The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: A Little Bit of Everything All Of The Time

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Insane feats of endurance. Space-traveling billionaires. Dystopian musical comedy specials. Record-breaking freediving depths. And of course, UFOs. Today is a little bit of everything, all of the time. Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein myself and my podcast co-pilot Adam Skolnick break bread on matters high-minded and mildly entertaining. For those new to the show, ‘Roll On’ is about stories that deserve a brighter spotlight, buttressed with a bit of show and tell, wins of the week, and rounded out with answers to questions posed on our voicemail, which you can ring up at [phone]. Aside from serving as my magnanimous sidecar hype-beast, Adam Skolnick is an activist and veteran journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. Adam writes 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 the author of One Breath and is currently using the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Some of the many topics covered today include: Richard Branson’s successful spaceflight and the billionaire race to space; the Pentagon’s efforts to de-stigmatize reporting UFO sightings and their recent release of unclassified reports on aerial phenomena; Our summer must-watch list; Robbie Balenger’s Colorado Crush & Timothy Olson’s PCT FKT attempt; Lachlan Morton’s Alt-Tour; a 2021 Tour de France wrap-up; and Vertical Blue freediving records In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you adjust to post-pandemic parenting? How do you create a healthier body image? Will there be future RRP gatherings and events? Thank you to Eric from South Bend, Zach from West Virginia, and Chris from Rockland, California for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone]. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll616 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon616 Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, fellow travelers. It is I, Rich Roll, once again, after a brief respite, the nature of which will soon be clear, here in brotherhood with my podcast husband, Mr. Adam Skolnick, master of pen, scroll and word. Here to pontificate, to traverse a diversity of terrain, both high-minded and perhaps frivolous.

For those new to the roll-on edition of the podcast, this is all about stories big and small, what catches our attention, what deserves a brighter spotlight. We typically buttress that with a bit of show and tell. We share a few wins of the week and we round it all out by answering some of the questions dropped on our voicemail,

which you can ring up at 424-235-4626. What is going on my man? Just sitting here contemplating the magnificent interdependence of all things. Well, that should be chalked up as frivolous. Oh, it's supposed to be frivolous? The way I approach it is very frivolous though. I approach it like- On the surface level?

Yeah, like all the people that can give me, end up working towards giving me my snacks. Listen, a little existential angst is good, you know, fuel for the fire. But I don't think it's angst. It's like I have, maybe it's fatherhood or maybe it's insomnia, but I have been focused on the great mesh of society

and how so many people play their role and in so doing society works. And it's kind of phrase sometimes. And there's like little holes that we have to patch up. But for the most part, we are so interdependent. We don't even think about it. We don't really take time to think about how much others do for us.

And we do for others just by playing our role. I think it's a beautiful thing. Did you do DMT over the weekend? I wish. Yeah. I wish. You're but DMT over the weekend? I wish. Yeah. I wish. But cogs in the wheel of a matrix that although perhaps flawed at times does cohere.

It coheres. Yes. It feels coherent. Yes. At most of the time, even- We're tiny little cells. We are. In the microbiome of a greater ecosystem.

We're ants in the ant hole. We play our small little part with being blithely unaware of the greater ecosystem. We're ants in the air. We play our small little part with being blithely unaware of the greater mechanisms at play. Right, and occasionally things fail, like when the sewage system of Los Angeles failed for like seven hours and 17 million gallons of raw sewage spilled out around Dockweiler Beach in the Santa Monica Bay,

it fails sometimes. That is not a criticism of the good people of the sewage treatment plant. It just happened that it was a failure. Shit goes sideways. It is weird how- Literally shit went sideways. Here, everybody knows that for a period of,

I don't know, you might know better how many days after there's a rainstorm that you just don't go in the ocean and we all have just normalized that. Like, okay, you don't go in. And then at some point we decide, I guess it's okay to go go in the ocean. And we all have just normalized that like, okay, you don't go in. And then at some point we decide, I guess it's okay to go back in. Right. Well, no, now, but there is a way to figure it out.

You can go on the LA County website, but after this, they were really taking a lot of tests. And so now everything is good except for like one beach. So we're back in, I got back in on Saturday. I was like a week out of the water. Got the gills wet again, it was fun, but everything's good. We have a family of red tail hawks in the yard that live in our yard, which is pretty cool.

That's cool, you've moved into a new abode. We moved into the hawks nest, I guess that's what I'm gonna name it maybe. That's cool. Trying to name it. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at Thank you. personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews

from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you, I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best

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

been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support and empower you to find the ideal level of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for

you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. On that subject of being cells in a greater macro organism, you really get that, that really gets hammered home when you are in a plane and you're descending into Los Angeles and you just see the grid.

I agree. It just goes forever. And all the cars on the freeway that are like blood cells delivering oxygen to the various organs. Yes. So that it can all work as a greater system. And it makes you think on some level, we are just unconsciously participating

in some grander play where we play this tiny little role that allows the whole thing to function. And it's a trip, man. It is a trip. We're all the stars of our own great grand opera that no one else is watching. How do you know?

Somebody very well may be watching. Maybe. But also the honeycomb that is New York, kind of the same thing. You go, you drop in and you're, that's when you can feel small in the city. You know, often for me, I like to get out into nature to feel the reductionist, but that's what's some of the beautiful things about New York.

One of the many things that's so exciting about New York is that you feel so small in this amazing like hive of activity. I feel very at home there and I feel very alive. And also I don't necessarily feel small. I feel much more plugged in than I do here in Los Angeles. So on the metaphor of the hive and the bee, am I taking pollen from Los Angeles

and pollinating New York or is it vice versa? I don't know. There's some sort of cross pollination happening. You're cross pollinating my friend. Yeah, but I did spend nine days in New York, which is why we had to take a bit of a respite from Roland because I was out of town. It's my first trip back there since before the pandemic.

I think I visited shortly before everything locked down and it was fricking awesome to be there. Yeah. I just get such an energy boost from being in the city. And, you know, despite what people may be hearing about law and order and about everything being shut down and it being a city, you know, monopolized by fear, my experience was very different.

I mean, I was in lower Manhattan. If you go to Midtown, there's a lot of stuff that shut down and who knows what's going on in all those office buildings, but downtown there's just so much young energy. Like everybody's out on the street and all the cafes have created

these outdoor dining situations that by all accounts look like they're gonna be permanent, which has made a lot of the streets much more walkable, much more bikeable. A lot of the streets on the Lower East Side are actually cordoned off to traffic. Is that where you were, Lower East? Yeah, I stayed on the Lower East Side.

I had a bike that I could ride around, which was awesome. And it was so much fun. And what's great about New York is all the synchronicities that you put yourself in a position to experience. And my history with New York is that there is no other place on earth where that happens with such frequency. Like I ran into, so people know Davey Greenberg

who shoots photographs for us. I ran into Davey's brother who I'd never met. I just knew what he looked like from Davey's Instagram. Oh really? You never, you didn't plan that? No, I just saw him and I was like, hey, Nile, you know, what's up? And then I ran into Davey's girlfriend.

Oh really? Who was like staying in the same hotel as me. I mean, it was wild. And it's just so fun to be in the flow of life there. And everything is so accessible. Everything's five to 10 minutes away and you can get so much done. And I just felt this resurgence of life there. And everything is so accessible. Everything's five to 10 minutes away and you can get so much done. And I just felt this resurgence of life.

Like I felt like myself again, which was really cool. Where does Rich Roll stay in New York City? I stayed at the Public Hotel. I'd never stayed there before, but it's pretty centrally located like right in the Bowery. Cool. It's pretty great. The reason for that trip was multifold. I mean, it came about because Daniel,

whom agreed to be on the podcast, that episode just went up. I got to dine at his extraordinary 11 Madison Park and followed up the next day by doing the podcast with him. He was so delightful and what an extraordinary privileged experience it was to enjoy his crazy cuisine. I mean, it was amazing.

Not to repeat yourself on this podcast. Do you get into all the dishes in that podcast? I haven't read it. No, no, no. I haven't listened to it yet. So give us some highlights. Give us the highlights. I can't remember the names of all of them.

They're so exotic, but basically he converted this restaurant into a 100% plant-based menu. And these experiences are like five hours long. Like you go into the restaurant, they greet you by name. Like they curate this unbelievably personal experience where you feel really special. And then they just start bringing dishes out and the servers, you know, all the backstory on everything

and they can explain to you how these things are made. And it's all very elaborate and very unique. Like not just what you might expect with a plant-based menu but stuff that's like very outside of, you know, very surprising in many ways. All the dishes are pretty small, but they bring so many that by the time you're done, you're sated. But you're not feeling,

typically if you go to like a super fancy restaurant, particularly one that's of French influence, for example, the dishes tend to be really rich and you just feel very heavy and it's very meat laden. But here you felt content, but also energetic, which was cool. They take everybody into the kitchen at one point to give you this tour.

It's immaculate that kitchen. I know it's crazy. I was like, how do you keep this place so clean? With this huge portrait of Miles Davis in there and like some words of creative inspiration. And there's so many people working back there. It's this unbelievable machine where Daniel has to be head chef, but also host.

He has to share personal moments with every patron. Like it's, you know, quite a few hats that he has to wear, but it's a machine that's like super well oiled and was pretty amazing. That is, that's incredible. And you went with Jeff Gordon, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

And did he hook up that taste? Did you call him as soon as you, to try to get in there? Well, what happened was when the news broke, and I've told this story before, so I don't wanna belabor it, but when the news broke that he was gonna be reopening the restaurant with a plant-based menu,

the food world like exploded. Like I thought, oh, that's cool. Like I didn't realize the magnitude of that announcement, but the whole food world kind of lost their mind. Yeah. And Jeff texted me and he's like, you gotta get on this right away. And I was like, well, hook me up.

Like, that's cool. Like, let's do it. He connected the dots. Daniel got right back to me and we kind of went from there. That's cool. So yeah, it was great. So that was really the anchor, that's what anchored the trip. But I also was able to sit down with Eric Adams,

who is most assuredly gonna be New York City's next mayor. He had just clinched the Democratic nomination for the mayoral candidacy, but New York City is 70% Democrat. So it's essentially a foregone conclusion that he's gonna clinch it in November. And what's interesting about him is that he's been on my radar for many years.

I've gone back and forth with one of his chiefs of staff as Brooklyn Borough President over the years about getting him on. And for whatever reason, we just didn't sync up schedules, et cetera. And I've learned to trust that, you know, time, like I just trust the timing of these things that they're supposed to happen

when they're meant to happen. And it was so cool to do it right after him clinching this democratic mayoral position, which makes it more compelling than had I done it like two years ago, because he is gonna be the mayor. And throughout the campaign, it's really been a law and order campaign. It's all about policing, police reform.

There's been an uptick in violence and gun violence in New York City. Is it safe? How are we gonna make it safe, et cetera. And what's been lost in that discussion is this insane health story, health history that Eric Adams has, which is a big part of his advocacy.

Well, he's an ex-cop, right? He's an ex-cop. He was a police officer for many years, resigned as a captain, and within the police department was a reformer at a period when it wasn't necessarily cool or safe to be a reformer, being a black police officer. And he was able to make a certain amount of changes

within that construct. Then he went into politics. And of course, that's why much of the sort of debating and punditry around this campaign has been about police reform and the police and what that looks like in New York City going forward. But what's been lost is this story of personal health because he, I think it was about five or six years ago,

was diagnosed with type two diabetes. When he went into the doctor, it was very advanced, like I think stage four. He went into the doctor because he was losing his eyesight. He couldn't read his alarm clock. Like he could barely see. And he had numbness in his extremities, in his feet and his hands.

And he went to the doctor and the doctor was like, you're way down the line on type two here. You gotta go on all these meds. You're probably gonna lose your sight within the next year, year and a half. If you don't get on top of this, like we're gonna have to look at amputation. Like that's what happens when type two gets out of control.

And he, something inside of him, it just didn't sit right that he was suddenly gonna go on this panel of medications for the rest of his life and that there was nothing he could do about it. And he went home and he Googled reversing type two diabetes. And he doesn't know why he used the word reversing as opposed to treating or managing, but he did. And that resulted in all this information

about Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neil Bernard, people who have been on this podcast, who have been talking about the benefits of a plant-based diet to treat and reverse some of these chronic lifestyle illnesses, including type two diabetes. He went to Cleveland, he met with Dr. Esselstyn, he met with Dr. Bernard,

and he adopted a whole food plant-based diet. And within a couple months, he'd reversed all of his symptomology and his blood markers came down as A1C, went from way out of control to below normal. And he became this, not just convert, but champion of this lifestyle. And he started to advocate for changes

in nutritional policy in Brooklyn, with the hospitals and with the public schools. And that's a big part of his platform. Should he become mayor? Interesting, I didn't even know about any of that. And I only had an hour with him. So the conversation focuses on that, but he's very charismatic as you might suspect.

And he's the sort of, you know, latest iteration in a long line of charismatic characters who become New York City mayors. But in the context of the race, he's the centrist, right? I mean, he's like- Yeah, he's very centrist. In the context of the Democratic Party, he was on the right side of like that. Yeah.

He's not about defunding the police. He understands the police department needs reform, but he is a very much, he's a Democrat, but he's a law and order Democrat. Yeah. He's more in the Biden mold. Yeah. He's up the middle.

He's up the middle. So that was cool. I got to meet with the folks at 10,000. We had a big design meeting. We're cooking up some cool stuff that I can't get into specifics about now, but we're gonna be doing some really fun stuff in late fall and I'll have more information about that.

But it was the first time that I had met the whole team in person. That was cool. I got invited to go to the observation deck of this new skyscraper called One Vanderbilt, which is still under construction. Parts of it are still under construction. Brilliant business move to open a commercial office building now.

Yeah, well, this is such a- It's gonna become an amusement park. This is such a gargantuan building. It's been going on for years. It's been years and years and years in the making. But interesting you say that because actually all of the commercial space in this building is occupied or leased because,

and I asked the question to the guy who invited me up and he said that there will always be, for premium office space, his sense was that it will always be filled. It's the lower and mid-level kind of commercial space in New York City that's gonna be problematic. But this building is built right next to Grand Central Station.

And there's a tunnel underground where you can go right from the train to the building. So it makes it very convenient for high rollers who live in Connecticut or Long Island to come in and work and still expeditiously like get home. But this building is 96 floors high, right in Midtown. And Manhattan is essentially, we think of it as flat, but right where Grand Central is, is like a hill.

I think it's the highest point on the island. Bunker Hill? Is it Bunker Hill? I don't know. I don't think that's in New York City. That's Boston, right? Yeah, that's Boston. You got your Revolutionary War geography off. McGraw's Hill? I don't know. I don't think that's in New York City. Yeah, that's Boston. You got your revolutionary war geography off. McGraw's Hill, no such thing. But they're building this incredible

kind of tourist attraction that involves a glass elevator that goes on the outside of the building with a glass floor on it, which was not operational the day that I was there, but I was able to get up to the observation deck on the 96th floor. And you go outside and you have this 360 degree experience of seeing all of Manhattan from the perspective of Midtown.

And you look right at the Empire State Building and you're essentially at eye level with their observation deck, which is insane. And they're creating all of these, you know, kind of extravagant experiences for tourists. So that was cool to go up there cause it was still under construction. It was like a hard hat tour.

That's cool. You know, be up there. I saw that you peaked Casey's New York, New York MV, Casey Neistat commented on your observation. Oh, I took that, yeah. Anything New York. Always a coup if Casey likes your photo, I suppose, right? Yeah, he was all excited.

Yeah, the flip-flops up against the glass. Yes. With the view. The California bra. Yeah, exactly. Oh, and another random synchronicity. I've been going back and forth with Chris Chavez, who listeners or viewers will remember

from Adam and I talking about the influencer mile where Chris challenged Malcolm Gladwell to a mile and Malcolm put him in the grave. Yes. And we'd gone back and forth about trying to connect, but I got really busy. And this is what tends to happen when I go to the city. Like I've learned to not overschedule

and still my time gets totally occupied. So I have all these people that I'd love to hang out with. I was gonna go running with Hella. I was gonna go running with Lindsey Krauss and Mary Kane and like none of that happened. Oh really? It was just pillar to post filled up. But I remember thinking like,

well, maybe I won't see Chris this time, but maybe I'll run into him. And I was riding my bike through Greenwich Village and then I just spotted him jogging down the street, which was cool. And I yelled his name out. He had earbuds in, he didn't hear me. And I was like, well, maybe that's not Chris.

And I whipped around, caught up to him and just waited till he looked at me. And then we had a little moment. Nice. It was special. That is cool. So you were the first person that I texted that photo to. I told him, I was like, Adam's gonna be so happy that I ran into Chris Chavez.

That's awesome. And that was cool. And I love that about New York. That like was so fun. It like made it simple things like that, that just made me so happy. Big city as small town. Do you do, so obviously we're gonna get into one of the movies that you saw out there

and then you had the big dinner. Was that basically it for your nightlife or were you out at night too? Were you all day and night? Cause when I'm in New York, it's like, I leave it like, leave the room, whatever. And then you're not back until like, yeah, you don't go back to the room.

Because I was doing podcasts and having meetings and stuff like that, I have to keep my energy high. So I'm no longer, although there was a time where it was all about staying out all night in New York. That is not my relationship with the city anymore. No, I figured that. Yeah, so no, I mean, I was out late when I had dinner at 11 Madison Park

because that, I think the reservation was like 7.30 and I don't think I got home until like midnight. I saw the Bourdain dock, which we're gonna talk about with Jeff Gordnier, who invited me to see that. Oh, really? So I was out kind of late for that. But other than that, I was back in my hotel room at nine and I would just, you know,

basically watch the tour to France and fall asleep. Fantastic. Yeah. Good shit. What else can I share about that? I think that's it. I mean, great trip. I love New York City so much.

Do you ever think about- I really wanna spend more time there. Yeah. I'd love to be- I wanna spend more time. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to be more bi-coastal. I get so much done in a single day compared to Los Angeles. Is that right? You can meet, you can have like four or five meetings

and still be cool. In LA, you can have like one meeting a day and it takes up your whole day to drive across town, do all that kind of stuff. So I just feel more plugged in socially to humanity than I do here. Yeah, it's less alienating because it's- Well, here you have to seek out the flow of life.

Right. And in New York, you just walk out the front door and you're smacked in the face by it. You can't avoid it. And so you're participating in the flow of human activity, whether you want to or not. Which is exactly what we talked about at the top of human activity, whether you want to or not. Which is exactly what we talked about at the top of this show.

We are all participating. That's right, microbes flowing through the gelatinous. We're all airborne microbes. The gelatinous cellular matter. That does sound appetizing. This is typically the point in the show where we turn our attention to recapping whatever the iron cowboy is doing,

but we no longer can afford to do that because he is no longer waking up every day and doing an Ironman. No. What are we gonna do with ourselves? I wonder what he's doing right now. We could just keep doing it. Putting on a little weight and enjoying his life.

What are you doing right now? Oh, you're still sleeping? That would be great if we just continued with iron cowboy updates on just like, well, I played golf today. Yeah. He's probably got like a three handicap or something silly.

Yeah. So yeah, I think he's just normalizing at the moment. But what we can do, there are a couple interesting prolonged endurance feats that are underway right now. So we could supplant the iron cowboy by talking about those. What do you got? Well, first what I have, I'm glad you asked by the way.

I've got Robbie Ballinger's Colorado Crush, which is super interesting. Robbie, former podcast guest, ultra runner, plant-based beast, ran across America. His name came up in the Hella episode as well. He's in the midst of this summer long quest to conquer a series of ultra running challenges that collectively he's calling the Colorado crush.

And it started with him running the Leadville marathon, which he completed. Then he ran the Colorado trail, which is 500 miles. He did that. He went back to Leadville and did the silver rush 50. That was July 11th. And now he's in the midst of attempting to summit all 58 peaks in Colorado that are over 14,000 feet called 14ers.

I don't know how many he's done at this point, but he's knocked off quite a few of them. He basically wakes up every day and knocks one out and he's in a van traveling around from mountain to mountain. Is he living in a van? I think so. He and his wife, they're just cruising around in like a converted van at the moment.

Does she run also or she support crew? She's supporting. Yeah, she's supporting. And he's got Leadville 100 coming up? And then he's gonna complete it with the Leadville 100 at the end of August, August 21st. So three runs, and just so people know, like Leadville is at 10,000 feet.

So this guy's spending a lot of time at insane altitude. And a lot of these 14ers are, you know, mountaineering. He's wearing a helmet. It's not like he's running up a, like what you would imagine to be a trail. Like these are, some of them are pretty crazy ascent, so. Yeah, I mean, most of them have trails though. I don't think that he's, but.

No, no, no, no. But then you get above the tree line and you got a boulder and do stuff like that. Can I shout someone out? It's an outside editor, the outside magazine editor that I guess not really a colleague, I'm so freelance, but she just left there and is now a freelancer herself. And Dan Schwartz who writes for Outside and others,

they are incredible mountain bikers and are now taking their mountain bikes onto hiking trails, single track trails. And they rode up Mount Elbert, which is one of those 14ers. And it's the first one that they've done where they're riding their mountain bikes past hikers that are just like mystified.

And they made it all the way up a 14er. Wow. It's the first one that they've done. And I don it all the way up a 14er. Wow. It's the first one that they've done. And I don't know how many people do that out there, but it seems kind of pioneering and interesting and weird. And like technically challenging. Yeah, technically very challenging. Especially when you get above the tree line

and you're going over boulders and rocks and stuff like that. So shout out to Gloria and Dan. We should probably also shout out Reese Robinson. Reese is a kid who went on one of our retreats to Italy several years ago, him and his mom. And then he came and did a bunch of photo and video work for us several years ago.

He lived with us for a while. And he was alongside Robbie on the Colorado trail. And that's 500 miles north to south or is it- I don't know actually. I should know that. Is it east west or west east? I'm poorly researched today. But it's a trans Colorado trail.

Yeah, basically. Yeah, basically. So much love Robbie, we're paying attention, sending you good vibes. You can check him out on Instagram where he's sharing his daily experience at Robbie Ballinger, B-A-L-L-E-N-G-E-R. And we also have Timothy Olson,

also former podcast guest from way back in the day, episode 78, which was in 2014. Crazy, awesome, ultra runner, super cool guy with a crazy backstory who's in the midst of an FKT attempt on the Pacific Crest Trail. And he's got about, well, as of yesterday, he had 250 miles left, which isn't much.

I think he's clocking off at least 30 to 50 miles a day. And he's doing it. 30 to 50? Yeah. 50. All of these guys are doing double marathons a day in order to break these FKTs. Right, right. Meanwhile, his wife is 35 weeks pregnant and they're doing this as a family adventure,

which is so- She's like, okay, dude, you can do it, but I expect 75 a day from here on out. Clock's ticking, baby's coming, wherever you are on the trail. So it's his baby moon. I guess so, right? Yeah.

I guess so. Get it in, get it in, Timothy. So those two things, I think that those are two good things to take the place of the iron cowboy and capture people's attention. So in a couple of weeks, send these guys some love.

A couple of weeks, we'll circle back on both those, right? Right. So we're gonna take a quick break now. When we're back, we got a big story. We've got much more to report from the endurance world. We're also gonna do a summer watch list. We are doing the ritual summer watch list. And the Adam Skolnick summer watch list.

It's more like the ritual summer stream list. No, you had mentioned we should do like a graphic like Obama does. Like these are the books that I read. You should be doing that for podcasts. Like here's the stuff you should be watching. For your podcast watch list. We'll work on that.

All right. We'll be right back after these words from our sponsors. It's so good to be back here with you. Do you like my I Love Carbs T-shirt? I love it. I like that you're like deep in the inside baseball cause you're kind of being ironic about the carbs V protein erroneous false equivalency

that most plant-based people have to bump up against when they meet their uncle Tony for ribs. I mean, he's having ribs. We're having French fries. I don't follow any of what you just said. Don't you know, don't plant-based people always have to, what do you do for protein? No, I know. Where do you get your protein?

It's a clickbait t-shirt because people are so carb phobic, and they don't realize that actually- You're turning the tables on that protein discussion. Yes, yes. It's a picky bars t-shirt. Jesse Thomas sent it to me. I like it.

Yeah. I actually genuinely love carbs. I'm not just trying to get clicks, okay? I love carbs. You are? I love carbs. I'll give you some clicks. I'm happy to give you clicks. Bagels, sourdough bread. I want it all.

I want all the yeast. All the yeast? All the gluten. I feel you, man. What is our big story today? Hang on, let me- Mr. Skolnick. Our big story, outer space.

Branson beats Bezos in the race to see which billionaire can get to outer space faster and deeper. That's where we're at. Did they really go to outer space? I would call it very much inner space. Well, James Hamblin says. Yes. Who is James Hamblin again?

James Hamblin is a, he's an author. He's a preventive medicine doc. Right. Who, he wrote a book called Clean that was all about his experiment of not using soap or shampoo or anything like that for a year. I think he's on the faculty at Yale. I'm not sure, but he's a very interesting guy.

I love following him. Did he get divorced within that year? No, I'm not sure, but he's a very interesting guy. I love following him. Did he get divorced within that year? No, I don't think so. No divorce? No, not that I know of. No, he wouldn't become estranged. I think he has a dog. Did the dog divorce him? No, why?

No soap for a year, what do you mean why? Well, he wrote a book about, it's kind of a microbiome oriented thing, like we're overly sanitized. Anyway, he's a great follow on Twitter, James Hamlin, H-A-M-B-L-I-N. But he had a great tweet, which was billionaires saying they've been to space

like people saying they've been someplace because they had a layover in the airport. Just kind of true, right? It's a good tweet. Like shoot up, you're up there for a couple minutes and then you're back down. Yeah, but at the same- You didn't really go to outer space.

Now, listen, I'm as excited as anybody that people are going into space. Yes. So it is this weird thing, like it's very inspirational and I celebrate any kind of technological breakthrough. Right. But you have to balance that

against sort of the indulgence component of it, especially when it's in the context of billionaires, you know, competing against each other to who can get out there first. So there's a spectrum of people going out to the outer spectrum. There's Branson who got there first. I think he went 50, I read about this a little bit ago.

So my stats might be slightly off. So don't at me, but I think it was like 53 miles above earth was Branson. And then Bezos is going 60 plus, because he's in more of a rocket. So he might be later, but he's gonna go higher. Right, and then someone actually, I think, I forget who this person is,

but it's an international billionaire has effectively chartered a SpaceX spacecraft and they're gonna do like a 10 day orbit. So they'll be even higher, I believe. And then there's someone else who's chartering a spaceship to go to the space station. So these are all tourism, it's on the spectrum of tourism.

None of this is state sponsored or highly trained. They're definitely getting some training, but it's not like that highly trained thing. But in terms of this, to me, it's like, if you get up to see the curvature of the earth, you experience zero gravity for a few minutes or whatever it is, that's space to me. I mean, if you're fully zero gravity,

you're in the darkness, you're seeing the blue marble. I mean, you're in space. I think it's, and there is something monumental about that achievement. If you just look at it in the vacuum, and then if you look at the look on the face of Branson and his colleagues who he chose or who somehow got selected, one was like the astronaut trainer,

there was, you know, one was the communication specialist. There's two women and two men from the staff of Virgin Galactic that were chosen. And you see how happy and excited and thrilled they are. You cannot fake that, you know? So to me, that just shows space. I mean, I'm gonna give them creds. I'll give space creds.

Listen, there's a lot to celebrate here. I mean, it's so extraordinary that private industry has pioneered what, you know, the government has been unable to execute on, you know, ever since we landed on the moon in the 60s and then NASA kind of faltered for so many years due to funding or whatever. And the fact that technology has caught up with this,

you know, obscene aggregation of wealth that's allowed these guys to indulge, I think indulgent is still, It's still very indulgent. It's still an accurate word. 100%. To indulge their fantasies by pushing technology forward in this way, whether it's for selfish reasons or competitive reasons

or on behalf of humanity and the pioneering human spirit, the result remains the same. That at the same, essentially at the exact same moment in the grand spectrum of time, three or four fat cats have created competitive rockets to go into space. I mean, the fact that Branson went last week and Bezos is going like in two days,

I mean, by the time this podcast goes up, he will have gone. Jeffrey Bezos. We're gonna talk about that. Jeffrey Bezos. Jeffrey Bezos. It's so- You didzos. It's so- You did it. It's so weird.

It's so bizarre though, you know? I like trolling Bezos, but he's got blue origin. Have you seen, did you see like Twitter go on it? Like they showed his logo. No. And his head was like newly shaved and glistening. And then there's the logo of blue origin,

which is vaguely phallic. And then the rocket was behind him. It was tri phallics. What is with Bezos and phallic iconography? Like the little arrow on the Amazon thing is highly phallic. You know? What's going on there? He's the big baller baby.

I know. Big BD. I will say that Branson had really beautiful, huge windows on his craft. Didn't he? Yeah, that's more feminine. Although I heard something about, I should have researched this,

but there was that video of him riding his bike to the launch pad. Branson? Yeah, and apparently he didn't actually do that. Like that was faked. I don't know. It is a very, I will say this, Yeah, and apparently he didn't actually do that. Like that was faked. I don't know. That was too hard. It is a very, I will say this in the, in, you know,

if you're looking at it from a climate perspective, there's something both inspiring and grotesque about it. It's, it is like- Sure, that's why it's confusing. Like I don't have, you know, a hard take one way or the other. Right. Like we need to move forward. And this is our, you know, kind of genetic prerogative or disposition, right?

We're always innovating and there's something to be celebrated in these kinds of breakthroughs. Like they're unbelievable. And yet are they distractions from addressing the problems that demand our full attention right now? Well, I don't think- Will those resources be direct, better directed at, you know, solving climate problems

that have an immediacy to them? I mean, did you see those videos of Germany with the flooding and the water going, and like the fires that are breaking out so early in the season and the incredible drought that we're experiencing here in California? Every year we notch up in terms of the cataclysms that we're facing right now. And I feel like-

Did you say something about drought? I was busy drinking my naturally alkaline spring water from Erewhon. Tenderfoot privilege motherfucker. How dare you? I don't think Greta is gonna really- As we sit here outside Malibu, talking into microphones. Who made this microphone?

Was it made carbon neutral? A couple of assholes. No, but like Greta is not gonna be happy about the space race. Of course not. No. Of course not. I kind of want her to like show up as Bezos.

You billionaires in your spacecraft, munching caviar as you look down on the blue planet that's dying. Ladies and gentlemen, Greta as Angela Merkel. That was good, Angela. Yeah, I'm not good with the accent. I like that. Not good with the accent. That was great.

But the reason that we're talking about this space story, I've kind of got a curve ball for you. Because we led with the billionaires, but in reality, the most interesting space story, in my opinion, of the last few weeks are UFOs. Now, in late June, the Pentagon released an unclassified report prepared by a secret government program that had been collecting reports on aerial phenomena since 2007. Now, before 2007, there was a similar program that stretched from 52 to 1969,

where 12,000 cases were reported by civilians or military personnel about unidentified flying objects or just aerial phenomena in general. And then from 69, nothing happened. Like you said, that period where kind of nothing really happened. Yes, we had the space shuttle and all of that, but the Pentagon was out of the business

of trying to figure out who else is up in outer space. And then in 2007, they launched this new program. And there has been, from what I could tell, 7,200 cases reported in the last 15 years or so. 12,000 from 52 to 69, 7,200 from 2007 to 2017. And in 2017, the Trump administration ordered the Pentagon to declassify and come up with a report.

What's going on? I like that Trump did that, by the way. Do you think Trump was trying to find his real dad? I don't know. From outer space? I don't know. It's space? I don't know. It's kind of a stroke of genius that he inserted that into some bill to make sure that this stuff would come out.

He just wanted more conspiracies. He's like trying to hit a conspiracy that'll work in his favor. So he orders that and it just was revealed. The report came out in June. And in that report, most of them are explained away as natural phenomena or classified military drills

that people didn't know about and they couldn't really tell them. So they just let the kind of the conspiracy filter. But there's like over a hundred. I can't remember from that Kevin Roos that he sat in at the Daily, but it was over a hundred that they don't know what it was.

Well, we've all seen the video from, like I don't remember everybody's name cause this is a curve ball and I didn't like write all this stuff down, but the video from the fighter pilots where multiple pilots are seeing the same thing at the same time and they're discussing it and the thing goes, it just drops precipitously at an insane, you know, velocity

and doing all sorts of things that no man-made, you know, vehicle is capable of. And there's a lot of confusion and wonder about what actually is going on. Like it's kind of amazing. It is amazing. So on one level, if you look at it, you think, I've been waiting my whole life for UFOs to be discovered.

I guess we're calling them UAPs now, right? Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Yes, because some of them are not flying objects. Some of them could be natural phenomena. So there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't really be talking about anything else but this. So it would be like, if you could verify

that these truly are alien, it would just absolutely change everything. But then we just go right onto Twitter scrolling. Well, I think before we get into that, let's get one thing out of the way here. Does Rich Roll believe in life from other planets and UFOs? Well, to quote Mulder, I wanna believe, Adam, I wanna believe.

I mean, just by sheer numbers, I have to believe that it's possible when you think of the billions and the trillions of, you know, stars and galaxies and solar systems that are out there, the percentages are very much in favor of some type of life form being somewhere. Some type of intelligent life form.

Yeah, intelligent lifetime. I think where it gets tricky is that we project our idea of what intelligent life form means. That's true. We're basing it on a carbon-based life form and we imagine it will have appendages and limbs and a brain and all of that.

I think of whales. Well, that has a brain. Yeah, it's true. It's a big brain, right? Yes. How we conceptualize an organic organism, I think is limited. And I think we're limited by the capacity of our own brains.

Like we still, there's so much about physics that we still truly are baffled by, including dark matter, et cetera. So, you know, we're endeavoring to try to understand the mysteries of the universe, but I think we're limited in the same way that, you know, the brain of a snake is never gonna be able to understand human language.

Like it just, it exceeds the capacity of that organism to comprehend. And I think we have huge limitations in our ability to comprehend everything. Perhaps technology can serve as a proxy to help us better understand certain things that are beyond our capabilities. But I think there's a certain hubris with human beings

that we think we could be all knowing when in fact we're handicapped in ways that we're not even aware of. So that being said, my point being that life forms could take a shape and a structure that is beyond anything that we've contemplated or could contemplate. So when we think of UFOs and flying saucers

and what we see in the movies and on television, that's a pretty limited imagination of what's actually truly possible. Spielberg's gonna be so pissed when he hears you say that. And like, first of all, if somebody is gonna sit, like we're already doing drones, right? So if somebody's, if these truly, these UAPs truly are alien,

we can't assume that they're manned in a way that we would understand them to be. Why would they do that? Right. And why would they care about us? Are they observing us in the way that we observe in Ant Hill? Like, I don't know. It's more like Chris Columbus,

just bumbling their way to discovery. You think so? Yeah, it's just a total accident. You don't think it's more strategic than that? No, no, if they're as intelligent as we are, it's just human, it's just alien error, just like human error. They're gonna like accidentally, they got here.

You're projecting a human sensibility onto an alien intelligence. I just think life bumbles its way forward. Evolution, that's the one thing that Darwin forgot to get into in evolution, accidental evolution. Most people just evolve accidentally. That's what natural selection is. That's it.

Competition and we select for the happenstance genes that are favorable. But I'm with you though. I can't believe that there's so many stars out there and so many galaxies and there's not another planet like with really good music, you know, and like good restaurants. Yeah, so that capsule that's floating out in space right now

that has the phonograph that's playing music, you think that'll ever find an audience? No, I think there's gotta be life out there. There's gotta be intelligent life, it's gotta happen. It's gonna, I think there's gotta be life out there. There's gotta be intelligent life. It's gotta happen. It's gonna, like, it's gotta be like, I can't see how it wouldn't. Like, it's pretty silly to think that we're the only game

in the universe, right? It seems ridiculous. Well, we seem to be on this trajectory hurtling towards self-destruction. Yes. And just basically, you know basically imploding our planet. But what if we're the younger sibling in all of this and other forms of us out there have all done the same

far in the past. And we're the sole remaining viable planet because this has repeated itself time and time and time. We're going so deep right now. That's a very dark, depressing way to look at it. It's gonna be more like a Mars attacks thing. Remember Mars attacks? Yes.

Where Jack Nicholson's the president and everyone's all like, I knew the aliens were there, it's gonna be beautiful. We love you. And then they attack. I watched Independence Day the other day with my daughter and her boyfriend. Oh, nice.

I forgot how much fun that movie is. I haven't seen that in so long. You know, Will Smith doesn't come on screen in that movie until like 25 minutes in. Yeah, he has to fix it. He does fix it in the end. He does. Perhaps the greatest president performance in a movie,

Bill Pullman delivering the speech. Really, you're going Bill Pullman. And then getting in the, becoming the pilot at the end. You're going Bill Pullman delivering the speech. Really, you're going Bill Pullman. And then getting in the, becoming the pilot at the end. You're going Bill Pullman as the greatest president. Maybe not among, I would say definitely among the greatest cinematic presidents in that movie. So Bill Pullman, then Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe Lincoln. No, I don't know about that.

I mean, for sure acting performance, I'm talking about like, maybe the guy in the white house sitting president, he's gotta make hard decisions. And he does a good job. Yeah. If only there was a script when things got hard. I don't know, we got off track here.

We know this is a perfect track. We're headed towards the summer watch list. There are all these sightings. And it's really hard to dismiss. And when you have legitimate military pilots and high ranking officers who are taking this stuff seriously, it does give you pause.

It does. It's unbelievable. And yet at the same time, and this argument has been made by many, everybody's got a 4K camera in their pocket right now. And yet every image and video clip that we see still looks like the fuzzy stuff that we saw as kids. I mean, I used to buy these little books about UFO. I was obsessed, you know?

And they're all so grainy. Tell us about that. You used to buy little rich, you used to buy UFO books? Yeah, I went down a UFO rabbit hole as a kid. How old were you? I don't know, 12, 10. You used to buy UFO books? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went down a UFO rabbit hole as a kid. Really? How old were you? I don't know, 12, 10. You used to draw them? No, but I got really into Star Trek.

Oh, really? I went to Star Trek conventions. Did you really? I did. Did you dress like- I made my dad take me to a Star Trek convention. Who were you? Were you Spock or were you-

I didn't dress up. I remember- Were you Jim? I vividly remember my dad just being baffled because there were grown men and women in full Star Trek costume as we wandered the convention hall at this thing. Dude, I want the archival foot.

You know, if you ever go on David Cho's show, which will be on the show. We're gonna talk about that. He would find our couple of footage of you in a Star Trek outfit. I don't think so. But back to the point, no crisp definitive video footage

when everybody has a cell phone in their pocket. And why did these things always happen over, you know, desolate areas of the ocean? A lot of it was those recent ones that the military captured, I think were off the coast of San Diego. Right. Or in over some cornfield.

Which does make sense because San Diego is a nice place to visit. And if you're gonna come to the earth, San Diego would be high up on the list of places to visit. Well, then why not be right over San Diego? Why are you 20 miles offshore? Like near a military base.

So you're saying it's some sort of spy craft. I don't know. Are we getting anywhere with this? The whole point is not to get anywhere. It's to entertain people with your musings on outer space and UFOs. I don't know that I have any take on this that everybody else doesn't have.

I mean, I do wanna believe and I think it's fascinating. And it is wild that the government in fact has been collecting all of this information in a systematic way for a very long period of time. And my understanding, I wish I'd done a little bit more research on this, is that that report that came out is only part of the picture.

Like there's still a bunch of classified information that they haven't disclosed. Exactly. So what is that about? And why aren't they disclosing that? What does that say? I think that's in the sequel, the report sequel. Are they ever gonna release that

or is that just wrapped up? We need like Snowden to figure out how to prep them. Now you've gone from Mulder and Scully and you're into Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith category in that next report. I like that mashup. I like that mashup. So before we date ourselves with more old content,

I wanna ask one thing because me personally, when I heard from someone I met actually at swim run, who works at SpaceX told me about, it was the first person to tell me about this, this group of people that's gonna be orbiting on a spacecraft. And I thought, God, that would be so cool to be the journalist, like to be the old, kind of like the log book writer,

the old, what are they called? The scribe that's brought along on the transcontinental ship to write about life on the ship. It would be so fun to do that. Like I would take, I would go check it out. Like even though I'm- Would you go up in the craft though? I would go up in the craft. Someone's gonna die.

One of these things is gonna explode. I agree. It's gonna happen. Yeah, it's built into it. I mean, part of the SpaceX model was building into the budget that a certain number of these rockets are gonna explode. Yeah, it's gonna happen.

It's part of this journey. We've seen the unmanned ones explode. Right. We've seen it. It's going to happen. So is a billionaire gonna die doing this? Yes, 100%. No question. But you'd go up in it anyway.

But it's not gonna be Bezos. His luck's too good. He just stepped down as CEO though. Jeffrey Bezos. All right, that's a good segue to get into what we're gonna talk about next, which is our summer watch list. Yes, the ritual first annual.

Ritual summer stream, must streams. We both made a list of things that have captured our fascination and attention and things that we think are worthy of you guys checking out some of which are very much in the zeitgeist and perhaps you've already seen some of which are a little bit off the beaten path. But at the very top of my list is Bo Burnham's Inside.

This thing haunts me. Like I saw it maybe, I don't know, three weeks ago. When did I text you and said like- He was right after we recorded last time. It was like the weekend after. I think it was about three or four weeks ago. I can't stop thinking about it. Oh my God. It was like the weekend after. I think it was about three or four weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't stop thinking about it. Oh my God.

It's unbelievable. I truly think this is a master work, what this guy accomplished. And for people that aren't familiar, Bo Burnham is a standup comedian. He's a film director. He's a writer. He's done many things.

He's kind of a theater kid who grew up on the internet and went viral as a young kid, singing songs and telling jokes on YouTube and on Vine and has matured into a pretty prominent talent in Hollywood. He wrote and directed the movie, Eighth Grade, which I loved. I thought it was magical and a really special movie. And he's done a number of comedy specials over the years,

but this comedy special, and I hesitate to even call it a comedy special because I don't really think that that captures what exactly it is. It's sort of a private concert film. There is a comedy special component to it, but it's performance art, it's isolation theater, and it really is cinema.

But DIY, DIY cinema. DIY, he basically took the pandemic year to create this special. He did the entire thing in his little guest house where he lit it, he shot it, he wrote it, he performed it, he edited it and created this really compelling, multi-layered, profound piece of art that I don't know,

I'm at a loss to figuring out the language to describe it because it is so unlike anything I've ever seen. And I think it operates, it entertains and operates on so many levels. And the reason why it haunts me and has stayed with me is because of that multi-layered aspect to it. Like you can watch it on its surface and be entertained by it.

But the more you think about it, the more you realize like how deep he's probing issues of isolation, issues of internet culture, issues of youth culture, depression, loneliness, suicide, and the attention seeking that is part and parcel of his generation as somebody, I think he was born in 1990, grew up on the internet. The internet has always been who he is

and where he has gone to perform. And this interesting, difficult, challenging relationship that he has with social media in the sense that it birthed him and has given him this outlet. And yet it's also so destructive and emotionally debilitating at the same time. And he probes all of this stuff with songs, with interludes, with think pieces that are peppered

throughout this whole thing. And you see this trajectory from, kind of opens and he's in a, it's relatively light and gleeful as it begins. And there's a slow degradation of his mental wellbeing throughout the course of the hour until, you know, he's quite despondent at the end and has to find, you know, some salvation.

But I think it's kind of like, cause he gets, you can sense the darkness in it really early. I mean, it is a very, to say it's very dark is not to put you off. It's dark, but in a way that great art has to be in a way. You know, it's the most honest, I think the best piece of satire for the internet age that we have seen.

I don't think it even gets anywhere. Nothing I think that I've seen can even come close to the commentary that's in this. And it shows you how, you know, this is like people, who was the first comic to swear, you know, like Lenny Bruce, like this is like, to me for sure, all time great comedy work of art, you know, it's like for of its age,

there's nothing that even comes close to being able to push buttons like this that I've seen in a long time. It's such a trope to say voice of a generation, it's such a trite turn of phrase, but I think it is apropos in his case, in the case of this work. I mean, it's unbelievably self-referential, it's meta,

and the level of self-awareness that he brings to it, like the idea is that he is authentically performing and bearing his vulnerable self while also reviewing it at the same time. So it folds in on itself. And he's also letting you know that he knows that at the same time. So it begs the question of what is truly authentic?

Is this vulnerability true or is this a performance? And you're not quite sure where that lies. Like when he's breaking down, is he really breaking down or is he winking at you and saying, this is part of the performance as well? Right. I mean, as a performance art piece, it doesn't even really matter.

Like there was some blowback I heard that people are saying, oh, you know, he's trying to pretend that he's lived in that room for the whole year and it's actually a guest house, a really nice house. And he has a partner that he lives with and he's got a great life and he's not depressed like that. And I'm like, well, first of all, you can't fake that kind of introspection and genius.

And it usually does come with a very big dark side and he grew up religious too. So like that is in there as well. And from what I read, I don't wanna speak for him, but that's what I read. So to me, that kind of criticism, which is there's always gonna be haters, but I did hear there was pushback on him.

I'm like, this is a piece of art. Like, you know, for you to try to say that, it's like, it doesn't have to be his- That's part of the art. That's part of the conversation. Like that self-awareness extends to his understanding that he knows that the audience knows that he has a partner who's a successful film director

and that he probably makes quite a bit of money doing what he does. It does great. Is this performance, is it real? And where is that line? I mean, it almost doesn't matter. The commentary remains significant, I think, whether or not it's true to the extent to which it's true.

But I think you're correct. Like he was degrading, you know, and it's this confluence or this overlap of analyzing how the internet impacts all of us in that self-referential way, him as observer, but also participant. At the same time, a commentary on the pandemic and the progressive isolation

and mental and emotional despair that goes hand in hand with that. Yeah, and then, you know, two songs. One is Welcome to the Internet, which starts with a polka. Welcome to the internet. Yeah. And it goes into this, you know,

this quote you have here. Could I interest you in everything all of the time? A little bit of everything all of the time. Apathy is a tragedy and boredom is a crime. Anything and everything all of the time. I mean, that song might be the single best critique of the internet I've ever seen or heard. And it goes on and on and on and it's amazing.

Like you can't say enough how great the songs are. They're like earworms and they're satire. You're like, you don't really tend to listen to like comedy songs for fun, but like, but it's deeper than that. And you know, whether it's that one or white girls. I mean, white girls Instagram is probably the catchiest one. I'm sure on YouTube, it's got insane views at this point.

You know, he makes this music video of this song, white girls Instagram that is just so on the nose. It's unbelievable. And then he uses auto tune, which you know is also part of his satire and what's amazing. Well, he did that on stage in another show that he did where he was sort of doing commentary on Kanye

and he started doing this auto tune song about why the Pringles jar wasn't wide enough for your hand to go in it. Because people on the internet are doing auto-tune stuff on loops. And also he self-flagellates himself in this martyr, this sort of satirical, I'm a martyr white guy. Like I'm aware, like, should I be talking about social justice issues,

but I'm a white guy and no one needs to hear from me. Like that internal battle that he's having that is layered with the fact that over time, like he's had missteps on the internet and said jokes that were inappropriate or whatever. As somebody who grew up, like his whole life, the guy's been performing on YouTube. So as a kid, you're gonna look back on that stuff and cringe.

So now here he is growing up and he turns 30, like while the plot unfolds. And what does that mean? Like to be an adult and look back on this, you know, chronicle of your life that plays out in the digital space and a big part or recurring theme of the show is him watching himself, which is this beautiful poignant metaphor

for how we all are learning how to navigate the intersection of our three-dimensional lives and our digital lives, right? So this idea that he's, there's this authentic burst of originality and creativity. And then you see him watching himself on a laptop and editing it, you know? And isn't that the perfect statement

for what this is all about? Right, I mean, he makes fun of Twitch. He makes fun of like everything. He makes fun of like YouTube wrap up commentary, like whatever the- The commentary video where he's singing and then he pops up in the corner Like whatever that- The commentary video where he's singing and then he pops up in the corner and he's doing a reaction video to his video.

And then it just continues to tile. He's reacting to the reacting video. He's so good, dude. Like that's the meta, you know, kind of space that we're in. And then when he's a Twitch streamer and he's the video game character. And as the Twitch streamer, he's like,

I'm gonna make him cry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fast forward to later in the arc where he actually cries and has this emotional breakdown. I think there's definitely depression in his makeup somewhere because I don't think he can really fake it that well. Like, and I think he's more channeling

what might've happened in his life to make great art versus pretending things happen. And which is what great acting is. And I think in addition to, welcome to the internet, there's that funny feeling, which is kind of similar type song, but more of an acoustic song, but it's more about the smartphone,

and it's the same idea though. See to me, it's more about the smartphone, you know, like, and it's the same idea though. Like, you know, we're it's see, to me, it's more like, instead of, it's not really about learning to, to deal with this new space that we all find ourselves in self-referential space. It's more like, this is a bad idea. Right. Which is like, it's this, this is going wrong.

It's not like, it doesn't end. It's not like, you know, it doesn't end. It's not going to end well. It doesn't end well. And a couple interesting observations on that. First of all, he did zero press on this. He didn't do, as far as I could tell, he didn't do any interviews. He just put it out there on Netflix.

It exploded. Everybody's talking about it, but it's not like he went and did a bunch of talk shows or podcasts. He's done that in the past. He did that for eighth grade. He did a whole promotional tour. He's not one who isn't somebody who has experience

doing that kind of thing. But in this case, he just like put it out there and has said nothing like a true artist. Amazing. Which I think is fucking cool. As much as I'd like to have him on the podcast. Right, right. Clearly he's not doing that.

And I think there's this, yes, this is what social media and the internet is doing to us. And there's kind of a beautiful, third act sequence in here. I mean, thinking of this much like a Sartre play, like, he's stuck in this house, he can't get out of it. He's struggling to open the door and get out.

And every time he pokes, he looks out the window, he shuts the shades again. He finally summons the courage to get out. At the end, he gets out and what does he do? He immediately tries to get back in. And that idea, I think he says it outright in the show that we're now living in a world in which the only reason to go outside

is to gather resources, collect the resources required so you can come back in and fortify your digital life. It's very interesting and crazy to think about it like that. It's true. It's like the digital life and he gets into sexting and some of this stuff is like, even without the pandemic would be

voice of the generation type stuff. You know what I mean? Like, because there is more isolation even before the pandemic. But after the pandemic, we all feel like, wow, we wanna go out, but what's it like? And it's like a lot of people, some people are probably diving into it

and getting back out there, but more people, it's a one step forward, two steps back. We've acclimated to a more immersive digital life. We have. And how many people are gonna just double down on that? Even if and when the world opens back up. So I wrote down a couple of things I could think of, like in terms of where this fits on the Pantheon,

all time great specials. You have Richard Pryor live at the Sunset Strip, Eddie Murphy's Delirious, Robin Williams at the Met, Chris Rock's special when he had Four Cities, Ali Wong's Baby Cobra, I think was a Zeitgeist turn, incredible, but this is less straight comedy like that. You know, this is more performance art too. So then you have Sandra Bernhardt and John Leguizamo's

one man show from the nineties, but this is it's funnier than those two. And it's as funny as any of the best standup comedy performances, but it also has that performance art and he's making it himself. I think it's the most wildly original, brilliant comedy special I've ever seen. That's my feelings.

Well, I struggle with even comparing it to those other standup comedians because it is so different. To me, it's more like Peter Boghossian or who's the walking to Cambodia guy? Okay. What's his name? I don't know.

Look that up. He was a one man show guy, a Tribeca, you know, theater dude who did a bunch of one man shows that were pretty profound, like back in the early 80s. Who was kind of a contemporary of David Byrne and some other interesting people like that. Anyway, it stands on its own. And I think what distinguishes it even more

is the cinematic quality to it. Like it really is a movie and the intentionality that he brings into the lighting and the camera framing and the interludes in between these musical numbers and sequences are those quiet moments. And I think those say as much about who he is and where our culture is then, you know, the big kind of splashy numbers themselves.

I agree. I mean, the lighting is spectacular splashy numbers themselves. I agree. I mean, the lighting is spectacular. It's insane. Yeah, like what he can do with just a couple things. It's yeah. So congrats to Bo Burnham on an incredible piece of work. And it's a must see. Yeah.

It's a must stream. A final thought on that. And I'm probably spoiling it for people who haven't seen it. Not that there's really anything to spoil because it's so experiential. It's not about plot or anything like that. But there's that, when I say it's haunted me,

there's that clip of him where he's sitting and he's watching like his first video when he was a kid playing piano. And you're just like, your heart breaks and you wonder what is he thinking about that? And how does that inform what he does now? And the whole thing ends with him sitting, there's a closeup on his face

and he's watching the finished special, like he's reviewing it again. And again, it's that like, we're always observing ourselves as authentic as we're trying to be, we're creating a calculated version of whatever message we're trying to be. We're creating a calculated version of whatever message we're trying to put out there. And the very last frame is him cracking the slightest smile, like just a little smile.

And you can tell he's pleased, like he's pleased with this thing that he created as painful and as hard wrought as it might have been. Like he knows that he said what he wanted to say. And it's kind of a beautiful way to end what is a very dark and disturbing and at times depressing look at, you know, the gestalt of culture.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I can't recommend it enough. I know- We should probably add a spoiler alert at some point up top. No, I mean, I think, you know, whatever, listen, regardless of any of that, I don't think any of that spoils it.

I don't either. Because like I said, it's not a plot driven thing. It's an experiential thing. I will also say that as much as I was impacted by it, like my boys who are 26 and 25 and more, you know, in the age range of Beau, like absolutely loved it. They can't stop talking about it. My 14 year old, like totally dug it,

is very meaningful to Jaya. So it operates on different levels for different age groups. And I think for young people, because we're older and we don't have that relationship to the internet, even though a substantial portion of what I do is online, there is something about, there's a relatability, I think, for Gen Z and perhaps even millennials

who will be able to connect with his message in a way that, you know, even as impactful as it was for me that I can't access. I think as we go through this list, one thing that kind of ties it all together is archival footage. And the fact that in every one of these instances, there's an incredible, incredible archival footage.

Yeah, it's like, we all have footage like that somewhere, you know, like a lot of us. But not like him. But not like him. If you're 15 years old right now, your entire life. Right. Is sitting in the cloud. The documentaries are gonna be there, yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of archival footage, that's a good moment to pivot to the next must watch of the summer, which is Roadrunner, the new Bourdain documentary. That thing is rife with so much archival footage. It was shocking just how much of Anthony Bourdain's trajectory was captured on film because the documentary tracks his arc from the early days

when he was the chef at Les Halles, I think that's how you say it, all the way through all of his successes and ultimately his demise. And I love the documentary. Jeff Gordnier invited me to a press screening when I was in New York City the week before it came out. It's now out in theaters now.

I don't think it's streaming, but I'm sure it will be soon. I was very moved by this. I mean, I would suspect like you, Anthony Bourdain, you know, holds a large place in my consciousness. His passing was a tough one, I think for all of us. And I don't quite know what it is about him, but he was able to connect with so many people in such a profound, meaningful way.

And I think the documentary does a really good job of helping you understand who this guy was and what made him tick. You have not had a chance to see this. I have not seen it yet. Cause it's not streaming and I only stay at home. You're here now. Oh wait, I got outside for a little bit.

I go home or to the beach, Rich. That's what I do. You've never met Anthony Bourdain. I've never met him. No, I never met him. But you know, as us Lonely Planet writers, we're like the road warrior hacks of yore going to places that he's gone to with his crew

and eating some of these similar restaurants and finding that like ethnic food that nobody sees. That Jonathan Gold here in LA and the Anthony Bourdain overseas aesthetic is figures prominently in almost all Lonely Planet writers. I mean, that's what we aspire to and did in our own way and expressed in our own way. So very kindred spirit stuff there.

And obviously the work itself is great. And then he's got the kind of somewhat Taoist, Eastern philosophy that he's, the kind of somewhat Taoist, Eastern philosophy that he's appropriated is the wrong word, but that he's, cause he actually cared about it and studied it. And so I can relate to that. And so, definitely when he died, it was shocking to be honest with you and sad,

but someone I always have admired and continue to admire. It was shocking to be honest with you and sad, but someone I always have admired and continue to admire and I'll watch anything with him in it. So I'm really looking forward to this. Yeah, just utterly compelling to watch him, a captivating, charismatic personality who had this expansive joy for experiences of all kinds and irrespective of however successful he became expansive joy for experiences of all kinds. And irrespective of however successful he became was really just like one of us, like he was in every man.

And he was much more interested in having a conversation with a random guy on the street than he was about going to some velvet rope event. And I think what's interesting about him and the documentary affirms like this take that I've always had, which is that this guy essentially was an untreated alcoholic.

I mean, I'm convinced that this was the case. Big drinker. So he had this heroin problem. He kicked heroin. He kicked hard drugs as far as I'm concerned. But without going to Narcotics Anonymous, right? But he's this extreme personality and that ism inside of him divorced itself

from hardcore substances, but remained active and would latch on to anything and everything that could kind of take him out of whatever emotional disaffectation he was experiencing. And that extremism made him this larger than life personality. So it was in many ways his strength

and what endeared us all of us to him so profoundly, but also ultimately paved the way for his demise. I mean, he continued to drink and smoke pot and stuff like that. So it wasn't like he actually got sober, but you see over the course of this documentary, how he latches on to certain, not just substances, but people experiences.

Like he goes from being just the guy who just smokes like crazy to being an insane jujitsu practitioner. And that becomes his obsession, a healthier obsession of course, than some of his other ones, travel experiences that obviously underscore, why those television shows that he did,

impacted so many people. But a brooding dark guy who was an incredible writer and an incredible friend. And thinker. Thinker, the person who would really invest a lot of time into his friendships and really was curious about what made other people tick and really appreciated his friends, I think,

in a way that we can all learn from. But I think ultimately where it all really begins to unravel is when he gets involved with Aja Argento near the end and she becomes his obsession. And he remarks early in that relationship, a self-awareness that this potentially could be his demise. And the documentary, I won't spoil it,

but it kind of plays this out. And you see how everything starts to line up for him. I didn't realize that. Meet his fateful end. Was he an escapist? Cause I think about escapism a lot cause I think I have that in me. Well, escape, I think escapism can mean different things.

I mean, I look at it, as I always say, through the lens of recovery and addiction. And I just see somebody who was an untreated addict and had a profound, you know, whether it's a hole in your spirit or an inability to just sit with yourself that drove a lot of those wild experiences and compelled him to go to places other people wouldn't go,

like Beirut when it's being bombed and places like that. That's part of, like, that's a very addict thing. Like I need to be where the action is. I need to get with the most dramatic woman. I need to be where the action is. I need to get with the most dramatic woman. I need to be where the action is happening. And that's exciting and it's intoxicating. And it's ultimately a distraction for whatever emotional issues you're having

because you don't have to sit with yourself and deal with yourself. And you see the pain and the tension between that pull, that drive inside of him and the fact that he has a wife and he has a kid and the, what's the right word for it? The kind of, he tortures himself over his relationship with his child in that, you know, he's not sure he's being a good dad

and he's so desperately wants to be a good dad. And yet, you know, he has this huge life that all of us look at and say, I would be happy if I had that life. And you realize that that life is disconnected from whether or not, you know, you're gonna be happy because that's the relationship between you and you and it has nothing to do with the externalities

that are swirling around that guy or any of us. You know, having lived on the road for eight months a year for seven, eight years as a Lonely Planet author, eight, nine months and you're chasing like cool destinations and going weirder and weirder places that we call, I call it weirder and weirder, more unusual places. It's a better way of putting it. To get further and further away from the known world,

our own culture and our own selves. A lot of people call that the dream job. Most people wouldn't last one year doing that. To last seven or eight years was a lot for me. There's people out there still doing it that I know of, although the pandemic has halted a lot of those contracts, but most people would not last one year. You know, the New York Times had the 52 places journalists

and all of them, a lot of them have written about it afterwards. And a lot of them were, I mean, so far, I think they were pretty exhausted by the end and wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a great lifestyle. Like lonely planet, lonely writer. Well, it's like Jeff Gordner said about like needing a healthier lifestyle

after years of eating and being a great food critic. And he taps into some of that same stuff. It's different than that because we're not getting that same, but you do get some of those meals. So you do have a little bit because we're writing about food, but we're also staying in crappy places and nice places.

We're on the ferries, we're on the rickety airplanes you read about. I can't tell you how many Indonesia flights I took. And after every trip to Indonesia, cause Indonesia has a very bad air safety record. You could look it up. It's not good at all. And after every trip over there, when I've done,

30 domestic flights, I'm happy that I'm out. Like that kind of stuff, but that's part of the appeal too. But in the end, there is an element, like I wanna do that. I love the fact I live in a small place in LA and I can open the door and the doors to the whole world, but you do lose, my situation came with a failed marriage. It came with missing lots of weddings and friends. It came with missing birthdays and holidays.

And I couldn't imagine doing that with Zoom at home now. Sure, you're also not an addict. You know what I mean? Well, imagine the guy who's like, oh my God, I'm gonna get on this plane and it might crash. Like, let's get in it. You know, that's the difference. Right, right, right.

Yeah, maybe not. I mean, there's a sequence in the movie where they go to the Congo and they kind of walk through that very predicament. Is that right, right. Yeah, maybe not. I mean, there's a sequence in the movie where they go to the Congo and they kind of walk through that very predicament. Is that right? Yeah. But I'm not an addict, you're right. I'm not in that level, but I can understand that kind of chasm

between your life and the connections in your world. Sure. And so I'm really looking forward to this. Now there is a controversy that came up late, late game controversy where apparently a couple of emails that he wrote, they went to AI and deep faked his voice. They fed this program, all of his, you know,

all this recorded stuff that he spoke, all his narration from, you know, a bunch of files, maybe it was like dozens of hours. And it came up with a deep fake of Bourdain's voice to narrate his own emails. And the family of the people connected to Bourdain are saying that wasn't approved. The director says it was approved.

Does that disturb you? Does it change the way you look at the movie? I think that they shouldn't have done it. I think it was wrongheaded of the director to go in that direction. I guess I could understand why. It's like he wanted to animate these words that Bourdain had written

and what better way to do it than to put it into his voice. He didn't, he never actually said them out loud, but when you're making a movie and you wanna show rather than tell, I can see why that would be a creative choice, but my sense is that they didn't really completely think it through. So the director said, we cleared this with the estate, et cetera, everybody was cool with it.

The family says something differently. The consensus is essentially that this is something that Bourdain who is, you know, the very emblem of authenticity would not be into. Like the idea that he would be resurrected from the grave to say something that he never actually said, even though he actually wrote it, I think was, you know was perhaps in poor taste.

I think the wrong creative choice. I think that it could have been ameliorated if he decided that he still wanted to use that as a storytelling device to put a caption in the movie itself to say, like we recreated this off of an algorithm or something like that to let the audience know so there was some transparency in it.

I saw the movie before this controversy came out so I was unaware of it completely. So my screening of it was not informed by that awareness going into it. You lost yourself in the movie more than like if you'd known something corny happened. Had I known going into it would my reaction to the movie be differently?

I'd like to think not. Like to me, this was a mistake, but I don't think that it should cloud people's, it shouldn't be a reason to not see the movie. Like I think it's a distraction. Like it's a beautiful work of art. Like this movie is actually really quite good and I was very moved by it.

And I want everybody to see it because it's an extraordinary chronicle of one of the most iconic figures of our time. I think one of the most charismatic figures last 30, 50 years. Yeah, absolutely. And to the extent that this is a controversy that would motivate people not to see the movie

or to protest the movie, I think is wrongheaded. Fair enough. So they shouldn't have done it. I'm not happy that it happened. It could have been handled in different ways, but don't let it be a reason to not see the movie. Cause the movie, standing on its own two feet

outside of that controversy is really worth seeing. I separate the offense as like someone who doesn't understand the harm that deep fakes could cause. It's the problem is it is kind of a hand grenade. Yeah, and it's something it's sort of like, oh, this was slipped in here and no one said anything about it. So what's gonna happen in five or 10 years

and how is this gonna work its way into other works of art? And is there an obligation to be transparent about this if you're gonna do it or should we not do it at all? And I think that's an important conversation. Exactly, so big picture, the criticism of it is good and important because hopefully it'll scare off other people from doing this. Next time, you know, directors will think twice

as they should. Yeah. As they should. A couple of, before we segue, a couple of the characters that pop up in this movie, you've got David Chang, who I always love, like David Chang's the best man. Every time he talks, like I just,

I can listen to that guy tell stories and- Do you watch his show? Talk about, I've watched some of it. I listened to his podcast. I'm a huge fan. And the other David, David Cho, is also in this movie. Talk about charismatic. Like that guy is captivating.

Like he figures prominently in the Bourdain doc and as part of a sequence that ends the movie that just leaves you wrecked. Really? There's something about David. He's so, he allows himself to be so emotionally vulnerable. Like nothing is off the table and he'll tell you everything. And his emotions are just right on the surface

talking about Anthony and his relationship with him. I found to be very impactful. There's also a short sequence with Iggy Pop in the documentary. Oh, beautiful. But Iggy Pop drops a crazy truth on Anthony Bourdain that I can't stop thinking about. I won't spoil it. Okay, but that in and of itself,

it's worth the price of admission to this movie. That's amazing. Speaking of David Cho. Yes. We're gonna go from the Bourdain doc and David Cho's appearance in that movie right into the Cho Show. The Cho Show, baby.

How do you feel about the Cho Show? You know, I was skeptical. I was skeptical going into it because of his backstory. I don't know, you know, the, the back story being, he's this graffiti artist that I think got famous at first cause he went to Facebook headquarters and he did it. He did a piece and got paid in stocks. So what happened was, yeah, he, he got hired.

He was a young artist and he got hired by not just Facebook, but I think Zuckerberg personally, and maybe some other people in that kind of startup Silicon Valley world, like a bunch of high net worth people. But he came to Facebook and he painted a bunch of murals and stairwells and things like that. And he took stock instead of cash. And when Facebook-

Which they would never do anymore. No, no, no. Pre-share all. Those shares, when Facebook went public, were worth $200 million. Unbelievable. So he made $200 million for painting their office. He sold those shares and cashed out.

Had he held onto those shares, you know what they would be worth today? I have no idea. $1.3 billion. That's how crazy that is. So he's both a genius and he's screwed up. Well, he's definitely a genius and he's definitely screwed up.

And that's part of his charm and his charisma. But I don't think he'd want the 1.2. I cannot look away from this guy. Everything that I see him in, every interview that I, he was on Rogan. I think he's been on Rogan a couple of times. Fascinating. He's just absolutely fascinating figure.

This show is so wild and original, so chaotic. It's like you're dropped into his brain and you're living in his brain and he's living in his brain and everyone gets invited in. It is, I wasn't prepared for how brilliant it was. I thought it was gonna be a vehicle for a guy who like does cool art. I wasn't prepared for it

because I didn't know much about him. And all I knew was that story that everyone talks about. And I knew that he had some weird thing with women that came out and he dresses that head on. Yeah, he also had a podcast for a while that was completely off the rails. Okay, yeah and I just thought maybe it's gonna be too weird for me, but it's not.

It's like right up my alley. And the one thing I'll say, and I'll spin it back to you, but is that he lives in his childhood home. And the reason that's poignant for me is that we just moved into my childhood home. I'm renting my childhood home right now. And I mean, he bought his, and we don't know the chain of custody of that house,

but I'm renting it. And it was weird for me. It was like a whole process for me to go back. And this is in David Cho's fashion. I'm gonna reveal something of myself in this David Cho review. But I felt weird about it. Like I didn't wanna live there.

And yeah, it's a nice place. It was always a nice place. There's good memories there. There's less good memories there. There's bad memories there. But we need more space. And like looking at the real estate market, me being the escapist that I am and investing in real estate,

it's just like terrifying for me. And so this opportunity came up, the renters had moved out and my folks offered it to us. I knew April wanted to be there. It's great for Zuma, but for me, I wasn't super into it. And like, I didn't really wanna live there. And even after we moved in, I'm like, don't like, it still doesn't feel like me,

but to see what he did to his, I'm not about to like start painting the walls. Right. I mean, he just turns the whole house into an art studio. Oh yeah, it's like, it's like. Just paint everywhere. It's bizarre. Clay.

I couldn't like think straight in a place like that, but it just, it gave me permission to own my situation, if that makes sense. So like, so early on in the episode that I watched, which was episode two with Will Arnett and Denzel Curry, this really brilliant young musician, I just thought it really kind of gave me permission to own where I'm at in a way.

And I didn't expect that from a talk show. Like, so, you know, when you go that deep, I have such respect for it and it works. It's not just like going deep to try to be cool. It's like authentic, it works. It's so authentic. And I think there's a method to the madness that plays into why he's in that house

and the very strange, you know, manner in which this show unfolds because it's nothing if not, you know, anarchy and chaos, you know, but he's so vulnerable and he's so creative and he's so original that you're riveted by it. And so these episodes essentially work like triptychs. Like they're a couple, usually three interviews

that you toggle back and forth between. He's talking to interesting people while he's also painting their portrait and doing strange role play. Like I watched two of the episodes, we should say it's streaming on FX. There's only four episodes. I watched episode three and four.

Three is with Rainn Wilson, my friend, Neil Strauss and Erica Garza. Episode four has Steve-O and Maya Erskine in it. And Val Kilmer pops up. Oh, that's awesome. I mean, Val Kilmer is like, it's insane, this guy. But I can't even describe the show because it doesn't like, like Bo Burnham's inside,

it doesn't match up to anything that we're familiar with. But Bo's show is even more accessible in a way. It's a little more straightforward. It's not like this is go, you go from one guest to the next. Imagine David Cho covered in head to toe in paint and throwing paint on the wall and covering his face in clay

and then extrapolate that into this show that's a pastiche of interview meets art project meets performance art with animations and archival footage of him as a kid. And grays of extras, dancers. Unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But truly what it is, is an excavation of his psyche

and a process for him to heal his emotional childhood trauma which I think is part and parcel of why he lives in his childhood house. Like he's a prisoner of certain loops that play out in his head that become manifest. And you can see him struggling with how to overcome them. And so many of his conversations are about, you know, processing that in real time

in conversation with people who have analogous childhood trauma experiences. And in his childhood trauma, like, well, he has two that he talked about in episode two. That was one is when he was four years old, he was sent away to Korea, ripped away. Like his parents shipped him off because they needed to get rid of one kid

because they had a financial problem, I think. And they had to like move in with the family members, but they didn't want three kids. And so they chose him because I think he thought he was the odd ball and that just messes with him. Can you imagine being four years old and being sent away? It's like, I can't even imagine that. And then while he was over there, he suspects,

he doesn't have clear memories of it, but suspects sexual abuse in Korea, I believe so. And where I live now is where my childhood trauma happened. So it's like, that's what I mean by permission. It's like a deeper recognition. But also an opportunity. Like there's a reason why you're back in this house. You have an opportunity to not just revisit that past,

but work through it so that you can develop a new and healthier relationship with your past and with this domicile. Like, I think it's a gift in certain ways that might feel uncomfortable right now. But I think the show shows you a guy struggling in real time with just how to do that. It's amazing.

It's like, it's amazing though. Like that's like the key I just didn't expect. So, you gotta make it your own though. You gotta work, you gotta do the day-to-day stuff. And he does do the work. He guides them on a guided meditation. There's nothing I want more right now than the David Cho guided meditation.

I think what draws me to him is that he, it's one thing to say he's vulnerable, but he has such a big heart. Like he leads with his heart. Like it's just, it's right on the surface. Like he wants to connect with other people so profoundly and you can see his struggle and that's very appealing. Like there's a humanity to that guy

that is really irresistible and utterly fascinating. And at the same time he lives his life. Yes, he's got a lot of money, but that aside, like he allows himself to be so free and childlike. And his art is all about trying, like doing everything that he can to make sure that that doesn't get calcified.

It's so physical, his art. It's incredibly physical. And he's not the only artist that's like that. There's a lot of really physical, but he is exceptionally physical and it's all about losing trauma. I mean, the episode, when you watch episode two, what he and Denzel Curry create together is magical.

Like I didn't even heard of Denzel Curry before. And he's really special. I can't wait to listen to more of his music and really special guys. So I had to watch the other ones first cause I'm friends with Neil Strauss who always gives unbelievable advice and feedback on matters emotional and psychological,

especially with respect to overcoming trauma. And Steve-O who doesn't love Steve-O and David goes right to the heart with Steve-O and gets just gold out of that guy. While he's like painting, what he does is he paints these portraits and then in the middle of that, like they're sort of participatory.

Like the subject is participating in how the portrait unfolds. And I know that's a big part of the Curry thing. Yes, because they actually- Where you paint it, you destroy it, you reconfigure it, you reimagine it, and it has like nine lives before it's complete. And it's cool to see that kind of unfold as a result of,

and a reflection of the conversation that they just had. Yeah, I would say it's not for everybody. I could definitely see some people being turned off by the nature of it, the jagged nature, the chaotic nature. You know, I will say that. So just, I'm not saying don't watch it cause I think it's great, but I could see people being, it's avant-garde, let's put it that way.

Yeah, but get over yourself and check it out. That's what I say. You're avant-garde, Rich. Final thing that I wanna do really quickly here is to shout out Chris Nee and her new show, We The People. She's created this children's show that was produced by, I believe the Obama's production company. It features people like Amanda Gordon

and it's kind of like a really upgraded version of Schoolhouse Rock in many ways. Chris, if you're listening, thank you for creating this beautiful thing. I believe Chris listens to the podcast and I just wanted to acknowledge her and this amazing work. There's a great profile of her in the New York Times and I'll link that up in the show notes.

So if you've got kids and you're looking for something edifying for your child, check out We the People. I'm gonna check it out. I have not seen it yet, but congrats, Chris. On the kid note, we watch a lot of Bluey at our house. I don't know if anybody with kids that knows Bluey. Bluey is-

I miss those kid days and yet I'm so happy I'm not there anymore. But you know what? As great a work of art as Cho-Cho and Bo Burnham is, Bluey is a juggernaut. Bluey is one of the best animated shows of all time. It's amassed half a billion views. It is considered one of the best shows on television now.

And it comes from Queensland, Australia. It's the biggest show in the history of the Australian broadcasting company. The creator is Joe Brum. And he is like kind of this dad that geeks out on play and learns about play. And that's what's so beautiful about this. It's a family of four.

You've got an older girl named Bluey, the younger girl about four years old. So like a six-year-old and a four-year-old, four-year-old named Bingo. And then you have the dad. The dad is named Bandit. And I'm spacing on the mom's name. And Bandit is arguably the best,

that's what called, the Guardian calls them arguably the best screen dad of all time. comes up with the most amazing games and so like dad goals wise bandit is the man but what's great about it is it's hilarious and it's beautiful and it's fun and anyone of all ages could watch it my four-year-old nephew turned me on to it zoom is too young to even enjoy it, but April and I watch it ourselves because it's that good. And these days, Hollywood A-listers are gunning to be

in guest roles for season three. And I think it just shows you what I'm getting out of it is how much play can do for not just the kids, but for the grownups and what kind of that space it opens up in your brain. It's so realistic, even though it's just these four dogs and it's very touching. So that has been high on my list,

but also watch last night, the first episode of the 100 Foot Wave. You heard of this documentary series on HBO. It's the Nazare doc. Yeah. And episode one is a great history of big wave surfing, including the toe in intervention that Laird and his crew was part of.

And it's mostly focused though on Garrett McNamara, who by that time was kind of 35 year old pro surfer that had opened up a shop because he needed to make money and he had kids. And he never really wanted to be the shop owner. The shop was doing fine, but he didn't really love that life. And then all of a sudden he's on the beach

when Laird and his guys are out on a Zodiac getting pulled into the mountains beyond the regular surf break. And it just opened up his whole mind and possibility. And Garrett McNamara is the first guy to get barreled at Jaws. And he was approached about, and this is something that in my Maya Gabera story

that I got into, just a local guy in Nazare sent him an email and started to say, hey, you gotta come surf these waves. He was like the first guy to surf that wave. Not just, so he's not just the first guy to surf it, but he built the entire infrastructure of how to surf it. So he went over there, he studied the wave with hydraulic and whoever hydro, whatever, the people who,

the engineers that understand how the wave was made, he studied it with academics. He then went to the local kind of motorcycle dealer and got that, figured out a way to get jet skis and get funding for the jet skis. He taught local people how to ride the jet skis and how to be safety people. He found other surfers to come in,

including Andrew Cotton, who was a plumber in Devon, a young plumber in Devon, but also was riding big waves in Ireland with his buddy. And none of his Hawaiian friends would come over. He invited everyone, all the big names, none of them would come over, none of them believed him. And so he called these two guys he'd never met, they did a Skype call, invited them over

and together surfed this wave, so at its biggest. And eventually he sets the record and that'll be part of this documentary and then I'll go forward from there. But he eventually set the world record there at 78 feet, which is why he was on CNN. Is that still the record? No, the record has, it's like,

I think someone finally did get the a hundred foot wave last year, last winter, but I'm not a hundred percent sure on that. Don't quote me, but I think there's an argument that someone maybe eclipsed it, but it just gets into how he built the entire infrastructure, his intensity, his greatness as an athlete, as a leader,

which I was able to interview him for the Maya story. So I knew a little bit about that, but I wasn't really fully prepared to see it. And part of the reason it's more impactful when you see that is because there's so much archival footage. Again, incredible archival footage of him from way back with he and his family

and how they put this whole thing together in Nazare. And so that's just episode one. Philip Glass does the score. Wow. The photography is insane. Who produced this and where is it available? It's on HBO. So it's HBO Max.

How many episodes is it gonna be? I don't know how many episodes. I should study up more before I get here. Yeah, next time I'll- HBO likes to drip these things out. I prefer the Netflix model. Just put it all out at the same time, you know, and let people binge it.

Let's see. I have had some emails with Garrett over the years about getting him on the podcast. So that's renewed my enthusiasm for learning more about this. He's such a, and he's a great interview and he'd love to talk about this. And what's amazing is what he told me

that's quoted in the New York Times piece was, no one believed him. And he's like, why not? Like Mavericks gets 60, 80 feet, like once every few years, you might get 60 foot waves, you get 60 foot waves in Hawaii every, not all the time, but it does happen, but it's not very common. And here in Azariah, it's like 60 to 80 feet,

30, 40 times a year. And so it's like- I think no one believed him. Well, it doesn't, it's different. It's not a reef break, it's a beach break. So it's harder to, it doesn't have the traditional thing where you know where it's gonna break, you know where the channel is.

That's part of what's interesting in this first episode is coming to terms with the fact that it's a beach break. So the break moves. And so there's not really one safe area and safe zone. And it's a different shape than a lot of these waves. And so that, I think that was some criticism. Like it didn't seem like the typical barrel. And there was just a lot of excuses,

but Garrett, I was always like, no, no, no. It's always been like the epic ride. Well, I'm definitely gonna check that out. I think that concludes our summer screener list. That was a good one. What do you think? You did have a parting shot though. My parting shot?

Oh, yes. Is there too much content, Beau? Can there be too much content? I think the better question is, will there ever be a monoculture again? Like we grew up in an era where there are huge hits and whether it was a movie or a TV show or an album that came out that everyone would talk about

at the same time. And I think with few exceptions, that's a bygone era. And I think the trend is gonna be more content and more specialization. And that makes it less likely that we're gonna have a shared experience in terms of entertainment, books, movies, television, music. And is that, I think the, and even the bigger question is,

is that a good thing or a bad thing? Or is it just a thing? It is definitely a thing. Yeah. And is that, I think the, and even the bigger question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Or is it just a thing? It is definitely a thing. Yeah. It's the 15 minutes of fame. I don't know if it's just a thing. Is it just a thing? Yeah, until ultimately every single person

will just have their own unique silo and we'll all be, we'll be living in 10 billion different silos. And we'll only be watching our own silo. We'll be watching ourselves like Bo Burnham, locked in his house and inside. How's it going this week? Well, I had one view and one list, one download.

I was my own view. I got five stars. Or everybody watches everybody else's thing one time. So everybody gets one view, but that one view isn't you. I don't know how that works. Welcome to the internet. Yes. We're all living in our own private Truman show,

self-aware yet unable to escape. Could I interest you in everything all of the time? A little bit of everything all of the time. All right. We're like two hours into this and we have a long way to go. Oh, awesome. Wait, is that good? I don't know.

I'm gonna feel like Beau at the end. Or is it just, it just is. It just is. Right. Well, let's pivot. We got a few wins of the week. We can rifle through these pretty quickly, but we've gotta get through them

because I can't do a podcast and not talk about this stuff. First up, of course, yesterday, the Tour de France concluded. Adam, I know you're allegiant to free diving. So I'm not sure if you're aware of this bike race that was happening over the course of the last month. I used to love that, the Phil Liggett commentary on the old Tour de France.

I've got a good Phil Liggett story. Oh, really? First of all, Phil- Is he still around? Yeah, Phil Liggett is around. I mean, Paul Sherwin died. I think he died. He died, I can't remember how many years ago.

I think he had cancer, but they used to do it together. And Phil, them together, I mean, all time, like the greatest. Remember the John Tesh, Phil Liggett stuff on like, why we're the sports? Like they covered that. I don't remember that. I think they covered it. I don't remember that, but nobody,

there is nobody like Phil Liggett who can keep you occupied and fixated for six hours straight while cyclists are riding through cornfields past old fortresses and castles and just regale you with endless stories. I mean, it is an unbelievable talent. He is the goat. But several years ago,

I took the boys to the Tour of California, Tyler and Trapper. We joined my friend, John Moffitt. And I'm friendly with Craig Hummer who was doing commentary at the time. And Paul and Phil were in the booth. We were in Solvang. It was the time trial of the Tour of California.

And Craig Hummer came out and then Paul Sherwin came out and Trapper who's really great with voices and impersonations, does an unbelievable Phil Liggett impersonation. So I was like, Trapper, you gotta do your Phil for Paul. So he did it and Paul was like, come with me. And he takes us into the booth and Paul Sherwin's like, Phil, Phil, you gotta hear this. You gotta hear this.

I mean, Trapper's like 14, 16 or something like that. And Trapper goes into a full Phil Liggett routine for him. And he was just delighted. That's amazing. Such a highlight. We were talking about it last night at dinner. That's amazing. Anyway, do you know who won the Tour de France?

I know he was Slovenian. I'm talking about the Tour de France? I know he was Slovenian. I'm talking about the Tour de France, not the Tour de France, the Tour de France. The original Tour de France. Not Le Tour. I'm talking about- The Alt Tour. The Alt Tour.

I can't, is it something Morton? Lachlan? Lachlan Morton. Lachlan Morton. This is an unbelievable story. I'm working really hard to get Lachlan Morton. Lachlan Morton, this is an unbelievable story. I'm working really hard to get Lachlan on the podcast cause I got to know more about this. For those that don't know,

Lachlan Morton is a professional cyclist on the EF, Education Nippo team. He was not picked to be on the Tour de France team. And this guy being no stranger to all manner of crazy ultra endurance challenges. He held the Everesting record at one point. He's done all kinds of cool stuff. Decided that he wanted to ride the entire Tour de France

course solo and unsupported in this beautiful nostalgic throwback to the spirit of the original Tour de France, which started in 1903 when it really wasn't a professional affair, it was really devised to sell newspapers and was populated by cyclists who were kind of like blue collar guys who were just out there hustling to do something hard and make a little prize money.

So he goes off and rides 3,424 miles by himself. Not only does he ride every stage of the Tour de France, he rides all the transitions in between. And for a lot of these stages, there's like hundreds of miles in between where they finish and where they start the following day. So 3,400 miles, 215,000 feet of climbing, the entire route plus the transitions.

And he beats the Tour de France to Paris by several days. And he arrived there. So the tour ended on Sunday. I think he got there like Tuesday morning or something like that, which is unbelievable. 18 days, 220 hours on the bike. 18 days, 3,424 miles. Right.

So what is that? That's like almost 200 a day, almost. Yeah, at least. I mean, his final day he rode 340 cause he was in the South of France and had to get all the way to Paris. Yeah, it's almost 200 a day. And he does it, I love this guy.

He was having problems with his knee and the cycling shoes. So he customized these Birkenstocks, he modified them so that it would alleviate the pain in his knee. And I think also to avoid some like trench foot issues. So he literally rides the whole thing in Birkenstocks. So clip in Birks. And he's sleeping, you know,

in a sleeping bag on the side of the road and he's stopping in cafes to eat. He's patching his own flats and being his own mechanic. And along the way raises $660,000 for a world bicycle relief, which purchased 4,000 bikes distributed to those challenged to increase access to education. So there's a beautiful like service element to all of this.

Which does show you how expensive bikes are these days. Yeah, I don't know what model of bike, I read it somewhere the model of bike that they're, but they basically distribute them to like kids who can't afford them, who are in impoverished areas where they can't get to school and stuff like that. I mean, this was like an internet phenomenon, first of all, like people-

Bigger than the tour on the internet. People were losing their minds. Yeah, EF, the team reported, I mean, look, the Tour de France is on NBC every day. So that's reaching, you know, a ridiculous amount of people. But in terms of EF zone, social media feeds, they reported that their social media posts that involve what Lachlan was doing outperformed posts

that they were sharing from the actual tour to France by a vector of two to one, which is fascinating. So the question becomes, what can we learn from this? Well, Jason Gay at the Wall Street Journal has some thoughts on that. The Wall Street Journal and Jason covered this extensively. I think he wrote three articles about this, but he essentially says like,

this is a model for how a modern sports operation can widen its ambitions and grow its audience. This idea of this authentic homespun adventure that is accessible to people that they can follow online, that they feel an emotional connection with and kind of in an aspirational sense, feel like perhaps they could do one day as well. Like nobody's gonna be able to, you know,

hammer the individual time trial at the Tour de France at 40 miles an hour. But the idea of just getting on your bike with a sleeping bag and riding around France until you finish is aspirational enough that I think it really engendered that kind of grassroots. It's the iron cowboy effect. Digital support. Same idea.

Same idea. Except in one case, the tour and the professional people associated with it are promoting it and want it to happen. And the other people, the Ironman people are like pretending it's not happening. Yeah. Well, maybe it would be different

if you could sign up for the Tour de France if you just paid enough money. You know, that's the difference. Like Ironman is, they didn't wanna cannibalize their brand. I think they were short-sighted in that regard. It's a little bit different here. But I think the point being, and this is the point that Jason Gay is making, like this should be studied in business regard. Right. It's a little bit different here. But I think the point being, and this is the point that Jason Gay is making,

like this should be studied in business schools. Like every sports organization should understand that these kinds of events are percolating up. We saw it with the Iron Cowboy. We're seeing it with Robbie Ballinger. We're seeing it with Timothy Olsen and all kinds of people all over the country. And a lot of this is emergent out of the pandemic

and races getting canceled saying, I'm gonna figure out this thing for myself and I'm gonna share it transparently as it unfolds on digital media. And it's sort of like the difference between posting an image on Instagram that's highly edited and filtered and looks perfect versus an Instagram story that's just raw and on the fly and authentic.

And there's something about that rawness that we're compelled by. And I think what Lachlan did is extraordinary. I think far more difficult than people realize and just so fucking cool. To challenge the orthodoxy in this way. And so when I asked you who won the tour to France, like Lachlan Morton got there on Tuesday.

Those guys got there on Sunday. Who won the tour to France? Lachlan.on got there on Tuesday. Those guys got there on Sunday. Who won the Tour de France? Yeah, Lachlan. Yeah. So I hope to make it happen to get them on the podcast. I'm working on it because it's just a fascinating story. On the subject of the Tour de France specifically,

do we really need to spend a lot of time here? I mean, anybody who cares probably watched it on TV, but I did wanna shout out Mark Cavendish, who at 36 years of age and in the waning days of his career won four stages. He tied Eddie Merckx's record with 34 total stage wins, which is unbelievable, especially when you consider that, you know,

he basically was in this state where his career was essentially over. He hadn't won a stage in five years. He hadn't won the green Jersey. This is the second time that he's won the green Jersey. First time was 10 years ago. And he almost hung it up. He got a one-year contract with this team.

He wasn't gonna go to the tour to France. He wasn't training to go to the tour to France. And then their lead sprinter, Sam Bennett, this Irish guy, who was last year's green Jersey winner gets injured, can't attend. They elevate Cavendish to go to the tour. There was zero expectations of this guy, you know, doing anything significant.

And he ends up winning four stages, runs away with a green Jersey. I mean, it's crazy. And, you know, over the past couple of years, he's dealt with Epstein-Barr virus. He's had several crashes. There's been some depression, all kinds of stuff that would indicate that

his days of being in top form were in the rear view mirror. So how can you not love that story? It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. A little bit of drama. He threw a tantrum a couple of days ago in front of a bike mechanic. People lost their minds a little bit on Twitter.

Oh, did they? There's a lot of bagging on him. But listen, man, you don't win the green jersey a second time and win four stages unless you're a bit of a perfectionist. And so he had a little bit of a hothead moment. Who cares? Get over it. Right.

You know, he's always been on Instagram. He's always talking about his teammates and how much he loves them and how grateful he is for all their support. So I think he just had a moment. Right. You know. You don't have to be. He's always been on Instagram. He's always talking about his teammates and how much he loves them and how much, how grateful he is for all their support. So I think he just had a moment, you know. You're allowed to have moments in life. I mean like.

We have to allow people. We have to allow people to be not nice sometimes. It's okay. He regretted it. He apologized. I think that apology was genuine. Who knows? You know, these guys are exhausted.

We're not talking about him because he's the nicest guy in town. We're talking about him because he did something only Eddie Merckx had done before. Right, exactly. Speaking of doing something only one other person had ever done before, my favorite kind of emergent talent out of the tour

is Wout van Aert. This guy's unbelievable, 26 years old, not a newcomer to the Tour de France. He's been around for a little bit, but he won a sprint stage. He almost won a second sprint stage. He almost out sprinted Cav in another sprint stage. So he almost took home two sprint stages,

but he also won a mountain stage, a climbing stage where he broke away from the pack and he won the individual time trial, which is like unbelievable, like the versatility of this guy. So he won the final time trial, which is like unbelievable, like the versatility of this guy. So he won the final sprint stage on the final day on the Champs-Élysées beating Cav. Nobody has won a sprint climbing and time trial stage

since Bernard Hinault in 1979. So to me, that's super exciting to watch him. And of course we have Tadej Pogacar on a second win. This kid's only 22 years old, second yellow Jersey from Slovenia. They make them hard in Slovenia. I can tell you there's a lot of crazy ultra endurance athletes,

exceptional ultra endurance athletes from Slovenia. There's another Slovenian we're gonna talk about in a little bit. There is, isn't there? Before we do that. Yeah, so this guy, yellow jersey, but also the white jersey, cause he's the outstanding young rider and the polka dot jersey winner.

I mean, where does this guy go from here? To a bigger closet. He's gotta get one of those Home Depot closet installers. Just like he needs a bigger closet cause the closet space in Europe is smaller. Okay, I don't know what you're talking about. You said where he goes from here. He's got all these jerseys.

He does, yeah. I'm sure he'll hang them on his wall or do something. But unbelievable performance. He was never really challenged at all throughout this whole thing. So he's set up for perhaps like, he set up for potential, a couple more of these. Legend, legendary status.

I did wanna shout out the announcers. Like we're unplugged at our house. So I don't have television. I don't even know if I have like an NBC streaming, I don't have Peacock or anything like that. But when I was in New York City, like I said, I would go home every night and watch the tour. And went into that thinking,

how exciting is this tour gonna be? I hadn't really been following cycling that closely, but I thought it was a super exciting tour. And I think that the commentators deserve a lot of credit for that. Again, you know, Phil Leggett being the goat, but right next to him, Bob Roll, my namesake. You know how many times I get discounts

and when I go into bike shops, when I go into a bike shop and I need to buy something, invariably they're like, are you related to Bob Roll? And you say yes. I say yes and I get a discount. Paul Burmeister, who I was not familiar with, but also Christian Vandevelde, shout out to Christian. Those guys did an unbelievable job.

Right on. Thank you for riveting me. What else we got to talk about? Well, we have Hard Rock 100. Yes. So Hard Rock 100, 100 miles, 33. Turning into an endurance report card here on everything that's going on.

But yeah, Hard Rock 100 was this past weekend. This race, I can't wrap my head around how difficult this race must be. It's a 100 mile foot race with 30,000 feet of elevation gain at 11,000 feet of altitude. And they haven't run this race in the past couple of years. In 2019, there was snow and some risk of avalanche,

so they canceled it in 2020. Of course, COVID ended that from happening. So it hasn't happened in a little while, but it was a pretty exciting race this year. The top three men all broke the previous counterclockwise record of 23 hours and 28 minutes up by Killian Jornet in 2015. In first place, this guy, Francois Dehaine,

finished in 21 hours and 45 minutes, which is the fastest time ever. I guess the clockwise version of the race, they alternate year by year is a little bit easier. And Killian had that record at 2241. But it's a huge accomplishment when anyone runs 100 miles in under 24 hours. And these guys are getting 33,000 feet of elevation gain.

And this guy does it in 21 hours and 45 minutes. Like it just bends my mind. That's another level. Yeah. And second place went to Dylan Bowman, podcaster, podcast fan, I think. What's up Dylan? 22 hours and 45 minutes.

He'd never done that race before. So that's a huge accomplishment for Dylan and super cool to see. Unfortunately, Courtney DeWalter, that podcast is going up August 2nd, I think. We recorded it a while ago. Hard Rock was one of two races that Courtney was really keying in on for this year.

She was running in fourth place overall. Like so Dylan Bowman, Ryan Smith and Francois were the only ones ahead of her. Wow. But started having stomach issues and at 62 miles she dropped out. So that's a bummer for her. So I hated to see that.

You can't eat or drink, you can't. You're done. You're done. Yeah, I think stomach issues turned into some other kinds of issues and it was just the right thing to pull out. She's running UTMB in August. So back to the drawing board and hopefully she's healthy and figures all that stuff out

so that she can crush it there. But the woman who won, this woman, Sabrina Stanley, she's the returning champ, did it in 27 hours and 21 minutes. Like it's just mind bending to me, like at this kind of altitude and this kind of elevation gain that these people can run that fast.

So anyway, that's that, that's cool. I wanted to update everybody on Jason Caldwell. We talked several weeks ago about the great Pacific race, Jason and his teammates, Angus Collins, Gus Barton, and Duncan Roy, who were attempting to break the record for how do you call it? Like the fastest ever to row from San Francisco who were attempting to break the record for, how do you call it? Like the fastest ever to row from San Francisco to Hawaii,

which I guess is the Guinness record for human powered crossing of the mid Pacific. They completed it. It's 2,400 nautical miles. Only 50 have attempted this. They met all kinds of weather and huge swells and all that kind of stuff, but they broke the record by nine days,

which is insane. Unbelievable, I was following that story with you. And I mean, that's just incredible, nine day record shatter. So now- How long were they out there? Let's see, they started May 31st and they finished, what day did they finish? I don't know the cumulative time.

They've been done for a little while. So like it was like 28 days or something like that. I saw an interview with Jason and he was saying that the big challenge immediately was that they can't walk. Like they haven't like literally other than walking from one end of the boat to the other, they haven't walked in a month. Jelly legs.

They have to figure out how to walk. And there's some kind of weird atrophy and all the weight loss that they experience. Is that right? So they're like just torsos on twig legs kind of cruising around. I don't know. But rowing requires a lot of leg strength too.

So I don't know how that works. So maybe it's just the- Different types of muscles. We can get them like a certain kind of, like one of those sit down bicycles. They can get around that way. Oh, recumbent. Yeah, they're in recumbent space.

I can see you on a recumbent. No, you can't. Going up and down PCH. Never in a million years be seen on a recumbent. Weird beard and the little rear view mirror. If this experiment renting the family house goes awry, I could escape on a recumbent. The recumbent bicycle is a close cousin

to the snorkel mask. It's the cycling version of swimming snorkel mask. Not in my world, my friend. So like cyclists look at recumbent cyclists the way swimmers look at people that wear snorkel masks. Maybe that'll help you understand. I'm glad the mask came back. I'm bringing the mask to Cho's house.

I didn't plan that. It came back very organically. Yeah, good job. I'm glad it's back. The audience demands it. Speaking of my swim mask, there's been a free diving competition going on. Yeah.

Vertical Blue, which is- We couldn't get through this podcast been a free diving competition going on. Vertical Blue, which is- We couldn't get through this podcast without a free diving update. Listen, Vertical Blue is the tour de France of free diving, baby. It takes place in Long Island, Bahamas at a place called Dean's Blue Hole,

which is just off the beach, steps off the beach. There's a sink hole, like a limestone hole that goes down to 202 meters. So 630, 660 feet, whatever that is. And they drop a line. William Trubridge, one of the best in the history of the sport, lives there, discovered the place as a freediving destination,

created the infrastructure for it, much in the same way that Garrett did for Nazare, Will did for freediving. And what's beautiful about it is there's no current. So like conditions are always good. I mean, sometimes the visibility is better than others and it's always nicer to have some viz. But really when they're going deep,

it doesn't matter that much, only matters for the pictures. And this year is seeing some of the most incredible records that I can't remember seeing this many records. So I'm gonna have to put on my phone. So I don't miss anyone because it's a big deal and everyone needs the recognition. But let's start with Alexey Molchanov,

who we've talked about before, who is the record holder for two of the three disciplines on the men's side, the constant weight record, which is a monofin. Basically they call it constant weight because anytime you do competitive freediving, whatever weight you swim down with, you have to bring up with you.

So really all the dives are constant weight. It's just a bad name for, it should be called the monofin. There's no event where you're carrying some big weight and then when you get to the bottom, you drop it and come back up. That used to be the way. So in the early days, like in Big Blue, where that was, you know, the early days of free diving,

they were competing in variable weight, which is that. You could take a weighted sled down and then swim back up. Now it's all swim down, swim up. And so he broke his constant weight record, which was 130 meters. He got to 131 meters. But more impressive than that in certain ways, it was his free immersion dive,

which is you pull down along a line, free fall to the bottom, get your tag and you pull a line, not wearing any fins at all. You pull a line all the way back to the surface. He did that to 126 meters and the dive was four minutes and 45 seconds. And it looked like he'd walked around the block.

I mean, obviously it was incredible, but to be underwater and doing that kind of physical activity that long, it's just remarkable. This guy- Four minutes and 45 seconds. Four minutes, 45 seconds. This guy is doing things that just haven't seen before. You know, he's broken the record on bi-fins dynamic.

He's broken the record in ice and he's doing it all. The only thing he doesn't have is the constant no fins record, which is still Wills. I think it's 102 meters and that's the on the men's side, but Alenka Artnik, which we've also talked about her, she's a Slovenian. And when I was covering the sport for one breath, Alexi's record was still at 128 meters.

So it was still close. Alexi's mom, Natalia Molchanova, the most decorated in the history of the sport had the constant weight record on the women's side at 101 meters. Now the thought was she could have gone much deeper than that. She just didn't have to. And that's been Alexi's philosophy too. Why should I put the effort out to break the record just to push it a meter when no one's threatening it? But lately, Alenka Artnick and Alessia Zaccini, an Italian have been pushing each other. And on this, at the beginning of this,

I wrote about Alenka when she got to 114 meters in the red sea earlier this year. Alessia Zaccini was in Italy during lockdown. She couldn't, she can go anywhere. She couldn't train in anything but like a 60 meter pool that Italy has finally when they opened up and she's watching Alenka do amazing things. Well, on day one of vertical blue,

she hit 115 meters and broke the record, got the record. It was a 114 before that. So she broke it by a meter. And she held it for about 10 minutes and Alenka got in right after her, hit to 118. And then just the other day, two days later, got to 120 meters. So she continues to advance to levels.

Those are huge gains. It's huge numbers. I look at Alenka as potentially the biggest threat to Alexi's overall record, just because she's showing- She's improving at that rate. She could get to 131. Because she has the capacity to equalize

and she's coming up without threat of blackout. So she's got something down, some relaxation, some power, unbelievable athlete. Today, Alessia was set to dive to 118 meters. So I think she's still trying to go for it. Meanwhile, Alessia also broke the no fins record on the women's side at the same competition, 74 meters without any fins.

And she did that as a tribute to the person who held it before, which is Sayuri Kinoshita, who died very young in a freak, not a diving accident at all, just a freak accident in her home in Japan. And so Alessia kind of gave that shout out on her social media.

So we'll link to all the social media accounts that we're mentioning here. That's true. Two other records to note. One is a bi-fins record for men, Arnaud. I'm gonna space on his last name. Arnaud has got to 116 meters, on 116 meters with Bifins and another French woman

who I had not kept track of before. She broke the women's side on Bifins. And so, we'll link to all of these accounts to make sure that. But we have a link as Instagram up here. It looks like it's like a five minute video, but did you wanna show us a little bit of that? Let's look at it.

This is what the Dean's Blue Hole with a monofin dive looks like. And you'll see her at the beginning, kind of breathing up on the surface. So for people that are listening and not watching, what's the Instagram account? It's at Alenka underscore, I think. Yeah, at Alenka underscore Artnik, A-R-T-N-I-K.

So there she is, she's going down. I mean, we're not gonna watch all five minutes of this, but there's no line here. I don't see a line. There is a line. You can see it kind of see. Oh, there it is. Yeah, you see it. And so she's just passing the sand falls. So as you go down in this limestone hole,

sand continues to pour off these cliffs and it looks like the photo negative of a waterfall. To be in this place, it's magic. I mean, look at that. And look at her elegant kind of movement. So 120 there is showing the depth. No, the depth is here. Oh, it's the 40.

It's taking up there. And then you have the second. So the idea is to go a little faster than a meter. 120 is the record. 120 is the record. That's what she's going for. Right. Arnaud Girard is the bifins record on the men's side.

And he got to 116 meters. And Alexi has told me he's maybe going for the Bifins record also. So he, so Arnaud has to watch his back on that. So she, oh wait, she hit it. Like, let's see where she eclipses the record there. She gets all the way down. So in order to get the record,

it's not just getting to the bottom. You have to make it to the, you have to make it all the way down. So in order to get the record, it's not just getting to the bottom. You have to make it all the way back to the top unassisted. And then you have to demonstrate to the judges that you're still lucid. Right. You can't black out. If you black out, you're DQ. You're DQ.

So it basically is, it disincentivizes you from pushing too hard. Yeah, because if you don't make it through unscathed, it doesn't count. On the women's side, Alice Madolo, who's a dentist in France, and she did the women's bifins record to 95 meters. Because if you're looking at this,

it does help to have the monofin, it's much bigger, it's much wider. And when you do the dolphin kick, you're just pushing so much more water. She has a pretty wide kick. I mean, there's different types of monofins also that vary in their flexibility. But the key is, they can also use,

they can expend a lot of energy because they're relying on your thighs and your core to propel you. So if you really put your energy into it, you can deplete yourself very quickly. But if you have a very malleable fin and you have a very slow, graceful, methodical kick to it, you can move, and this is what they're perfect at,

of moving expeditiously without oxygen expenditure. Well, yes, but I mean, remember, she's been underwater for two minutes already or like almost two minutes. And then she has to start kicking all the way back. And you've already been, you've been holding your breath that long and now you have to sprint basically.

And without taking a breath. She's breaking the surface here. It's been three minutes and 20 seconds. Yeah, 28 I think. She has to flash the sign, take everything off her face and say, I'm okay. First you have to demonstrate like motor acuity, right? Like if you're able to take your stuff off and show, right.

You have to clear your face of all equipment, flash the okay sign and say, I'm okay. And show the tag. Do people ever do that and then blackout? If they don't, then they have to hold it for like 10 seconds. That's why there was a delay there before the judge gave it to them.

The judge wants to know that they're not going to do that. Usually by the time you're to this and you're like, I'm okay, that's when you're gonna blackout by then. So I've seen near and west. Wow, that's cool, man. Yeah. Awesome. That's it. All right, vertical blue update complete. I've seen near- Wow, that's cool, man. Awesome. That's it. All right.

Vertical blue update complete. I think we've done our, this has been an endurance roundup like no other. We had a whole thing we were going to talk about the Olympics, but we're at like over two and a half hours here. Let's get to the listener questions and we can table the Olympics for next time because there's going to be a lot of Olympic stuff to

talk about in the weeks to come. All right. Listener questions. Eric from South Bend, what do you got? Hi, Rich and Adam. This is Eric Leif. I'm calling from South Bend, Indiana. My question is about parenthood. Adam, like you, I also became father of this pandemic. this pandemic. And as difficult as the pandemic was, the one positive was that it allowed me to be present for my family in a way that I would never have thought possible.

You mentioned that you recently went on a trip out to see the Iron Cowboy, and it was your first business trip since the pandemic began. So I'm calling to see what sort of advice both of you have for parents who maybe got used to being ever-present for their children, being hands-on. What tips do you have and advice for transitioning back to normal post-pandemic life where we're required to be gone from the nine to five and transitioning back to what would be a more normal parenting children relationship. Thank you for all you do, Rich. I've been listening since 2016. And Adam, I love Can't Hurt Me, especially your reading of it. Fantastic. Both of you have done so much for my personal development. I really appreciate it. Thanks and roll on. Excellent. Yeah. You are a very good reader.

Thank you. And when you say such nice things to me, your odds really shoot up about being played on the air. Is that what it is? No, I didn't even- Adam is the one selecting these things. I didn't even see that until just now. No, it's cool. You deserve it. Thank you. Thanks, Eric. Yeah, it's a great question.

Do you wanna go first? I feel like on some level he's speaking to you because you have young kids and I can chime in, but maybe you wanna lead out here. Well, I guess my lead would be, I think it works. Like it takes communication and write up like for Iron Cowboy when it was even a discussion

or a possibility, we were talking about it. And then as it approached and we picked our dates, there was still discussion of it. In the end, we found a way to make it work for all of us. So when it came to our trip, we actually got April and Zuma in with the grandparents and situated so she had support and backup for that specific trip.

But in general, in terms of getting back to what we're more used to, it hasn't really, like when I'm home working, I still have my chunks of time with him. So I do the breakfast, I do breakfast and play with him in the morning. Then I do work all day. Sometimes I'll do a run with him

in the stroller in the afternoon. And I'm in charge of kind of late afternoon into dinner and bath time and that kind of stuff. So we chunk the day out. And if I'm in town working, I can plug into those chunks. Like when I'm here at the studio and I don't get back until after five or close to five o'clock,

that's more like the nine to five schedule. Then I'll still come in and I'll still manage everything before dinner, getting him ready for food, doing the bath time and transitioning towards bedtime. I'll do that. So that doesn't change. So to me, like the way I look at it is, how can you chunk out the day

so that you plug in where you can, so that he still has a hands-on experience with his dad, so that your wife or partner has some sort of dependence that she's not in it on her own and how else you can do it. And the other thing that we're doing is we're kind of trying to get other childcare going. So we've been engaging with nanny stuff and we have a nanny now that we think is working,

but he's been a pandemic baby. So he hasn't been super comfortable with other adults. Really, he loves other kids, but other adults. Right, hasn't acclimated to having other people around. And so we're in the position where we can have childcare, professional childcare, but it hasn't really been super smooth to implement that. So we're hoping that that helps

because April needs a break too, so we can bring our best to Zuma and Zuma needs to be comfortable with other human beings and be confident in different settings. So, my best advice to you is, I was really hungry to get back out and reporting in a different way and not just because I was like home with the family,

but because the pandemic itself had made me hungry to get back in the human connection and not just report from the desk. And so I really had a good experience with it. It worked out great for all involved. We didn't miss a beat. I am parent B, so April does such a great job that it makes my job a lot easier.

And so in my house, she's the lead and I just try to help where I can. And so that hasn't changed. So I don't have any specific advice for you other than make sure that you chunk out the time and show up for your periods. Yeah, I think that's good advice. I mean, I think the first thing that I wanna say on this is,

and I'm not the first person to say this certainly, but this idea of back to normal, I get where you're coming from, like this idea that we're headed back into some version of what we experienced pre-pandemic, but I would encourage you to try to find other phraseology for that, or to think about it a little bit differently,

because no matter what is to come, I don't think it's accurate to say that we're going back to normal, or at least we shouldn't be going back to whatever that was prior. And my hope is that, you know, even if you must return to an office and a more typical nine to five experience,

I mean, Adam, I think your words are wise, but you do have an interesting career in that you don't go and sit in a cubicle in an office building all day. It's different. You have a little bit more domain and control over how you structure your day. But in this particular context, Eric,

that you seize the moment, the opportunity that you've been given to take this experience that you've had over the last 18, however many months, the lessons that you've learned along the way and the tactics that you've kind of honed throughout the pandemic to reframe your relationship to work in the workplace

and how you relate to your kids. So I guess what I'm saying is, what has your experience been over the last 18 months? How has that changed or improved how you relate to your kids? How has it changed or informed your relationship to work? And now that things are presumably opening back up, how can you take that into this next phase

so that you're not just pivoting back to what happened prior to the pandemic, but creating something entirely new. Secondly, I don't wanna hold myself out as a parenting expert. The pandemic has been really hard on our kids. They're at an age right now where they really don't want me talking about them

on the show, so I'm not gonna go into specifics other than to say, it's been really challenging for them, for us as a family, figuring out, you know, Julie and I's parents trying to figure out how to best support them. And that being said, yes, of course, I think a lot of parents have experienced more present time with their kids by dent of sheer proximity, if nothing else, just being in the house with your kids all the time.

For me personally, this is unlikely to change that much because my work life is not gonna change that drastically other than travel, but I have been doing my thing the way I was doing it before kind of throughout the pandemic period. But I think what I wanna say is that when you venture back into the workplace in a more conventional way,

that that connection with your kids that perhaps you're getting less of all of a sudden, I want to encourage you to think about it from a different perspective, not from a perspective of time spent or volume of time spent and more about the quality of the time that you do spend with them. So as you weather this transition

to less total time spent together, I think it would be advisable to increase the presence of mind that you bring to the time that you do spend I think it would be advisable to increase the presence of mind that you bring to the time that you do spend together. Because I think how present you are with them when you're with them is the most important thing. Like, can you completely give yourself over to their cares and their interests when you're with them,

unclouded by distractions like your phone or distractions like your to-do list. How present are you actually when you're with your kids? And I think the quality of that interaction is what you should focus on because you're gonna have less control over the volume piece of it. Like when Zuma's playing with the doorstopper,

boing, boing, boing. And listen, when your little kid is like doing something, yeah, you're like, this is like, yeah, but you could be like, I have no interest in this. I'm gonna look at my Twitter, or like, well, my kid is doing this, I'm with my kid. But how can you really be present for that experience and find a way to be compelled or interested in that

when it's happening. And I think ultimately a lot of parents like sort of wring their hands and feel guilty about not being with their kids all the time, or there's gonna be some separation anxiety when the kid is acclimated to that. But I think ultimately, you know, as somebody who has older kids,

what's more important is to be a living example in the world of somebody who is fulfilled and purposeful and, you know, out there, you know, pursuing something aspirational, whether it's through career or other interests and to, you know, be a living embodiment of that, I think is powerful for the child. It's less about, it's not really about like, oh, I spent all day with my kid, then making sure that that time spent is quality and that the kid is aware, like when you're not there, you're doing this thing that, you know, engenders their respect.

I think that's, you know, a really key thing, because if you're at home, but you're depressed, you're spending more time with your kid, but you're not in a good frame of mind, what's better? Well, going out in the world and coming home fulfilled, I think, and being available to your kid for their needs in those moments, I think is really more important. And I would say also, to extend that a little bit,

and as a parent of kids who are older, like, and as trite as this sound, like time goes crazy fast. Your child changes with such rapidity. I mean, Zuma is in a phase right now where I'm sure week to week, you know, you can gauge those differences. Oh yeah. And thinking more about that, you know,

I think will help you, you know, understand the profundity of it and that you really do wanna be there for all of it to embrace all of those changes, to not, you know, when you're with them to not wish they were that younger version of themselves, but to meet them where they currently are. And to do this, we really have to be mindful and present.

And that might be easier when the world has stopped and harder when it resumes the velocity that's more typical. So it means like amping up or refocusing or doubling down on those practices. And I would conclude by just saying, being proactive with their needs rather than reactive is important. Understanding it's not about creating amazing experiences,

like we're gonna go on this crazy wild adventure, than just being there for the mundane. Like those mundane everyday experiences when you really show up in our present can be as meaningful and memorable and profound as the crazy rollercoaster ride or the trip to Costa Rica or whatever it is. Right.

It sounds like Eric has got a baby about Zuma's age and that he is really enjoying the hands-on and is worried about disconnecting a little bit from that to go if he has to go out back out of the house for work. But I would say just make sure for me, it's like, if you're like, okay, if I have to be somewhere at 8.30 or nine, I can still do the morning. I can own the morning.

And if you've been used to kind of sharing all day duties with your partner, you just have to chunk out the stuff you're gonna own. And that's what I've had to do from the beginning is I've been working since like the first few weeks and working in the house. Now, because I've been working in the house, I can, she can just hand them to me if she needs to,

or I can be there and I can work at night. But for the most part, I think that advice stands. And I think your advice stands too, is that means stay present and you know, it's okay to like fail at being present sometimes too. So, at least that's what I say to my wife. All right, let's move on. Moving on to West Virginia.

Zach in West Virginia. West Virginia. Hey, Rich and Adam. Love the podcast. Quick background. My name is Zach. I'm a lawyer. My wife is a lawyer

and we are vegan and raising our 20 monthmonth-old vegan. We are from wild and wonderful West Virginia. My current issue is this. I love endurance sports, running, biking, swimming, rowing, etc. I love to move. I also struggle with self-image because I'm a skinny guy. I feel that I have good muscle tone, but I'm six foot two and weigh 165 pounds. I battle with my ego and image issues internally all the time and force myself to do two to three month lifting phases to try and build muscle. The thing is, I don't really like lifting. Rich, I know you have discussed lifting more yourself this year, so I wanted to know why and if you like it. I guess what I'm asking is, what is the best way

to get over my body issues and just do what I love, which is cardio and endurance sports? Thanks, Rich and Adam. Keep up the inspiring work. I ran my first marathon because of you, Rich. If you ever get the chance, visit West Virginia. I feel like you two would love it, and I would love to host you and show you around. Peace. Plants. Zach, coming in hot with the invite to West Virginia. I want to go to West Virginia. I've been to West Virginia.

Really? I mean, I grew up in Maryland. I've been to West Virginia many times. I want to go adventuring in West Virginia with Zach. I think that would be well-advised. Yeah. Interesting question. I think there would be well advised. Interesting question. I think there's a lot to unpack here.

I think this is really not about weightlifting and whether or not you like it or can learn to love it or what my experience is with it. And really all about Zach and his relationship to Zach and these body issues. You know, I'm curious about where that comes from and what that's all about. I mean, look, you're 6'2", you're 165 pounds. So yeah, you're a skinny guy.

If you, for health reasons, if you needed to put mass on, which I'm not sure that you do, then that's one thing. But this is really all about your self-consciousness and your insecurity, because there's a lot of endurance athletes out there who would kill for that profile. Like most dudes are trying to lose weight and get lean to have that power to weight ratio that you probably have.

And to get be quicker. I mean, yeah, exactly. So the pull into the weight room to put muscle mass on feels like, A, you don't enjoy it, but do you not enjoy it because you actually don't like the physical process of lifting weights? Or do you not like it because you feel like it's counter to who you are or what you really wanna be doing,

which is out there running and swimming and biking and all of that stuff. Or do you not like it because you're not good at it? Or yeah, because as David Goggins would say, who cares if you don't like it? Like sometimes it's good to do things you don't like. Like it doesn't matter if you don't like it. It's good to be a beginner at something. Yeah, it's good to be a beginner.

And also if you continue to do it or you find a way to make it more fun by having friends or involved or whatever, you can learn to like something that originally you didn't like, especially as you develop some momentum and you start to see some gains and stuff like that. But really, I don't know that this question

is about weightlifting at all. It's really about your internal self-consciousness. Like, why are you self-conscious at this weight? It's not like you're 120 pounds, like you're skinny, but what is the genesis of that insecurity? Like, where does that come from? What is contributing to it? And how can you get honest with yourself?

How can you excavate that, get honest with yourself, work through it so that you can just be comfortable with who you are? I mean, I think that's the real weight room here, the emotional weight room. You can go into the gym and Goggins it out and put on a bunch of mass, but let's say you do that. You still haven't really,

you've then kind of put on a costume to shroud or mask whatever that insecurity is, but have you really dealt with it? Like, so I would encourage you, like, I don't know if you're in therapy or you have some tools to work through this, but perhaps do some journaling and an inventory of the things that make you feel insecure or childhood experiences that anchored, this connection that you have between your weight or your skinniness and how you see yourself or how others like interact with you.

Because really the bigger kind of challenge here is to get comfortable with who you are, no matter whether you put on mass or not. So how can you get over the issue? What drives it? And I think, you know, a good place to start with all of this is with a self-love practice. Like how can you learn to develop a greater capacity

for self-acceptance? So on that note, if you haven't listened to it already, my podcast with Kamal Ravikant could be a good place to start or re-listen to that because it was a while ago. I would suggest picking up his book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It. And I think that might give you some tools to begin this journey.

The other thing I would question or wonder is whether there's some childhood trauma here. Was there some bullying when you were a kid? Like how can you resolve whatever that is? And I don't wanna project because I don't know what that experience is or was, but how can you find a way to make peace with yourself and that past or that association that you have

between your body image and how you feel about yourself internally. Yeah, I mean, I think it's contentment in what you are and who you are and what you have. It's very easy to compare yourself to other people. It's normal. And if you're skinnier than most people at 6'2", then you might feel that way.

You know, I look at myself and wish my body was different sometimes. So I understand that impulse. What do you think about swimming for upper body building stuff as opposed to the gym? Does that work for everybody or does that not always work? It sounds like this guy's an ectomorph. So yeah, he could probably put on some mass doing that,

but if he wants to do it quickly, the gym is gonna be a better avenue. But since he enjoys swimming, if he upped his swimming volume, maybe that would help him do that. But look, swimming is an endurance event. It's an aerobic exercise in and of itself. So if mass is his big thing,

like the gym is the only way, you know, is the way to do that. Or, you know, it sounds like he's got a fast metabolism, all of this stuff. But I think all of those again, are distractions from the real issue, which is his emotional relationship with himself. Yeah, and just being happy.

I mean, it sounds like you have a great life. You do amazing stuff. You have work that it sounds like you have a great life. You do amazing stuff. You have work that's satisfying. You have a great partner. You live in a beautiful place. I mean, I'd say just ride, run and swim. If you don't like the gym, fuck it. And if you think you're skinny,

turn on the Tour de France and look at those guys. Yeah, look at the guy who won the Tour de France. Yeah, he looks like a 12 year old boy. That's not helping. That's not rich. That's not helping. He probably not rich, that's not helping. He probably weighs 120 pounds. I don't know how much he weighs, but-

Those guys are like 140s to 150s, right? Easily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they could be tall too. And lighter. Yeah, yeah. A lot of them are tall. But I grew up super skinny as well. And I wish I was still skinnier. Yeah.

I would like to be 165 pounds right now. Yeah. Sweet spot. I think 180 for me. All right. All right. Thank you, Zach. Thank you, Zach.

Last one, Chris from Rockville, California, not to be confused with Rockville, Maryland. Right. I didn't know we had a Rockville. No, Rock Lynn. Rock Lynn. This is Chris Jones from Rock Lynn, California. My question is, you know, pre-COVID,

there was some discussion. Rich was pondering having some sort of like podcast gathering or maybe setting up something different than the, for instance, the retreats, which are hard for maybe normal listeners to get to in terms of Italy or Ireland and things like that, where maybe there could be some sort of like, I don't know, some sort of gathering of wellness. And I can see Adam, maybe some sort of free dive and all sorts of fun guests and kind of a wellness explosion. It seems like we're sort of moving past.

I realize there's all sorts of concern about, there's probably some trepidation as to whether we might have some future issues with different variants and whatnot, but I'd love to see something happen where you've gathered people together, maybe on a biannual basis or something and just celebrated what you guys do. Thanks. Thank you, Chris from Rockland, not Rockville. Thanks Chris. I have put some thought into this,

but one thing I didn't ponder or think about was Adam leading a free diving symposium. Yes. Not a symposium, a mask fitting, a mask fitting experience. A mask fitting, yes. Swim mask fitting. Two day, a six hour intensive. A six hour intensive on the superiority of masks

to pedestrian goggles. I love it. Yeah, so we do do these retreats in Italy. COVID canceled last year. We're doing that one next May, but obviously those are pricey tickets and they're limited to not very many people. So how do we create experiences

that are more accessible and affordable to everybody? COVID obviously put a clamp on any of that manifesting, but when I was in New York, I had some good talks and meetings about getting the podcast tour up on its feet. I don't know exactly what that's gonna look like or when that's gonna happen. It's not gonna be for a little bit,

but for certain at some point, we're gonna take the podcast on the road and do a multi-city tour and some mid large size venues, which will be organized around some other events over the course of the day or the weekend there with a group run or et cetera, things like that. So we're working on that kind of stuff. There's possibility that something's gonna go down in New York City in the fall.

I'll keep you posted on that. I'm not sure how that's gonna pan out quite yet. I don't have details on that. In terms of other kind of wellness oriented weekend type or week long events, I can't say there's anything specifically in the works for that. I'm always trying to gauge like how my bandwidth

and how much energy and time that I have. There's some speaking stuff coming up, some travel coming up. I've got a new book coming out. So it's hard to always figure out how to allocate that time and to do it in a way that's sustainable for me and makes sense with everything else that's going on. So I appreciate the interest.

We'll put some thought into it. I think it would be cool to do some kind of, I don't know, wellness sort of retreat type thing that is not at the price point that the Italy retreat is and makes it a little bit more accessible. We had put some thought into that, basically like two years ago, doing like a camp sort of situation

where a lot of people could come and it would be more affordable, but we never got out of the gate on that because of the pandemic, et cetera. So we're revisiting all of that and I'll keep you guys posted. Ritual conference type thing. I appreciate the interest.

It's a lot of work, man. I know. And also, I mean, it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy and resources. Most of those things lose money at the same time. Is that right? So it's like, all right, podcast tour with the podcast, with the book, like how do all of these things fit

and make sense so that I don't burn out and just become exhausted. When do you need my rider for the podcast tour? When do I need to file that? Soon. Soon? Yeah, what's going on the rider? If I see any red in the,

besides the shoes that on my feet, any red at all in my dressing room, I'm gonna freak the fuck out, okay? No red, I better not see red. What else? What else? Actually, I really liked the color. I don't mean to offend people who like the color red.

Please don't cancel me for that. You have been surreptitiously canceled for not liking red, Adam. I think I'm in Bo Burnham's head. I look forward to your exciting and specific rider, but the tour will happen at some point. All right, let's do it. That's very real. And I am excited about that.

I think that's gonna be really cool. I'm gonna put together five to 10 minutes of a crowd warmup stand up for you, just for you. That is something I look forward to. All right, we gotta wrap this up. How do you feel, man? I think we did. This might've been our longest one. You know, this is what happens

when we are away from each other too long. There's a lot to catch up on. There's too much to catch up on. There's too much to catch up on. It's also boiling hot in here because we had to turn the air conditioning off. It's boiling hot. We're sweating like crazy.

And there's a lot of great athletes doing amazing stuff. Right. It's very impressive. Once you crack, it's like when you plan a wedding. Well, if I invite this person, then I have to invite this person. I can't talk about these events and I don't wanna leave anyone out.

Cause it's true. Like so many athletes are doing so many amazing things and I wanna just share love with all of them. With the Olympics on deck, it's unbelievable. Exactly. What a time to be alive, Rich. Unbelievable. In the meantime, until we're back two weeks from now,

follow Adam at Adam Skolnick on Instagram and Twitter. If you want your question fielded, leave us a message at 424-235-4626. You can check out links to everything that we talked about today in the show notes, which you can find on the episode page at richroll.com. Please don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple and Spotify,

or wherever you enjoy this content. And that's it, man. I wanna thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Blake Curtis for videoing and editing today's show for YouTube, Jessica Miranda for graphics.

We have Grayson Wilder for portraits here today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK, David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music by my boys, Tyler Trapper and Harry. Thanks, I love you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome episode. Hope you enjoyed this.

Hope you enjoyed Daniel, whom, and we got a lot more where that came from. If I smell rosemary, even the hint of rosemary in that dressing room, I don't know what I'm gonna do. You're fired. Brogan, you're in. Peace.

Plants. Thank you.