The Rich Roll Podcast - Has Cancel Culture Gone Too Far? Plus: Training Principles, Favorite Gear, Listener Questions & More

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Welcome to another edition of Roll On—my bi-weekly deep dive into (semi) current events, topics of audience interest, and of course answers to your questions. Once again serving up co-host duties is Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist perhaps best known as David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me co-author. Adam has written about adventure sports, environmental issues and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is also the author of One Breath, which chronicles the life and death of America's greatest freediver, and is currently hard at work on a novel. Some of the many topics explored in today's conversation include: An update on ultrarunner Tommy Rivs' battle with lymphoma; Endurance training first principles; Why building a Zone 2 base is critical; DHS failures & overreach; Cancel culture: the Harper's Letter & Bari Weiss; Gear review show & tell; and Wins of the week: Kai Lenny & Valarie Allman In addition we answer the following listener questions: How to live with an angry & abusive alcoholic? The paralyzing perils of self-help addiction Daily habits to thrive What changes should be made to public education? Is it worth writing and sharing your story? How to effectively work with your spouse or partner Thank you to Jake from Kansas City, Jackson from Wyoming, Adam from Alberta, Canada, Jeremy in Sant Michael, Minnesota, and Henry in Los Angeles for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone].   The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

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and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. Thank you. disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one

need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, me and my hype man, Adam Skolnick, are back. I'm taking roll call on everything from cancel culture to endurance training principles, plus some gear show and tell, and of course, listener questions, and so much more. So let's do this thing. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. We're back with another AMA roll-on edition of the show. I'm back with Adam, my man, Adam Skolnick, hype man, podcast hype man.

Yes. Journalist, author, adventurer, swim run aficionado, co-author of David Goggins Can't Hurt Me. That's the bio, right? Yeah, that's good. How are you doing, man? I always like it when you read it. I love it. I didn't read anything.

Well, you just speak it. I know it. You speak it. Yeah. It's good to see you again. Good to see you, man. I've been enjoying this. I feel like we're finally hitting a groove with this, trying to figure out how we want to leverage this type of podcast.

And I think we're starting to narrow in on what it is that we want to do here, which feels good. Agreed. It feels great. It's good to have the template. And it's fun to figure out where we decide to dive in. It's always interesting to figure that out, especially this week, which there wasn't this... The big news story this week was kind of the same as last week, so we had to kind of figure out how to approach things.

So the news cycle moved so quickly that even two weeks ago when we put up a show, it was somewhat dated from the two days that lapsed in between recording it and putting it up. The cycle has slowed a little bit, but just a little behind the scenes for everybody who's watching or listening. Adam and I put together an outline and we kind of go back and forth over the course of two weeks. And what was relevant seven days ago, we end up nixing that and updating it because the news moves so quickly here. And again, this is not a new show. We're trying to laser in on topical issues that are somewhat evergreen, but show up in the news cycle. Yeah. But this was one of the few times we were kind of ahead

on what was happening in Portland and that's kind of stayed as one of the biggest stories, what was happening in Portland. And that's kind of stayed as one of the biggest stories that in the COVID relapse. So, you know, instead of boring everyone on the same old topics, we don't go there to this time. Right. Yeah. So if you're new to the show, we have a couple of segments that we do some opening remarks, a little bit from the news, a little show and tell. We take an advertiser break and then we come back with listener questions. If you would like your question considered and read on air, you can leave a voicemail for us at 424-235-4626, or you can leave it on our Facebook group page. But I'm liking these voicemails. They're great. And I have to thank everybody who's called. The calling is definitely, there's been an uptick in messages. And so we're seeing that and I appreciate everybody who's

calling and I'm going through every single one, listening to every single one and slotting them in. And if we don't get to you today, we still have you in the can and we will get to them over the course of the life of this AMA. It's cool to listen to them. I think it takes a certain amount of courage and vulnerability to leave your voice and your name. And I understand some people want it to be anonymous and that's fine, but it's cool. And it makes me feel like this is a community, which is the whole idea. And really the impetus behind this version of the podcast to try to make it a more communitarian, inclusive version of what I typically do when I just

interview people. Yeah. It's a chance to interact and to get into topics you can't, you don't have time when you're talking to a Hooberman, Dr. Hooberman or someone like that, you know, you're not going to talk to him about stuff that isn't relevant. So this is a chance to be more generalist, as you like to say, to get into the range of what Rich Roll is all about. So we got good stuff for you guys today. I want to open it up with a little update on our boy, Tommy Rives. We spoke about him, was it two weeks ago, I think? Yes. At that time, Tommy Rives, for people that don't know, is a legendary ultra runner. He's beloved in the endurance community.

He's just a beautiful, beautiful human being who is suffering from some very significant and dire health circumstances at the moment. When we last recorded this podcast, he was experiencing what was being characterized at the time as quote-unquote COVID-like symptoms, some severe respiratory distress. Since we recorded that, in between the time in which we recorded that and it went live, he went into a coma and then the family got to work trying to figure out a way to move him to a facility that could properly diagnose him because he was undiagnosed at that time. He got moved to a facility in Scottsdale from Flagstaff where he was previously and received a diagnosis, which is a very rare and aggressive form of lymphoma called primary pulmonary NKT cell lymphoma. I understand that he is now out of that coma, but very much still in a very serious situation. He's sedated. According to his brother, Jacob, he's less inflamed. His oxygen levels are improving. So that's good news. It feels like it's moving in the right direction.

And I understand that he's going to be undergoing, if he isn't already, some cancer treatments. And I don't know the details of that. But thank you to everybody who reached out, who contributed to the GoFundMe campaign. I'm going to put a link to that again in the show notes. They have raised over $433,000 to this point, which is incredible. Tommy, of course, because he's such a big-hearted individual, is asking that people also consider donating to clean water for the Navajo Nation. There's a link to that up in the GoFundMe for Tommy and his family as well. So I can link that up as well.

And in addition, his brother and his family organized a run with RIVS, which is a, you know, communitarian kind of run to raise awareness and funds for Tommy and his family. The idea is you pick a day between August 1st and August 9th to run, hike, walk, whatever, just move, put some miles in for RIVS. And they also just announced an auction called the Rage On Auction, which you can find on Facebook. And that's live between August 3rd and August 13th. If you go to facebook.com slash Rage On Auction, you can find more information there. I'm going to donate a couple books for that. People are just bidding on stuff, and that's another way to support him and his family. In the meantime, if you want to stay current with his condition, the best place to do that is just following his brother Jacob on Instagram at Jacob Pusey, P-U-Z-E-Y.

And he's posting daily updates to keep everyone apprised of how he's doing. And the run with ribs is kind of like as many miles as you want or whatever you want. I think it's like a social media thing. Like you put some runs in, you post it, you help raise awareness for him and what he's going through. So heart goes out to Tommy and his family. Hell yeah. It's going to be a longer journey than even just COVID. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

But I'm glad he's been diagnosed and he's getting the treatment that he needs and deserves. Meanwhile, on the subject of putting miles in, you just put in your first 10 mile swim run the other day. I did, I did, I did. You posted on Instagram and all your gear. In my climate change chic gear. How'd that go?

It went well. I had been having problems with my foot again. It was like the same foot that I broke ages ago without realizing it and then walked on it for several months and then became a chronic condition and slowly was able to get back and, and first on a treadmill and then finally running. And, but it's something I have to manage. It's like a pain thing. And so it had just come back and I was, and, uh, I was having trouble, but

then I decided to give it a go and, um, lace them up and go out and do a 10. I ended up, I think it was like 10 and a half miles. Like eight running, two swimming? That's right. A little bit, yes, eight and a little bit over two. Yeah, two and a quarter swimming, I think. And around Santa Monica? Yeah, so I run from my place down to the beach and then up to the end of the bike path there

by Bel Air Bay and then swim down and then ran up Amalfi. So I did a full rich roll running through the neighborhood in my gear. And I definitely got some looks this time. Cyclists, when a cyclist totally decked out in Lycra are giving you looks about how you look, then you know, you know you're in new territory.

You gotta check it out. The best, I found the best swim run training that's most appropriate for the courses that you find in the Otillo races is in and around the bluffs of Point Doom. Like that original swim that you took me on around the point and then going up those trails. I don't know if those, they may be closed right now. I don't know. Well, no, they're open. I mean, that's where I trained for Catalina when I was doing that. But it's just such a haul for me to get out to Point Duman back. Even if I'm just diving the reef like I do, it's like four and a half to five hours. And it's just impossible. But from this, what I love about this is it gets me in the ocean without having to do that. I'm like, literally, it's two hours. Like normally, if I just do a seven-mile or a six-mile or one,

it's like under an hour and a half, and it's right from my door. And so it just feels like what this sport's supposed to be about. Like, you leave from your door and you're back. Like, that's the beauty of living in Santa Monica. So for a long time, I was avoiding the bay because I love Doom, and I love how clear it is, and the water's clean, and it's an MPA. And I still love Doom. But that's now really mostly a dive site for me.

And if I'm doing swim workouts, it's in the bay. And it's cleaner than I thought. I've seen white sea bass there. There was a 14-foot shark sighting off Sunset Point not far from there. Wow, I didn't hear about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's wild out there, too, to a lesser degree. You get dolphins coming by.

But, yeah, it's, I do love it. I am addicted to it. I feel so much better than just if I run eight straight, like just doing the- It's a different thing. It's a totally different thing. The switching gears really puts it over the top. I feel like it's a better workout,

like the full body workout, yeah. And you never, like when you're doing it, I mean, you did longer segments, but when you're doing these shorter segments, you're never comfortable. Like once you settle into a rhythm, then you gotta switch it up again and your heart rate's bouncing all over the place.

That too. And that's a huge difference from triathlon or cycling where you're kind of in a certain groove and you kind of hold it for a long time. Yeah, but now I'm ready. I could do a 15K. I could do like the 15 now, which is like what I wanted to prove to myself. And I mean, I could see if you just, if you have enough water and food, you could just keep going. Cause like even

three mile runs, I mean, even multiples of them, they're not that, they're not that hard. So yeah. Yeah. When, when it was, when I was training for the world championship version of that race at its peak, I was doing my, I should have been training much more in the ocean than I was. I was doing it in a pool, but it would be in and out and in and out like, you know, like for like hours and hours. That's different. And I think the world championship has a 12 mile run in there somewhere. Yeah, late, like two thirds into it or three quarters into it. Yeah. Well, I was grateful for that

because I just wanted to get into a rhythm. All the switching gears was much more challenging for me than just the plane running. But correct me if I'm wrong, you're just kind of winging this, right? It's not like you're working with a coach or you've got a plan or a program. You're just like, I think I'll do this today.

Well, our friend Ted McDonald helped me get ready for Catalina. Shout out to Ted. Yeah, shout out to Ted. And that was really helpful. But basically what happened is quarantine happened and I don't really go anywhere. I go to the farmer's market once a week.

I come here every two weeks. And other than that, I'll either drive to Point Dume for a dive or I'm swimming and running. And mostly it was running at first because the trails were closed and the beaches were closed. And so I started doing these double digit runs for the first time, which was great. And so then when the beaches opened and we can get back out there, I started to kind of switch it up. And I still was doing one run a week, but it was really just, you know,

the gyms were closed, everything was closed. So I just started winging it and, you know, seeing if my foot could hold up and it's mostly has. Right. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to talk a little bit more generally and broadly about training principles. We can have a segment training principles because as proud as I am of what you've been doing, I think that you would benefit from having a little bit of a program or- Is this an intervention, right? A little bit. A little bit. What am I doing here? I don't want to rain on your parade or anything like that. But in my experience, when you're just

out waking up in the morning and saying, oh, I think I'll do this today and spontaneously going out, that's great. And I think you'll, first of all, the most important thing is that you love what you're doing and you're enjoying it because that will, you know, basically give you the impetus and the level of emotional engagement to keep going. So, I'm not dissuading you from that in any way whatsoever. But I do think there's wisdom in having a little bit of a plan and intentionality about what you're doing. In my experience, when people are just haphazardly going out and doing whatever, you can reach a certain level of fitness and competence, but you will inevitably reach a plateau. And most people just are never able to break through that

plateau to the next level because they're not intentional in what they're doing. They're just going out and winging it. And I think quarantine, this stay-in-place moment that we're all experiencing along a spectrum because – Not all of us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Depending upon where you live and many other variables, it is an opportunity to think about first principles here and get back to basics and really be mindful about what it is that you're trying to do, trying to achieve, trying to accomplish. And because there are no races on the calendar, we can all rest easy and take a breath and say, I don't have this thing on the calendar right now,

so how can I make the most of this moment of repose? And I think what I keep coming back to is the idea of not necessarily starting over, but essentially building a proper foundation, starting from the very beginning, no matter how fit you are saying, okay, let's be a beginner here. A perfect example is, I see this all the time with swimmers in Ironman and triathlon, people who didn't grow up swimming and don't necessarily have the best technique. And because they're time crunched and because the race is on the calendar and coming up in a number of weeks or months, they feel so compelled to get in their volume and their wattage, whatever, making sure that they're fit, but they're overlooking their technique. So they're slapping around in the pool. And it's like, no, if you would just stop and not

worry about your fitness for a minute and hone in on your technique and spend a month just focused on proper technique, you will have tremendous gains that will allow you to break through that plateau and reach the next level. And I think we have that opportunity right now. So I would encourage anybody and everybody who's fitness-minded to think about how to build a foundation, to focus on technique. And this is the moment to focus on functional body strength, things like core, core strength, and I was thinking that whether you're running or you're swimming, or you're on a bike or whatever discipline it is that you're that you're doing, being technique minded in this moment right now, I think will pay off in the long run.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt. But I was thinking in functional body strength and overall like doing the 10 miles, I was thinking, God, if I, cause I do wanna try to get to the point where I can do like the, not the world championship necessarily, but like the longer version of this, which is what, 40K, 45K or something like that.

Right. And to do that, it's not just fueling yourself better but you do need to have beyond just the ability to run longer distance you still need to build in your long distance run of the week you still need to do all that but you also need to still be i think lifting weights and doing weight training or some sort of like functional body training 100 and i can tell you that when my core is strong and my back is strong, that I'm a much better athlete and I'm able to maintain that technique under duress. When you start to get tired,

instead of turning into a wet noodle when you're running, you're able to maintain your form and that's gonna obviously manifest in better performances. So with your example of trying to prepare yourself for a longer version of this swim run, the focus should be on those things that are really annoying that you don't want to do when you're time crunched, like the core body strength and the technique work and the drills and all those sorts of things. And at the same time, that building that foundation to create the ultimate aerobic engine, right? The most efficient aerobic engine that you can. And the way that you do that,

and I learned this through my tutelage under Chris Howitt for many years, is to focus on zone two training. So what does that mean? This is something that I talked about extensively in finding ultra and I'll recap it briefly here, but essentially the body has two energy systems. You have your aerobic system and you have your anaerobic system, your aerobic system, which is the energy system that you use when you're exerting yourself at a moderate level relies on oxygen and fat for fuel. You have enough fat in your body to propel you for umpteen hours. You don't have to worry about it. Your anaerobic engine relies on glucose. And essentially that's something that can get burned out

in 45 minutes. Right. You have to be constantly refueling yourself. So your anaerobic system is what kicks in when you notch it up to that higher gear and you start exerting yourself, sprint work, tempo work, and the like. Endurance sports, and especially ultra-endurance sports, rely on the efficiency of your aerobic system. And you build that very slowly over time by spending a tremendous amount or percentage of your training time in what we call zone two. So there are different zones for training, zone one through zone five. Zone one would be anything from a walk to a brisk walk.

Zone two is the next level up. Think of it as conversational speed, whether you're riding a bike or you're running. conversational speed, whether you're riding a bike or you're running, it's the cadence with which you can carry on a conversation with your buddy and complete your training without feeling overexerted. There are ways of calculating specifically what that zone two is for you specifically through heart rate training, lactate testing, and the like. And we don't need to go down that rabbit hole now. I talked about this in Finding Ultra. For running, for me specifically, my zone two is a heart rate in the range of 130 to 145 typically.

For cycling, it's 120 to 130. People read that in my book and then just assumed that that's applicable to everybody. I would get people tweeting me saying, I ran at a 140 heart rate. I was like, that's great, but I don't know if that's your zone two. That's my to everybody. I would get people tweeting me saying, I ran at a 140 heart rate. I was like, that's great, but I don't know if that's your zone too. That's my zone too.

Everybody's gonna be a little bit different. And I've done lactate testing to establish those zones. So what people will find, even people who are fit and have been out running or cycling or whatever, haphazardly like yourself for a considerable period of time and feel like they're fit, they'll quickly realize

once they really understand what their zone two is, if you're wearing a heart rate monitor, which everybody should when they're training, or at least when you're endeavoring to train intentionally, you will realize that it's not very hard to tip into Z3 and to cap your heart rate at zone two. I mean, according to my watch, I'm living in zone four. And it's very humbling. Yeah. It's very humbling. Yeah.

And it takes a very long time and a certain different kind of discipline. We think of discipline as like, what gets you out of bed in the morning and like the Goggins-esque, like hit it hard all the time. But the discipline with building this aerobic engine is the discipline to hold back when you feel like you want to go harder.

Yeah. Because you want to finish your workout and feel like you got something out of it or that you did something. When you're training in zone two, oftentimes you're going to complete your workout and go, is that it? Like, I want to go harder. So you have to hold yourself back. incline, oftentimes you have to walk in order to cap that heart rate until you develop the efficiency, the proficiency, and the aerobic capacity to be able to handle those inclines without going over your zone two. It's a patient's game. It takes a lot of time. What we have right now is time. So I think now is the moment to invest in that. And I can tell you from personal

experience and many other people that I know in this space, that this is the ultimate secret to breaking through that plateau to the next level. Because when you have invested in that zone two methodology of training, and you've applied it over a long period of time and built your volume up very slowly, you will find, like in my own personal experience, when I first started training for Ultraman, when I would go out for a run, I would have to run like 10 minute pace, 1030 pace in order to not go over my zone two threshold. But by the time I lined up for Ultraman, I could run 730 pace at the same heart rate. That's crazy.

So it's not about going out and running fast. It's becoming so efficient in these motions that they are less taxing over time. And that's really what you're trying to work on. And what most people do, the mistake that most people make is they spend the vast majority of their training time in what we call the gray zone. And the gray zone is sort of in between your aerobic energy system and your anaerobic energy system, where you're training too hard to really effectively develop your aerobic engine, but not hard enough to develop the power and the speed that anaerobic training avails you, right? So it's what happens when you go out and you're just like, I'm going to run for 45 minutes, you know, three days a week and just go as hard as I can sustain it for 45 minutes.

Most likely you're in the gray zone. And again, you will develop a certain level of fitness doing that, but you will quickly become stuck and never be able to improve and certainly not experience any quantum improvements until you are mindful of your training, spend most of that time in the slower zone two, and then pick your anaerobic moments for threshold work and tempo work a couple times a week. But most of the training you're going to be doing is going to be in that zone two space. And again, it takes humility to do it because you've got to be willing to let people who appear less fit than you pass you on the road or on the trail and just say, it's okay, I've got a plan. And that's the difference

between exercising and training, the mindfulness and the intentionality that goes into it. When you become adept at zone two aerobic training, what you're doing is you're increasing mitochondrial density in those big muscles, and you're developing this efficiency and this aerobic capacity that once you've honed it, and it took me many years to do this, again, it's a patient's game,

it's like a superpower, but it doesn't happen quickly. It's not a hack. It's the opposite of a hack. It's being willing to put in the time over and have a long view of what performance gains mean. Are you offering to coach me, Rich? I'm not a coach. I got a coach for you. You got Ted. He probably knows about this stuff. He does. He does. I mean, I think the first time I heard about this beside your book,

because I obviously read about it in the book, but Mark Allen, I think on your show, talked about he won Ironman this way. That's how he beat Dave Scott, is like completely revamping his training. Exactly. And there were other things too, like visiting the shaman

and becoming one with the island. Getting rid of the hacks. That was truly his real secret. I will tell you that. And I believe that. But we did talk at length about Zone 2. You should go back and listen to that interview if you didn't listen to it the first time around. It impacted me a lot. But he would say that in the winter when he would start training again for the following year, Ironman World Championships are in October every year, that he would have to walk the hills. And this is the Ironman World Champion.

And he'd be like, yeah, I gotta walk these hills because I don't want my heart rate going over whatever his zone two threshold was. So if Mark Allen can walk a hill, you can too. Well, yeah, and I have done that because I've been trying to keep track as opposed to pace heart rate on this Garmin. I have the Descent, which I got because it's good for freediving and has all the bells and whistles or you think.

But obviously, we're going to get into that later on how accurate it is. And I don't wear a heart rate monitor. But I have tried to hold back at times. But obviously, at times, I don't. And I have gotten a little bit quicker., but obviously at times I don't. And I have gotten a little bit quicker, but obviously I'm not doing it. I'm mostly living in orange, like which I guess zone four on almost every run.

Yeah, that's not good. And that's not good. No. So I have to go slower. Right. So we'll work on that. And to reiterate, it's not about the gear. We're gonna do a show and tell segment where

we're going to talk about gear because so many people want to know about the gear. But my refrain is always, it's not about the gear. Gear is helpful. It's fun. But when it becomes an impediment to you just going out and doing like what you did yesterday, then it's a problem. But we'll get to that in a later section. All right, cool. I'm excited about it. I mean, I totally see how I can do 10. And it's not like I got off the couch to do it. I mean, I've been building up to it. I've done some 11-mile runs. I've done seven-mile swim runs. I mean, I've been building up to it. So it's not like I wouldn't encourage people to get off the couch to do it, but I could see how the difference between 10 and 20 is like, it's, it's the difference between five and 10 is nothing compared to the difference between 10 to

20. There's a reason why everyone falls apart at mile 18 on the marathon, because that's the difference between somebody who has truly honed their aerobic engine versus somebody who's spending all their time. Like if you're a gray zone trainer, then you're gonna fall apart at mile 18. Yeah. Pretty much every time. You see it time and time again, so. Shout out to all my homies in the gray zone.

Yeah, like yourself. Like definitely, like me. I have- That could be the title of this podcast, Don't Live in the Gray Zone. I may have a smart watch, but I'm not a smart swim runner. Right, so that's the thing about the gear. The gear are tools,

but if you're not using those tools effectively and properly, what use are they? Okay, I'm suitably shamed. I'm going to buckle down. Right, all right. Well, let's put a pin in that for now and pivot to teachable moment. I'm open to all advices. So yes, my mitochondria need it.

This is a segment we call Teachable Moment. What are we going to learn today, Adam? Well, you know, I kind of, I teased this a little bit, but said we're not going to get into it. We're not going to get into the weeds of Portland, but I wanted to get into this, like, what the F is DHS doing, the Department of Homeland Security? What are they doing?

And basically what I've been thinking about watching Portland go down is we have this department called Department of Homeland Security, What are they doing? agency that could more efficiently exchange information with local law enforcement so that we don't have a repeat of the failures that allowed people to train to bomb the, you know, to fly planes into the towers. That was the intent behind it. There was always this, the dissenters were always a little bit worried about giving the government that kind of power for federal agencies to be kind of interacting with local law enforcement. And the scope is dictated by the Patriot Act? Yes, the Patriot Act created the agency as far as I remember.

And so in this, also TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, Customs, ICE, they all fall under DHS. And so, but if you just say that you believe in the idea that there's this agency out there to protect the people that live in the United States to give us safety and security. Well, to me, like, what's the point of having a DHS if you can't help contain a virus? Right. And so cut to last fall and early winter, the virus has gotten out from Wuhan. It's all over the place.

Italy is having its problems. And we don't do anything. People are getting off planes from Europe. And they are from China. Yes, there was some containment. People were brought to military bases and quarantined for a period of time. But not from Europe. People were just like walking off flights from Italy. O'Hare was the big one that we saw the video of. And it became like a two, three-hour line, which is the exact wrong thing to do under the auspices of, okay, we're now going to start to manage this thing.

And in stark contrast, sorry to interrupt, but in stark contrast to some of the videos that I saw, I'm sure you did too, of airports in Seoul and in Beijing where they had their testing completely dialed in and there were no lines. Exactly. And so we have this, this is the backdrop. The reason I'm bringing it up is here's this agency that's supposed to protect us, keep us safe, keep us secure, drops the ball so poor. They did such a poor job of managing Corona and yet they're putting their personnel, border patrol tactical teams, BORTAC is what they're called, in Portland, Oregon. Same people also were deployed to Standing Rock, by the way, also deployed to Portland to deal with these protests that have been ongoing since George Floyd was killed. week because of my reporting in the Sonoran desert, because my reporting on the border wall, I was in contact with an organization called no more deaths who drop water off for migrants as they come across the border. And they also have humanitarian aid stations set up. So if, if people are suffering from heat related or cold related, whatever it is, there's, there's places they can

go for water to be checked out by EMTs that are volunteers, all volunteer run. And the Border Patrol hates No More Deaths because No More Deaths reports on abuses of migrants and arrests. And that camp, a camp in Aravaca, Arizona, a tented camp, was raided by 20-plus vehicles, a chopper. This is on Friday. They were just raided at 20-plus vehicles, a chopper. This is on Friday. They were just raided at gunpoint. Under what stated purpose? There was a warrant to collect, basically, they were, No More Deaths believes

that Border Patrol is thinking they're a smuggling operation. They had a warrant for financial records. They took everyone's phones, all their computers. But in actuality, what happened is tents were slashed, 30 plus migrants were rounded up. The volunteers were zip tied and held cuffed with zip ties for two hours. And medicines were overturned, beds were overturned. The place was trashed. Cell phones that were being used to photograph it and log it were confiscated.

Volunteers won't get their cell phones back for a couple of hours. The judge that signed the warrant had signed one previously on No More Deaths. So there's this. one previously on No More Deaths. So there's this, and No More Deaths thinks they had just released a report about the Border Patrol that implicates the Border Patrol Union in these raids on No More Deaths. And they think it was payback, but who knows? I mean, because I haven't reported the story out, so I have not gone to Border Patrol. So I should say that right away. I'm getting this straight from No More Deaths. But knowing what No More Deaths does, having researched them extensively, they are not a migrant smuggling operation. They are a humanitarian aid agency.

They're a nonprofit. And that's what they do. So the point is, what is going on with DHS? Why do we have a guy who's running DHS getting into feuds with governors? Like what is going on? Yeah. Yeah. The fumbling of the COVID response in stark contrast to the sort of authoritarian overreach of this organization in places like Portland raises a broader issue about power in general, federal power versus state power, and how we're allocating our governmental resources for the behest of the people. By definition, the DHS is to protect homeland security. The biggest threat to that at the moment is this virus that shut down our economy and is forcing us to not interact with each other and is creating tremendous havoc that will have a ripple effect for who knows how long to come.

And yet we've been incapable in getting a grip on how to manage this. We're still seeing these crazy spikes. The United States is spiraling out of control with respect to new cases, et cetera. Meanwhile, we've dispatched this basically paramilitary organization to places like Portland. And the argument being that it's an effort to protect federal property. Right. Which is one small portion of what's actually transpiring in these places. And this organization has gone on to, you know, rather than, I mean, the whole, it's a misuse of government systems. This was all meant to, you know, basically combat terrorism, essentially.

And under the broad authority of the Patriot Act, it's allowed overreach. allowed overreach. So now we're seeing these lists being made about journalists, names being put on a ledger. Yeah, dossiers on journalists. Baseball cards being made of arrested protesters, which all feels very Orwellian and dystopian. And concerning, irrespective of whatever your political perspective is, this should give one pause. And the guy who was integral in creating, like, tracking those two journalists that were in the Washington Post story, which I think you're going to link to, that guy was reassigned, but he wasn't fired. I mean, so what is happening, you know, like, and why? That's the question here. You know, like, what should we be asking of our government agencies and why? And so that's the teachable moment. What's your take on that?

Well, my take is that everything's upside down, obviously, under this current administration, but you have an environmental protection agency that is cutting environmental laws. I don't know. My takeaway on this is that I'd like to hold this agency accountable. This agency to me is dangerous. It's dangerous to the civil liberties of everyone who lives here. And we should be watching it.

And I don't have a petition to give you. I don't have anything else. But I would just like listeners to pay attention to what is happening at the Department of Homeland Security right now and be very skeptical to the point, not to where you don't believe everything, but that you're really paying attention to the statements being made by Chad Wolf and by everything that comes out of the DHS. Yeah. What's interesting also is that a core principle of republicanism is states' rights. Yes. And here we have an overriding of state mandates for the purposes of a federal flex.

But that's been – since Trump became president, it's kind of cut both ways, whereas the Democrats were always for a big federal kind of policy. And now, really, it's states that are fighting for democratic principles like the state of California. So that's kind of cut both ways. It just so happens that that's the way it was, but it didn't happen that way under the Bush administration. So it's interesting how that all has transpired. But yeah, so I just wanted to flag that for the listeners, because I know listeners are super concerned about, you know, how to be better people and how can we be a better country. And it doesn't seem like safety and security are right now the mandate of the DHS. It's a control thing. It's so strange. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Department of Homeland Security. Do you feel more secure?

And it's also bizarre how we kind of haphazardly normalize things depending upon our political perspective. Yeah, that's true. What do you think about that? Well, I think it's concerning. It speaks to our cognitive biases. If you're of a certain political persuasion, you're going to have a lens on what the DHS is doing that's going to differ from somebody who's on the other side of the aisle. When in truth, these things should not be partisan. But we're not even talking about like the protests in Portland.

Like I'm not there. I'm not watching it every day. It's not, you know, I read about it from time to time. And your sense of what's transpiring there if you're not there depends wholly upon your information silo. It does. firing there if you're not there depends wholly upon your information silo it does but like no matter what's happening there like we have to have we have to expect the dhs to be an impartial partial arbiter of uh the constitution and and and how that's laid out and so it doesn't seem like that's the case when you're when you're enforcing, when you're cracking down on a humanitarian aid organization in the middle of fucking desert and you're cracking down on protesters, it seems like it needs to be either disbanded because it's a failure or overhauled completely to include some, you know, the CDC or some sort of like offshoot or corridor that links the CDC with the DHS.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem super wise that DHS is vested with authority of maintaining or trying to establish some kind of security around the spread of COVID when its real mandate emanates from 9-11 and terrorism. Right. And I'd like to point out that the failure with containing COVID wasn't just international borders. It wasn't just customs. TSA should have been taking everyone's temperature on every single domestic flight in this country. That wasn't happening. So maybe now it is, but it wasn't then. All right, let's shift gears here. Let's do it. We're going to talk about a couple of letters.

Yes. Aren't we? We are. So this news came out, I forget when it was. Was it like three weeks ago, four weeks ago? It was like four weeks ago, I think we talked about it. Right. When it first, no, we talked about it right before it dropped. Yes. It dropped about four weeks ago. We were talking a little bit about cancel culture

and the notion of redemption. And then like literally the next day, the Harper's letter dropped. And so this is a letter that was spearheaded by a journalist named Thomas Chatterton Williams and George Packer and a few others. And it was signed by legends really, Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem, Wynton Marsalis, Malcolm Gladwell, Salman Rushdie, Noam Chomsky, most of whom or all of whom are liberal, right?

Liberal-minded. There's, I think, 100-plus signees. There was a bunch of conservatives, too. I mean, the whole point was that it crossed that aisle, and it was a panoply of perspectives. And the idea was it was kind of speaking out against illiberalism, illiberalism, not being a political statement, but like on the idea of free flow of ideas, liberal ideas, like free speech and free expression. And so I'll just read a little excerpt here for you. And, and then we can discuss kind of what we think of it. The excerpt is this.

The free exchange of information ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture. An intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter speech from all quarters, but it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions

of speech and thought. It goes on. But, you know, and it's in response to people losing their jobs, losing their positions, not based on something like Me Too, but based on action, like speaking the wrong thing, making the wrong move. A guy was removed from a position in Harvard for actually being the lawyer for Harvey Weinstein. That was his big offense. He represented Harvey Weinstein. These was his big offense. He represented Harvey Weinstein. Like these are illiberal, dangerous forces. My original knee-jerk reaction when this broke the news, was it like two and a half weeks ago or something like that?

Was that this is a conversation that we need to have. And very rapidly, there was a reaction to this, a counter reaction to this letter that was pretty severe. Yeah, it came out right away. There was the people who I guess the letter was targeting, didn't take it too well. And people were being accused of, the signees were being accused of being elitist. And a lot of them are very accomplished and elite people. But there was one of the poets that signed it was a black poet who was an ex-prisoner, like as an ex-con.

So it's not like everyone's this elitist. But I think Hannah, I hope I'm not butchering her last name, Gorgas from the Atlantic probably had the best rebuttal, and it explained itself the best. And so I'm going to read a little bit of it right now. Across the globe, the challenge facing journalists and intellectuals is not the pain of Twitter scorn. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that at least 250 journalists were imprisoned worldwide last year for their reporting. 50 journalists were imprisoned worldwide last year for their reporting. In the U.S., the Trump administration continues to threaten reporters' safety and undermine the belief that journalists

play a valuable role in a democracy. The country is moving deeper into an economic recession, decimating industries, including journalism and academia. And yet the suddenly unemployed people, the Harper statement references, clearly lost their jobs, not because of a pandemic or government pressure, but for actions criticized as potentially harming marginalized groups this small group includes james bennett the former editor of the new york times editorial page who was forced to resign after the op-ed page he was supervised published an article by arkansas senator tom cotton that endorsed state violence and she was basically saying what that like like these elitists are complaining about being criticized, not complaining about something that's real. front criticism of their writing because none of them are actually in jeopardy of being deplatformed

or losing their ability to express themselves. They all have massive platforms and they're all going to be just fine. But the broader truth here and where the conversation really needs to center is on this trend towards illiberalism and the censoriousness that is at play across social media in a sort of Orwellian sense. Not that the government is cracking down in any kind of authoritarian way, but that there is this social media kind of mob at large that self-polices what's acceptable speech and what isn't. I'm no fan of Tom Cotton, but I don't think that the editor of the New York Times editorial page should have been fired for publishing that letter, certainly not because of the content of the letter. I think he resigned under pressure. I'm not exactly sure. I think it

was like resigned. It was a resignation. I think so, but it was under pressure. And I think that the reason that they gave is that he didn't read Tom Cotton's piece before it went to print. That's a different issue. However, Brett Stevens, who's another favorite punching bag of left-wingers at the New York Times, wrote a really convincing op-ed about that.

And he said, you want people like Tom Cotton to tell you what they're thinking. And what you don't want is to make Tom Cotton somehow a sympathetic figure to people who care about free speech. Because this guy is advocating for state violence, like advocating basically what we just were flagging for people. And he's not for civil liberties, clearly. And now he's the darling of people who, you know, he was able to be set up as this conservative avatar for like being abused by this so, you know, a biased media. You're basically showing the world that you have a bias. And that's not, and obviously I don't think New York Times does have a bias, but that's what you're, that's the perception that could come up. Right. And so it's dangerous. I mean, like the one thing that I think that Gorgas didn't get right is that these overreaches by the left can lead to a more hostility toward journalists exactly for that reason.

Because you're overreaching and then it becomes more convincing when someone says fake news. It becomes more convincing. Look, they are biased. Yeah, it's certainly a danger. I mean, this is something that Bill Maher talked about in his episode this past week. He interviewed Chatterton Williams and Barry Weiss as well, who we're going to get to. And he pointed out this study, I don't know the origin of the study, the Cato Institute, I think, where 62% of people were afraid to share their honest opinion. And I think that that's worth exploring because I just know personally in my circle of friends and journalists and writers that there is this, what Chatterton Williams calls this onlooker effect, that it's not about the criticism, that cancellation is not about bringing the elites down to earth, but it's about this chilling effect, this stifling, this narrowing influence on all of our behavior, where we have to pause and consider whether we really want to share what's on our mind.

And just the fact that you're going through that calculus at all, I think, speaks to the current health or lack of health in public discourse at the moment, which should be concerning to everybody. I think so. I mean, right after the letter came out, I tweeted it and retweeted it and agreed my own agreement. I mean, listen. Right before the backlash? Before the backlash. and retweeted it and agreed my own agreement. I mean, listen, when I tweet- Pre, right before the backlash? Before the backlash. When I tweet, it's like a lonely man

on the Alpine lakes skipping a rock. Like that's the kind of effect it has on the greater world. I'm not a tidal wave maker like you, Rich Roll. I'm not that on Twitter, I can tell you that. But so no one really pays attention. But even that, you know, like as soon as the backlash started to roll out, even I was, and I'm very progressive. I mean, I have-

You're a progressive contributor to the New York Times. Yes. And I have put myself in harm's way to report stories that I'm proud of that are human rights stories. And I thought about deleting my tweet. It's problematic. Knowing you as well as I know you, it's problematic when somebody who is as progressive and liberal-minded as you, somebody who is so devoted to human rights causes and the kinds of stories that you devote your life to, like going down to the wall in Arizona and trying to understand the deleterious environmental impact of what that construction project is all... You've reported on GMOs in Hawaii. These are very liberal-minded stories to pursue.

And when somebody of your ilk is being accused of not being liberal or progressive enough and being shamed for pointing out that we need – like the health of our society depends upon the free exchange of ideas, then it's problematic. It is. To be clear, I wasn't shamed because nobody really pays attention to my Twitter. But you said you got a little bit of... I was worried about that. I see. I was worried about being shamed. You're thinking about it. I was the onlooker.

I was concerned about it. I stuck, I kept it out there and I didn't have a backlash and I kept it out there. And I actually then tweeted at Williams and, and, and thanked him for the letter. And, and, and so I, I'm, because I believe in that. I believe in the idea that we should have free speech, you know, like it's Dave Chappelle is, is constantly complaining about, he won't play colleges. Most comics won't play colleges anymore. That was like a lifeblood for comics, like playing the college circuit. That's what kept people out of bars all the time. And, and, and they were making a lot of money on that college circuit. It's no longer there. They don't do it.

And I think this whole thing points to this weird co-mingling of academia and newsrooms, which wasn't the case. Like when a guy like Carl Bernstein, who with Woodward broke the Watergate story, he was a cub reporter that came out out of high school, got a job at a paper. You can't get a job at a paper as a cub reporter at a high school anymore. It doesn't exist. Part of that is that we don't have local papers that are as robust as they used to be.

That's harder. So now you have academia feeding newsrooms. That's different than we ever had before. And in some ways that can be good. I'm not saying it's all bad, but I'm just saying this idea is one that came out of academia first, this idea of the proper way to speak and that there is... Closed societies, it was first a problem on campus before it was a problem in newsrooms. Yeah. I think it started with student bodies and

then those students matriculate and go out into the world and they begin to populate the newsrooms and they slowly begin to have their voices being shared on social media and the result is kind of what we're seeing right now. Yeah. And then you wanted to get to Barry as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. She was a signatory on to Barry as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. She was a signatory in a letter. She resigned from the New York Times in her resignation letter. She claimed to be a target of progressive forces

within the newsroom there. And this is what she wrote. A new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper, that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few And so that's what her take is. Right. This is an interesting situation. It's related to the Harper's letter, although it's distinct and it's its own unique thing, I think, independent of that. letter, although it's distinct and it's its own unique thing, I think independent of that.

As somebody who is a contributor to the New York Times, you have a sense of what the inner workings of that newspaper are like. I do know other writers for the New York Times who take issue with Barry's characterization of what that climate is like there. And I wouldn't consider myself a big Barry Weiss stan or fan or anything like that. I think she's done some interesting reporting. I don't agree with everything that she says. But it does speak to the Chatterton Williams letter in the sense that there is this feeling feeling of orthodoxy that supersedes fact-finding or science or the pursuit of truth. Yeah. I think it's the same thing that we're talking about with DHS. I think overall, and I wouldn't put it just to the New York Times, I think overall, it's more of a, let's be aware of what's really happening. My experience in the New York Times is confined

to the sports desk. I've never had any issues. It's always been like, um, like the best people that I've ever worked with in journalism. Um, so, and I have no insight into how the newsroom operates. Um, and, uh, Part of the criticism of Barry though, is that, is that this was like a press release for her next move, whether that's her creating some new media platform or whatever it is, there's a little bit of grandstanding. Oh, for sure. I mean, she is, she is, but at the same time, it's like this idea, like, I think the ideas concerns me more than the way that the New York Times operates fine. They're great. To me, the issue is, are we going to confront, is the left kind of setting themselves up as this new

McCarthyist type era? Is there a purity test? Because we've joked about purity tests in the past and it is like becoming true. Like, are there purity tests that people are going to have to pass in order to get to a certain level with- It's deeply concerning. And Bill Maher pointed this out. He's like, who are these perfect people out there that are holding us all to account according to some impossible standard? And how deep does that reach extend in terms of what the cancel culture type people who are so ready to cancel people for saying the wrong thing when anti-Semitism is the issue? You know, we had 17,000 people marching in Berlin against COVID restrictions. But it was like the people who created that protest were far right politicians. There were neo-Nazis involved. far-right politicians. There were neo-Nazis involved. There is a big fear in Germany right now that neo-Nazis are deeply embedded in all forms of government there, and certainly in police

forces and in the military. Here, we had issues with Ice Cube speaking up, Deshaun Jackson speaking up. Nick Cannon on his podcast said some pretty terrible things about Jews, quoting Farrakhan. Deshaun Jackson thought he was quoting Hitler at one point. And some people, you know, Deshaun Jackson then is going to go to Auschwitz. He's been counseled. Nick Cannon has been counseled. And Barry Weiss actually just shouted him out on Twitter about how great it is that he is educating himself and welcoming, you know, basically being the model of allowing for

redemption. Of course, Nick Cannon did read her book. That might have something to do with it. Well, there has to be a path to redemption and rehabilitation. You know, if somebody missteps, and in this culture where people are misstepping all the time, to just expect that people are going to say the wrong things. And in those instances, look, there's a spectrum of severity here that we're speaking about. There are some horrible things that are happening and some minor transgressions. But we have to determine the half-life on these cancellations and how we're going to create a culture in which it's conducive to people learning and growing in real time in the public sphere. It's the difference between... I think the real concern here with the onlooker effect is it creates, it seeds apathy, not empathy.

And to communicate and to exchange ideas and even to misstep like Nick Cannon did, but now he's showing publicly empathy. And to have Barry Weiss, who feels like she got chased out of a newsroom. And this is her core issue. This is the main, she wrote a book about this. Right. About the rise of anti-Semitism. I mean, look, I mean, we've had shootings in synagogues. We've had, I mean, this is not a small thing. And even on the left, I hear it in the wellness community all the time. People who are suspicious of George Soros as he's like some Svengali, which is this whole anti-Semitic trope that has revitalized. So it's not just right-wing, it's not just left-wing, it's all over the place.

But where do we want to encourage people to be? Do we want them to become spectators of a big Twitter fight that doesn't solve anything? Or do we wanna have empathy for one another? Are we creating apathy or are we creating empathy? I think that's what the letter is getting to with this onlooker effect is like, is that- I don't know if we're creating apathy, but we're creating antipathy, right? Versus empathy.

Or like this idea that you're a frozen onlooker that you're not gonna get in the fight. Well, that's the true onlooker effect. I think people are just opting out. Yeah, the apathy. And they're just saying, I'm just not, you know, I'm not participating in this. Not for me. Because it's too fraught. Yeah.

And for me to express myself honestly is this minefield that I'm not going to subject myself to. And that's the stifling and the chilling effect. Right. For me, it's just like, that's why I swim run without any sort of intelligence, because I just want to get out there, flail around for hours. No, I think that's right. I mean, anything else you want to share on that? No, I think we'll close it with that and we'll move on to, what are we moving on to? Show and tell. Show and tell. Show and tell.

Hard pivot. Hard pivot. Hard pivot out of Skolnick. We just watched Weight of Gold. It's the hard pivot to the weight of gold, the HBO doc featuring Apollo Ono and Michael Phelps is the narrator and Lolo Jones, great sprinter turned bobsledder.

And it explores the mental health challenges that Olympic athletes often face during training, competing, and then obviously after the torch is extinguished. So this documentary just premiered on HBO this past week. I saw the trailer getting circulated by a bunch of the athletes and thought, this is like right up my alley. I want to know more about this. I reached out to Apollo Ono. I just did a podcast with him that's going to go up in a couple of weeks. But why not take a moment now to talk about the movie? I mean, I think it's great that Michael and all of these athletes have created this project that focuses on what I think is a very

important and overlooked issue, which is the mental health of our elite athletes, whether they're professional or Olympic. The lens in this documentary is honed solely on the Olympic athletes. And you could make the argument like, oh, woe is me, like they're Olympic athletes, like they're having a hard time. But the truth is that there isn't, you know, sort of an existential crisis that's created when you're somebody who is at the height of their powers and whether you stand atop the podium or you end up in 20th place matters little. What does matter is that almost overnight, when you become a civilian in the aftermath of that experience, you're left without any resources to manage how to move forward with

your life, right? When you're used to being surrounded by tons of people who support you, who are there for you, who are all invested in your success, and every waking moment of your life is devoted to this very specific window of time in which you're expected to perform at your best, when that moment lapses and is over, how do you then become a normal human being? And a lot of these people have severe mental issues trying to grapple with that. And I think it's incumbent upon the organizing committees of all of these respective sports to create structures and programs for these athletes to better help them make that transition. You're seeing that in some of the professional leagues now. I know they do it with finances, like how to manage your money and all that kind of stuff.

But the mental aspect of high performance is only now starting to get the weight that it deserves. What I thought was interesting, a good point made by one of the figure skaters, not Sasha, but the other one. I forget. Gracie Gold? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she was saying, if I tore up my knee, I'd have the best surgeon in the world looking at it. But I don't have any, I didn't have anybody. And to look at my, after my mental health, I got recommendations

of a therapist, but I didn't have them like paid for and on the payroll and available to me, like on the spot. And I find that interesting because, you know, obviously sports psychology and sports psychologists, that's been a booming field for a while, but it's always about performance. That's surprising to me that the sports psychologist role hasn't spanned overall mental health. I'm surprised by that. Well, I think that the resources are available, and this is a point that Apollo made. It's not that they weren't there and available if you reached out for them, but you have to take into consideration that these are people who are trained to never show weakness, right? And so the idea of being vulnerable enough to say,

hey, I'm feeling not good, like I need help is a stretch for a lot of these people. And so they end up not availing themselves of what is available. And I think that makes it even more incumbent upon the coaching staffs and the people that are in these people's entourages to pay closer attention to how they're doing. But the movie's good. I think that if I had a criticism of it, I think it lives a little bit on the surface.

It could have probed a little bit more deeply. There's some great stories there that weren't fully fleshed out. Yeah, exactly. And come on, Michael Phelps. Are you going to come on the podcast? Yeah, why hasn't Michael Phelps been on this microphone? I've been trying for years to get Michael on.

I've made many overtures. I've never met Michael Phelps, but I have friends that are friends with him. I know coaches that have coached him. Recently, I emailed Peter Carllyle, his agent. I just get no, I get no response. So come on, Michael. What are you doing? Come on, Michael.

I got a chair ready for you. Get on the mic, buddy. Yeah. I mean, he looked amazing in the film. He looks like he's ready to compete is what he looks like. He looks amazing. He's really shouldered this mantle of being a mental health advocate in a meaningful way. And I think it's super cool and it's powerful.

And these are stories that need to get told. So kudos to Michael. Kudos to Michael. You know, one day he will show up on this podcast and share with us about it. Michael, if you're listening, you don't look like a retired athlete. He definitely does not. You look like an athlete in prime condition. And if you're not going to-

Are you saying he's maybe thinking about a comeback? I thought about it, but if you're not gonna do that, I think you should try freediving because I think Michael Phelps would be an incredible, it'd be an interesting way of going. It's a much more introspective kind of meditative sport. It's a huge challenge. And there's never been an athlete like Michael

that did that crossover. That's something Alexei Molchanov, right now the number one ranked freediver in the world. He has two of the world records in depth. He's wanted to see that. He's wanted to see someone from the elite. An elite athlete crossover from another discipline. Yeah, because Alexei was a nationally ranked swimmer in Russia. A nationally ranked swimmer in Russia, a nationally ranked swimmer in Russia, and his mother was too, when he – then he transitioned into freediving.

And so he's an elite athlete, and so is William Shrewbridge. So there are elite athletes in the sport, but you don't get – like, there's no swimmer pipeline. Right. Yeah. Right. That would be an interesting crossover. I think it's much more likely that he'll try to make the PGA than go into free diving. Golf seems to be his thing. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's no ocean in Arizona. Right.

Couple more things to talk about really quickly before we get into audience Q&A. I did want to mention that my buddy, Dotsie Bausch, who's been on the podcast before, you guys know her, you love her, Olympic track cyclist. She started an organization called Switch for Good, which is this incredible nonprofit promoting the benefits of a plant-based diet. It's really kind of an anti-dairy advocacy group. dairy advocacy group. And I was privileged to tape some PSAs for Switch for Good recently that were directed by Luis Ahoyes, who many might know as the director of Game Changers and The Cove and Racing Extinction. He's an amazing Academy Award winning director. And I got to spend the day with a bunch of incredible plant-based athletes like Rebecca Soni, who's a six-time Olympic medalist. She's been on the podcast as well. Dotsie, of course, George LaRock

from the NHL, Derek Morgan from the NFL, Heather Mitz, three-time Olympic medalist, soccer player, and a bunch of other really cool people. And those PSAs aired on NBC during the Today Show. And I think people keep coming up to me saying they've seen them. So I think they were on NBC during the Today Show. And I think people keep coming up to me saying they've seen them. So I think they were on NBC subsequent to that too, ran for like a month or something. I saw one. I saw one. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's really cool. And if you missed those, you can find them on the Switch for Good YouTube

channel. And I'll link that up in the show notes as well. So Dotsie's doing great work. It's basically a response to the kind of got milk, chocolate milk campaign that the dairy industry promoted. As like an energy food. Well, what happened is, in my estimation, at least, the dairy industry noticing shrinking demand for its products made this interesting decision to reposition chocolate milk, not as like the drink that elementary school kids drink at lunch, but as an athletic recovery supplement of some sorts that would enhance your recovery. And they put a lot of money behind this, a lot of money into advertising, into sponsoring athletes. And Dotsie and her organization and a bunch of athletes like myself were like, it's not right. It's really not right. So this is sort of

a response to that to correct the record as much as anything else. So shout out to Dotsie. to that to correct the record as much as anything else. So shout out to Dotsie. Well, I mean, I think athletes have been playing a huge role in this growing plant-based movement, movement away from animal products. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt that performance and athletics and mentors from the sports community has been a big driver in that.

Don't you agree? Yeah. Do you think chocolate milk is the ultimate recovery drink? No, I can't drink milk, man. Most people can't. No, I can't drink milk. I can't even eat ice cream. I eat nut milk ice cream now or oat milk.

That's the new one. Oat milk is the new thing. I'm into oat milk cream now or oat milk. That's the new one. Oat milk is the new thing. I'm into oat milk. Yeah. Oat milk's good. Yeah. A couple other quick things. My brother-in-law, Stuart Mathis, Julie's brother. That's your brother-in-law. I forgot the link up. He was great. He is a brilliant guitar player. And this is a guy who picked up a guitar when he was, I don't know, eight or nine years old and just never looked back. Like there was nothing else that he was ever going to pursue in his life other than music and the guitar.

And he, you know, I wouldn't say suffered is the wrong word, but like he bled for his art for many, many, many years. Like living in LA, in all different kinds of bands, cutting his own records. And it took a long time for him to finally hit his groove. But now he's like lauded and in the music community, like most people know who he is. This is an incredible guitar player. And he's played, he was Jules' tour guitar player. Okay. He toured with Leanne Rimes, and then he was in the Wallflowers. Oh, really? For many years. I didn't know that.

And he's been playing with Lucinda Williams for, he moved to Nashville, lives in Nashville now. But the reason I'm bringing it up is that Lucinda and Stuart just played an NPR Tiny Desk concert. For those who aren't familiar, NPR does this series called Tiny Desk where these amazing musicians play these intimate little contained concerts. And the one with Stuart and Lucinda just published recently.

So I'll link that up in the show notes. And you could see my brother-in-law, Julie's brother, and you'll get why her side of the family is so musically inclined. Yeah. Which is cool. Yeah, I liked it. Thanks for sharing that. Final thing, there's a new documentary that just came out called Takeout by Michael Sawirsky, who is a documentary filmmaker who's made some cool movies over the years, Food Choices,

being one of them. And this is a documentary executive produced by Moby. I have not watched it yet. Michael just sent me a link to check it out, so I'm going to watch it this week. But it's another sort of look at the environmental impact of our food choices through the lens of how the Amazon is being destroyed to create fields for cattle grazing and growing crops for cattle. Okay. One of those uplifting docks. Yeah. The fires in the Amazon.

Oh, really? Yeah. All right. So that's it. So should we talk about some gear? Let's talk about gear. Let's talk about the gear that's going to change my game. This is the real show and tell.

The change of my game. So hold on, I got a couple more. You know, I just want the listeners to realize that I had no idea how much Rich didn't approve of my training habits. Until I sat down here. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I'm celebrating what you're doing. I just want to put a little structure into it. I'd love it, man. I'd love it. Yeah. So on the gear tip, again, my disclaimer is that it's not about the gear. You don't need any of this gear to perform. And when people reach out to me and ask me questions about what watch are you wearing or what should I get, I essentially never respond of bike they should buy that they never end up just going outside and moving their bodies until they have this sort of equation completely figured out, which of course

they never figure out because the whole point is to protract the process of being focused on the gear. That being said, because I'm asked so often and so frequently about this, I'm going to take this moment to discuss it and then maybe never discuss it again. Maybe never. So the first thing is people on YouTube have been leaving comments like, why are you wearing two watches? Because it's cool. Does this look like a watch? I don't know what that is.

It's cool. So on my right hand, I have an old Garmin GPS watch, a Phoenix 3 heart rate. And on my left wrist, I have the Whoop band. That's the Whoop. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you haven't heard the ad reads, the sponsored ad reads that I do for Whoop on the audio version of the podcast. This Whoop, this thing is a, and again, this is not a sponsored post at all. I'm just sharing what I use. The Whoop is a wristband, essentially fitness tracker that connects with a mobile app, but it's not about gauging your workouts per se. It's much more about rest and recovery and sleep.

And so by leaving it on all day, it monitors your heart rate, it monitors your heart rate variability, your metabolic rate. It tracks your sleep and breaks down how much time you spend in the various sleep stages. data and delivers these metrics on how rested you are, how recovered you are, how much strain you should undergo that day or shouldn't. And it also calculates the strain that you put your body through every day. So basically, it's kind of a helpful tool in helping you calibrate your workouts so that you're not overtraining or not under training, right? Like how do you kind of meet your strain goals every day and make sure that your body is properly recovering? And when you're training really hard, it's a great way of adjudicating whether you've pushed too hard the day before, when you should like sort of ease back and when you kind of have the green light to push harder than you have in past days.

So I haven't taken this thing off since I got it maybe, I don't know, six months ago or something like that. Maybe I've had it on. Really? I can't remember. Like, yeah, I love it. It's waterproof. And it's amazing. Like I swam this morning.

You don't have to push any buttons or there's no interface or anything like that. And I swam and then I refreshed my app and it's like, oh, you swam this far for this long. Really? Knows your heart rate and it has a little optic sensor on the back of it. That is how it's calibrating the data. This guy's getting jealous. I have to tell this guy what I'm doing. But then in terms of working out, I prefer a proper GPS watch in terms of the data that I want to look at and analyze. For distance and pace? Yeah, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it has an interface so you can see it when you're, like if I'm out running, I want to know what my heart rate is. So I can look at my watch and know what that is at any given moment. It also will, via Bluetooth,

connect with a heart rate monitor strap around the chest, which I think is much more preferential than these optic sensors that you see on the backsides of these GPS watches that are calibrating your heart rate from your wrist, which I have found, at least to date, I think the science and the technology is always iterating and getting better and better and better.

But I found that gauging your heart rate off a chest strap is much more accurate and stable. Better than your arm as well, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Much more so. So I highly suggest getting a chest strap for your heart rate. In terms of what kind of GPS watch to get, like I said, this is a Garmin that I'm wearing right now and it's super old. Like there's been many iterations on this since I bought it,

but I still love it. It works perfectly fine. And I don't know that it matters that much which watch you have. I tend to wear this one kind of because it's like nice and heavy and metal and it just feels like a real regular watch that you can wear out into the world, kind of like yours is.

I mean, yours is just a different variation of mine. Right. Mine just has a dive component. And it works perfectly fine. The sort of user interface in terms of getting the screens to do what you want them to do is a little bit kind of clunky, I would say. And that's where a competitor watch, this is the Coros watch.

Coros is the brand? This is the Coros Vertex. And it's very similar to the Garmin. But the advantages of this watch, which I should disclose they sent to me for free. This is not a sponsored thing at all. I'm not getting paid to say this, but they did send me a free watch. And I really like this watch too, because the user interface

is much more intuitive. It's much more easy to navigate through the different screens and to get to the data that you want. Its interface with its mobile app is incredibly seamless. It uploads to Strava without any hassles whatsoever, and it has unbelievable battery life. So this thing you can wear for like weeks without charging it, whereas the Garmin, you have to charge much more frequently. So I like them both for different reasons. The Garmin feels more like a knock around wear every day watch, but this one I also found is, has some wonkiness in the swim metrics that the Garmin doesn't have, but the Garmin isn't always super accurate with swimming. On ocean swims, the Garmin fades in and out of GPS connectivity.

Yeah, I agree with that. And these are things that are like software pushes that are always improving. Yeah. But I like them both. And the Coros is like a small little startup, and they're making waves in the space. And I think what they're doing is super cool. So you can check them out. Can you swim in a chest heart rate monitor?

You can. I don't. I don't worry about it. I mean, since I've been swimming my whole life, I can intuitively gauge my sort of perceived effort. A lot of people do. A lot of triathletes wear the strap when they're swimming. So it's okay. It doesn't impact the electronics't impact. You definitely need a chest strap. That would be one thing that I would suggest. Yeah. And then just get really connected with, with your

heart rate. And I don't need it all the time now because I've been using one for so many years that I just know, like, I'm like, I know how I feel and I know basically where my heart rate is all the time without looking, but that only comes through experience. All right. So there's that. Here's something I bet you've never heard of or seen before.

And these are, this is a pair of goggles and they're made by a company called Form. Have you heard of these? No. These are cool. And also these were sent to me for free as well. Are they night vision goggles? They are, they look kind of like

that too. They look like swim goggles. They look like some kind of futuristic swim goggle. They've got this little doodad on one side of it, a little computer thing. And basically what they do is, it's like an AR device. When you put them on and turn it on, you'll see a little digital readout in your visual field. And when you hit start, it's basically a GPS watch for swimming. It's Google glasses for swimming. Basically. And when you're swimming, you input like the size of the pool, 50 meters, 25 meters, or whatever. And there's a running clock and you can kind of adjust, customize the data fields. But basically, it gives you a running time and also a tally on your distance.

And it knows when you are doing an interval set. Like it'll say, like if I'm doing a set of 10 100s, it will, when I finish the 100, it'll flash like the time that I did that 100 yards in. And then it'll do a running clock of like how long I've rested before I push off again. So it's essentially like using a pace clock, but the pace clock is just in your visual field while you're swimming. And when these were sent to me, I thought there's no way these things are going to work. Like, it's just not going to be that good,

but I was really amazed at how well they work. You're seeing all that? Yeah, you see it like it appears like an alternate AR, like a VR kind of experience when you're wearing these. And they work really well. And I'm blind, like without my glasses. I was like, I'm not even going to be able to read these numbers, but I could see them totally fine. And so this has

been a really fun doodad gadget that I've been playing around with. I would totally buy them if it had like, you know, like the parking, like you can get cars that automated parking. If we could do an automated flip turn, I'd buy it tomorrow. If it trains for you and you can like,

what if you lay in bed and you put them on and it pretends like you're swimming. And then every time I cross the room, it flips me upside down. That'd be crazy. All right, one more thing. These things are the Jaybird Vista earbuds. Jaybird is a podcast sponsor

and I'm sponsored by them personally as well. So they're not, they didn't sponsor me talking about this right now, but they are a partner of mine. And I love this product. So do you ever wear earbuds when you're training? I don't. I don't. I don't listen to- Which is fine. That's good. I think it's important to go out in nature and just experience nature for what it is. If you are going to listen to podcasts or audio books or music when you're training,

though, I highly suggest these be your choice. Are they waterproof? Obviously, I'm biased because I work with this program, but I sought them out because I love them. They're not, you can't swim, like go diving in them or anything like that, but they're incredibly, they're waterproof to the extent that you could sweat on them and you could jump in a pool or whatever and they would be fine. I've dropped these in the pool and they're perfectly fine. And no matter how much I sweat, they stay in my ear. They never fall out. They're super easy to use. And, uh, and I love them. So, you know, again, just another like cool fun. They come in this, this pack that charges the, that charges them charging pack

and the battery life's excellent. And they're incredibly durable. Do you have to have your phone with you when you're to have them work or do you download it onto your watch? No i don't have an apple watch i don't know what that would be like because i think you can an apple this one has like i could put i could i could put music on this thing i don't even know about that yeah you're the one who should be doing that maybe possibly i mean they just they just connect via bluetooth so they connect to my phone via bluetooth so you just bring your phone on your runs yeah exactly yeah all right final thing oh yes you see this? Yes, that's Mathis' work, right? I know, right? So if you're listening and you're not watching on YouTube,

I'm holding up a t-shirt that I shared on Instagram the other day. Yes. It's a graphic illustration of me, I guess, loosely based on me, I suppose. Earth you. That Mathis had made for Father's Day. I thought we were all getting T-shirts. So her friend Sterling is the artist who's like this 15-year-old kid, and he's the one who came up with the design. But Mathis kind of produced the project with him.

And I posted it. I mean, it's like, I can't wear this. I can't go in the world with me on my- You can't wear your own T-shirt. Yeah, like my name on it is like preposterous, right? No, you can't wear your own t-shirt. Although Roger Federer wears an RF hat. Does he?

Yeah, he does. I feel like when you reach a certain level, you can get away with that. Like, I can't imagine like- You're not there yet. You can't wear this out in the world. But I posted on Instagram, Mathis is like, ask him who wants merch.

And like a lot of people seem like they were into it. So I don't know, you know, if you leave a comment on, on YouTube below, if you, if you would be interested in this and maybe we can do a limited run and make them available on the podcast. I would love that. I'd wear one. Yeah. I'd love to be the kind of guy that could wear the t-shirt with my own. There's mushrooms growing out of my shoulders. There are. Someone invited you to take mushrooms, but I think that's against the sober thing. I think it is. Wouldn't you agree? Unless they're four sigmatic mushrooms, a different kind of mushroom. Well, no, but there's this whole idea of psychedelics to cure addiction.

Yeah, I know. You don't buy into that. No, I don't. I'm not, I'm not. I mean, this is, we could do a whole podcast on that. We should probably do that. Yeah. I mean, and I've spoken about this in the past on the podcast. Like I'm a product of 12 step. I believe in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I got sober that way. I stay sober that way. And I've seen countless lives transformed as a result of working 12 step. It's a miraculous and beautiful program that is unlike anything I've ever experienced. But that's not to say that I also – I know plenty of people who have gotten sober in other ways. Yeah.

And I've never done psychedelics. So for me to speak to that with any authority I think would be foolish. I have. And I know that there's, I'm sure you have. Yeah. But just like for my training, not with any intelligence whatsoever. Right before you go out for your swim run, just a handful of mushrooms. When I was in treatment, there was a guy who, in my rehab, who he had like long white hair. And he said that he used to, for like a decade, he was in the restaurant business and he owned a restaurant. He would wake up in the morning

and he would take LSD and he'd go on a 10 mile run. And he said he did that every day. That's crazy. I could barely sit up when I was on LSD. I was lying down most of the time. But I know that there's a lot of interesting science happening right now, specifically at Johns Hopkins around the use of psychedelics and depression. PTSD. Exactly. All sorts of stuff. And I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, that's a good thing. And ayahuasca, obviously, a big one. Win of the week. I got a win of the week. I dug one up. Go for it. My win of the week is congratulations to Kai Lenny for his five nominations in the Big Wave Awards. The WSL just announced on July 20th.

If you don't know about Kai, he is a true innovator in surfing. He's one of the best, if not the best, big wave rider alive. He has crossed the Molokai Channel riding wind bumps on his foil. He's a master windsurfer. And even this year when COVID broke out, he was in Tahiti competing on the qualifying tour. Now, remember, this is a guy who wins big wave contests, but he was competing on the qualifying tour

so that he could be on the WSL championship tour as well to be one of the rare riders that competes in both formats at the same time. Often it's surfers choose one or the other. And he's kind of the heir apparent to Laird Hamilton at Jaws, kind of innovating with foils, innovating with a windsurfer who also is a resident, basically lives right at Jaws. And he got nominated for five nominations. There are five biggest waves of the year nominations in the category. He rode three of them. So he's got three of those. One of those was at Jaws.

Two of them were at Nazare. He's also nominated for Best Overall Performer and for Wave of the Year from Jaws. Nazare is that ridiculous wave in Portugal. It's the mountain of the wave. Where you always see there's that building that's in the foreground every time. Kind of that rocky kind of bluff that's like right there. And yeah, that's the one though, the hundred foot waves where people ride. And he got a crazy ride there.

And he said he rode, he got that wave. Everyone took the videos, everyone took the pictures, and then he went out and surfed for three more hours there. And he said he rode, he got that wave. Everyone took the videos, everyone took the pictures, and then he went out and surfed for three more hours there. That's what he told me because I was interviewing him for a different story. That's like David Goggins when he parachuted into the Ironman World Championship swim start, did the race, finished it, and then went and worked out later that day. That's right. Did you know that?

Yes, yes. I remember that story. Yeah, yeah. He told me that story. And that story of that is that he parachuted in. He was doing that with another Navy SEAL who they both parachuted in together, swam in, they did the thing. It was basically the TV kind of was going to be one of their things they ran.

And he was behind the other seal the entire race until the, because he had problems, I think. He fell behind in the swim. And then he had issues at the beginning of the run where he couldn't like get his rhythm and he was walking a lot of it. Then he found his rhythm and started hammering as he does. And then he caught the guy like right

at the end of the guy looked at him and goes fucking Goggins, man. I think that's exactly what I said to him when we started our podcast. That's how I opened our podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they finished together. David could have beat him, but they finished together. That's classic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good deal. Um, um, I have a quick win of the week, and that is shining a spotlight on Valerie Allman. I tweeted this the other day. Valerie is a discus athlete, and she just broke the American record in discus. And I shared this video. We'll link it up in the show notes of her breaking the record and her swinging the discus.

Did you see this? No. It's hypnotizing. It's like ballet and performance art in extraordinary athleticism. Check that out. I'm having Adam watch this right now. I'm watching the discus.

I like watched it like 10 times in a row. I couldn't stop watching it. Wow. It's so extraordinary. And she's a Wazelle athlete. Wazelle is the kind of women first apparel brand that works with athletes like Lauren Fleshman, who's been on the podcast before, a really cool company. Amazing.

She's like a whirling dervish. I know. Isn't that amazing? But for gold. Yeah, beautiful. Very balletic. Congratulations to her. The footwork of elite athletes is always incredible.

Like the footwork of some of these athletes is just next level. I think that she, you know, I don't know cause I haven't spent a bunch of time looking into her background, but I think she has a background in dance or ballet, which is not surprising. That's probably why I can't throw the discus that well. No. That's the reason? That's what it comes down to. It's only because of your lack of dance background. Yeah. And my bad foot? That's what it comes down to. It's only because of your lack of dance background. Yeah, and my bad foot. I'm not sure if I brought that up yet, but. Okay. Yeah. All right. So that's it. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with questions from the audience. All right.

All right, and we're back. Let's do some listener questions. What do you got, Adam? Let's do it. We got two that were emailed. One is from an anonymous woman, and let's get into it. She wanted to keep her name out of it. I live with an angry, manic alcoholic, and things seem to be getting worse, or perhaps it's that my tolerance and patience levels have diminished.

But it's gotten to the point where not only am I affected by this, but also my family. Every day is like walking on eggshells, never knowing when the next bomb is going to go off, but you know it will. He's also had episodes of threatening suicide and not coming out of the room for days. I know that this is a dis-ease, and I'm trying to stick by him, but it's getting more and more difficult. I certainly do not find it acceptable to treat me and my sisters in an unloving way. We have been together for over 20 years and I've never believed in giving up, but I don't want to live the rest of my life with this negative energy. How can I help him and myself? Thank you for the question.

It's a super important topic, subject matter. My heart goes out to you. It's an incredibly difficult situation and knowing how to navigate it is one of the most fraught and emotionally challenging things I can possibly imagine. So first of all, I'm empathetic to your situation. You're in a very difficult spot and I can't tell you what you should or should not do. You have to make those decisions for yourself. But perhaps I can give you a couple light posts here. And one is first and foremost, you have to take care of yourself. You've got to figure out how, you know, take care of yourself. You've got to figure out how, you know, you have to figure out how to protect yourself and insulate yourself against the unhealthy, his unhealthy behaviors. And it's not indulgent for you to do so. You shouldn't feel guilty for doing that. And in fact, it's of service to him for you to do so. The way that you can do that is to seek out Al-Anon. I think that you would find great solace in that program to participate in a community of people who have experience going through exactly what you're going through right now and understand that there are only so many things that you can control here. You can control your behavior,

you can control your response to your spouse, but what you can't control is him or his behavior. So to the extent that you're trying to get him to change, you're in a situation in which that's very unlikely to occur. Hopefully, he will reach a point in his addiction where he will develop the willingness to try to get better. But from what you've written here, it doesn't sound like he's in that place right now. He is succumbing to the great obsession of every alcoholic, which is the effort to try to control your drinking. And he's going through the machinations and the experimentation to convince himself that he can do that, whether it's fasting or exercise. His pursuits in those regards are all in extremis. So it's clear that there are

manifestations of the underlying disease that he has, which is addiction. And your ability to manage or control that will result in a lot of unhappiness on your part. So I think your focus needs to be placed on yourself, making sure that you're safe and healthy. Nobody should have to submit themselves to that kind of abuse, whether it's emotional or physical. I can't tell you whether you need to end the relationship or not. You need to make that decision for yourself. But I can tell you that you are valuable in this world, and nobody should be talked to in that regard. So take the steps that you need to take to protect yourself and your family members who are on the receiving end of this kind of abuse. There are resources available to you even in the age of COVID.

And again, that's where I think your priority needs to be. In terms of how you communicate with him and perhaps be of service to him, you can set healthy boundaries around what is and is not acceptable. You can tell him, look, if you speak to me that way, again, I'm going to leave or whatever it is, whatever esteemable act you take on behalf of yourself to create that boundary, I think is important and letting him know where that boundary exists so that if he disobeys it or transgresses it, then there will be a ramification or a repercussion. Whether that means you leave him or not, again, you have to figure out that for yourself. But I think establishing those boundaries is the first step in terms of letting him

know that his behavior is not okay. And I think the more specific and concrete you can be around that, the better it is for yourself and for him. You can make suggestions. Hey, listen, I think you should go to treatment. You should go to detox. You should check out AA. You can make those suggestions, but it's important that you remain divorced from expectations as to whether he will avail himself of that advice and also any attachment that you have to outcomes. If you have an expectation that he's going to get sober or he's going to do what you advise him to do, then I think you're setting yourself up for a lot of emotional woe.

So it's fraught. It's very difficult, especially with loved ones, because you can see the person beneath the disease and you are able to hold space for that individual, but sometimes they're just unable to see it for themselves. And in truth, you can't get an alcoholic sober. The alcoholic gets sober when the alcoholic develops the willingness to take the actions and the steps required to get sober.

And that's a very personal journey. So as harsh as it may sound, this person might have to suffer greater repercussions, sound, this person might have to suffer greater repercussions, might have to be in more pain than he is in right now in order to hit that bottom and have that reconciliation for himself. You can make yourself available for him if and when he reaches that point, but you need to protect yourself emotionally and not make yourself available for all of the abuse and the unhealthy behavior that he is manifesting at the moment. Yeah. Heavy. The only thing I can add is you said safe, making sure you're safe. And I can tell you from my previous reporting and things that I've learned is that physical abuse doesn't necessarily have

to build up from like a push or a slap. You could get, you could be in danger already. And I don't want to make you hysterical or anything like that, but, but this kind of emotional abuse, you're already on a path that you don't want to be on. And so I don't know if Al-Anon has domestic... I'm sure they do have domestic abuse counseling recommendations, but I would also... I'd look into some domestic abuse hotlines that you can call. Yeah, maybe we could put some resources up in the show notes for that. And I would call someone ASAP. And I'm not suggesting anything other than calling and just make your own decisions on how

you want to proceed, but you're already in a place that could lead to a dangerous situation for yourself. I think I would add that I can't diagnose another person as an alcoholic. This anonymous person is saying her husband is an alcoholic. She's diagnosing him as that. Maybe he perhaps admits it to her. I don't know. The diagnosis of alcoholism is something that only the alcoholic can diagnose for themselves. But if this person is an alcoholic and it would appear that he is, these things don't tend to just get better. They get worse. The best case situation is they stay the same, but generally they degrade and devolve. And with that comes a notching up of the abuse and the unhealthy behaviors that

circle around that. So short of an intervention or this person developing the willingness to get better for himself, this is going to continue to progress. And again, that just means that it's all the more important that you take care of yourself. 100%. All right. Let's go to Jake in Kansas City. This is another emailed question. In Kansas City, this is another emailed question. You've talked in the past about people getting addicted to self-help, that we mistakenly search for the next hack, the next optimization strategy.

I felt this way in my own experience to self-improvement. I tend to consume all that's out there. And while I live out some of it, I find myself being more concerned with reading or listening to the next thing, whatever that may be. So how do I go about choosing the top three to five things I find most valuable and just walking that path? How do you stay committed to learning and growing while also remaining steadfast to a short list of pursuits that you're 100% committed to? How do we avoid consuming self-help as an end in itself instead of just a means to a greater end? Thanks. an end in itself instead of just a means to a greater end? Thanks. It's a great question. It goes back to analysis paralysis, what we were talking about before,

whether it's the gear or self-help literature, these are just devices to distract you and prevent you from actually moving forward. I've got nothing against self-help literature. It helps lots of people. I think it's good that it exists in the world, but I've also become a little bit cynical about it. As a podcaster, I'm now on these lists with all the publishing houses. So I get all the galleys of all the nonfiction books in the mail before they come out. So every week I get like 10 self-help books in the mail. Yes. And every author wants to come on the podcast. And after receiving like a hundred of these over the year, you're like, how much self-help literature do we need? There can't be that many secrets to getting better.

And then I think about David Goggins and I'm like, how many self-help books did that guy read? You know how many he read? Zero. He got off his ass and he got to work, right? So self-help is fine. If you need some guidance, if you lacked mentorship or education in your life

such that these are helpful to you, I think that's great. But when you start to use them as a shield to insulate you from taking any actions, obviously they're becoming an impediment. They're the very thing that is preventing you from helping yourself. It's interesting. The irony in that, right? Yeah. It's interesting. This fact that neuroscience has become so popularized, it kind of makes us attuned to optimization. And in this tech world

where everything's supposed to optimize, there's a like Tim Ferris's kind of position and how to optimize like the work week or how to do this or that. It's interesting. I think there are people out there, there's a whole segment of population that are interested in how to be optimal, but then the pursuit of that. But when you look at the most optimal people in the world, They're not the people that are focused on optimization necessarily. No. I don't think so. So it is a weird kind of paradox, I suppose. And I would say to Jake, listen, he's like, how do I go about choosing the top three to five things I find most valuable and just walking the path? How about one thing? I can't tell you what your values are, but if you can get clear

on what your values are and establish something that you want to manifest in your life, let's begin that process. I think the analysis paralysis comes in the plotting and the map making and what is the trajectory and how am I going to get there? And there's so much mental masturbation that goes into that at the behest of taking that first step. So again, I think it goes back to simplifying this process. We want to overcomplicate it and think that we have to lay on top of our goals some crazy lattice work, right? And I think that those can become handicaps as much as tools. It's interesting. I think about the

Huberman thing, talking about how habits first and then thought and perceptions and everything follow. Right, behavior first. Behavior first and then everything else follows. And the construction of habits, it sounds like maybe he's the type of guy that gets bored from doing the same thing over and over again. And there is a certain boredom in creating a habit that becomes like a daily ritual.

But you gotta stick with, something about creating habits for yourself, maybe every morning coming up with a morning practice, whether it's a meditation or a yoga and then a meditation or something that you commit to doing every day, something, one thing that you commit to doing every day and then see what that gets you as opposed to whatever you got out of a self-help book.

Maybe there's some habits that you can take, that you can build your days around, that you can lock in. I think that that's good advice. I would say, and we talked about this last time, I think, that it's important to understand that when you're consuming a self-help book, that that's not the accomplishment. The accomplishment is in applying that wisdom to your life, right? And so the first step is understanding that just because you read a book doesn't mean that you did anything. And I think what happens is you read these books and you feel

like you're accomplishing something or growing in your life simply in the consuming of that book. But that in and of itself will... It's like in 12 Step, they say, half measures will avail you nothing, right? So like reading a book, it's good you've consumed this piece of knowledge. But unless you figure out how to apply it in some fungible, tangible way in your life, it will avail you nothing, right? So it's disabusing you of that notion that you've done something just because you've read a book. And it's reconfiguring your perspective to focus more on actions, you know, to bring it back to Huberman behavior,

like lead with the behavior. So we're sitting here having a podcast episode 500 and whatever. I didn't start the podcast because I read a self-help book and tried to figure out what my values were and created some roadmap to where I would be seven years later, I just thought this will be cool. And I turned on a mic. It was a behavior. It was an action like, hey, this might be fun. And I was like, that was cool. Let's do it again. It wasn't like a whiteboard situation. And I think that's the problem with our optimization-obsessed culture, is that we think we have to have all of these things figured out before we begin.

And in truth, in my own personal experience, it's in the doing that the path is revealed. Yeah. You never really know what the end product is going to be. And we don't even necessarily know what optimal is while we're experiencing it. It's all kind of through analysis later. Well, there's also a binary nature to that very conversation around optimization anyway. I lean more towards the ethereal unknowing of it all. Yeah. Right? That you can never know. There's a spirituality to all of this as well that I think gets lost in the

conversation around optimization, which is this assumption that we can drill everything down to ones and zeros and create an equation for success. And I just don't think it works that way. That doesn't mean that we can't learn and improve by virtue of these tools, but I think there's a bigger dance at play and broadening your perspective and understanding that, I think at least it's been helpful to me. We've talked about that before. I mean, just recognizing you're a speck of consciousness in this great sea is liberating in a way, because it means that there's so much more going on than you can possibly be aware of. And if you just handle your stuff in a systematic way

on a day-to-day basis, it's gonna get you to a good place. You just don't know where that good place is necessarily, which is also a beautiful thing. Just think about this. Self-esteem comes from esteemable acts. Like that's a truth, right? Why is that the case? Can that be defined in some kind of binary optimization vernacular? Like I think

it's a spiritual principle. That we are the sum total of our actions and we do esteemable act. We're more than that. We're more than the sum total of our actions. But I think that, you know, just being able to broaden your aperture a little bit and understand that if you are clear in your intentions and you are full of heart, pure of heart, that when you, whatever path that you pursue, and I talked about this in my book, like I believe that the universe will conspire to

support you. If you've done the inside work, if you are coming from a place of love and compassion and gratitude, that the world will greet you in kind. And that has nothing to do with neuroscience necessarily. You disagree? I agree to a point. I think that chaos theory exists and sometimes chaos descends on your head. Also luck plays a huge part. So I don't think it's always, it can always be that way. But I can say that if you tend to greet your experiences,

I do think it comes down to how you deal with the hand you're dealt. So sometimes you're dealt a really shitty hand, and it's really hard to stay open and positive about it. Um, but that doesn't mean that the person who does stay open and positive about it, isn't going to have more success than the one that doesn't. So I, I think it's, I think it's complex, but I do believe you're right. A lot of the time. I also believe that chaos, you know, hurricanes, hurricanes brew. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that does happen. Point taken. Yeah taken. Alright, let's move on. Moving on. Let's listen to some voicemails.

Hey Adam, hey Rich. This is Daxon from middle of nowhere Wyoming. I deliver coronavirus tests across the state and I love listening to you guys when I'm on the road. My question for you today is as a 25 year old the state and I love listening to you guys when I'm on the road. My question for you today is,

as a 25-year-old, along with plant-based eating, what are some other habits, things I can do in my life now that I will appreciate in the next 10 years? Thanks, guys. That's such an awesome question, Jackson. Isn't that great? I know, right? All I can think about is like, what was I doing when I was 25? I was such a knucklehead. I certainly wasn't like trying to better myself by leaving voicemails for podcasters. Or delivering coronavirus tests. Yeah, exactly. Big respect, Jackson. Huge respect. Very cool. Well, yeah, plant-based diet. That's good.

Yeah. That's a good start. Look, there's no behind the velvet rope here. I think the habits that you form at your age, at age 25 own momentum so that when you're 40, 50, and 53, they become second nature and rote. I know personally, because I'm at my age, I have a lot of friends who are now starting to deal with a lot of health stuff that they never really had to think about, but they never formed proper healthy habits early on. And now they're confronted with having to undo all of their unhealthy habits and create new ones, which is much harder than just creating

a healthy habit when you're young that becomes second nature and just part of who you are, part of your lifestyle, as opposed to something that, you know, you feel like you have to focus on. It's just, it doesn't even require any brain bandwidth because it's fundamentally who you are. I think at the top of that list, I'd put some form of exercise or movement, preferably something that you enjoy because then it becomes second nature and part of your lifestyle. It almost doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's something that gets you outdoors, breathing fresh air, get your heart rate up a little bit

and is something that you can do consistently throughout the week. I think that's super important. Plant-based eating, he's already got the diet part down. I think developing a meditation and mindfulness practice at 25, I mean, what a gift. If you could really figure that out and nail that down at your age, the benefits that you'll see in your life will be tremendous. And I think also

developing a habit of reading, not to go back to the guy who reads too many self-help books, but you should always be reading books. Every single interesting person that I've ever met in my life is an avid reader. Yes. So if you can make reading a go-to habit, it doesn't even matter to me what you read. It doesn't really matter. As long as you're reading all the time, I think that will make you stand heads and shoulders above your peers and just make you not only an interesting person, but a person who is interested in the world. Well, that's what makes it. That's those who are the most interesting people, right? The ones that are still like trying to figure it out. Of course.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think one thing that helped me when I was younger, kind of build good habits just in general, was starting a yoga practice, morning yoga practice. I started by just doing nine sun salutations every morning before I did anything else. And just that alone kind of got me to the point where I could like try to become a writer basically. Like it gave me discipline. I never considered myself a disciplined person until I started doing that. It taught me discipline. So creating some sort of morning ritual for yourself doesn't have to be that. You can go run. But I think some sort of meditation aspect, some sort of metaphysical, spiritual aspect to your day does help you kind of stay grounded, stay humble, and stay ready.

Yeah. What is your connection to source? What does your higher power look like? And how does that infuse your life and set you on a trajectory to bring meaning and purpose in your life? The other aspect of this that I would mention is finding a way to be of service. But this is a guy who's delivering coronavirus tests across the state. He's doing it. He's providing a service. but this is a guy who's delivering coronavirus tests across the state. He's providing a service. But I think when you approach your life from a service perspective, from a perspective of how can I contribute? How can I give? How can I provide as opposed to what am I getting out of

this for myself? That will not only make you a happier person, it will make you a more productive person, a more contented person, and just a better individual, I think, and somebody who other people want to be around also. I'll add one more thing to the list. I don't want to overload you, Jackson, but travel internationally. And not just to nice places, but to places that might be fraught, to places that might be challenging. Make yourself, put yourself where you're one of the only foreigners on the ground and just go explore. That's the Henry Rollins philosophy of life. That's right.

Yeah. Pack a bag and go to some weird corner of the planet. Go to Papua New Guinea or somewhere like that. I think that's really good advice. And I think also, you know, to avoid overwhelming you, just break these things down into tiny little chunks, you know, and don't beat yourself up for not doing it perfectly every single day. And I'll cap it off by just saying, it sounds like you're in a car or a truck for a lot of hours during the day. That's where you listen to the podcast.

Thank you for doing that. But to the extent that you have all this time in the car, like what else are you listening to? Like, don't just turn the radio on and let it tell you what it wants to tell you. Be mindful about how you're programming your audio throughout the day when you're spending all that time in a vehicle,

whether it's audio books or other podcasts and the like. Yeah. Make sure you get your QAnon feed. Kidding. Kidding. Yeah. All right. Let's go to Adam in Alberta, Canada. Hey, Rich and Adam. My name is actually Adam, too. In fact, my name is Adam Rurka, and I live in Alberta, Canada. I've been a longtime listener of the podcast. In fact, I've been listening since Episode 1, way back when you were recording in Hawaii, which means I've literally listened to you talk for thousands of hours as I've listened to 99% of your podcast. The question I have, which you do have my permission to play on the podcast, is this. The topic of education has come up frequently in your podcast,

and I happen to be a teacher in a public school. In fact, I'm a school administrator in Canada. I often think about how somebody can influence the world in a positive way and how educators are positioned in a highly influential role. While there are an increasing number of mainstream education alternatives for students, which I think are wonderful, I still believe that public education remains an important avenue for a significant percentage of the population. Whenever health-related guests are on your show, you ask them if they were to

wake up in a parallel universe as the Surgeon General, what health changes they would make to the system. So I'm going to ask you the same question. If you were to wake up in the education world equivalent of Surgeon General, what changes would you make to the education system as a whole so that one could positively influence children, who I believe to be our most valuable resource and whom the future of our planet relies on? Keep up the great work, guys. That's an amazing question. I like how well thought out it is, too. Yeah. Well, he it is too. Yeah. Well, he's a teacher.

Yeah, I know, right? Thanks, Adam. And thank you for listening to the podcast for so long. I really appreciate that. I will say this, that surgeon general question that I ask to doctors when they come on the podcast, those people are trained in their specific discipline. So should they become

surgeon general? They actually have some level of expertise. So now I'm being asked to be education czar, but I'm not an educator. But yet you're an education podcast. Right. But I would not consider myself a teacher nor an expert in education in general. So my answer will be couched in that caveat. Yes. education in general. So my answer will be couched in that caveat. That said, and I've touched on this before, I think that our educational system is a legacy of a bygone era. It was developed in Victorian times to develop good factory workers, to be productive in an increasingly industrialized society, the world has changed. And I think we need to take a hard, long look at what we're teaching and why we're teaching kids what we're teaching them. There's plenty in the current curriculum that I think should remain.

I'm not for just overhauling it and being completely radical and revolutionary about it, but I do think we need to resort to first principles and really try to understand how much our culture has changed and how that impacts what we're teaching children and more importantly, how we're teaching them. I think that with technology, and I've said this before many times, everybody's got a supercomputer in their pocket that will answer any question that they ever want to ask it. So this rote memorization kind of default methodologyominated and monopolized our education system for too long and focus on how do we create amazing, adaptable human beings who will be lifelong learners, who are interested in learning and interested in the world.

And I think that needs to start with focusing on developing the esteem of the students and then orienting curriculum around where they sit and what they're interested in and expanding from there. We need to develop young people who know how to work in teams, who understand leadership, who understand and appreciate listening, who know how to collaborate, who know how to work alongside each other on a project basis methodology of learning as opposed to the singular individualistic approach of reading a textbook and regurgitation. That would be a start. Away from memorization towards analysis of the material that is available to you too. Yeah. And I think in terms of being surgeon general, like what are the changes that I would make? Well, I would certainly reallocate budgets such that public education is adequately and

properly funded. I think it's woefully underfunded right now. And I think the funding is not directed in the best directions. We have in the United States, teachers that have to do GoFundMes to raise money so that they have equipment to teach. It's ludicrous, right? Every kid should have a laptop or an iPad or some form of device. pad or some form of device. We have this opportunity because of COVID to learn more about how digital learning can inform our educational procedures and processes. And I know there's a lot of smart people that are looking at this and that are studying this. The fact that kids are now learning from home, how does that affect long-term? What happens when we finally get over the hump here and return to classroom learning? How much should we retain of what we've experienced now versus how much do

we go back to the way that it was before? And I think this forced moment right now is instructive in that we should be really trying to understand how kids learn in a better way. And when we return, apply what we've learned to create a better classroom experience for all. And I say all of that, like, this is all very off the cuff. Like, I feel bad, Adam, because I feel like I should have mapped out my response to that, but- No, you get into it. I think that young people going into the world right now and into the workforce need to- No longer are we in a situation where somebody joins a corporation and spends their entire career there.

No longer are we in the situation where a young person is even going to have the same career field for maybe even a small percentage of their professional life, right? So with that understanding, how do we train young people to be better equipped to handle the strange vicissitudes of a technologically oriented global economy? And I think adaptability comes to mind as one of the most important things. Spoken like a competitive swimmer turned entertainment lawyer turned podcaster. I don't know. And when you graduated law school, did you ever anticipate doing something called a podcast? Well, there was no, like when I was in law school, there was no internet.

Exactly. No, but you're the proof of that. Adaptability is my point. Right. It's like that- But then I look back and I'm like, well, all the things I did were in education and making me better at being able to do what I'm doing today. That's true. But I couldn't have known that. Right.

I mean, but you've said you already couched that in there saying you would keep a lot of what already exists because clearly you got a lot out of your education. Yeah. But there was a lot of wasted time too. A lot of it forgotten due to blackout drunks. That too. I think you hit the nail on the head with the number one thing would be put some more money where our mouth is. And to me, that place is teacher salaries, number one. Teacher salaries, of course. We need to attract talent to the pool. And you're not gonna do that by paying people peanuts. And it's absurd, the level of salary.

We need a cultural, social shift in our perception of educators. 100%. These people are rock stars and heroes, and we need to treat them as such. We were talking before the podcast about how this medium has created rock stars out of scientists

in a way that is unprecedented. We were talking about Andrew Huberman and David Sinclair and Matthew Walker, these amazing scientists who are doing phenomenal work in terms of longevity and sleep and neuroscience, et cetera. In the past, they would have written a book. Maybe the book would have done well, who knows. But now they can go on these podcasts and talk for two or three hours and people are like so thirsty for their wisdom. And the response to the podcast that I've had with these people has been unbelievably tremendous.

People revere these people. And it makes me think, well, we should have the same perspective for secondary educators and primary educators. What if we were able to shift our perception of this professional career path and understand that these are people that we need to hoist up and that we need to celebrate in a way that we don't right now and to attract the best talent to enter into that. We're talking about not just the future minds of America and the world, but literally the future of the planet when we're in this existential crisis of whether or not humanity is going to survive the very real threats that we face. So, yeah. So, we can't be paying people 40 grand a year to do it. so uh yeah you gotta i mean that's the best way to uplift them is pay them properly yeah and uh yeah i love it beautifully well said rich all right let's go to jeremy in st michael minnesota hey rich hey adam uh this is jeremy from st michael minnesota and i first of all just want to say thank you to Rich for the podcast.

It's been really life-changing for me. I've been listening for about almost two years now, I think, and the knowledge and insight it's given me has been super helpful in everyday life. So I appreciate it. The question I have is for both of you. I guess you're both writers. And I was curious, maybe more from the sense of a personal story, when you feel like you know that your story is worth writing and putting out to the world and that it might be received and kind of. received and kind of, I don't know exactly how to ask the question, but, you know, I have a story. You know, I've been through recovery. I've been sober for 15 years. I've, you know, done some

things after recovery that I feel, you know, would be of worth for people to hear and maybe give them hope to do things in their own lives. And I'm just curious how you come to the reality that this might be something good to put down on paper and that your story might be received well in the world. So hope that makes sense. Keep doing what you're doing. And thank you. Bye. All right, Jeremy.

Listen, of course you should write your story. It sounds like you have an amazing story. I think everybody should write their own story. And if you have even the slightest inkling that you want to share something and that what you have to share could be helpful to another human being, of course you should do that. you have to share could be helpful to another human being, of course you should do that. I can't encourage you enough to write what is inside of you that clearly I can feel from your words is yearning to be expressed. I sense some hesitancy and perhaps a lack of confidence around doing this, maybe a little bit of fear. And my sense is that that fear is linked to how what you would write will be received. And what you have to do is let go of that. Like,

who cares how it's going to be received? Detach those two things. Yeah, you have to detach. These are two different things. There's the self-expression, there's the telling, and then there's the reaction to it. If you get caught up into the reaction, you're dead out of the gate. Back to that paralysis. You can't think about that at all. You have to just basically get into a place of pure expression and allow it to emanate from there, I think. And I can only share my own experience. I'll tell two quick stories. One is how the book Finding Ultra came to be in the first place,

because it wasn't like I set out to write a book. I thought maybe in the back of my mind, one day I'll write a book, but it wasn't like I had set this goal that I was going to write a memoir. What happened was somebody who I didn't know read about me in a magazine article, reached out to me by email and asked if I would be willing to talk to him because he had just gotten out of treatment and was having a hard time. And it was somebody that I didn't know, but was somebody that was friends with other friends of mine. So I struck up a friendship with this guy and we would talk from time to time on the phone and I was trying to kind of help him acclimate to being newly sober. And at one point he said, hey, you've got this amazing story.

Have you ever thought about writing a book? And I was like, well, not really. I mean, kind of, maybe, but like it wasn't a top of the mind thing. And he was like, I know this book agent, you know, this book agent worked with Dean Karnazes and it helped him with his books. And, you know, you should, would you like me to introduce you? Like it was like that, right? And that led from what, that led to me being introduced to this book agent and this book agent being like, well, if you want to write a proposal, I'm happy to read it. You know, this is a tough thing.

You could thread the needle here. I wrote, I worked really hard on a proposal and she was still very, you know, like grounded in her, you know, trying to, you know, basically prevent me from having high expectations. And we ended up selling the book and that's how the book got made. And when I reflect on that story, what I take from it is that the good thing, whether you can qualify it as good or not, like the fact that I wrote a book, all started from basically being of service to somebody else, like taking somebody's phone call and talking to them about recovery. That was it. I didn't have an agenda. And that process led to

something that I could have never anticipated that has changed my life in unbelievable ways. that has changed my life in unbelievable ways. And in the writing of that book, I had plenty of moments of personal terror thinking like, do I wanna be this open? Do I wanna be this vulnerable? Is this a good idea? And I would become paralyzed because I was thinking about the audience reception.

And the only way that I could get through it was to completely block that out and just pretend that I was writing in a private journal and that no one would ever read it. And every once in a while, I'd have this flash of like the book being on a shelf in a bookstore and I would panic because I would get caught up in that reception. And that ultimately is the enemy of creativity. So just pretend you're writing in your personal journey and maybe you don't share it with anybody and maybe you do and maybe it impacts one person or maybe it impacts a million people. You don't know. But the point of the exercise is to engage with your creative voice and to try to basically be authentic to who you are. I love that. So well said. And it echoes something that our friend Elizabeth Gilbert has talked about, um, which is kind of in her book, big magic. She gets into that a lot is,

is, um, the point is the creative output. It's not the, you have to divorce yourself from expectation. You can't expect something out of it. Um, especially when you're first starting, um, because you don't know about that. It's about, you don't know where this one act will take you. Uh, you know, I've never written a memoir like you, but I wrote a, my, the way I got an agent was I wrote a, a fictional novel kind of loosely based on my life. And I did put a lot of stuff in there that was very personal and ended up getting me an agent, which helped my, you know, got me into the publishing houses. So that's how it started for me too, by doing that. Didn't sell the book,

didn't make a dollar off of middle of somewhere. It's still somewhere. It's still in my computer though. But you know what I mean? But I never, you know, and obviously I had ambitions for it, but it led me somewhere else. And so that's the point is, is if you wanted,

if you're feeling the passion and you're feeling the urge to create, you gotta give it some energy. Right. So clearly I could feel there's something inside of him yearning to be expressed. And that's really the only important thing. Awesome. Cool.

Cool. All right. One last one. This is a personal, more of a personal question for you. This is Henry from Los Angeles, California. From what I've gathered, you, Rich, and Julie, Srimatiati have a relationship that is pretty similar to me and my wife. And by that, I mean you're both clearly spiritual and empowered in your own ways, but you, Rich, seem to be more practical, rational, and grounded, whereas Julie is the more esoteric, receptive, intuitive one. In my experience, that relationship balance has been really beneficial for personal growth for me and my partner, but my question is about working together. When you collaborate on projects, how do you balance each other's energy without getting dragged down by differences in

work styles and priorities? What rules or guidelines, whether they're unspoken or formal, have you set up to bring out the best in each other and not let disagreements grind projects to a halt? Thank you. That's a great question, Henry. Thank you for that. This has been an evolving journey for Julie and I to figure this out and definitely a tricky equation to solve, but I think we've done a good job and figured it out. And I think the key for me has been not needing her to do things the way that I would do them and respecting that difference. Right? So Julie and I are incredibly different. We have our own respective projects, but then we come together to collaborate on things from time to time. And early on in that adventure, I would say, you know, it's like, this is how you do these things. You have to do it like,

and she would not do that, you know? And I would get frustrated and angry. And I'm sure she was angry with me because, you know, she has her perspective on how you would do Project X, and I'm not meeting that expectation. So we had to go through it in order to figure out a language around communicating and also guideposts and boundaries about how to work together. So we did it- Did he have it right? The way that, did he handicap it right in terms of you're the rational grounded and she's the esoteric kind of intuitive? Yeah, but I think that that,

what's missing in that is that Julie is incredibly smart and competent and she gets shit done. Like she's a doer. So it's not like she's all airy fairy and up in the clouds and like can't make any practical progress. Like she gets a doer. So it's not like she's all airy-fairy and up in the clouds and like can't, you know, make any practical progress. Like she gets shit done. Like, and she knows how to get care about. And then we try to meet each other so that she's doing the things that she's best at. And I'm filling in the gaps where, you know,

she is, you know, less competent in. So Julie, for example, is very good at the global picture and I'm a very, I get mired in the details. So you need both of those, right? You need a detail-oriented person and you need somebody who's thinking more broadly about what it is that you're actually doing. And that functions when you understand that those are your roles. Julie's a much better team person. She's a leader. She knows how to get a lot of people around her who are excited about what she's doing. And I'm like a solo guy. Like I'm very good when I'm just by myself. So those are different.

Those have positives and negatives. So it's where do those – when you look at a certain project, like how are we going to fit together and let's allocate the tasks so that we're focused on the things that we're best at and most interested in. And I think when you do that, and this doesn't happen overnight, like this happened over time for us, then you can become like a superpower because you're meeting each other, like you're filling in each other's gaps, right? And then the product of that collaboration tends to be exponential rather than just additive, I suppose. But I think it has to do with self-understanding and also really understanding your partner and then developing really effective communication between you guys, because these things, especially when you're working together, emotions can run hot and things can get heated and things can get misunderstood. And it's really critical that you have a way of communicating in a balanced and objective way,

because otherwise these things can be combustible and they blow apart a lot of relationships. So the communication has to be strong. The self-understanding and the understanding of your partner has to be intact before you even launch into one of these projects. But if you have that sorted out, then I think you're in a good position to collaborate together. And it's beautiful to do that. I've had amazing creative professional experiences working with my wife, but it's also important that at the same time, we have our own respective things that we do outside of our collaborations so that we're not sort of solely resting on our sort of co-collaborations for

our kind of professional well-being. Well, you just need to have those silos that you go into on your own so that you can be your own whole human being outside of raising kids and having a life and having a romantic life and also having a business. You got to have your own. So it sounded like communication skills, a solid understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses and shared understanding of both of your collective strengths and weaknesses together and how those fit. And then making sure that, yes, collaboration can be awesome, but you also have to have some room to do your own projects too, which will feed the collaboration. Right, right. The communication, I can't overstate how important that is. Because if you're in the heat of the moment and you can't figure out a way to get balanced and give each other objective feedback that isn't then completely emotionalized, you're going to be doomed.

So really what you should do is just get a lot of Ikea furniture and both try to put it together. And then by the end, you'll have communications. Yeah, exactly. You'll either be divorced or... That's great. Anything to add? I think that's it. That's what I would say for now.

We've rocked it. Thank you, Henry. I think we did it. We're done. We took a one and a half hour podcast and made it three hours. I know. That's hard to do.

We were gonna try to do this in an hour. I don't know what we're doing. Are we getting better at this or worse? I don't know. It depends who you ask. Don's hard to do. We were gonna try to do this in an hour. I don't know what we're doing. Are we getting better at this or worse? I don't know. I don't know. It depends who you ask. Yeah. Don't ask Chad Wolf.

But listen, it's a podcast. You can listen to half of it. You can listen to half of it later. You can abandon it. I don't know. But I like what we did today. I did too, man. It was fun.

Thank you, my friend. We'll be back here in two weeks. You can follow Adam on all the socials, Adam Skolnick. I'm at Rich Roll. If you want your question answered on the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 424-235-4626. Yes. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, that notification little bell.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify. Check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll link up everything that we discussed here today. You can also submit your questions on the Facebook group. And I think that's it. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis for videoing today's show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Davey Greenberg right over here shooting some awesome portraits. Georgia Whaley for copywriting.

DK for advertising relationships and theme music by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. Appreciate you guys. I don't take your attention for granted. Thank you for taking this journey with Adam and I. And we'll see you back here

in a couple of days with another awesome episode. Any closing thoughts? No, it's just, thanks for listening. It's your moment to be profound. This is it? No, I appreciate everybody who listens and cares about getting better and being better.

It's really cool to be a part of this journey. I really appreciate it. Don't take it lightly. And I thank you, Rich, and for all who listen. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. See you guys soon peace Thank you.