The Rich Roll Podcast - Our Social Dilemma — Thoughts on Technology, Addiction, and the Illusion of Free Will

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

Welcome to another edition of Roll On—my bi-monthly deep dive into (semi) current events, topics of audience interest, and of course answers to your questions. Commanding co-host duties is my hype man 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. He's also currently hard at work on a novel and just welcomed his newborn son into the world. Some of the many topics explored in today's conversation include: The new Netflix documentary, 'The Social Dilemma,' and the dangerous human impact of social media The mental health effects of the pandemic on teens Rich's exploration of barefoot running Ethan Hawke's new TED Talk, Give Yourself Permission To Be Creative 30 Day Single-Use Plastic Challenge Update The ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship Tony Riddle's #3barepeaks challenge Maya Gabeira's big wave surfing world record  In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you balance climate consciousness with realistic needs? How do you know if you are living your purpose or should pursue a career change? How do we navigate professional relationships in the age of Zoom? Thank you to Mark from Germany, Josh from outside D.C., and Victoria from Ottawa 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 our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast 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. It's a real problem. at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower

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I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming

and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety,

eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and 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. treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Another hotly- Hotly. Anticipated edition of Roll On slash Roll Call. We're still in a no man's land about what to call this. I guess it's Roll On. It's Roll On, but Roll Call is good. Yes. It's been a minute since we've been here. I think it's roll on. It's roll on, but roll call is good. Yes. It's been a minute since we've been here. I think it's been a month. One month. Since I sat down with you.

A lot has happened during that period of time. We're gonna unpack all of it. But just to reintroduce you in the event that there are new listeners and watchers to the show, I'm sitting across from my friend, Adam Skolnick, journalist at large, adventurer, environmentalist, author, co-author of the great David Goggins book, Can't Hurt Me, New York Times, contributor, among many other things, a Swimrun aficionado. Swimrun is like

probably the most recurring theme on this podcast as of late. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. Even more. Brief overview. Basically, what we do in this special version of the podcast is talk about what we call the big story. We pick one thing from the news or something that piques our interest. We dive deep into it. We have a teachable moment. We do a little show and tell.

And then in the second half of the show, we take a couple listener questions. You can leave your question if you would like it addressed on our Facebook group, or you can leave us a voicemail, which is most preferred at 424-235-4626. And we will air it on the show and discuss. The main reason why we missed our last bi-weekly edition of Roll On is because the man sitting across from me had kind of a life-changing event that occurred that prevented him from being here. And then we had to scramble to get another episode up in time. It was predictable, of course. Sorry about that. Tell us what happened. My wife gave birth to our son. Oh, my goodness.

Zuma came to us on August 29th at 6.11 in the PM. And it was, yeah, man, it was an incredible day. It started early in the morning. She started getting contractions. And we had like the full yoga spirituality mantras kind of blaring in the office. We have a two-bedroom, and so in the office slash maybe future baby room. And she was super in charge of the energy. There was so much energy flowing.

And then by 8 o'clock that night, we were in the hospital. And then it was a full almost 24 hours later. She was in labor for 38 hours um 38 yeah with that we we uh that zuma came in once she started pushing it was like just over an hour the doctors were like whoa that's very fast because it's one to three hours and um and he was you know almost eight pounds and healthy and and then we had nurses for a couple of days in the hospital. And by the way, the team at UCLA, at the labor and delivery UCLA Santa Monica is incredible. Just incredible doctors, incredible nurses. And then after two days, they send you

home and you have to figure out what to do. It's that thing. It's like, wait, wait, you're not coming with me? Like where do we just the nurses go? What do we do now? When's somebody gonna come and pick this thing up? Yeah, exactly. You know? Exactly, yeah. And meanwhile, your wife is just torn up and like, you know, emotional

and just like everything is going haywire in her body. And you're completely ill-equipped. And you're ill-equipped, but you have to step up like into the breach. And so it was cool. You know, like the first day, the first night, you know, I'd always, I'd thought of people who've like done co-sleeping and slept in the bed with their babies. I always thought that seems hazardous. But on that first night, the only thing that soothed him was being on one of our chests.

And so I had him on my chest on the couch and he fell asleep and I just brought him to bed and literally had him like in the nook of my arm, sleeping with him that way on night one. Now we have a better sleeping system, but like that first night right away, you're breaking all your rules. You're just trying to figure it out. But there's something profound that happens there. And in reality, he's like a super chill baby and he doesn't like being in poopy pants or having his diaper changed. So there's an irony there. Yeah. Well, who does? Right. Who wants that? And so other than that, he's like really chill and he's doing great. And mom is doing great. She's bounced right back, and everything's going well.

I'm knocking on wood. It's been cool. Are you one of those guys who always wanted to be a dad, or were you on the fence about that? No. I mean, it's both. Growing up, I always assumed I'd be a dad. I loved kids. I was one of those people as a teenager and in college and,

you know, as a young adult gravitated towards that. I was in education for a hot minute and love hanging out with little kids and always had a good time with it. And so I just assumed it was going to happen. Then after my divorce, I was married once before when I was 40, we were divorced 41. I think I was divorced. You know, I just thought it wouldn't happen. I was 40, we were divorced, 41, I think I was divorced. You know, I just thought it wouldn't happen. I just assumed, okay, well now, you know, when I remarry, if I remarry, probably someone a little older, and it probably just won't happen. And so I just assumed that, or maybe I'd be a stepdad or something like that. You know, it was kind of the assumption I had. And then, and when April and I got together, assumption I had. And, um, and then, and when April and I got together, we, we still didn't have plans to have kids. We weren't like necessarily trying. Um, and so, so then when it happened,

you know, we embraced it. Uh, but no, I didn't think by the time like we got married and, and, you know, this time last year, I did not think I would be a father. Yeah. Did you have that experience of instant love? It's interesting. You hear about like the instant, like for me, I'm just not, I mean, I think I don't, I take it like, I don't think I'm like that. Like people think they talk about these really high moments. For me, the high moments tend to be not the things people think about. I didn't have this all of a sudden Shakti pod, like heart bursting. My life is totally different experience. Not to say that I don't love my son or I've enjoyed the experience, but it didn't realign everything for me right away. But I will say this last week, and we'll talk about it in a little bit. This story came my way and I just couldn't resist getting back in after just one week off and doing a little bit of writing. And I'll tell you guys why. But that experience, like doing a story used to always be like,

I'd be so hyped up on it. And I'd be like, I'd need to get every interview. And if I didn't have it coming, I'd have all sorts of anxiety. When will I get it? Or when will the editor read it? All that's gone. And I don't know if it's sleep deprivation or just like more chill about things because I have something way more important

in my life. Like I have no anxiety about that at all. Right. A realignment of priorities and what's really important. Yeah. So I think that's the most profound thing I've noticed so far. And I do feel like the love is there. It's not like it's not there. And I think as I grow into this new phase, I'll probably see more of those kinds of more subtle realignments and it'll grow into something huge. Two points that I want to make. First, the most important point is that I was the only one who called the day. Yes. You called the day. I forgot. Yes, he did. August 29th. Let's make that known for the record. Yes, on the record.

I thought it was going to be at 2.30 in the morning. Yeah, but you thought it was Saturday night, but 2.30 in the morning. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Second thing is Zuma. I mean, it's the most epic name of all time. Also very California. It is very. So explain. Okay.

So it's Zuma James Kalu. Skolnick is his name. Zuma means abundance in Chumash. And Chumash is the native indigenous tribe of this region. Yes. And we spent most of our recreation time off Point Doom diving a reef out there. And Point Doom was sacred in the Chumash culture. And Zuma is the beach. And Zuma is the beach right there. So

that was April's decision. She wanted it to be Zuma. And originally she was throwing out aspen. And I'm like, I like aspen trees, but we're not really ever in aspen or around aspen trees. So she came up with Zuma, which I think fits better. Plus I have a nephew and niece, Zach and Zoe. So it's like adds to the Zs in the family. A little alliterative. So it's nice. And then James, in the Jewish tradition, we sometimes take the first letter of someone's name that you want to name your child after. We don't usually do the, like the, you know, Adam Skolnick Jr. type stuff, but you might take someone's first initial and, and

honor someone with that. And so I had an uncle, Jay Michelson, who growing up meant, you know, we spent a lot of time with he and my aunt Sid and, and three cousins, John, Jeremy, and Jenny. And we spent a lot of time together, like a lot of road trips. All the first travel experience of my life were with them. And he just meant a lot to me growing up and into young adulthood. And he died younger than you're supposed to in his 60s.

And so I wanted to honor him. So James, J for J, Michelson. And then Kalu for Ekalu, who died last year. Freedom fighter in Karin State, Burma area. And he's an exiled freedom fighter who basically ran his country's health system from exile in Mae Sot, Thailand. Like you've heard about the Rohingya who were massacred and abused by the Myanmar military. For years, that's happened in all sorts of ethnic states in Burma, which is this country with a lot of different ethnicities. The Karen people are one of those

states that was under continual attack for decades. And Ekelu was helping to kind of keep a medical system in place, even though all these people are getting displaced. So he would train medics and bring medics to displaced people camps all over Karen State. And he was just a gentle, giving, incredible, peaceful warrior soul. Right. And you interviewed him or you did a story on this? So I did a story on that, on how some American doctors were working with Ekalou and his team of medics in Corinth State in the displaced people's camps

to try to cut down on malaria because malaria is killing a lot of people. Once you're displaced, a lot of times what ends up killing people in Burma after the military burns down your villages, you have nowhere to go and you're out and exposed and you can die of malaria. That's the number one killer.

And so they had come up with this rapid malaria test that was enabling some really early interventions and cutting down on malaria deaths. And it was able to be, they did studies that was able to be replicated in other places that weren't necessarily war zones. And so it was really important work that they were doing, like actually public health work,

but doing it in like in this really high intensity war zone type area. And so, yes, I was out there. I basically uprooted my life and moved to Mesat for months and reported on this story. And Ekalu is like, you know, my number one source. And I featured him in the story and just stayed close with him and, you know, always remember him. So it's also because my wife is Asian. She's from Australia, but her family is, her roots are Malaysia, Southeast Asia as well.

So it was a good way to honor our son's Asian heritage, even though it's not Malaysian, but it's still Southeast Asian heritage. So it was a good way to put a little of that in there too. A lot of thought and intentionality into this name. Yeah. Zuma James Kalu Skolnick. That's it. Wow. Yeah, man.

So with that, having a newborn in the house. Yep. How's the fitness? How's the training going? How's the swim run training? Not a lot of swim training. It's just all out the window, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Barely any sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just forget about it for a while. Barely any sleep. He's been pretty chill with sleep, but you still have to attend to him. You wake up, you know, your sleep is, you're lucky if you get, you still have to attend to him. You wake up. You're lucky if you get six hours of sleep. Six hours is great.

Yeah, six hours is great. I've been an insomniac for years, so I'm kind of built for it in a way. Like broken sleep has been my thing for so long that it doesn't – but I still need at least like seven hours to feel good. And we've been able to get, we're building up to that, but I've done two, three mile runs basically. And that's all I've done. And they were all in the last four days. So I haven't done a lot.

I hope to do more. I hope to get in the ocean soon and just get a swim in. But what do you think? What are my prospects here? I think you grab what you can. This is a really precious time. You wanna be as present as you possibly can for it. And with that realignment and priorities,

your focus is on your newborn and in supporting your wife. So it's natural and appropriate that your fitness regimen is gonna get short shrift, but you still have to carve out some time for yourself because as the adage goes, if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of others, right? So you still have to make sure

that you have at least a little bit of time that's just for you so that you can recharge your battery and then show up with the best of your abilities to support what's going on at home. That's it, man. I gotta save out the dad bod. Yeah, no dad bods allowed in the podcast studio. I'll lose this job.

You're gonna get fired. Yeah, well, that's good. I mean, I'll check in with my sort of latest on the fitness front. When we last spoke, I told you that I was shifting my focus away from endurance and onto strength, taking that 90, 10, kind of 90% endurance, 10% strength,

flipping it to 90% strength, 10% endurance. And I've adhered to that routine and I've been doing it now for, I don't know, five weeks at this point. Really? And it's been great. I will say that I'm not a gym rat by nature. When I wake up in the morning and it's a nice day, I just want to go out on the trails and I just want to be wild and free for a couple hours of just running and being in nature. And the idea of being, you know, throwing some weight around inside a building

just is not appealing. And for many, many years, I just shrugged it off. I was like, I'm not doing that. And I found myself, you know, at 53 coming quickly upon 54 with some back issues and some imbalances and just not feeling strong. You know, I've gone through periods of my life where I was very strong, but this sort of over-prioritization of endurance training

and not really taking the time or carving out the time to pay attention to functional strength and making sure that overall my body is sound has taken its toll. And like I mentioned, I'm having some sciatica stuff, some back problems and just feeling, you know, janky and not in command of my corpus in a way that I would like. So I was like, now is the time where there's no rate, there's nothing to be trained for at the minute. So let me do the things that I'm always, you know,

telling myself I don't have time for. And, you know, telling myself I don't have time for. And, you know, I started really slow and was, you know, appalled at how weak I was in the gym. And I should say, just so people know, there's a little gym near my house that's part of the pool where I swim. And they moved some of their gym equipment out of the gym and into an outdoor space. And you can book one hour appointments. So you can only go in for one hour and they restrict how many people can be in there and you're wearing a mask. So they've under- In there, meaning in this outdoor area. In a tiny, yeah, it's like, it's not a big space and there's only like four people there when I'm

there. But the one hour window forces me to go in and get it done and not like, you know, kind of walk around and do the kind of things that you would do at the gym where you're there for hours and you didn't really do anything. So it makes me focused. Keep the heart rate up. Keep the heart rate up, you know, get through the workouts. And I'm doing really basic stuff like bench press and like squats and like, you know, just stuff that ordinarily I just would never do. And like I said, you know, started off with really light weights

in an almost embarrassing fashion, which was a nice lesson in humility and also a dose of just how far away I'd moved from that aspect of being a physically fit athlete. But I've shown up for it almost every day. And now it's kicked in and I'm starting to see the gains and see the progression and I feel good in my body. And I have one of those physiques where, you know,

if I touch a weight, like I blow up, like, you know, I can make gains pretty quickly. And I'm already seeing my body change. Like I'm getting like wider and like squatter. Like I'm used to, in endurance training, it's all about power to weight ratio. You wanna be as lean as possible without sacrificing power on the bike or in the run.

Like the lighter you are in general, the better you are. You can get too light and then you're weak, but it's finding that perfect balance between those two things. So you're paying a lot of attention to getting, and so when you're riding your bike and running all the time, your upper body just- It's the upper body, yeah.

You start to look like a 13 year old boy after a while. Like if you look at the Tour de France riders and they take their shirt off, you're like, holy smokes. Right, but their legs are just like- Their legs are massive, right. They're like Greek gods. But they're so lean, they know, they're so light. Their chassis are like, you know,

just reduced down to the barest minimum. And now I'm trying to build that back up. And it's been interesting, but now I'm at a place where I've gotten over the hump of that initial phase where, you know, I feel like I'm embarrassed to even be there. And now I have like some momentum and I'm seeing some gains and I'm looking forward to it there. And now I have like some momentum and I'm seeing some gains

and I'm looking forward to it in a way that I wouldn't have predicted and I'm really enjoying it. Are you working with a trainer there? No, I mean, you know, I know what to do in the gym. So that's been really fun. So no spotter on the bench press or anything? No, but I'm not, like I do lower weight, higher rep stuff,

but I'll do like three rounds per exercise. And I break it down into like one day I'll do chest and arms. The next day I do back and shoulders. And then I do legs and I kind of rotate through that. And it's a really basic rudimentary. I'm not doing anything, you know, funky or weird. I'm not throwing around kettle balls yet. Like I'm still just trying to get fundamentally

like strong enough so then I can start to challenge myself with different and newer exercises. At the same time, doing a ton of core stuff, like trying to strengthen my back and strengthen my abdominals. At the same time, what I left off, what I left out in the last time we spoke was the other aspect of what I'm focusing on right now,

which is trying to relearn running, to rewild my running, to quote the great Tony Riddle, who was a fantastic guest on the podcast, who's all about barefoot running and functional strength and getting back to kind of an ancestral biomechanic relationship with the body and with nature. And in the course of my day that I spent with Tony, when he came out to do the podcast, we went out. Well, the first thing he did when he arrived is he started showing me all these drills for barefoot running. And we made a video, Allie's right over here. She created a really cool video that people really enjoyed of us doing some drills and him taking me through a couple really basic routines to retrain how to run. And like, you know, I just go out and run. Like I haven't

really thought that much about technique in a very long time. And this is a very counterintuitive approach to what is fundamentally, you know, natural for everybody. But in those videos, you didn't seem like, it didn't seem for you know, natural for everybody. But in those videos, you didn't seem like, it didn't seem for you actually when watching those videos. Oh yeah. Well, I was like, what am I doing here? He's running barefoot on my gravel driveway and I couldn't even walk on it. I was like, how do you, what are you even doing? Like, how is it even possible that you could run on these rocks and not hurt your feet? Like it was amazing. Right. And it just seems so foreign and impossible to me.

I'm not there yet, I will say that. But after we did those drills, then we went out to Malibu Creek State Park and we went running. And in allegiance to what he was teaching me, I pulled out my pair of Vivo barefoot running shoes, which I had not worn in quite some time. He did the whole thing barefoot.

I did them in my Vivos. And I couldn't walk for like a week after what was essentially a pretty easy six or seven mile run because my calves were so sore, which was an indication of the fact that this is a very different kind of motion than what I was used to.

And I was just amazed at his ability to do this trail run barefoot, like on little rocks and all kinds of things that you would think would just tear your feet apart, but he's so accustomed to this that he could do it in an extremely graceful way. Because his feet have a musculature that ours don't, right? Yeah, well, it's also this technique of lifting.

Like if you watch that video or you go and take his programs, he's got all these online programs. It's all about like this light touch with the earth where you're focusing on pulling your heels up and kicking them back and working your hamstrings and this leaning forward motion. It's a whole thing that's very different

from how you're running in running shoes. And what I realized initially, even when I did that run with Tony, was just how hard I was landing. Like, you know, when you're wearing a minimal shoe, you can feel the pounding, you know, and I'm like, I have like a lead foot. And what is the relationship to that,

the biometrics of that on the back pain that I'm experiencing or, you know, the occasional pain in my hips that I'm feeling? What if I could relearn how to run so that I have a very soft touch and it's not a pounding experience, but a more human and natural approach to this movement, right? So I devoted myself to trying to learn this. And this is a very, I'm very much just in the starting gate of trying to figure this out to retrain this process of running. And so I don't know what happened to those Vivo barefoot shoes. I couldn't find them. So I went out and bought another pair and I haven't worn anything, but we're going to do a

show and tell. And I'm wearing them right now because I just came from the gym, but in the show and tell, I'll pull them out and show you guys and we can talk a little bit more about it. But it's been really interesting. And I've started, this is another thing that I started really slow, just doing the drills, being very gentle on myself, not overdoing it.

And then went from drills to doing a run, like I ran 10 minutes, just trying to keep my cadence really high I ran 10 minutes, you know, just trying to keep my cadence really high, focusing on lifting my feet up, being gentle on the earth, not pounding, not landing hard. Where were you running? So just on like, there's,

I alternated between trails and pavement because I wanted to mix those two things up. In the vivos or barefoot? No, in the vivos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not like running barefoot yet. Okay. Yeah, so I'm just trying to do this.

I don't wanna get injured either. And when my calves were hurting for a week, when I overstepped it and went out running full stop in these things, I realized like this is something that I could easily get hurt doing if I don't take it slowly. So yeah, it started off with like a 10 minute run. Now I'm up to being able to run an hour in them

and I have no soreness and my technique is coming along. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm getting better at it and it's been really fun. And this is an example of looking for the opportunity in the quarantine. Like, okay, all these things that I like to do, they're kind of off the table. What can I do that ordinarily I wouldn't be able to justify

or I would just have a hard time wrapping my head around? It's like the world has stopped. Like, let's learn this thing. Let's take the time, be patient, and try to master a new skill. So it's been really fun and I'm enjoying it. I love it. I think also like you

can't understate, overstate the, what that does to your brain, just learning, just starting again at zero and being the beginner, like the beginner mind, like what that does for you, how that kind of keeps you young to some degree and just keeps you humble and all sorts of good things come from being open to being the beginner again. It also changes your relationship with time. When you're in a rut and in a routine and doing things the way that you always do them and always kind of doubling down on your strengths

and ignoring your weaknesses, time, especially as you get older, seems to speed up. It's like, wow, it's already September. Like what happened to the summer? But when you decide to try to learn something new, time slows down and it seems more technicolor than it would ordinarily. Because it's triggering,

it'd be interesting to hear what Andrew Huberman would have to say about that. Because I think it lights up other areas of your brain that are dormant. That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, what kind of brain health thing is there from taking up something new? I mean, they talk about it all the time with older people learning a new language or... I wonder, there's got to be some sort of brain health benefit in middle age starting. I'm sure there is. It's definitely an overlooked aspect of well-being and perhaps even longevity. Yeah. Especially in terms of brain health.

It's very inspiring to me because I've had all sorts of foot problems and, you know, just playing basketball for so many years and just spraining both ankles, you know, a half a dozen times. And just like I've had, you know, I have orthotics for my regular running shoes and then going into the swim run shoes, which are very minimal, even the Solomons that I typically run in because the Vivos are so hard for me to deal with. I'm wearing the Vivo every day right now for this episode and I have worn them, but like if I wear them too many hours, like I feel the calf pain and I feel my foot pain even more. But the Solomons, you know, I had to, one of reasons, I actually stopped running the week before April gave birth because I had like this, almost a shin splint feeling that was starting to happen. And so I had to stop. And so, I mean, I'm definitely a lead footer.

I mean, I'm a thumper. So, you know, it just makes me- And there's a sense that, well, that's just the way I am. Like I have a heavy foot. Well, that's not the case. That's just because this is the way that your brain is wired to move yourself in this way, but that can be retrained.

And in addition to, excuse me, what I witnessed spending time with Tony, I also reflect back upon my experience doing the Eau de l'Eau World Championships. Yes. And I was amazed how many people were wearing Vivos in that ultra race. Not everybody.

There was a variety of different kind of shoe selections, but there was definitely a contingent of competitors who were wearing Vivos. And I was like, how are you gonna do this race, be on your feet for nine hours or however long this thing goes on in this minimal barefoot shoe? Like I couldn't wrap my head around it. Now I'm starting to understand that not only is it possible, like maybe it's a better way to go. And I think to really, you know, punctuate this whole thing and bring it back to Tony,

really, you know, punctuate this whole thing and bring it back to Tony. He just completed last year. He did this thing where he did the, he basically ran the entire length of England, like did the John O'Groats run, like ultra running, like, you know, I don't know, something like 40 or 50 miles a day, barefoot from one end of the, you know, the, the, the island to the other. It was an incredible accomplishment. This year, he just completed something called three bear peaks where he ran 450 miles over nine days. It was like nine days, seven hours, 18 minutes where he tackled the three tallest peaks, um, in the UK, Mount Snowdon in Wales, Scaffold Peak in England, and Ben Nevis in Scotland. So there's a lot of pavement in between these mountains, which he ran in vivos, but then he would scale the mountains barefoot or some combination of barefoot and wearing his vivos.

In addition to that, according to an article I just read, which I just found out, I didn't know this, apparently he had COVID, like he was just coming off having COVID when he did this. It must not have been a very severe case of COVID. Well, no, COVID just can't deal with Tony. Like Tony- Maybe, yeah.

Well, he's the natural lifestylist, right? Yeah, COVID's like, I don't wanna be in Tony. Right. Tony's gonna make me run barefoot. Apparently this is a thing, this race, and he broke the record for it. I don't know how many people have done it over the years.

But essentially he was running the equivalent of about two marathons every day. He's a beast, man. 17 marathons total over this nine-day period. Incredible. Yeah, which is amazing, right? And he's all about, this is gonna dovetail into the big idea

that we're gonna talk about. This kind of like ethos that he lives is all about trying to align himself with the natural rhythms of the planet. Like he's removed all the chairs out of his house and he's about squatting and being barefoot and trying to connect with something that is very primal and ancestral about being human, which in many ways, as a result of the modernity of the world in which we inhabit, we've lost connection with.

Yeah. I mean, and his, and I think just one last physiological question. I mean, I imagine his feet are extremely muscular. I met a guy in Tahiti named Mato who is barefoot all the time. And he once sailed a canoe with like some other Tahitian guys all the way to Shanghai and then was walking down the city streets of Shanghai barefoot. And this guy doesn't like his feet are thick as, you know, they just like muscle. It's like a pure muscle with toes coming out. And he, everywhere he goes, he can run on any surface

and hike any surface. I mean, I imagine Tony's feet have to be like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they don't look deformed or anything like that. I mean, the original impetus for him getting into this was that he had some kind of foot deformity and this was a means of trying to correct that. They don't look freakish,

but they have like the skin on the bottom is much thicker, obviously. Like he's not, you know, like the tenderness on the underside of most people's feet, mine included, and I'm sure yours, you know, is so paper thin and that gets, you know, conditioned in a way where, you know, he can run on loose, tiny little gravel rocks

and it's not cutting him or- He doesn't feel it. Yeah, he doesn't feel it at all. Yeah, amazing. amazing. Well, you had a couple of questions that we aren't going to tackle later that kind of get into this fitness area. One is a woman, Linda in Marin, who is trying to do the same thing, get into more functional body strength to age gracefully and kind of transitioning out of mostly running and endurance. And she wondered if there's anywhere to start. Like where would you recommend somebody to follow your lead?

How would you recommend Linda to start? There's a million videos on YouTube. You can just dial up functional fitness routines on YouTube and you'll get tons of instructional videos. I wish I'd written this down, but there's one called like mountain fitness or something like that. Like they literally take every exercise and make like a two minute video out of it, whether it's a kettlebell exercise or some kind of abdominal or back exercise, and they walk you through it so that you can watch it. And that's how I learned how to do some really basic kettlebell moves, because that's really foreign to

me. So the perils of YouTube, which we're going to get into in a minute- Yeah, that's a better transition. Are buffered by a lot of helpful information when it comes to this kind of stuff, right? Yes. So I would start there. I mean, I think the larger point to her point about desiring to age gracefully is well considered because, and we talked about this last time, as we get older, she's 53, I'm 53, I can continue to advance my endurance capacity. That doesn't go away as we age. What becomes more difficult is maintaining strength

and muscle mass, like that starts to diminish as we get older. And I think it's important to make sure that you're taking care of that. I told you like, oh, I touch a weight and I blow up and that's always been the case for me. But I have noticed now at 53, it's taking a little bit longer. It's coming back,

but I do have to be more patient with it. And I think, five weeks into this, what do I have to say? But I can tell you that I feel better in my body and I feel like I have more control and agility and it's a good feeling. And it's something that I'm gonna continue to do irrespective of how much I dip back into the endurance world.

And you see it with, we mentioned this last time too, like this is the David Goggins approach. Like just because he's running 100 mile plus runs doesn't mean that he's not in the gym. And he might be a better ultra runner if he cut back on that stuff and lost 15 pounds of shoulder, shoulder mass. Right. You know, he might be a better runner, but overall over the course of his life, will he be, um, as strong and as fit and as healthy? Who knows? You know? Right. Well, I mean, I'm sure he's been told that a million times by people. What are you bench pressing for?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's been in the gym this entire time. Like he's like, it's two days and three days every time. And one of them is always in the gym. So, and functional stuff, like often body weight stuff more than anything, you know, like pull-ups and push-ups. Right, because the gyms are closed.

Right, there you go. All right, the big story. The big story. Do you wanna kick this? You brought this one up, so. It's not gonna be a surprise to anybody who follows me on social media because I've been posting about this.

But what I really wanna do is spend some time talking about this documentary, The Social Dilemma, which just premiered on Netflix. It's essentially an exploration of the dangerous human impact of social networking, interspersed with talking heads, these tech experts who are sounding the alarm on their own creations and the existential threat to humanity they pose. And I think what makes it so compelling and distinct from other kind of alarm bell documentaries is that these talking heads are not only alerting us to the

dangers of what's going on online right now, they are the architects of it themselves, right? And they're holding themselves to account on some level. That's a tangential thread that we can pull on in a minute because it's fraught with complications. Yes. But I found this documentary to not only be incredibly powerful, I really believe that it is the most important movie of the year.

And I can't stress enough how much I think everybody needs to see this film. It is the revelation, how much I think everybody needs to see this film. It is the revelation, the Neo revelation in the Matrix. It really is. It's like, we're all Neo and this is Lawrence Fishburne coming to us to try to,

Morpheus trying to tell us what's really going on. Don't you think? I mean, not to make it like bigger than it is, but it is a really big issue. And Morpheus is Tristan Harris. Yeah. And that's what's happening. Yeah, and he closes the movie by essentially saying like,

how do you get people to wake up from the matrix when they don't even realize that they're in the matrix? Which is the whole point of the matrix. Which is to put yourself in the position of Neo when he comes to realize that there's more going on than he originally imagined. And to make it clear, what's happening is basically we're the product. I think you also sent me this GQ article that one of the people who's featured in the movie, Jaron Lanier, Zach Barron's GQ profile of him. the movie, Jaron Lanier, Zach Barron's GQ profile of him. And in that, Jaron is basically quoted as saying, anytime you are provided with a service like Facebook for free, you are in fact the

product being sold. And that's the point of this whole documentary. We are the product. We are what's being mined. We are the precious metal, you know, lifeblood of the earth that's being mined for money. And we're doing it because we think we're getting better connection to our friends and family. But in reality, we're being teed up with content and these news feeds that might feel sometimes really good, but in the long run are really bad for mental health, especially in young people, and are really, really bad for social welfare and democracy. And it's happening to such an extent that we're completely unaware

that it's happening, and it is undermining our free will. I mean, we could talk about whether we have free will at all, period, but certainly this is triggering us in a way to navigate the world from a perspective where we think we're making decisions about the content that we consume. But we've been so manipulated by these platforms that it leads us down these pathways and introduces us to ideas that we didn't consciously choose for ourselves. And I think Jaron Lanier is like the godfather of this notion. Like this guy is unbelievable, right? Like I would love to get him on the podcast. I mean, he's been around forever. He's a pioneer of virtual reality. He worked at Atari for a long time. He's kind of this futurist philosopher king. Many years ago, he wrote his own manifesto. I mean, we could talk about Tristan's

manifesto, but Jaron's, he wrote like 10 reasons to delete your social media. Like this is not a new idea. No. From his perspective, he was recently a guest on Andrew Yang's podcast, which everyone should check out. Super interesting, thoughtful, you know, perspective on the impact of social media on everybody. But the movie is really the brainchild of Tristan Harris, who has been making the podcast rounds for many years. You know, I would highly suggest checking out his first appearance on Sam Harris's podcast. It was amazing. He's a former design ethicist from Google and has kind of now stepped into this role as,

you know, the quote unquote conscience of Silicon Valley. He wrote this manifesto when he was at Google like, hey, you know, shouldn't we be thinking about like the impact of these products and how addictive they are? Like, what are we really doing here? I think we need to stop for a minute and assess the long-term implications of these tools that we've crafted. And everybody seemed to agree. It kind of went viral within not just Google, but Silicon Valley at large. Everyone nodded, but then nothing happened. And that led him to quit his job and create this now nonprofit called the Center for Humane Technology, which is really the one organization, I'm sure there's others, but the leading organization that's trying to redress the ills of these social

platforms and these technology behemoths and how they're impacting not just personal mental health, but how they're undermining the cohesion and the social fabric of society at large. So let's take it, let's kind of like unpack it. So we'll start with like the human psychological component, because that's one thing that I think I didn't fully get until watching this is the idea is that this AI that is basically taking our data, analyzing the data, and then using what it's learned about us to serve us more content in the idea to capture our attention, to mine our attention so they can sell this stuff for pennies. I mean, it's pennies a click, like pennies. So basically, we're being sold super cheap, but just a million times over. But it is an understanding of human psychology and

twisting. It's like the greatest con ever. It's computer con, and it's understanding who we are and what we want next before we even know we want it. That's why it feels like free will when we're clicking on something, but it's not necessarily free will. Right, and the way that they illustrate that is with these little dramatic interludes that they pepper throughout the movie, which I will say if there's one flaw in this movie,

I'm not so sure that these things are successful. They do one where they play out kind of a family drama with actors and the classic kind of tro family drama with actors and, you know, the classic kind of trope of being at the dinner table and like, don't have your phones and the teenagers are rebelling. And that all feels kind of dated right now. But the other little drama that they interpose throughout is this panel of Vincent Karthyser, who you might know from Mad Men. Pete from Mad Men plays the AI.

He plays the AI. He plays three guys or he plays all of them and they're all sitting behind monitors, as puppeteers trying to, staring at their product, who is the young teen boy in the other drama, trying to maintain his connection to this platform. Like, oh, he looks like he's gonna log off, send him this so he stays here. Right.

And it's sort of cheeky and fun. It's fun. It makes the point, but the point, the larger point being like, all of these little bells and whistles are very well thought out and intended in the same way a Vegas casino intends to keep you, you know,

in front of that slot machine or at the table to keep you engaged on this platform and not let you leave. Whether it's the color scheme or the way that every time you refresh, it's a new feed. All of these things are A-B tested to the gills to maintain your focus and keep those eyeballs on that platform. They serve you up the ads you want to see. They know who the people are that you really want to hear from on these platforms. And so we think we're just staying in touch with our friends when in reality, we are being mined for so much data that this AI understands us better than we understand ourselves. And that's a frightening prospect. And how this gets played out, it's one thing to talk about it in kind of an intellectual academic context, but we're seeing the deleterious implications of this

getting played out in the fracturing of our society. And one of the quotes that was really impactful for me in watching this movie was when somebody said, I can't remember which person said this, maybe you'll remember, but he said, you know, we have this idea of the Truman Show, like, you know, you're in a reality show where you're being manipulated. Well, imagine that everybody, every single person, the billions of individuals that are on Facebook- He's at 2.7 billion Truman shows. Right, are all in their own respective personal Truman show. Roger McNamee said that one. That's different from everybody else.

Yeah, Roger McNamee. And when you realize that, you realize that we're not engaging in a shared reality. We all have our own reality and we're deluded to think that everyone is living in our reality when in fact they are not. Exactly. So, which means that, you know, the Time Magazine article that we both read this week, which you're gonna include in the show notes, which kind of, it's from,

it's basically a reporter that's been in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the post Jacob Blake kind of protests and everything that's been happening there. She's there, you know, smoke is cleared and she's there and interviewing, uh, which I think it was nine dozen or seven dozen people, um, about, you know, from all parts of, you know, from left to the right about what they think about this upcoming election. And, um, it's scary. Some of the views from both sides that people were just basically parroting QAnon theory and things like that. And one point she makes is, you can't have a functional democracy if you don't have an informed public.

And it used to be a little easier to figure out or to figure out how to be informed. And now that's all very muddy. And the reason that's muddy, and we can talk about the, you know, fake news traveling six times faster than real news on these platforms. And that's one of the reasons. The other reason is that the AI doesn't care what's fake or, or, or real because it doesn't know what's fake or real. It just knows clicks. And, and so some of the, sometimes what you're getting on your Facebook feed, it won't necessarily feed you stuff you like. It won't necessarily feed you material from people you like hearing from. It will feed you stuff it knows you don't like, because it knows it'll keep

you on that feed longer. So you'll find, if you wonder why there's all this politics on your news feed, that's because it knows you don't like it. But you can't resist reading this shit. Right, if you click on it, that's the paramount consideration. That's all that matters. Right? Right.

There's a quote in that Time article by this woman, Whitney Phillips, who's a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. And she said, they're not on the same, she's talking about these people who are kind of canvassed, who are all like harboring, you know, ideas that range from insane conspiracy to, you know, counter-cultural or what have you. And she said, they're not on the same epistemological

grounding. They're not living in the same worlds. You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system. And this is what is so troubling and problematic about all of this. And I said to you the other day when we were talking about this, when we look at the very large existential problems that we face from climate change to political division to wild conspiracy theories to the protesting in the streets. None of it can be properly addressed and worked through if we're not sharing some basic set of facts here. We cannot solve our problems, existential and practical, solve our problems, existential and practical, if we don't solve this social dilemma first. This is a root driver of the division, the divisiveness, the polarization, the anger, the acrimony that we're seeing getting played out on the streets all over the country. And I think we really need to pause

and reflect upon the role that these technological behemoths play in our society. And I think it's incumbent upon us as the public to call for their regulation. This movie is very dystopian when you watch it. And at the very end, it's sort of like, okay, well, we can't leave the audience just feeling absolutely horrible without some sense of hope or solution. But that kind of

hopeful note that's cast at the very end feels a little bit tacked on. There is a sense that, well, we know we need to change, like delete your social media from your phone. Okay, that's one thing we can do. We need to regulate these companies. Okay. But what is the path forward? You know, I have, I have hope that Tristan and his team at, you know, the center for humane technology are, are, they've got their eyeballs on this and they're, they're coming up with these solutions, but it's not like we have it all worked out right now. No, I mean, I think that there are... All right. So let's pan... One thing that you're talking about in the dystopian ending is you can cut from all over the world, you're seeing street clashes. And then the guy who went from Facebook or... yeah, he was like the Facebook-

The guy who came up with the like button? No, the guy that was in charge of monetizing Facebook that went to Pinterest. Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, they asked him what he most worries about and he said in the shortest time horizon, civil war. And if that sounds extreme to you, consider what, when you look back and read about wars, they start with kindling. And it's

like one little moment of kindling that could spark it. We've had them already. We've had the kindling moments. I'm not trying to be alarmist, but we have had them. We had Charlottesville, Kenosha, where a 17-year-old kid goes around with a gun to try to protect property, I guess. He thought he was in the right. He ends up shooting and killing people. And then he's used as a pawn by right wing people like Tucker Carlson and, and, and Ann Coulter and Donald Trump himself. And, and they don't care about this kid. You know, like it's, it's, it's a tragedy that a 17 year old kid went and did that for, you know, it's a tragedy for him. And, and it's, it's a tragedy that a 17-year-old kid went and did that for, you know, it's a tragedy for him. And it's a tragedy for obviously the people, the families he affected.

You know, like we've had these skirmishes now so much. We have in Portland, we have anarchists throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers. In Compton, we have people hunting cops. I mean, I'm not picking sides here. This is just what's happening. And so we have the kind cops. I mean, I'm not picking sides here. This is just what's happening. And so we have the kindling. The kindling is in place. I don't think it's our destiny is that,

but certainly, you know, if it is, we can look back at now as being when it started. And if you look at how Twitter, Twitter's big moment was 2010, the Arab spring, right? When everyone's in Tahrir Square in Cairo and, and calling for the end of, of the Murabak, yeah, something. Mubarak. Yeah, Mubarak era. He'd been a dictator in Egypt for, you know, decades and, and they depose him. And the same thing happens. It replicates across, you know, the Arab world and it becomes Arab Spring. And if you look at it now, only Tunisia has come out of it in a better place. Libya is on the verge of even more civil war looking like Syria. Syria is a shell of itself. ISIS came up out of it. And how did ISIS become so strong?

They recruited on Facebook. How did the Charlottesville rally happen? They recruited on Facebook. So the social media can be beneficial, but it's not in itself beneficial. It's like this medium that it does tend towards the dystopic. Even when things seem to be going well, it can twist and turn on you. And so that's, I think, what you're talking about, the dystopic ending, right? So how to fix it at the end of this movie, one way is to bust these companies up. Yeah, they need to be broken up. Broken up. We need to get Elizabeth Warren

either running the Justice Department or the FTC because she's on top of the anti-competitive nature of these companies. And there's just no reason that they should be as large and as powerful as they are. Right, like Instagram came up independently as Facebook, Facebook gobbled it up. WhatsApp came up independently, it got gobbled up.

Like certainly WhatsApp and Instagram should be separated. And Google and YouTube. Yeah. Google and YouTube should be separated. Yeah, and you know, look, there is something to be said for like these, all these talking heads,

these guys are all became super successful as a result of their involvement in tech. They're all worth tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars because of their involvement in this infrastructure. And a lot of how they learned how to create these persuasive technologies and these sort of, you know,

the bells and whistles that get packed into this, they learned at Stanford in B.J. Fogg's persuasive technology lab. B.J. Fogg, who's a master of behavior change, he's an amazing guy. I'm trying to get him on the podcast. We've been going back and forth scheduling thing. But they took what they learned in his lab and then kind of weaponized it to create this addictive, you know, like call and response relationship with the mobile apparatus. Yeah, it's, and yes, there's a certain amount of guilt. I think that some of these people in the movie must be feeling, they didn't see it coming.

The guy that created the like button, what's his name? You have him listed here. Justin Rosenstein. Justin Rosenstein, yeah. He was like, our whole goal was to spread love and connection. They didn't see it coming. Right. They were playing chess and didn't realize it. You know, I'm not, you know, they didn't see it. They're so smart, but they didn't see this coming. But, you know, maybe they couldn't see it coming because they were creating something like the like button. They weren't, you know, it's like all the different departments created this greater computer mind, um, you know, this big brain like

that Jaron talks about. Um, and so they couldn't see it coming. And, uh, and now that they do see it coming, it's, it disturbs them. And they're trying to get people to engage with the fact that this isn't healthy. Google's- And it's not a partisan thing. No. So in the drama around the teenage boy, you see him get radicalized by way of YouTube. But they specifically create some fictional faction that he gets radicalized into because this is not a Republican liberal thing. Trump makes no appearance in this documentary whatsoever.

And the only politicians that kind of offer soundbites are Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake, both Republicans who are sounding the alarm for this being problematic. So this isn't a conservative liberal thing. It shouldn't be. Well, it shouldn't be. Yeah, everything gets weaponized and everything becomes politicized. Yeah. But in truth, anybody who's looking at this clear-eyed and objectively will understand that this is a disease. It's a pox on our society. And once we lose the ability to effectively

and communicate with each other, as Tristan Harris says, it's checkmate on humanity. That's how big this is. Yes, civil war. I don't think that's overreaching to say that. When you look at what's happening right now, we're seeing the early stages of what could become a failed state. Definitely. I mean, and I think what Jerron talks about is like a place where we can't solve any of

the problems like you had mentioned, because all we have is this contentious political arena and authoritarians running everything and no clear idea of what to do. And so, you know, that's what he's worried about. A hundred years out, he is worried about our ability to solve any problems whatsoever. Failed state absolutely is something to be concerned about. You also got to be concerned about the kids. I mean, we didn't get into what they talked about that, but they're talking about spiking suicide rates of girls between 10 and 14 years old. I mean, 10 and 14 years old. That's usually there aren't,

10 year olds don't do that. 10 year olds don't do that. And so obviously between 14 and 17, it's a spiked rate as well. That's something you maybe could understand why, but between 10 and 14. So what we might feel as FOMO as adults, little kids are thinking of, I wish I wasn't me.

And this is the evidence why. So they're always seeing that evidence of why they don't wanna be themselves. And so, yeah, so it's emergency time. And Zuckerberg doesn't feel, doesn't seem like the type of guy that could fix it. He has to be imposed upon. Well, he, I mean, he's as feckless as ever. The talking, the sort of sound bites that they share of him, you're just like, seriously? Like, you know, he's not even addressing this at all. And what about the Google guys? Remember, Don't Be Evil was their whole thing.

I mean, that's gone. You don't hear that anymore. Like, where are those guys? There's a Fast Company article that I'll also link up in the show notes that was published on 9-11 of this year. And the headline is, we can have social media as we know it,

or we can have democracy. Yeah. That's how dire and serious this is. It's as serious as a heart attack. And, you know, it's terrifying and I can't stop thinking about this movie and I can't overstate how important I think it is to, that everybody, you know, watch this and have conversations about it. At the same time, I would be, you know, remiss and not calling out my own duplicity here. You and I- Me too.

I mean, I have an entire career because of social media. There is some logic to this idea that it is a tool and if used appropriately, it can be beneficial for other people and for ourselves. It's given me a career. But one of the things that they kind of dispel in the documentary is that trope of, it's just a tool, it's neutral, right? And you can use it for good or you can use it for evil. And it kind of belies, it pulls covers on that trope to say it's not actually neutral.

But yeah, it's like, well, I think this podcast is transmitted over the internet and people find out about it because of social media. I have a Facebook account. I have an Instagram account. I post there. Well, but in podcasts, new media in general, if you look at podcasts or any sort of new media and podcasts being the most successful form of new media, I think that we we've ever seen. Blogs couldn't touch what podcasts are doing. Blogs are dead. Yeah, blogs. And they never really... It's just another website. But podcasts are doing, financially, but also culturally, it's a whole nother thing. And that's new media. And one thing

this movie kind of looks at Steve Jobs as this figure and as if social media somehow twisted his dream of the computer being the most important tool for human evolution. When in reality, Steve Jobs' parting shot was the iPhone, which is probably the number one tool which gave us podcasts and gave us social media to this level, the smartphone. I don't think the hardware is, you gotta touch the hardware too. The hardware is the problem too. When you can get notifications and you can get this stuff right in your pocket and that you can watch it right here,

you're never far from it. I think that is, you also gotta call out Apple. I mean, if you're gonna call out Facebook and Google and everyone else, Instagram, you can call out Apple too. But you can also call ourselves out, right? So like we were talking about, yes, you've got your whole career in this podcast. And here I am sitting here and my biggest success so far has been able to collaborate with David on his book. And he's not famous from social media, he's famous from the podcast, but that fueled his social media, which allowed the book to become

this mega hit and gave... So there's things that come out of this that are positive. But look at the way David uses social media. He uses it, it doesn't use him. He follows nobody. That's the difference. Right, that's the difference. I don't even think... Does he even have an iPhone? I don't even know. I don't think so, does he even have an iPhone? I don't even know. I don't think so, no. No, I don't think so.

His fiance manages all of that. She has the iPhone, yeah. And yeah, he doesn't like, she'll shoot a video of him and post it, but he's not at home seeing who commented on his thing. He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't give a shit about that. Yeah, I know.

And he's like the most inspirational figure in the kind of fitness, self-improvement space on the internet, essentially. Yeah, because he doesn't, he's not a slave to that stuff. You know, like I am, like I want to see who commented. I care about all that stuff. But also, you know, I'm not going to go as far as saying there is no free will. I go on YouTube and I watch The Daily Show and other late night snippets on YouTube. And that's the only thing I use it for.

And I go in with a specific thing I wanna watch and I get the fuck out and I don't watch their queued up videos. So you can use it as a tool, you can. But the larger thing is just because you can doesn't mean it's easy for everyone to do that. One comfort that I take because the documentary sort of establishes this idea that these AIs are all powerful, like we don't even know what they're doing and they're

controlling all of us. And it's now it's beyond our control, this idea that, you know, we're going to, you know, live in this, you know, kind of Terminator world where the computers are running, where they're like, it's already happening, right? Right. But here's the thing. The AI isn't that great. Because like, sometimes I'll watch a YouTube video because I want to see like some knucklehead say this stupid thing, you know? It's like, oh, let's see. Let me see how bad this argument is. And then I get served up all these videos as if like, that's the person that I like. Or I'll like buy something like, oh, I bought a pair of shoes from an ad that I saw on Instagram. And then I get served up

more and more ads for that. And it's like, well, I just bought the thing. I don't need it anymore. Like, why are you doing it? So it's like, it's very rudimentary still. You're saying the good news is tech doesn't work. Well, it's not. Tech often doesn't work. Yeah. It's like, it's hilarious. Like if I, I'm like, and I'll think like, oh, if I watch this video, then I'm going to get all these suggested videos all of a sudden. And that happens every time. So yeah, just being like, oh, that's why they're serving me up that video because I clicked that other thing and being aware of that.

Look, you can delete your social media apps off your phone. I go through periods of time where I do that. Then they always find their way back. You can gray scale your phone. You can, I mean, one thing that I think is really important is turning off your notifications. You're not just constantly inundated with bells and whistles all day long. That's one way to take greater control of your sanity.

And I think just having conversations about this stuff, like, you know, as a parent of teenage girls, I'm very connected to the ills of, you know, what these platforms are doing to young people. And when you layer the pandemic on top of it, and now like the, we didn't even talk about the fact that California is on fire right now and the sky's orange. All of this is contributing to a very unhealthy state of mind in young people.

And it's really tragic. And I'm seeing kids cracking out there, like friends of friends who have teenage kids who are having a really hard time. And my family's not immune from that. It's been really challenging. And social media is not helping. It's making it worse. No. So just real quick, a couple of things on their solutions. One is breaking up the big tech. The other is regulation. What kind of regulation? One suggestion was a data stream tax.

The more data they take from you, the more tax they pay the government, which would limit. Basically, it would be more strategic about taking. And then there's a more radical version of where if they take your data and they earn money off it, then you get money. Yeah, I mean it should be – the default shouldn't be that they own the data and you have to try to get it back. It should be that we own our own data and then we can make the choice of whether we want to allow people access to that or not. And Australia is phasing in a law that basically Facebook has to pay, I think it's Australia, has to pay the publishers if their articles wind up on the platform. Right. I mean, that's radical. And they're talking about closing. That is a major

realignment. Facebook is talking about getting out of Australia. Yeah, because of that. There's no way they'll stand for that. But I think we need to see some experimentation in this realm. I know that Twitter is like beta testing a subscription model. Like what if you just had to pay 10 bucks a month to have Twitter? Like I probably pay that to have access to that platform and then strip away all the other, like if you can create a different model, it's the ad model that's driving this. Right. So if we can figure out, we can pivot away towards a healthier, you know, version that still allows these people to, like, it's a capitalist enterprise, you know, so I don't begrudge that at all, but not when it comes at the sacrifice of human dignity and health and the degradation of the social fabric of

our democratic principles. Absolutely. I think Jack could be the guy that does the most experimenting and gets it done quicker. Even though Twitter is in some ways the most problematic of these because it's so polarized on Twitter, he also seems to be the one trying to do the most. And Google seems, as bad as Zuckerberg and Facebook is, Google seems completely out of touch. Google is not even trying to talk about this. I mean, at least Zuckerberg realizes he has to say something every once in a while. I don't hear from Google ever on YouTube. I mean, to me, it's appalling what's happening on YouTube. And Sundar just, I mean, he seems like such a nice guy. Yeah. Like he's very polished and camera ready and he's very likable, but he's not the face

of the platform in the way that Jack is with Twitter or Mark is with Facebook. And Facebook just feels irredeemable to me at this point. It's crazy. And then talking about the fires here in Oregon, in Oregon, there was rumors going on on social media that Antifa was starting the fires in rural Oregon, which is like Trump country. And like the fact that it's ever even brought up while people are running for their lives, it's appalling.

And it just fuels my suspicion that 2020 is the 2012 that they warned us about. The Quetzalcoatl. You got to give it to the Mayans because a plus minus eight years. Like in a Daniel Pinchbeck kind of way? Yeah, like in a Celestine prophecy kind of way. Yeah, like 2012 was supposed to be like the beginning where everything ends or gets better. And it's actually 2020, not 2012. And that Buckminster Fuller quote that I sent you that was in the movie, something about how like it's going to be touch and go between dystopia and utopia. We're either going to go from oblivion or between oblivion and utopia, it's going to be touch and go. And we won't know until like the last act what's gonna happen

because these obviously, our technology trends towards both simultaneously and that's what we're talking about here. But if we're gonna get to utopia and leave oblivion behind, we have a lot of work to do. Yeah. Well, it does feel like an inflection point.

And I certainly can see that it could go either way. And it's up to us. It's up to us. It's up to us. And so if there is a way to leverage these platforms for good, certainly that's what I'm about. But I think it's incumbent upon all of us to shoulder the responsibility of getting active, having the conversations that need to be had around the health of these platforms and the health of our families, because the stakes could not be higher right now. And activism, when you come down to it, is just talking to people. Activism on the scale now, it's all online, but it used to be phone banks and knocking on doors. And for you, it could be making some phone calls.

I plan to call people as the election closes in and talk about this kind of stuff voice to voice. I'm going to take some time and I'm going to call people. And that's the activism I'm going to do around this. And I'm going to implore them to think of love first. And, you know, obviously I'm going to advocate for me. That means voting for Biden over Trump in this thing. But I also want to talk about in general YouTube and find out where people are getting their politics from, you know, where they're going to get their, they're getting their information from and have that greater, um, conversation as well. And I plan to do that. So, uh, that's what I'm going to do. I pledge to do that. I pledge to you guys now, and I will follow through on that. Um, and Rich can ask me how those conversations are going, but those are going to happen in my, in my world. Um, and I think

the more conversations let's using our phones to call people. And if you have to get a landline, because to me, that's my favorite tech. It's my landline. I haven't had a landline in 20 years. It's the best piece of tech I've ever had. I'm not getting a landline. You gotta get a landline, bro.

It's the new high tech. Is that the new like prepper thing? That's it, man. Having a landline. You're telling me Jaron doesn't have a landline? I'm sure he does, right? Probably. Meaningful conversation matters now more than ever.

And the truth is found in nuance, something I tweeted the other day. I love it. I think it's something we should all take to heart. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with some show and tell and some wins of the week. And we're gonna take some listener questions.

Beautiful. All right. And we're back. I think that went well, Adam. I feel good today. My neurons are firing. My whoop score is through the roof. My heart rate variability is good. Bro, your neurons are firing so hard, I'm ducking. Yes, you have to say that because you're the co-host. That's right. I'm the hype man. I feel like a walking advertisement for the podcast today. I've got like my whoop on. Yeah. I've got like this bottle that says Four Sigmatic on it. I can smell the sweat over here. Oh, is that a tracksuit? Yeah, like they're not a podcast sponsor yet, but we're talking to them. Like I love their stuff.

It's really cool. I'm wearing my 10,000 shorts. Malcolm's probably wearing that same shirt right now. I'm sure he is. I think I saw him wearing this shirt in an ad. Well, Tracksmith's a really cool brand. They work with Malcolm. Knox Robinson, who's been on the podcast, is collaborating with them on a few things. They're sponsoring Mary Kane, who you know was the woman that Lindsey Krauss wrote the article about in the New York Times about how she was the fastest runner, but her career was sort of decimated by Alberto Salazar and all that. So they're sponsoring her. I don't know, they make really cool stuff.

Amazing. Kind of like their ethos. How great is Lindsey Krauss? Can we just say something? She's the best. I think she's just one of the best. Have you met her? No, but I have emailed with her just a couple of times,

but I have not met her, but I find her reporting to be as good as it gets. Yeah, I love her. I loved having her on the podcast and she's an excellent Twitter follow. Yeah. Yeah. She's fabulous.

What do we got? All right. Well, the Ethan Hawke TED Talk is out. Yes, it is. Give yourself permission. It is. My favorite part- I love this TED Talk.

I shared this on social media, back to social media, but like I love Ethan Hawke and I thought this TED Talk was so great. And it leveraged the best of what can be done in quarantine. Like he's not on the TED stage. No. He looks like he's in a country Western bar in Austin.

He's got the denim jacket like you got on. And he delivers this monologue that makes it look like he's coming up with it on the spot. But clearly like, you know, he's rehearsed this. I like him removing the glasses and getting into it. So well done. Very actor. Yes. I loved it. I loved it. And I was like, how can I get this guy on the podcast? I don't know Ethan Hawke. I've never met him. I'm like, I got to figure out a way to connect. But he's had such an interesting career path because he's also, he's never just pigeonholed himself. He's always, you know, he's written novels.

I know. And now he's like taking on kind of some self-help, you know, real estate. He's stepping into the McConaughey universe. Well, that's the thing. Are actors the new self-help Skyons? I don't know. It feels that way.

Ethan Hawke and Matthew McConaughey. Have you talked about Matthew McConaughey's book? No, not yet. But before we do that, like Ethan Hawke just Matthew McConaughey. Have you talked about Matthew McConaughey's book? No, not yet. But before we do that, like Ethan Hawke just drops bombs on creativity. And it was so inspiring and so beautifully delivered in a way that you could, it wasn't like, here's the 10 things you need to do.

It was like a poetic monologue on the inherent creativity that exists and lives within all of us that's yearning to be expressed. And I just thought it was beautiful. And following what you love. Give yourself permission to be creative. Yeah, and follow what you love to figure out, because he was talking about his brother,

you can have a creative life and not necessarily be a creative artist or whatever. You can have a creative life and just do the things you've loved and do them to the utmost. And that's still a creative life. And he also, but when he is talking about kind of art, it's like, don't, don't worry if it's good. And that's like the hardest thing, you know, I've been writing this novel and it was like mid second draft when the baby came and I'll get back to it soon. You know, I've been writing this novel and it was like mid second draft when the baby came and I'll get back to it soon. But like, uh, that's the hardest bit is like, and even just writing an

article, the hardest bit is, is this good? You know? And, and the less you think of that, the better and it's good. You know, give yourself permission to have it not be good. You know, like be, you're playing the fool. It's a fool. It's kind of a fool's errand to try to make a living as a creative person anyway. It's like, it was never a good career choice. Like even back before when like newspapers were in good shape, we didn't have all this kind of fractured attention and fractured outlets. It still wasn't necessarily a smart move to try to become a writer or a painter or a standup comic. This outrageous ego, like, Oh, the world needs to hear what I have to say. Are you fucking kidding me?

Right, right. You know? And he's like, his point is your voice matters. All people trying to become creative matters. But in kind of a fly overview, none of it matters either, which is also kind of gives you permission to be a fool. Because if it doesn't matter, who gives a shit? And you're not gonna be the one to decide

whether it matters anyway. You could never know what's gonna make something a fool. Cause if it doesn't matter who gives a shit and, and you're not going to be the one to decide whether it matters anyway, you could never know what, what's going to make something a success. It's like a secret sauce recipe that nobody has the, it's a secret sauce. No one has a recipe for timing matters so much. And like, you can't control timing. So, um, you know, you can do the best for the sake of doing it because it is part and parcel of what makes us human. And, you know, he doesn't get into the artist's way, but you talk about the artist's way, the morning pages. I mean, that's a great way to figure out and just to be creative for yourself, you know?

Yeah, 100%. So are actors the new scions of self-help, Adam Skolnick? Are they? I don't know. It feels that way. But it's not just Ethan. It's Matt. So he's got a book, right?

So leading the charge, leading the charge, the latest chapter in the McConnaissance is this new book that Matthew has coming out called Greenlights. And it is interesting when you kind of look at Matthew's career, how he's had these fits and starts. And then he was kind of, you know, he kind of started off with the, you know,

the dazed and confused era where he, you know, carved out like a little niche for himself and then, you know, became a sort of cog in the machine of studio rom-com land. And that played itself out and was never really him. And he had to find his way back to what his sweet spot is. And he's just blossomed into this beautiful expression of creative humanity.

Brilliant actor. The latest chapter of that are these snippets. Like he only recently created an Instagram account and he'll just like drop pearls of wisdom. I didn't even know he had that. Oh yeah, it's great. Oh, are you kidding? It's like, oh, it's so, he's so wise and soothing in his delivery. I don't know what it is specifically about him, but it's a guy who has like sort of grabbed the horns of life and created this path for himself. And there's something to be said for the intentionality that he's brought to his life and his career that is super inspiring. And the way that he kind of conducts himself is so welcoming and inviting.

It's like if Wooderson had a master's degree in psychology or something, Wooderson from Dazed and Confused. It's like, you know what I mean? Like the Wooderson, Wooderson himself was his own prophet. You know, like the idea, he was the prophet of that movie. He was the Yoda. He was like, you just gotta, you know, he's go with the flow kind of thing. And then like the, you have the Lincoln ads, you have the Lincoln ads, which are like another kind of version of that, a more sophisticated version.

But the reality of him is he does have his priorities straight. And so he is a guy to take advice from. I mean, I think, you know, both those guys are. So it's interesting though, that they're staking out that claim in that territory. And that is a function of new media, isn't it? Like that where, you know, there's a place now and it's not just them. Look at LeBron James and his voting and stuff and, you know, his promotion of social causes or whatever he wants to promote. Athletes do it and they've done it for a long time, but it's kind of different

for actors, I think, to do it. Right. Yeah. It has to be the right one. You know, who's also incredibly inspirational online as an actor? Who's that? Josh Brolin. Really? Have you ever gone to his Instagram? No. He is a poet. Really? It's unbelievable. He writes these He is a poet. Really? It's unbelievable. He writes these posts that are just beautiful. Really?

Yeah. And at first I had no idea that this guy had it in him. Check it out. Josh Brolin. Your life is about to change. Matthew McConaughey. Brolin is real, I mean, it's very, he'll just like tell these stories that are really about place and mood. They're not trying to say anything,

but he is able to kind of evoke an emotional response where when you're reading what he's written, you feel like you're there. Like it's, he's very gifted in that regard. All right. So enter Josh Brolin into that universe as well. See? Yeah.

All right, let's stop. Let's stop. What are we doing now? Are we gonna talk about the vivos? Stop fanning. I've got like, I came- The beautiful Hollywood stars. Yeah, you leftist coastal elites, you.

Fawning praise on these movie stars. I don't wanna fawn these movie stars. Yeah. You leftist coastal elites, you fawning praise on these movie stars. I don't want to fawn these movie stars anymore. So I just came straight from the gym right here. By the way, like some people were, remember how I was like kind of wearing a jacket and like presenting myself in a nice way on the podcast? Yes, I do. Yes. So some people were like, that's cool. Some other people were like, that doesn't feel authentic. You feel like you're- Really? Yeah, some people were not happy with that.

Who are these people? I don't know who they are, but they should be happy that today I'm wearing shorts and I came straight from the gym and I haven't taken a shower. What do they care what you wear? I don't know. The Vivo, I got these Vivo barefoot shoes.

Vivo is not a sponsor of the podcast. I would like them to be, they'd be great. These are the ones that I've been wearing and they're made out of recycled materials, which are great. These are intended for kind of trail running. So there's some like rivets on the bottom here, but when you're, they look like they have more padding

on them than they do. I assure you it's basically just to prevent you from cutting your feet up. Like it's completely no drop. It's flat. There's no padding whatsoever. It's like running in Havianas. They're comfortable.

And these are the only shoes that I've been wearing lately as I make this adjustment. And I've been enjoying it. See, I thought you were running barefoot. You know, On Running is a sponsor of the show and they make amazing running shoes. So this isn't, it's not an either or thing.

You know, on our very kind of revolutionary in the traditional running space, like what they've done with their technology is super interesting and I love their shoes and their products. This is just an entirely different thing that I'm trying to learn right now. I've been having a lot of fun with it. You might go back and forth. You just want to get your mechanics better, even if you put on running shoes. I thought when there was a shot you put on social media of you on a beach and I thought, oh, maybe you're barefoot running on that beach.

I was actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that on the, yeah, I can, my bare feet can handle the sand. Yeah. I'm just not ready for trail running barefoot, like Tony style. So the Vivo guys, I met them in Catalina

at that swim run event. Right. And they told me to wear the everyday shoe around for a while before you start trying to run and like just do them 10 minutes at a time like you were saying. This is the everyday shoe. I'm sorry it's leather. It does look like leather. How dare you? I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to bring this in here. My vegan sensibility is offended. I know. My son is probably sleeping on a leather couch'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring this in here. My vegan sensibility is offended. I know. My son is probably sleeping on a leather couch right now. I know. You can't blame him though. Listen, Vivo makes recycled shoes. You should be all over the recycled thing, knowing you.

I know. Well. On that subject of recycled materials, should we check in on our 30-day single-use plastic challenge? Oh, yeah, let's go. What's going on? So how have you been doing with this? Me?

I'm changing diapers, bro. I'm out. You've opted out. I'm out. You don't need another challenge. I'm out. I'm out. I'm changing plastic diapers.

Let me preface my answer here by saying that I haven't done a great job. Like, I think what I said when we introduced this was that I would post something on Instagram and try to enlist, you know, everybody to do this with me. And then I didn't do it. Like, I just, I didn't post anything on Instagram about it. So that's my bad. Like, I'm just, you know, I'm trying to not be on Instagram all the time. You know, I'm trying to be offline. So, you know, I'm trying to not be on Instagram all the time. You know, I'm trying to be offline. So, you know, I just forgot to do that and didn't take the time to do that. But why can't a 30-day single-use plastic challenge turn into a 60-day or a 90-day?

This is ongoing. This shouldn't have a sunset on it, right? This is about changing habits. In terms of my own experience over the last month trying to do this, I would give myself like a B minus or a C plus. Okay. Like I've done okay, but I haven't knocked it out of the park. has done is exactly what I mentioned last time, which is create a much more profound awareness of how big this challenge is and how difficult it is to do. I will say that I don't really buy stuff. So yeah, I'm not buying bottled water. I'm not buying things in the store that are wrapped

in plastic, but I'm also not doing most of the shopping for my home of six people right now. You know, like Julie's going to the grocery store or Mathis is having food delivered, you know, takeout food. I don't have control over them. So is that why you're getting a C plus? A bunch of stuff ends up at our house that's all plastic. And I'm like, Julie, you know, I told her about this and she's been trying to do her best as well.

But she's like, look, man, I got to get this freaking hard, you know? And it's just appalling when you look at the amount of garbage that, you know, I've got six people in my house, two older boys, two girls. We've had somebody stay with us for a little bit last week in the teepee. And that's a lot of people. And it's really disturbing how much refuse we produce. And this experience has made me more mindful and pay more attention to the choices that I'm making. It's engendered a greater appreciation for how difficult it is to make this switch. You know, I don't have Lauren, I think her name's Lauren Singer, Trash is for Tossers. I don't have a Lauren Singer store down the street from me

where I can bring my glass thing and get it filled up. No, but you know what we can do is we can enlist the whole family in this cause and everyone can be part of this. That's how you're gonna get from C plus to A. Yeah, well, it's tough. My daughter is not interested. You know what I mean? How do you get her on board? She's in that phase of like, I'm not interested in anything my parents are interested

in as a point of just making a point for herself and trying to disassociate, not disassociate, but like differentiate her life from her own. She's punk rock. I get it. And my 13-year-old the same. They're trying to figure out who they are and they can only do that when they're in contraposition to who we are. So I'm okay with that. It's an exploratory period.

But it's very difficult for me to get her on board with something like this right now. So she's not plant-based? She's plant-based, but like she'll order, you know, she'll like get a Beyond Burger from Carl's Jr. You know, it's like, that's where she's at right now. I love her. And listen, you know, I don't wanna talk about,

it's like my daughters particularly are at an age right now where, you know, they didn't sign up to be talked about on a podcast where hundreds of thousands of people are listening to it. And so, you know, when they were younger, it's one thing. And now it's like they have their own lives and they're entitled to their privacy. Oh, yeah, I get it. I'm not putting my son's face on any social media at all. Right. Yeah.

So I get it. But the challenge continues. Right. Yeah. So I get it. But the challenge continues. The challenge continues. And if I find myself on Instagram, I will try to post something so we can have a conversation about it. You know what we could do is we can get Marcus and Anna. Well, here's the thing I forgot though.

Have you thought about Marcus and Anna from Five Giants? Yeah. Before I forget, I believe that I said I was gonna give away a bunch of stuff. Yes. So we're gonna have to revisit that next time. All right, we're gonna- But we will do that,

but we have to be able to solicit everybody's stories from our experience of this. We're gonna realign. We're gonna recalibrate on this challenge. I'm using you having a baby. I had a baby, so this whole thing went under. But we gotta get Marcus Erickson and Anna Cummins in on this, the Five Gyres,

the people that started Five Gyres. Marcus, they both have great stories. We'll talk about this. Who are they? I don't know who they are. So they started Five Gyres. They're early in on plastic pollution. They're like – they were – Anna was talking about plastic bag bans 20 years ago. And Marcus and Anna have a nonprofit called Five Gyres, which is all about researching and creating citizen science around the marine plastic pollution problem.

Marcus once built a boat out of plastic water bottles and sailed it to the Pacific Garbage Patch outside Hawaii. He's paddled the Mississippi River. That's different from David Rothschild and his plastique boat. Different, but around the same time, they were both doing that. But what Marcus has done is made it his entire life, which is going to all the different gyres, trawling for plastic particles.

What is a gyre? A gyre are these currents, like the great current systems in the oceans. There's five of them. And so the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and then the Indian Ocean. And they all have these current systems that bring water into the center of these oceans and then spin it back out.

And so what ends up happening is a lot of the plastic trash gets swirled into these gyres and broken down into particles. And so when he went out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which he'd heard about, it sounded like a big landfill in the middle of the ocean, but in reality, it's a lot of water and just tiny particles. There are some big stuff, but it's very rare.

It's like a gelatinous, soupy. Yeah, it's almost like plankton. I remember being, when I went with the five gyros in the expedition in the North Atlantic, um, we would trawl in the bluest water you could ever have ever seen, you know, blue, so blue, so clear. And we'd still come up with these plastic particles that were like look plankton size. And so, uh, they created this organization. They, they have ambassadors that go and talk about plastic pollution. They advocate for, yes, we can all reduce our plastic reliance and

single-use plastic, but also solutions are upstream. We need to stop plastic plants from being built. We need to create past laws to make it illegal to have plastic bags, built. We need to create past laws to make it illegal to have plastic bags, you know, plastic bottle bands, single-use plastic bands. That's kind of their focus because you can't fix it on an individual basis in time. The idea is that these particles are everywhere now. They're in the Arctic ice cores. We've talked about this before. So, you know, we are the plastic age. And anyway, they're great. We've got to get them on the podcast. Yeah, that's cool.

I would love to do that. I mean, there are some things that are happening right now. Technologically, it seems on a surface level that creating an analog to plastic that is biodegradable and dissolves in water shouldn't be that difficult. You'd think. You'd think. be that difficult you think uh you think but a lot of that a lot of that stuff that says compostable it's only compostable if the recycling center that your stuff goes to has the machine to break it down and almost none of them do so the the smoothie place that has the compostable thing it's not the type of thing you put it in the landfill dissolves to soil. No, it needs to be heated in a specific way. And they rarely aren't.

That's depressing to hear. Yeah, so just so you know. So it's always better to bring your own bottle like you have your water bottle, just bring that. It's always better to bring your own, right? That's the key. Yeah, sometimes they won't fill it though in the age of the COVID.

Sometimes, yeah, that's the COVID. The other thing that's you go to Starbucks. It's complicated this stuff. Not that I go to Starbucks, yeah, that's the COVID. That's the other thing, you go to Starbucks. It's complicated, this stuff. Not that I go to Starbucks that often, my daughters like it. And you bring your own thing and they won't fill it. And then they're like, well, they'll pour it in a plastic cup

and then you can pour that plastic cup into your thing. And then that plastic cup gets thrown out. And it's like, well, that defeats the whole purpose of the fucking thing. Well, that's been happening. So like that's pre-COVID. You'd sometimes run into that, but now it's probably even more so. Yeah.

All right. Let's move on. Let's get to the wins, man. We need some wins. We need some wins. You go your way. We're gonna pivot away from the dystopia. So first win of the week here

is the triple to the back to swim run. We can't get away from swim. We talked about the greatest sport in the history of mankind. I know. It's the greatest. Actually, by the way, I got an email or a DM notification

from Michael from Otillo. They just put out a video that's like a retrospective on the history of their race series. And they kind of go through the origins and through over the years and clips from all the races when it started and everyone had backpacks on and all that kind of stuff. And I have like a cameo,

like a couple of comments from interviews in there. You made it in there. You made it in there. You should link up that video. It's cool. And then for people that are new to this and they don't even know what we're talking about, it gives you a retrospective on this sport. I haven't seen it.

It's beautiful. Cool. In any event, because the swim run races are, like all races, are getting canceled, although I think they did do Endigan. Didn't they conduct a race? They did Endigan, and then they did the Uttila Final 15, which is always an option of the regular world championship weekend. But this time

it was the only thing available. Right. But the world championship race not happening. Was canceled. Canceled. So- They did a final 15K of that. The world champion of the whole thing- Yes. Decided to instead, because of this race getting canceled, to

swim run the entire Stockholm archipelago. Yes. Which is insanely huge. Anybody who's been there knows it's like there's thousands of islands in this archipelago. And it involves an 80 kilometer, doing

80 kilometers a day of swimming and running. The world championship race is 75 kilometers. More so, it was 260 kilometers altogether. Altogether, yeah, so 80 a day, but they did three. So it was three days. Started Friday at like four in the morning. And you talked to these guys, so break this down. I did before they left.

George, I'm gonna mispronounce him, Giacomo, Giacomo? Yeah, you probably don't mispronounce him. Giacomo? Giacomo? Yeah. You probably don't pronounce the P. Sorry. Giacomo. Giacomo. George, world champion.

Look, we're American. We don't know what we're doing. Yeah. So what he told me was that there is a lot of, there are maps and charts that they can use to create their route for the second day, because the second day was basically the world championship course. Right. And the third day is closer to Stockholm and they're swimming in a shipping channel

part of the time. Right, right. And so they, that, and people had been to those islands. But there are islands that they, nobody had even really been to in the top part. So where they started at Ahoma. Like way out on the outer reaches.

It's way out. And so they didn't go to every island, but they did go to 90 islands over the course of these three days. And it was, how many of them did it? I think it was six and four of them did the whole thing. And the other team was going to switch off swimming and running legs. And they only had one boat. That was their whole support was one boat. So they would like all their food and everything was in that boat. So when they left on their swim run leg, they had to bring whatever food and nutrition they were going to use on that run part also, and then get back in the water, get back to the boat. And so they couldn't really separate.

They had to kind of stay together and hang together because their only support was one boat. And especially at the end, when they're going through the shipping channel, you have to have a boat, you know, you can't be out there on your own, no one see you. And so, yeah, so I'm looking at what they told me, 90 islands, 210K of trail running, 50K of open water swimming in three days. I mean, that is beast.

That's a lot. That's a lot, dude. A lot in rough waters. And, you know, I saw some of the Instagram story clips. Like it was the weather didn't look so great. Yeah, it got cold. A lot of wind and rain. It got cold. So they had to move it up.

I think they were gonna do it at another time. And then the weather started to turn to fall. And fall in Scandinavia is not like fall in Southern California. No, no. And the shipping, like the exposed swims where you're in these shipping lanes, it's not just that it's dangerous because of boats,

it's that with that exposure, you get like high seas conditions, right? Like the pig swim in the world championship course. Like that's the choppiest and the most tumultuous of the waters because you're not getting the windbreaks from having the islands, you know, preventing that kind of chop.

It does look like there was a lot of glassy seas and certainly in the early stages. I mean, it looks beautiful. I mean, I'm so impressed with them. No, it was eight people. It's pretty cool. It looks like eight people. So did they camp? Eight people, four teams, four teams.

Where did they sleep and stuff? So I think at night they found an inn. Like the first, you know, they got to an inn, I think. They slept the night in an inn and then they started and then they got to an inn for the second. They slept in inside. Got it. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. All right. Well, good on them. Congrats. That's awesome. Keeping the flame alive on swim run

when there's no organized races. Tony Riddle's Three Bear Peaks was another win of the week for me, but we already talked about that. And you have one more. Yeah. Maya Gabera, the Brazilian big wave surfer, surfed a 73 and a half foot wave at Nazare.

It was the biggest wave ever surfed by a woman. And it was the biggest wave surfed by anybody in the winter season, 2019, 2020, which is big wave surfing. Dan that's their Danica Patrick moment. Basically. That's amazing. It's amazing. Maya, uh, surfed this wave in February. February, but it was only this week was when the World Surf League released that it was as big as that. Basically, what happens with big wave surfing is every May, people submit photos and videos, and they try to decide which – they have the big wave awards. And they try to decide who's got the best ride of the year, who's got the biggest wave of the year and, and, and so on. And, uh, this year there was no big wave banquet because obviously, uh, COVID. And so they've been releasing these awards piecemeal on zoom sessions that are broadcast by the surf league. Um, and you know, we already knew Kai Lenny had the big wave of the year for the men and ride of the year and all that.

But the women's, they were waiting because Maya Gabera and then a French woman named Justine Dupont also surfed a massive wave at that same towing competition where Kai set his mark at Nazare, 70-foot wave. It was the Nazare toe challenge and where Maya set her 73.5. And basically they couldn't decide, like the committee couldn't decide who had the bigger wave between Maya and Justine. And so they brought in wave engineers from Kelly Slater's Wave Co.

that have, you know, surf ranch. They brought in oceanographers from Scripps. They brought in aerospace engineers from USC. And together- How did they make that decision? They looked at the cameras that were taken and the angles and the amount of light in the sky and the tide tables.

And they looked at the imagery and the stuff in the images. And they tried to determine based on all of that, who had the biggest wave. And Maya was surfing in the men and they tried to determine based on all of that, who had the biggest wave. And Maya was surfing in the men's competition. She was teaming up with a male surfer from Germany named Sebastian Stuttner, who's- I think he did, he clearly surfed a huge wave too.

I believe there was a video of him surfing Nazare that was circulated pretty- That was I think 2019 or- No, I'm talking about like a week or two ago. A week ago? Yeah. He's a beast. I mean, that guy... The waves there can be so big and the wind can be so heavy that there are basically four-foot waves on the big 80-foot waves. So they have to ride these heavy boards in order to stay upright on these massive mountains of water. And the reason that the waves are so big there, real quickly, there's a story I wrote for the New York Times that'll be out when this is out.

It comes out Wednesday. We're recording it on Monday. We release on Thursday. So it'll be out there, and we can put it in the show notes. But there is an offshore canyon that's deeper than the Grand Canyon that can capture some of the swell that comes in and speeds it up, and then it bends it northwest. And so when there's also a southwest swell in at the same time, those two swells meet and there's a magnification effect, an amplification. So typically a 15-foot swell can be a 30-foot wave if it hits a reef, right?

In this case, a 15-foot swell can be a 70-foot wave because the canyon all of a sudden abuts a 40-foot sandbar. And so that verticality plus these two swells and that sped up swell and the bending of it converges and it creates this incredible wave that crashes on the cliffs, right? Where there's a lighthouse and a fort and it's this incredible- Yeah, you always know Nazare because you see that lighthouse in the foreground. And it's just incredible. Yeah, you always know Nazare because you see that lighthouse in the foreground. And there's something about that camera angle

that gives you, like it creates a dramatic perspective because you see that tower in the foreground on the left-hand side always, it makes the wave look bigger. So when you say Maya surfed a 73 and a half foot wave, when I'm thinking of the videos that I've seen of people surfing Nazare, they look like they're well over a hundred feet.

Right, so when Garrett McNamara was like the first guy to surf Nazare. And so what happened with, I talked to Garrett for this story. And so- We've gone back and forth about getting him on the podcast too. He's a hell of a storyteller.

He's great, he's great. Yeah. Yeah, so he basically said that in 2005, about getting him on the podcast too. He's a hell of a storyteller. He's great. He's great. Yeah. Yeah. So he basically said that in 2005, he came up in the nineties in Oahu. He's old guard. He's old guard. So he was, when Laird Hamilton was inventing toe-in surfing,

he was there in the early gen. And then around, you know, in the middle 2000s, late 2000s, toe-in surfing became passe, kind of like the big wave guys were like, it's not cool. It's cooler to paddle in. Why do you need this gas guzzler? It's not the purest, you know, the sports purists were kind of turning their nose up at it. But Garrett wanted to surf a hundred foot wave. And so he never did.

And so in 2005, some bodyboarder from Portugal who lived, sent him an email saying, you got to check out this wave. And he didn't even get it. It was like floating in his archives until his wife found it in 2010. And so he got it and he's like, okay, let's go check it out. So he went over there. He teamed up with a surfer from England called named Andrew Cotton. And the two of them created this, they decided to try to surf it. And so in 2011, I think, he surfed a 78-foot wave there that went all over the news, went viral. I remember that. And that one was estimated to be over 100 feet at the time. Now it's considered 78 feet.

Because you measure from the back? You measure from the trough of the wave, and then you just measure it up to the very tip of the lip of the wave. It's just because the reason people thought it was over 100 is because of what you're talking about, that angle from above will always make it look bigger. So the angle, the camera angles kind of gave it this distorted view that it was over a hundred feet. But so far, nobody on paper has surfed a hundred foot wave there. 80 foot is the men's record. In 2011, he surfed it. Still, there was a lot of most surfers were saying, oh, it's a messy wave. It's just a slope. It's not like Jaws or Mavericks. People just poo-pooed how hard it is to surf there and how dangerous it is. I mean, it's literally like a skyscraper's about to fall

on you. Who knows? I'm not sure why people would poo-poo it to me, but we're not big wave surfers, so whatever. But he kept trying to convince people to come surf there. And in 2013, Sebastian Stutner showed up, Maya Gabera showed up. Maya had a very famous accident there and she almost died. She was pulled from the water unconscious. She was given CPR to be resuscitated. She ended up breaking her fibula, herniating a disc. It required multiple

back surgeries, spinal fusion surgeries. In the aftermath of that accident, she was hated on by big wave legends who were basically saying, you know, you were irresponsible and you put people in danger and blah, blah, blah. Well, in 2018, she set the woman's mark for riding a 68-foot wave and put that in the Guinness Book of Records for the first time. And now she's surfed a 73.5-foot wave, breaking her own record. And I'd never heard of her until now.

And she lives there in Nazare, full-time. She's a great interview. It was an honor to do the story. Justine Upton turned out her wave was 70 feet. Kais was 70 feet. So Maya, for the first time, has created this, like I said, the Danica Patrick moment. A woman actually having the biggest wave of the year.

Nice. Yeah, pretty incredible. Hats off to Maya. Yeah. Chapeau. So that'll be in the New York Times on Tuesday? Wednesday. Wednesday.

Wednesday the 16th. Sports page? Yeah, it should be. With some epic photos? Epic photos and some video. Cool. Yeah. All right, man 16th. Sports page? Yeah, it should be. With some epic photos? Epic photos and some video. Cool. Yeah. All right, man.

Awesome. Well, let's do some listener questions. Let's do it. Hey, Rich. Hey, Adam. My name is Mark. I'm from Germany. I'm a nutritionist, an athlete, an environmentalist, and, of course, 100% plant-based.

I'm inspired by your podcast, Rich. My question has to do with the climate emergency we find ourselves in. I already impose a lot of restrictions upon myself, like choosing my bike instead of my car, reducing the amount of plastic I buy, increasing the amount of local and seasonal fruits and vegetables, not taking planes, and many things more. And these restrictions have actually improved my quality of life, especially the plant-based diet. However, I'm also struggling to choose between what is unnecessary and should thus be restricted,

and what is still acceptable, like using the car for a holiday, creating carbon emissions by watching Netflix, or living in a beautiful but huge house instead of a more minimalistic and environmentally friendly alternative. I'm trying to figure out the right spot between Tom Hanks in Castaway and Leonardo DiCaprio and the Wolf of Wall Street. Thanks, guys. Thank you for the question, Mark. That's a great question. It sounds like he's more Tom Hanks and Castaway than he is Leonardo DiCaprio and Wolf of Wall Street by a country mile. Wolf of Wall Street by a country mile. This is the dilemma that we're all struggling with, is it not? And I think there are things that we can do, which you are already doing,

and I applaud you for that. And I'm trying to do the same. At the same time, I think we need to like acknowledge and just recognize that none of us are living a completely carbon neutral lifestyle. Like we are consumptive beings living in the material world on planet Earth. We have an aspiration to live more gently on the planet, to live more in alignment with the rhythms of what serves the ecosystem that we all share. But none of us are immune from the harms that just our existence creates. And I don't think that anybody is served by somebody becoming a complete martyr or a recluse. I think that we do what we can, and we always strive to be better. The more carbon neutral we can become, the less that we get on airplanes, the less petrochemicals that we're using, all of these things are great. But I think we have to think about how can we leverage this message

to create a ripple effect with other people, right? So if everybody reduced their carbon footprint 10%, that would be massive and more impactful than you living in an electric van down by the river and never communicating with anyone. You know what I mean? So it goes back to what we were talking about at the outset of this podcast, which is that meaningful conversation matters. So I think where you can create leverage is to engage your community with these ideas, to try to spread them. And what I found,

and everybody has their own personal strategy for how they communicate and share ideas. I found that what seems to work really well is to make these lifestyle choices seem fun and cool. Like they're not the purview of an antiquated class of people that you can't connect with, but they're actually awesome. And we can thrive and live and be happy and fulfilled and connected in a way that perhaps eludes us in our modern world by adopting some of these habits and practices. So I think it's, I think that the evolution for you is not to, you know, become Tom Hanks and Castaway, but to try to be, you know, a lighthouse and to be an

example of some of these lifestyle principles within your community because we live in the world, right? You're not a monk meditating in the cave, right? You're a spiritual being having a human experience in the midst of a lot of chaos and disruption. So how can you be a force for positive change among those people that you're connected with i like that i mean i think uh first of all it's very funny and witty ending to the question um but i'm pretty sure that tom hanks didn't want to be the guy in cast away remember that movie but yeah i mean i think um we make choices to live our lives because we like, you know, like the fact that you've had positive reinforcement from the lifestyle choices you've made shows that you did it for you as well as for any other reason. You know, yes, you're limiting your emissions, you're limiting your impact.

And that's a great thing, but that's a great thing for you as well as for the world. And that's great. I mean, that's, I think that's the ideal, right? That you, that, that's the kind of balance that we want to strike where we're feeling like we're living our truth and we're feeling good living our truth. And we're actually feeling better than we did when we weren't. And some of it is like so-called restrictions have actually ended up being beneficial to us personally. I think that's great. I think it's amazing that you've done that. But I think there's also fixes you can do if you live in a regular house.

I mean, there's a lot between living in a tiny home and a big house. And if you do own your own home, you could install gray water systems, cistern to capture rain. You can model some environmental technologies that could be then used widespread in your neighborhood or your town. I think there's things you can do in those kinds of modalities that can be replicated to really fix cities and systemic problems. That's another way of going if you are going to choose to live kind of in the house you have now. And so I think that there, you know, you can just keep going with this, but you don't have to live in a certain type of way. You know, you don't have to live in a tiny place to have a big impact. Right. And it shouldn't be driven by guilt, but rather this aspiration to live more connected.

Yeah. And you can be minimalist. I mean, I don't have a big footprint in terms of where I live, but some of that is just kind of the circumstances of my life. And there's ways to, correct me if I'm wrong, you probably know more about this and I probably should know more about this than I do, but when you are traveling by air, you can purchase carbon offsets or you can find a way to do that travel in a carbon neutral way. You can. You can do carbon offsets. How do we do that? Do you know about that?

That would be something to look into. I can find out. I love travel and I feel guilty when I get on a plane, of course. I don't buy carbon offsets for my plane rides, but I do know somebody that does. Or you could be like Greta and just see if you can hitch a ride on a nice sailboat. By the way, she's got that documentary coming out soon. Oh, really? Yeah. She was sharing about that the other day. Did we answer Mark's question? I feel like you did. All right. Thank you, Mark. All right. Moving on. Let's hear from Josh. Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Josh from right outside

DC. I just wanted to say I love you guys were able to kind of go between the format and the interview segments. Kudos to pulling it off. My question is more of an ask for advice. I'm a few months away from 30 years old. I'm a few months away from 30 years old. I've been successful in the traditional sense of monetary relationship, career progression, making my way up the corporate ladder at a Fortune 500 company, and probably a lot faster than I ever could have imagined. But I can already see my mindset and the leadership style doesn't quite match up with that of my soon-to-be peers. leadership style doesn't quite match up with that of my soon-to-be peers.

The piece with Dan Buettner in July emphasized kind of how I'm feeling. I'm a rebel at heart, so I'm comfortable with pressing on the edge of the status quo. But I worry it might be the universe telling me my purpose may lie somewhere else. I know you've both kind of successfully transferred from corporate styles to more independent channels. And I was wondering if you were sitting in my chair, what would you do? All right. Thanks, guys. Bye. And of course, this is great to put on air. Thanks. Thank you, Josh. That's a great question. First of all, congrats on being successful on the cusp of becoming 30 years old, moving up the ladder, certainly something to be proud of, to be, you know, really stable and to have a future ahead of you. And that's no small thing. You know, I think there's this like sensibility right now, like everybody needs to

quit their job and like, you know, go on these vision quests. And we've lost sight of just valuing, you know, the product of like hard work and making your way in the world. Like that's fantastic. Agreed. First of all, you should be proud of what you've created for yourself and you should feel guilty about that. I'm not surprised that you have a little tickle in the back of your mind saying, maybe this isn't my ultimate purpose in life. If you found your purpose in that Fortune 500 company, then more power to you. That's fantastic. But if you think maybe there's something else that might provide your life with a little bit more meaning and purpose outside of the context of your career, my suggestion to you would be to continue to fertilize and foster that instinct.

You may not know exactly what it is right now. It sounds like it's pretty vague at the moment. That understanding I think is powerful. It doesn't mean that you need to do anything different than what you're doing right now. Stay at your job. It seems like it's serving you well. In the meantime, knowing that perhaps there might be something else you might want to do later just means that you should be more mindful about your consumptive habits.

Try to live lean. Don't go out and lease the BMW because your peers who are in your income bracket, who are sitting in the office right next to you are doing that. Like, don't get caught up in the keeping up with the Jones's game that happens with the ascension up the corporate ladder. I saw myself do it when I was doing the same thing at a law firm. When my peers would get to a certain point, I felt like I have to upgrade here and I have to upgrade there. And I was quickly living outside of my means. And this is a moment in which you should be banking that cash so that you have choices and freedom so that when that impulse matures to the point where you have clarity around what might give your life greater meaning outside of your job. You have the flexibility, the freedom, and the opportunity to take advantage of that. The thing you don't want to have happen is the creation of the kind of gilded prison that

happens to so many people. And it happens imperceptibly very slowly over time. Like, well, I'm making good money and I'm moving up and I'm going to get that promotion and that bonus. So I can not only afford this car, but that new couch. And I'm going to move from this apartment to the next one. It's a very gradual process, like the frog slowly boiling in the water. It's not until it's too late that you realize like you're stuck. Now I'm married and I have kids and I've got a mortgage. And that thing that I wanted to do, it's just not possible. Now I'm married and I have kids and I've got a mortgage. And that thing that I wanted to do, it's just not possible. So I guess it will happen in the next life. Like you don't want to be that guy. So live lean, live minimally, save your money, you know, continue to show up for

your job, learn as much as you can, you know, create a network of people, meet as many people as you can, and understand that, look, you're 29. You've got your whole life ahead of you. This is not a foregone conclusion that you have to stay at this job. You have tons of opportunities that will be available to you throughout your life. A couple of years ago, I wrote this tweet about how I thought my life was over at 30. A couple of years ago, I wrote this tweet about how I thought my life was over at 30. Like you've got to – compared to where I was at 30, it's ridiculous. Like you're doing great. I was in a very different state at age 30 and yet here I am at 53 with this completely unique life that I never would have thought possible.

And I wrote this tweet about how basically just keep showing up for life and anything is possible. And that freaking tweet, like, will not die. Like, it continues to get shared. And just today, Upworthy posted it on their Instagram page to like a million and a half people. So, like, my phone blew up. And it's intended to mean, like, listen, you know, if you think you're stuck in life or on a certain path you can always reinvent yourself you can always do that you want to make responsible decisions so that reinvention process can be less painful than it needs to be but don't think that just because you're 30 and at a fortune 500 company that your life is already scripted out right certainly is not one reason i think that that tweet that i wrote still has life is that, you know, people are like, oh, it inspires me and makes me feel like I, you know, I still

can make these choices and these course corrections in my life. But I think it also makes people feel better about the fact that they haven't done anything. Like, oh, I'm 40. Like, look, he didn't do this until he was 50, so I still have time. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is life is about constant reinvention. We tend to think of it as static. I'm here and this is who I am

and this is what my life is and will always be. And that is not the case. You always have the power and the domain and the control to make changes in your life. Just make sure that you're doing what you need to do now so that that doesn't have to be problematic, that you're not stuck. And you don't want to be that guy with regrets who's like, oh, if I had done this differently, then I could have become a scuba instructor in Aruba or whatever it is that your heart is yearning for. Yeah, man, that's well said. I think setting yourself up for flexibility so you can be responsive and move and do what you need to do without-

Nimble. Be nimble. Yeah, not to weigh yourself down. Have your go bag. Have a go bag. I mean, I will correct you one thing. I was never on any corporate ladder. I was working in the nonprofit world and then never really made any money, which made it easier in some ways to then leap and still not make any money for a while. Yeah, you didn't have the ability to create the gilded cage. I didn't have the cage. I didn't have a lot of bills.

But I've certainly also lived in there where I had a lot of bills and was trying to figure it out too, at the same time, mid career. So, you know, I think the idea of, of saving money is good. Um, I think I agree that it doesn't sound like, you know, exactly which direction to go into yet, or maybe you do, you just didn't say, um, in which case, uh, fertilizing that might mean, uh, following that intuition, the things that you love, you follow what Ethan Hawk was saying, follow that you love. You follow what Ethan Hawke was saying. Follow what you love to do. What is it you love to do and figure that out. And if you know what that is and you spend more time doing that, you're kind of fertilizing and watering

that. I think you can find some pathways towards a new life there. I do think it sounds like you already know that you don't want to stay at the Fortune 500 company forever, that you're seeing, wait, I could go this far. And I'm seeing the people that are the senior positions in that company. And you're seeing yourself. And you're like, wait, I'm not really – that's not necessarily me. And that's cool. That's fine. It doesn't mean you have to quit right now.

It just means that you've gotten a viewpoint. And I would trust that. It sounds like it's an instinct to trust to me. And it sounds like if you've been successful at this place, you can be successful at anything. And I think you know that. Part of the celebration of the entrepreneur that's very much a part of our culture packed into this kind of hustle 247 sensibility is, there's an idea with all of that that is to say, if you're not founding your startup, if you're not like following your passion 24-7, that, you know, your life doesn't have value or that you've missed the point or

something like that. And I think that that pendulum, you know, needs to swing back a little bit to say, hey, you at the Fortune 500 company, you're doing good. You shouldn't feel like if you're not in Silicon Valley creating the next whatever, but what we're saying is if you're not fulfilled in your job and you haven't built the, you don't have the payments and all that, then you still are versatile. You can go any direction you want. But if you are considering between staying at the Fortune 500 company and creating the app that's going to save the world and becoming a dive instructor in the Caribbean, please become a dive instructor in the Caribbean, please become a dive instructor in the Caribbean. I will say that. What? What if he could invent the app that saves the world?

No, don't do that. No? No, no, because that won't work that way. We already know from this movie, The Social Dilemma, that that goes sideways on us. Please don't create an app. What about the app that tells you about the sustainability factor of your consumer purchases?

Remember when we were talking about that? No, no, no. I remember reading someone tweeted that she and her husband want to start a venture capital firm to pay people not to do podcasts. I said, did you see that? Yes. Because everyone has a podcast now.

Put me on the dole. You'd have to pay me a lot of money you can you can keep podcasting you're good at it right just nobody knew no more no more podcasts too many podcasts all right let's let's let's let's round this out one more question one more question from canada hi rich and adam my name is victoria asis. I'm calling from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and you can absolutely play this on the air. I love the podcast and do thank you both for your work and wisdom. My question is with respect to working from home and still trying to navigate your career as a young professional. For some background, I'm 31 years old and a business lawyer. I always used to think of myself as an introvert who craves working from home all the time, especially when it wasn't an option pre-COVID. Fast forward to this now, mid-COVID time, and I'm finding myself really struggling, especially as a young lawyer, with working from home for what is soon to be half a year. I never appreciated before the importance of collaboration with colleagues,

meeting clients for lunch, creating long-standing relationships both in the workplace and outside the work environment, and the true importance of establishing these relationships, especially relatively early in my career. No matter what point you're at in your life career-wise, we are constantly reminded of the importance of networking, building a book of business, getting out there and meeting people. The problem is this has now been completely turned on its head. We can't have these social interactions. We can't meet people to build business and we can't truly have those professional experiences where these relationships can thrive. My question is, how do you think the corporate client relationship will change going forward? As a young professional, what do you think I and others like me should be doing now to try and salvage some of these relationships while also trying to establish new ones when we can't do it face-to-face in the manner that we've been taught?

Thank you. I really hope you consider my question. And as someone from Canada, I've got to throw in a go Raptors. All right, Victoria. thank you for the question. That's a great question. I mean, I first, I would say that I'm with you 110% on this idea of being an introvert. I thought I've been training for this my whole life. This is not going to be a problem.

Like this is my default setting anyway. And I've really met my maker with that. And, you know, I vacillate between moments of despair and melancholy with the social isolation of it all. You know, we're not hardwired to be separate and it has its challenges for everybody. And there's a spectrum. Some people are having a harder time of it than others, of course, but I'm sympathetic to the toll that it's having on all of us not being able to function and be in the world in a way that we're meant to be. I think the first thing I would say is that there is a sense – part of where you're coming from feels like you feel like you're the only one in this predicament, but this predicament is something we're all contending with. What you're struggling with is the exact same thing that every single person, not only in your field, but all across the world is dealing with. And just today, there was a news thing that popped up that I saw that

there's a good chance that we won't have a safe vaccine until like 2024. And that's a possibility that we have to factor into this. There may not be a short-term, I mean, we're already seven months into this thing, short-term, what does that even mean anymore? But there may not be a short-term resolution to this that's gonna get us back into the world in the way

that we would prefer. So with that, how do we move forward professionally in terms of how we approach our career and how we build a book of business and how we interface with the world? And we're left with no choice but to take advantage of these digital platforms, back to digital platforms again, but to take advantage of these digital platforms, back to digital platforms again, in order to do this. I think one thing I can say from experience as somebody who's worked from home for many years at this point, and prior to that did work in an office as a lawyer, as a lawyer, that it's important that you take control of your daily schedule, otherwise it will control you. So you have to set in place a structure that's conducive not only to your productivity, but also to your happiness. I think the idea initially of just being in your pajamas all day and sitting

on the couch with the TV on in the background as you're typing away on your laptop might seem appealing, but we've been at this long enough now where most people are realizing that that's actually making them unhappy. And I think you need to be regimented, diligent, and mindful about what your schedule is. So you get up in the morning as if you're going to commute to your office and you mimic some version of that in your house. You should have a morning routine and you should have clear boundaries that differentiate the work day from the rest of your day so So that you're creating some structures and a sense of stability and healthy boundaries

around your profession so it doesn't bleed into everything. And I think most people are just learning this now. And when you don't have those things in place, then everything becomes like a drab gray. Like you're kind of always working, but not really working. You're not as productive as you could be or should be, even though you seem to have more hours during the day because you're not commuting. And all of these things contribute to this soupy mess of disaffectation

I found in my own experience. So, you know, getting up, making your bed, putting on the clothes that you would wear to work or, you know, doing your meditation, doing your journaling, taking breaks to go outside, to have an exercise regimen. All of these things are crucial. In terms of the professional aspect of your question, how do you build a book of business? How do you remain connected with these people? Look, it's going to have to be on Zoom. The only other thing you can do is to try to engage with people in your locality from a perspective of doing it with social distancing. Like, hey, we can meet outdoors at this cafe and sit six feet apart and have a business meeting.

I mean, we're seeing this happening in Los Angeles. I don't know what it's like in Ottawa right now. I suspect because you're Canadian, it's much better than it is here. But there is some flexibility with travel and physical presence with other individuals. And if you're wearing masks and you're outdoors and you're separated or what, you know, there are ways of doing this that are, you know, not as risky that don't mean that you have to be staring at a screen all day long.

You can also be like Adam and get a landline and call people up on the phone. Not everything needs to be on Zoom. Right. And, you know, making sure that you're staying in touch with friends and family and doing all of that just for your own personal, you know, well-being. But on the professional tip, look, there are very, like, we're going to go back to the social platforms. Like, LinkedIn is actually an incredible resource for making contacts, for developing those contacts, for, you know, trying to, you know, cultivate new business on the client front. And right now, that's just the way the world is. So, on the client front.

That's true. And right now, that's just the way the world is. So suffering is directly correlated to the extent to which we resist what is. Resist. So you can either resist what's happening right now, which is that we're all in our houses, and you can develop a resentment about that and be a victim

and say, well, if I wasn't at home, then I could be going and developing all of this business, and I could be much more successful than I am. Or you can accept what is happening and educate yourself about how to use these very powerful tools to innovate in your career in a new and interesting way. When everyone's zagging, how can you zig? Always looking for the opportunity, the hidden opportunity in what everyone is perceiving as a crisis, right? What is the one thing that no one else is doing that you could do that could give you an advantage in terms of how you're building your network and your relationships that will fuel and underscore your book of business and put you in good stead with your employer.

That's awesome. Really well said. I'll just highlight a couple of things you already mentioned. And a couple of them are, number one, make sure you have that exercise routine. You have that you're taking care of yourself outside of the workplace and you have that getting outside, running, cycling, whatever it is, hiking,

walking, whatever you like to do, swimming, make sure that's, that's locked into your program because that'll alleviate some of this stress and it'll get you outside. Cause it sounds like you're just kind of going a little stir crazy, which I get. I understand that. Be, I would say, you know, the interesting thing about COVID is it gives us an opportunity to press pause a little bit. You know, that's one of the power of pressing pause of like, you know, all of a sudden the sky is clear and the traffic, you know, we can't say that now because of the fires, but you know what I mean? Like there was a pressing pause aspect of COVID that was really nice. And I would say that, you know, don't function from a pre-COVID playbook

now. Like, yes, you want to advance your career. Yes, it will happen on its own. It's probably happening now without you even noticing it. But don't expect necessarily to have, you know, picked up this client or that client as easily as you might have before. And don't beat yourself up for it. You know, you're functioning within this new sphere. You're accepting what is. And so part of that is, um, don't necessarily put yourself under so much pressure. Like maybe you might have as a type a person in a, in a different type of environment. Right. You know, you don't want to give your, you don't want to put that kind of pressure on yourself. Also, you have a job. Yeah. A lot of people don't right now.

Yeah. So focus on gratitude. Yeah. And then ultimately, we are all going to come out of this. And at some point, this period that seems like you're running in place and kind of languishing in this middle part of your career or not making necessarily getting the terrain necessarily getting the terrain that you covering the train you wish you had at 31, at some point you're going to be 35, 36, presumably in the same, same career. And you're going to have this incredible experience of what it was like to be a business attorney in the worst climate for business in the history of, uh, of our lifetimes. And you're going to have all this, all this have all this information that you'll be able to impart on other

clients. And it's going to be a wealth of information. It's going to be very positive for you in the future. So just getting through this period, staying employed, still working, and then figuring out how to help your clients within this climate, all that is going to pay off for you, even if you can't see how right now. Yeah, that's a very good point. There's an adage in the recovery community, which goes like this. I wonder what that would have been like had I been truly sober, right?

And that is to say that when you're weathering a difficult situation, whether it's like the death of a relative or a divorce or some kind of difficult emotionally trying situation, you want to be your best self. You want to be your most emotionally, mentally, spiritually fit. It's not just about not doing drugs or drinking. It's about emotional sobriety, right? Because you don't want to look back on that experience a year later and think, I wonder how I would have conducted myself had I really been dialed in. You know what I mean? You want to look back and go, you know what? Like I did the work and I was able to show up 100% and be of service and do it with

grace and gratitude. And that's the stuff of esteem building, right? To look back on that and go, you know what, that was really hard, but I was available for all of it. And I got through it. And I feel more empowered as a result of that and more resilient and able to handle whatever life can throw at me. And one day we'll all grow up and tell our grandkids really boring COVID survival stories. Right.

What's gonna really be interesting is how the younger generation not only gets through this, but the stories that they will tell their kids and their grandkids because this is very formative. That's gonna be the real baby boom. Not the during COVID, but post COVID

when everyone could go party again. There's plenty of people partying now as we know. That's true, I forgot. All right, we're gonna avoid pulling on that thread and we're gonna put a pin on it. Until next time, thank you, my friend. How do you feel? I feel good.

This was good, I thought. This was good. I'm not even tired yet, but I feel like it's coming. It's like nibbling at my synapses. Right, yeah, you're gonna go home and crash. Exactly, I better not. I think it's baby time when I get home. You gotta take those catnaps whenever you can, man.

Exactly. If you wanna come over to my house and grab a snooze in the teepee. Hey, that sounds good. It's available. Thanks, man. Good, man. Exactly. If you want to come over to my house and grab a snooze in the teepee. Hey, that sounds good. It's available. Thanks, man. Good, man. All right, well, hopefully we're back in two weeks again.

Yep. Until then, you can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick on the social medias that you're trying to avoid and that you're taking off your phone right now because you just watched that movie. If you want your message considered for an upcoming episode of the Roll On edition of the podcast, leave us one at 424-235-4626. Don't forget to hit that subscribe

button on YouTube, on Apple, and on Spotify. Check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll put links up to everything we talked about today. You can also submit your questions on the Facebook group. And I think that's pretty much 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, which you can find on YouTube, youtube.com slash richroll. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Ali Rogers for taking portraits today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK, David Kahn, our boy. DK. For advertiser relationships and theme music

by my boys, Tyler, Trapper and Hari. I can't talk anymore. I think that means we need to end this podcast. Cap it. Appreciate the love you guys. See you back here in a couple days with another episode that I really want to tell you it is, but I'm not going to.

You're just going to have to wait. That's the way it is. Because I'm making the rules because it's my podcast. It's your podcast. Peace. Plants. I love plants. Thank you.