get into the VIP section of heaven. We're all dying, irrespective of what we we eat and we all have bumped into grannies who are 87 that smoked a pack of fags a day ate nothing but bacon and chips but they were really like they didn't live a stress like they were very calm and relaxed so I think health is one aspect but I

think building community is simply just saying hello to people and being kind to people and accepting where they're at not saying hello Maggie do you want to eat some kale today let's go have a kale sambo you know it's more about just you know maggie you smoke fags i know someone else that smokes fags you know whatever way it's to connect with them on their level i don't mean you have to sit and have a fag with maggie but you know whatever way it is but it's simply if you do want to build communities accepting people where they're at and working from there I think and I think I'd add to that saying a point which Rich always says is to try to be a lighthouse or a beacon as opposed to I know when we first started the happy pair and we were quite new to it all we were very evangelistic and

we were quite preachy and we must have made people sick you know like we were very abrasive and we were like this was you know we were fundamentalist and we must have been awful and people really really didn't like it at all whereas Whereas when you're far more encouraging and supportive and you just do your thing, people are wondering, so if I eat that broccoli, can I do a handstand? You know, so I think to inspire people with whatever way you do, and if you're a happy, healthy, wholesome human, people will want to hang out with you and go, what's that dal thing? How do you cook that? You know, I think people will be more attracted to what you do then, I think. Yeah. Attraction always works better than promotion.

And I think like that the sort of attitude and perspective that they're sharing is, I agree with completely. But I also think that you can take a lesson from what they've done in a very tactical way, which is to use their small community as a way of, way, which is to use their small community as a way of, to use the veg shop as a way to educate their own community, right? So wherever it is that you live, you can host a screening of what the health, or you can find some location and say, hey, we're doing a free cooking class, I'm going to teach you how to cook plant-based, or just little things like that where you're inviting the community in. Vegan suppers or something like that. Or even kind of like, you know, yoga thing or something, I don't know, it's more connecting

with people, giving people a reason, you know, like if I look at my daughters, I bring them to the playground, and they make friends so quick, because they're playing, but as adults, we do sports, that's how we play now. So it's almost you've got to come up with a reason for us to meet one another because we're all a little more reserved and a little more hidden. So you've got to come up with reasons. Maybe it's doing yoga. Typically, people who do yoga or are into sport probably eat a little healthier. And I don't know.

Sorry, just ideas. Great. Thank you. Hi. So it's not really a health and fitness sort of question but it's probably for you rich actually um i was just wondering i'm i see myself as a very impatient person um and recently i've realized i'm definitely not on the right path in my life and i need to do something else completely but i'm finding my impatience is making me I suppose not you know not have any direction and I suppose I think everybody else is on the right path and I get panicked and think oh you

know maybe this is right maybe this is right and obviously you had maybe was it seven to ten years of sort of not really knowing what was going to happen and so I suppose my question is like how how do you become patient or how do you get on that path and that journey in a patient way and then sort of embrace not knowing what's going to happen if that makes sense so when you feel impatient what are you experiencing physically? Panic, I suppose. Just I look outwards to everyone else and think they know what they're doing. Everyone else has got it fixed.

And I know that's not the case and everyone has their own hidden lives. But I suppose I just think I need to do it right now. I need to know what I want to do right now, and I have no clue at all. So it's not impatience, it's fear. It's fear that the world is passing you by, that everyone else has the rule book, that you don't know what you're doing with your life, that you're wasting your time

or that you've wasted your time up to date and you need to get on with it and you're putting this pressure on yourself to have all of these answers that you don't have. Meanwhile you're measuring your experience externally in relation to your peers and this is creating anxiety, it's creating frustration and it's making you not feel good about yourself is that fair yeah definitely okay so first of all uh you're a member of the human race so go easy on yourself i think it's important for you to spend some time trying to figure out why it is that you feel like you have to know those answers right now and why you can't just be okay

with where you're at at the moment? Like what is behind that? And that's not an answer you're gonna get overnight, but I think that's a worthy path of inquiry for yourself. Fundamentally, you're afraid, right? So rather than trying to avoid that fear, what would it look like for you to embrace that fear? What would it feel like to be present with that and to really feel it? And I think the best way forward for you, in my estimation, would be to adopt a meditation practice. It's probably the most profound and impactful thing that you could do to begin the process of unpacking this for yourself and being more centered and more grounded in who you are, being more gentle with who you are. I would suggest a loving kindness practice.

You could check out my podcast with Sharon Salzberg or check out her work or just google loving kindness meditation and you'll be able to find some practices there. And I think that will connect you with who you are in a way that will allow you to be more gentle as you work your way through this process and allow you to just be present with who you are until you're comfortable with that. It's okay that you don't need to know that you don't have all these answers. None of us know. We don't know anything. We're just up here. We're up on a chair up here. We actually don't know any more about what we're doing than you do, you know. It's an illusion, right? So a mindfulness

practice, a meditation practice, and the other thing I would suggest you check out is adopting a practice of daily journaling about your emotional state, about how you're feeling day to day, so that you can connect with what's triggering these emotions. Because more likely than not, there's things that happen in your past, and there's things that you bring that past into your present experience, and you encounter something that triggers that emotional state that then paralyzes you and actually is preventing you from connecting with the solution that you seek the most.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Luca. So my name is Duncan. I messaged you guys on Instagram. I came from London. I'm sorry I didn't cycle here. I got the train. But I did sleep in the train station to come here, so I didn't cycle here. I got the train. But I did sleep

in the train station to come here, so I've got some kind of endurance aspect to that. Well done. I wanted to talk about the catalyst for change and I've already found the thing that it is I'm trying to do and I'm trying to promote

sustainability within the company I work for and I'm so desperate for them to listen to me because I want to serve and I want to change the world and it's really difficult when you're the only person that's doing it and within my own personal journey that brought me to that it seems that my relationship to guilt and shame is what gave me confidence and the want to do better and it was my relationship to sort of guilt and shame is what gave me confidence and the want to do better and it was my relationship to anxiety that made me want to go out and sort of see the world more so it seems that when it comes to change progress always seems to stem from pain

and we have to rely on something terrible to happen to our culture or ourselves or the people around us before they can progress. I don't want to have to wait for that. How can we show people how to change without having to wait for them to be in pain first? Thank you for your question in a nutshell your question is how can we provoke change most effectively

in others, right? I mean if I boiled it down you have an interest in helping people and helping provoke change in others and you're frustrated because you're not seeing it at the level that you would like to is that fair enough? You're shaking your head maybe I'm missing it and you're frustrated because you're not seeing it at the level that you would like to.

Is that fair enough? You're shaking your head. Maybe I'm missing it. No, that's basically it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I applaud the intention behind that, but I think the solution is in letting go of your attachment to whether anyone else changes and focusing on the things that you do have control over, which is yourself and your own personal evolution and development. It's about stepping into becoming that lighthouse that the guys were talking about.

And I think when we're really attached to an expectation about somebody else doing X, Y, or Z, an expectation about somebody else doing X, Y, or Z, ultimately we're setting ourselves up for frustration and resentment. It's about understanding that we actually can't control what other people are doing. We can only control ourselves. And I've discovered in my own way that the best way to be an agent of change

is to focus on becoming the best version of myself. Then you can be that lighthouse, and you will attract the people. As a beacon, you will attract the people who are gravitating towards that change. But when you're trying to change somebody who doesn't want to change, let's say you're trying to get an alcoholic or a heroin addict into rehab, and they're not ready to let go of their addiction, that's not going to go so well, you know, 99 times out of 100. It's similar with respect to diet and lifestyle and all these other habits. It's very difficult to get other people to see the world the way that you see it, to get them to see things the way that you would like them to see them.

You don't like it when people do it to you. So how does it feel when you're impressing yourself upon another person in that way? So what I would say to you is try to disconnect from whatever desire is motivating you to try to provoke that change in another person and turn that light around on yourself and just continue to grow and evolve. And you will attract those people into your life. When you vibrate at a certain level, you're putting a vibration out that is attracting like-minded people towards you. And then those people will be open

to whatever it is that you have to offer and that you have to set. I was just going to add something really quick that maybe it might be, for example, you said sustainability. I know a friend of ours is doing a one-week plastic free challenge. And I think maybe it's doing something like that and writing about it online. And maybe people will, you know, you'll connect with people that might not necessarily be in your organization. But if you consistently kind of evolve it, people around you can't help but notice if you're doing it in a

non-frictional kind of way, if they see you're doing it for betterment and you're kind of you're not trying to niggle everyone else and make them feel bad about themselves they're probably going to be curious and ask you more and almost like a child to do something you know adults go oh tell me about that you know if you're doing something and you're it's a positive kind of energy and if people will be drawn into it i think and and it might come indirectly from other people outside of your organization until it eventually trickles down to the people you really want to make the change happen. I don't know. Thanks, guys. I have a kind of personal question, Richard.

When I listen to your podcast, a lot of times you meet all these different doctors, and a lot of them, well, most of them will be either plant-based or will be quite aware of what you're doing. And the recent one, it's probably not as recent for you, but I can't remember the exact name of the doctor that you were interviewing, but I think in the notes you had that there's a caveat to it that he's not a plant-based doctor and that you don't agree with him. However, you're good friends with him. And my question was, how would you deal with that?

I listened to that podcast, and up to a certain point, it was perfect. Everything that he said aligned with your values what you think of in terms of sleep exercise and community and everything but when it came to food and then i think he mentioned fish oils or something like that i was like how how do you deal with that when you have a person who is everything seems to be to fall into place everything is in line everything is perfect even, I think even prior to that, there was the gut doctor, I can't remember her name, but she was, again, the same up until the very one point.

And you're like, how do you deal with that? Because for me, it's always like, here's this brilliant doctor who knows all these things, who understands everything. But at one point, for some reason, it seems like they're overlooking the vast majority of science that's available. And I think the doctor even asked you to introduce him to vegan athletes that you know, female athletes, because he didn't know any.

And I was like, how can you not know? You're like friends with which? I mean, everybody knows. So just from a personal perspective, how do you deal with that where, you know, there's that little bit and you're like, for me, for example, it doesn't make sense. So I'm just kind of wondering how does that make sense to you? How do you deal with that? Thank you. Yeah, it's tricky. You know, it's tricky. It's delicate. I take that on a case-by-case basis. I'm very mindful of the people that I invite on the show. And I don't want it to be a show where

the only people I invite on are people that agree with me on show. And I don't want it to be a show where the only people I invite on are people that agree with me on everything. I think it's important to bring in different points of view as long as there's a fundamental value system that seems to be aligned in a certain way. I'm not Garth Davis. I'm not a pit bull. I don't bring people on the show

so that I get in fights with them. I try to build bridges and find consensus. And so the doctor you're talking about is Frank Lipman. He's a friend of mine. We don't see eye to eye on nutrition at all. I think he's insane for some of the things that he's recommending. But I also applaud the fact that he has been an integrative medicine doctor for like 30 years. And there's a lot that he knows about that exceeds my knowledge base, especially when it comes to holistic, Eastern-influenced modalities of healing, acupuncture, and all these other things that he does. So the decision tree becomes, well, he disagrees with me on nutrition,

so I don't have him on. Or can I bring him on and use it as an experiment and also as an example of, like, how can I communicate with somebody who doesn't agree with me on something that is very important to me and still find a way to have a productive dialogue? And that's becoming more and more important and interesting to me because in the United States right now, we are in a situation in which it's almost become impossible to have a productive dialogue with somebody that you don't agree with. There has been a complete disruption of our cultural ability to navigate differences in a way that's become very damaging to us as a culture.

So much so that I'm starting to doubt whether it can be repaired, given what's going on politically right now. And that causes me grave alarm. And that's what I think motivates me in part to try to reach across the aisle a little bit and have different points of view on. And to be able to say, like, I disagree with you on that. And we can go back and forth. I don't want it to become all about that disagreement when there's a greater message to be shared. And I think we have to also bear in mind at a very top level, like most people are just like, they're not going 100% vegan. They're not trying to be ultra endurance athletes. They're just like, can I just reduce

the stress a little bit in my life? Can I just, you know, eat a little bit better? Just tell me a few things that I can take home with me, right? And in order to reach that person, a militant perspective is going to disconnect from their best interest. So if somebody hears my conversation with Frank and they go 90% plant based from the standard American diet, but they're having a piece of salmon or they're taking some fish oil, I still consider that a win. And that person is now on their journey towards better living and eating. And I'll take that. So I have to pick my battles, right? I have a podcast coming up. I'm putting it tomorrow night with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, who's a well-known doc in the UK. He's not vegan, but he's closer to it than Frank is. And we had an amazing conversation. I'm excited

to share that, even though we may quibble and disagree on the finer points of plant-based nutrition and its place in this discourse about health and disease reversal. Thank you, I just want to add, I understand all that and I appreciate what you do. I think it's amazing, I agree 100%. I was just trying to phrase it in a way,

how do you deal personally with that, you know, like with that little disagreement? Does that bother you in the background? Do you sit there thinking? Yeah, I'm, well, fundamentally, like I'm a conflict-averse person. Like I'm a people pleaser. Like I just want to be friends with everyone. So I don't go into the conflict and try to make it bigger. I try to make it go away for better or worse. I think there's moments where it's important to have healthy conflict and to stand your ground and to state your truth and all of that. I probably err too much on the side of trying to make the guest comfortable as opposed to kind of going in for, you know, the conflict.

Thanks. Thanks very much. First of all, I want to thank all you guys and Alan here who's the Devon gut doctor on Instagram who gifted me the ticket I won the ticket from his page and I saw him at the first ever nutrition and medicine conference back in

England and it was just amazing they're doing amazing work I was really proud actually there was four Irish guys there, there were seven speakers medical professionals and four of them were Irish I thought that was amazing because I'm second generation Irish so yeah I'm sharing his work his videos all the time so I definitely recommend you follow him little plug there um and you guys you've got me swimming in the Shannon and you inspired my son actually to cycle from London to Tipperary and to do a marathon over

Snowden so so that's my thanks to all of you um for my part I live 50% in London and 50% in rural Tipperary and one of my best friends I'm surrounded by farmers basically in Tipperary so my best friend is a cow farmer and I've known him for about 25 years and I was recently in the company of a pig farmer, a horse farmer and another cow farmer. And I've got so much compassion for them. They're such nice guys. He comes up to dinner now and he loves my food and he tells everybody and he introduces me as the vegan to these all in a pub to, you know, pubs full of farmers basically. So in terms of community i'm getting on very well with them and i'm thinking of having a farmer's vegan dinner party quite soon

but i just think it's quite unique um the obstacles to overcome for these farmers for their livelihood and what's the future going to be for them you know if we're wanting people to go more plant-based and i'm hoping to run a plant-based retreat right in the middle of all these farmers in January. Maybe they'll come on it, I don't know, but so I think that's just quite a unique situation in Ireland because most of it is rural. So how do you see that going forward? I think, well done with all you're doing. I think in Ireland we're really good at farming, and by farming I mean growing animals and

for people to eat. But if you look at Holland, Holland is kind of like the fruit and veg bed of Europe. It's an island, it's a country about the same size as Munster, and yet they feed most of Europe with fruit and veg, due to their kind of progressiveness in terms of farming. And by farming I mean horticulture

has grown fruit and veg. And and I think Ireland we have massive landmass and we've a climate that's very attuned to growing fruit and veg we just need to focus on it. To date all our agriculture is focused on growing animals, grants are for growing animals, there's very little focus on trying to encourage farmers to grow more veg so I think as a society we need to shift the focus and farmers likewise, like even oat milk is a great one at getting people to think encourage farmers to grow more veg so I think as a society we need to shift the focus and farmers likewise like even oat milk is a great one at getting people saying biodigesting like getting people to grow grass and biodigest that as a means of getting biodiesel there's many different

alternative means of growing crops which will serve as an income and I think we just need to change the focus from animals to plants. I think. I think it starts with young people as well. I think if we demand more Irish produce, you know, fruit and veg, as consumers, I think that's also going to catalyse change with stores and therefore trickle back up. So I think there's more power we hold

as an individual than we think we do. Like if you look at, even I know ourselves in our own shop, we have to really work hard to support the local growers and get as much local stuff as we can. And that's because the consumer is consistently wanting it.

So I think there's more power we all have. If we all want more local stuff, it's going to require us growing more fruit and veg and, you know, trickle that way. I thought one thing was brilliant. If anyone listened to the Zach Bush podcast, I thought that question you asked him, if you were Surgeon General, what would you do, Zach Bush? And I thought his answer was incredible. Israel grew a great army because everyone had to spend

a year learning how to be in an army versus in America or in Ireland. Anyway, people are very disconnected from where veg comes from. You think broccoli grows in the shop in the supermarket. You know, people, we go into schools and they don't know, no one knows what a courgette is. Like, genuinely, everyone calls it a cucumber. It's like, this is not a cucumber. They go, it's a cucumber. But I think if people were to spend more time,

like if there was kind of a state thing where people had to spend three months growing vegetables, they'd understand where they come from, the importance of soil biodiversity to grow healthy crops. And similarly, anyway, i'll stop talking um i think we're wrapping it up right we're done with questions we got to close it down cool so i just want to leave leave you guys with one thought and then you guys can kind of share a capstone as well um when i think about plant-based nutrition, I think about a lifestyle that basically checks all of the boxes, right? You're talking about farming and being more connected to food. In the United States,

you know, you drive around Ireland and you see cows looking happy. In the United States, you don't see that. It's all factory farms. Nobody is a fan of factory farming, but it just so happens to be the most efficient way to turn these animals into food for humans. And the truth is, it is causing an incredible amount of suffering in these animals. We're all inherently compassionate people. Nobody likes the idea of that. But because we're so divorced from our food systems, we're able to kind of not really focus on it and not think about it. But when you really do think about it, you realize that when you buy that food product, you are voting for that system to become further and further entrenched. If we want to change the system, we need to vote with our dollar. And when I think about plant-based nutrition, I think about a diet, once again, that checks all

the boxes. You are opting out of all of that suffering from that factory farming disaster that now monopolizes how we're feeding the planet. And you're also taking a stand for the environment. Right now animal agriculture is the number one contributor to all the vast majority of the man-made environmental damage that we're seeing right now. We're in the midst of this crazy unspeakable mass species extinction event. The amount of water and land and resources required to raise animals for food is unjustifiable. It's polluting our water table. It's acidifying our oceans.

It goes on and on and on. Meanwhile, it's producing more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector combined. At the same time, we're in the midst of an insane, cataclysmic healthcare crisis. One out of every three Americans will die of heart disease. Seventy percent of Americans are obese or overweight. And by 2030, they're predicting that 50% of Americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic. It's bananas. It's bankrupting our economy. 75% of all health care costs are attributable to these chronic ailments. And the

crazy thing is that 80 to 90% of these are preventable or reversible through diet and lifestyle alterations. It's the food. And when you adopt a whole food plant-based diet, when you're eating fruit and veg close to your natural state, you're opting out. You're not going to become one of those statistics. You're taking a stand for the environment. And you're saying enough with respect to the animal suffering. It's a win-win across the board. So I hope all of you leave here tonight, think about that a little bit, and think about changes you can make in your own life, and how you can vote for your dollar for change. or your pal. I couldn't dream of saying anything so eloquent.

So I'm going to finish by just saying thanks, Mil. It's an honor to have Rich Roll here. Thank you everyone for coming along. And please stay around, chat, make friends, and let's all have a good life. And there's a goodie bag for everyone down the back, so please take a goodie bag. Thanks for coming, you guys. good luck. And there's a goodie bag for everyone down the back. So please take a goodie bag.

Thanks for coming, you guys. And let's hear it for Rich. Yeah, what a pleasure having him here. Always a delight to spend time with the twins. And I really enjoy doing these live events. It just helps me feel more connected to all of you, to the audience. And I'm committed to finding a way to do more of this kind of thing in the near future. Listen, if you're looking for more nutritional guidance, if you're lost, you don't know how to do this plant-based thing, or just looking to clean things up a little bit on your plate, check out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com. We have thousands of plant-based recipes on the ready for you, all customized based on your personal preferences.

We have incredible customer service available to you seven days a week. We have unlimited grocery lists, grocery delivery in most U.S. cities. And all of this is available for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. It's really a great program. Really proud of it. And you can learn more by clicking on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website or going to meals.richroll.com. If you want to support my work, our work, the work we do here on the podcast, there's a couple of ways to do it. Just share it with your friends and on social media. Subscribe on whatever platform you enjoy this content, Apple Podcasts, on YouTube for the YouTube versions of this. It really helps with visibility, extending reach,

and the like. And I appreciate that out of you. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, for production, for show notes, for interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for graphics. DK for sponsored relationships. And theme music, as always, by Analema. Appreciate the love, you guys. I'll see you back here in a couple days with strength coach and kettlebell expert, Mike Mahler in a great conversation.

That's all about hormone optimization until then be well and love, love more deeply. Peace plants. Thank you.