The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: Get Back (To Basics)

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

Why is creativity vital? What is the nature of culture? And why is pursuing happiness futile? Today we tackle this terrain and so much more in today’s rendition of ‘Roll On,’ wherein myself and my undefeated podcast co-pilot Adam Skolnick ‘get back’ to our original old school format. 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. Today’s discussion includes the following topics: Remembering British photojournalist Tom Stoddart & Australian swimmer Jason Plummer; The ascent of Norwegian triathlon dominance; The Kyle Rittenhouse and Ahmaud Arbery verdicts; Oscar Pistorius’ prison transfer & restorative justice; Lawsuits involving Tyson Foods and Impossible Foods; Toby Morse’s new children’s book ‘One Life One Chance’; and ‘The Beatles: Get Back’ & ‘The Velvet Underground; documentaries As always, we close things out by taking a few listener questions. Today we answer: How do optimize your caloric intake for recovery when intermittent fasting? Is happiness something that can realistically be achieved?  How do you draw a line between people-pleasing and living a life of service? Thank you to Al from Washington D.C., Kendall from Boulder, Colorado, and Abby from Colorado for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone]. To read more click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy the show! Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. All righty. After an extended series of format deviations, which were met with, let's just say, a diversity of reactions, today, roll on original quote unquote original returns featuring my favorite and let's face it, the audience favorite scuba masked Paul to my John,

kale to my read jokes, which will soon be understood, Sir Adam Skolnick, how you doing buddy? You know, Rich, I'm not gonna bore you with my problems. All right, let me just interrupt you right then there. Yeah. Because I will not allow you to bore me with your problems. Do I have a blister under my toenail?

Yes, I do. Okay, good. Anything else? Get it all out. No, I have no problems really to speak of, not in the grand scheme of things, but busy times, getting ready to go away. We're getting the first passport stamp in Zuma's booklet.

You going down south? Going down south, baby. Things are changing rapidly with the new variant, however. I know. Travel restrictions are starting to abound. They are. But Mexico has recently announced, you know, that when you're getting a flight anywhere now,

they say check on the latest whatevers. And so the new guidelines. So we click on the guideline and I'm expecting, you know, you have to get a test or proof of vaccination or whatever. And it says, Mexico has no requirements. Come on in everybody. Mexico has no requirements.

But I am hoping, I'm hopeful that the Omicron variant actually makes it counterintuitively safer in a way. Like people cancel their plans. There's not as many people at the airport. And we're going to a part of the world where they're getting 43 cases a day over the last seven days in a 500 mile region. So we're actually going to a safer place. I don't think that it's gonna chill holiday travel.

I think people are like, okay, another variant. And we've been doing this for two years. We have to live our life. Like, I don't know, you know, setting aside government imposed restrictions. I don't know how much of an impact that's gonna have on people canceling plans that they've made. Maybe not.

And are looking forward to, but we'll see. Okay, well, before we get into it, just for those who might be new or newer, roll on as our inconsistently biweekly news entertainment AMA mashup, where we loosen the metaphorical ties of it, discuss matters of import, intrigue, and nonsense, answer listener questions, have a few laughs, hopefully have a bit of fun.

And we got lots to cover today. We don't really have a big story. We just have lots of stories. We'll see how long this is gonna take us to get through, but I'm excited about today's show. Before we dive into it though, I do wanna mention that Shreemu, Julie's amazing plant-based cheese offerings,

they're in the midst of getting everything ready for the holidays. So if that's on your wishlist for the holidays, if that's a gift that you wanna give or something that you wanna enjoy yourself, you have to get your order in by December 13th. To do that, go to srimu.com, S-R-I-M-U.com. And if you use code RRP22, you get 22% off.

Just wanted to slide that in there. There's no better plant-based cheese company that I've ever tasted. And the people and the staff, just like your staff here, like just top quality people. I had a good fortune to be able to meet a couple of them and just incredible operation and a big fan. It's good stuff. Big Shremu fan.

Good people, good product, all of that. Where do we wanna begin? Anything else you wanna mention before I check in? No, it's great to be back. I appreciate the love on the onlines for the OG roll on. I even got one yesterday saying, where's the regular roll on? Right, we diverted from our format so many times

that I can't remember the last time it was just you and me. It was super fun to have Brogan here and he adds a certain flair and spice to the program. But I have to say, Adam, you have a hardcore fan base out there that are very vocal about making sure that you are in good stead. They wanna hear from Skolnick. They don't wanna a bunch of other noise.

They just wanna hear it directly from you. You know what? And I love them for it. I love you. I love hardcore fan base. I love them too. I'm getting ready to go to Austin. We're recording this on what's the date?

The 29th of November. Usually we record these on Monday and then we put them up Thursday, but we're recording this the Monday in advance because I'm gonna be out of town in Austin at the running event, which is kind of a trade show for the running industry. I'm doing that for Solomon.

So I'm gonna be there the whole week of December one. So we're front loading this a little bit, but I did wanna catch up a little bit on things that have been going on. We had a low key Thanksgiving. Julie was actually in Egypt. She just got back. She was on a spiritual pilgrimage there.

It sounds like it was an incredible trip. Maybe I'll have her back on to share. She just, she went on an insane walkabout, which was cool. By herself? No, she was with a group of people, but they were in Cairo and did all the pyramids and went down to Luxor and they were on a boat in the Nile for five days.

Like she saw like so much cool stuff. But last week I was in Vancouver, participating in the Planted Expo, which was a really cool kind of plant-based nutrition event that was put on by Steven Markovich. He's like the main guy there, which was really cool. I got to give a talk. And I also got to do a live podcast event in a church,

which was really cool for a smaller audience. Like maybe, I don't know how many people were there, 200 people or something like that. With these guys, Zach Berman and Dean Morris, who have a podcast called A Little More Good. They gave me a t-shirt, I'm rocking their t-shirt. Nice. My seersucker suit.

I love the suit. It was really fun. They haven't put that out yet. I don't know when it's going up, but I'll let you guys know. But we had a great talk and it was just nice to be amongst people and to do like a live event. Zach is a co-founder of this company called Juice Truck,

which was Canada's first cold press juice bar. Oh. He founded that in 2011, I think. And then Dean is this sort of iconoclastic pastor. Like he's a pastor, but he's a vegan and he's a runner. And he's like a Lululemon ambassador. Right. And we had a really good time.

I shared a couple pictures from that. Cool, did the planted expo do a ritual crossword because someone from them- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was for the live podcast event. I didn't end up even seeing it. And I said they would send it to me, but they did a whole crossword puzzle based on words

that I have a tendency to- Right, they messaged me- Pull out of my quiver. They asked me for a few additions. I think that those made it. They mentioned that they had spoken to you, yeah. And those found their way into the thing. And then I guess they were handing them out

in printed form or whatever. And some people were like, oh, cool. And others were like, what I have homework? Like, what do you want me to do with this? Oh, they didn't understand. Anyway, I should get my hands on that. We gotta put it up on the site. Yeah, I know.

People would love this. I know, I gotta get, all right, guys, I'm sure you're listening to this, send me that thing. Also, I wanted to thank everybody who submitted a listener story. We put the call out over the last couple of weeks to call our voicemail and leave a message with how the show has impacted you.

I think we've received something like 200. How many did we get guys? Like almost, yeah, close to 200 stories amongst them. Some pretty incredible ones. And we're in the process of editing that together for like a really cool end of year episode that we're putting together. So thank you for everybody who did that.

It's gonna be pretty special. Don't we want them to be credible though, Rich? Not incredible. We're gonna fact check. Well, you're the journalist here. You wanna fact check them, get on the phone with all these people and verify the veracity of these stories?

I just, I'm pointing out the term incredible because incredible means amazing. But it could also mean, it's also there's that other usage, which we don't really use anymore. We use it incorrectly. We use it 99.9% of the time I suspect. Yeah, myself included.

Yeah, I'm gonna check myself on that. Now, will you use superlative? That's one of yours. Well, that gets misused also. Superlatives in general get misused. Are we gonna go down the grammar rabbit hole? Sorry. Have you been, so ever since we did-

I miss you, Rich, I miss you. Ever since I shared that guy on TikTok who does the grammar stuff about bi-weekly, I started following him and he's just a constant source of enjoyment for the videos that he creates. I forget his name. We'll link it up. But you have to be on TikTok to follow him or?

No, he posts them on Instagram as well. I gotta follow him. Yeah, they're pretty good. Send me that guy again, please. We have a couple people that we'd like to remember. You wanna kick this off? Yeah, in memoriam, memoriam? In memoriam.

In memoriam, in memorial. Two intrepid souls lost. My friend, Tom Stoddard, this is his latest book. Where do I put it? I don't know. Where's the camera? He's a photo journalist who I worked with in the past. He's covered the civil war in Lebanon, the siege of Sarajevo, the fall of the Berlin wall,

the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as the original Gulf War under the first Bush, basically covered conflicts, catastrophes, social issues around the world for 40 years. But that doesn't even come into like completely paint the picture of who he was. I mean, he was so well-regarded. Tony Blair had him along with him for a week, just him in the entire day.

To photograph him. Yeah, to photograph him the entire day. He only shot in black and white for a long time. He only used Leicas. He used to quote Canadian photographer, Ted Grant. If you photograph in color, you see the color of their clothes. But if you photograph in photograph in color, you see the color of their clothes. But if you photograph in black and white,

you see the color of their soul. Just a great guy from Northern England who knocked on the door of his local paper and begged for a job. They made him an assistant photographer and basically never turned back. That was in the 70s. And I met him because in 2007, I did a story for men's health, a feature on these doctors and healthcare workers, both American and Korean in this ethnic provinces of Burma.

But a lot of them were expatriated into Thailand and their base of operations was in Mae Sot, Thailand. And Tom was the photographer that came with me on this feature as I followed them into displaced people's camps, or we did together to displace people's camps. And these were villagers who'd been, had their villages torched and were run off their ancestral homeland

and were trying to flee to the safety of Thailand, but had to live in these penned areas on the river in these camps up and where aid workers were kind of giving them food and medicine. And that was the story of Corinth State, much of Corinth State for years. And Tom and I snuck over the border. We went to this camp,

people who just had their homes burned down and spent a week together first in Bangkok, then Maysot, then in Karen State. And he was, at that time, 2007, I was still kind of wondering if this was gonna work as a job. Like I started in 2000, was writing grants and doing what I had to do.

2004, I started getting bigger publications. We started LA Yoga and all of that. But by 2007, I was still very much in the eviction notice phase and just starting with Lonely Planet. So things are just starting to get better. And Tom said, he would remind me, we are lions mate, we are lions.

Just remind me that we have to remain confident. We may have to remain optimistic. We have to be able to fight through all the adversity that comes with trying to do this job in a, you know, climate that is not conducive to that. Because if, you know, you're getting paid months after the expenses come through, nobody cares. Your bills are still due.

And then you have to deal with editors that are kind of fickle. They can be fickle. They can kill a story. They can mess with a story. Not that I have that problem with editors in general, but it does happen. And Tom used to refer to him lovingly

as the desk fuckwits. And not that he thought that of those, of the editors that he worked with, but just that it's a way of thinking so that you can maintain some sort of sanity while you go and do this. And meanwhile, you're photographing or interviewing people who've been through hell.

Most recently, his biggest story was the migration of people from Syria and until I think it was Lesbos into Greece with that massive influx. He was there for that. To see him shoot, he's rolling on the ground. I mean, he's got knee pads, he's got elbow pads. I mean, he's a full body experience. And this is into his sixties doing this.

And then I met, he had a show at the Annenberg space for photography in Century City. That's the last time I saw him. And I didn't even know he was sick. He kind of kept that under wraps. How did he perish? He had cancer and he just didn't tell anybody really. I mean, I guess his really close, close friends knew,

his wife knew. He was the type of guy, like he married the love of his life. It turned out to be, but it was his best friend's wife. And he died, the best friend died. And then he ends up marrying very Conrad anchor. Yeah. And same with Julie's dad. Yeah.

It's a similar thing. And she's now had to bury both of those guys. And so the memorial I think is today or it's this week. This is most recent book, like I said, Extraordinary Women, it's some amazing photographs. The guy's truly a legend in the business and a great, great mentor to me and a great soul. And I miss him and I love him.

And I just wanted to share who he was with you guys. Sorry for your loss. How long ago was that, that the exhibit was going on? That was 2016. So it was five years ago. Yeah, but I spoke with him. We communicated in 2020 right before Zuma was born. When this book came out.

Life is short, man. On that subject, I've got a memorial to share as well. My friend, Jason Plummer passed away this last week. Too soon. I'm not quite sure that there's clarity on how he passed away. It was either an aneurysm or a heart attack. I think he was on a stationary bike at the time.

Jason was a teammate of mine at Stanford and exceptionally talented swimmer, Commonwealth games champion, distance freestyler from Brisbane. He was on the 88 Australian Olympic team. He was world surf race champion. Like this guy was very talented, but he was also kind of a wild man.

He was a free spirit. He was the class clown. He was, I think it's fair to say, not keen on authority. He was kind of a good time Charlie and was always the life of the party. And I had plenty of good times with him. But he had this history of clashing with Skip Kenny, our coach,

who was a Marine sniper and liked to run the team. Like it was a sort of military outfit, which I mean, Skip is a very complicated person and has a very complicated legacy. He was a guy who put team above all. And I learned a lot about how you build teams and how you create cohesion amidst, amongst individuals for a greater purpose.

But he also kind of reigned on this idea of fear, which didn't really work for me. And he was a guy who, if you were a favorite of his, like it worked really well. But if you were kind of on the outs or somebody that he didn't quite get along with, it was a bumpy road. And Jason was certainly one of those people.

And there was this huge scandal in 2007, where it came out that Skip had expunged swimmers that he didn't like from the Stanford record books. Like he literally, he had beefs with certain people. And so in the media guide, he just like, they compile these lists of like top 10 times for each event. He just line item removed them from the record books.

And I think Jason might've been the one to see it and realize it. And he made us think about it because he was one of the people who had earned a spot on these lists and he had been surreptitiously removed without any explanation. It's like something out of a Wes Anderson movie.

Which is like, I mean, right. It's sort of an ego is the enemy. Like Skip had a beef, his ego got caught up in it and he made an error and he ended up getting suspended. And ultimately that was the end of his career. And that career was an incredibly successful one. I mean, he lorded over, you know, perhaps one of the most successful collegiate swim programs

in the history of collegiate swimming. I mean, he won 26 consecutive Pac-10 championships. And he was, like I had my ups and downs with him. I have friends that were on the outs with him and I have friends that loved him. And my relationship with him is fine, but he's a crusty, difficult human being. I mean, Plummer has this quote where I found it

in an article kind of getting ready for today, where he said in reference to Skip, that he was a guy with an ax to grind who has circumvented common decency. And I think you can understand why he would feel that way. But at the same time, Skip would create these kind of traditions amongst the team that really congealed us as a unit.

One of those things was called the pants. There was this pair of old sweat pants that dated back, like, I don't know when, like, like they almost felt like sandpaper. They were so old, these red sweat pants. And each year the team would vote on who would earn the right to wear those pants for the year.

And it was basically the person who had the most enthusiastic team spirit. And you would kind of have to wear them like not every day, but like most days. Like to meets and stuff? No, every day. Every day? Yeah, just wear them for like an entire year.

Oh yeah, here I found the notes. So it started, the pants were from 1967, from the 1967 NCAA championship team. My friend Sam McAdam had them one year, Mike Reynolds had them one year, and then I had them one year. So I got to wear the pants for a year. That's awesome.

But it was stuff like that, that like, you know, was sort of created by Skip, like these beautiful little things. And there was all kinds of other traditions. We would do this annual road trip and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, Skip's tenure ended in, you know, this sort of cloud of ill repute that had, you know,

no small part due to like Jason and what had gone down. But all of this to say that Jason will be missed. He really was like a larger than life character and he's gone too soon, so. Where was he living? Was he local here? In Dallas, I think he was doing like high end real estate there or something like that.

But had that kind of like Aussie spirit, where he would light up a room when he would walk into it. Sorry about that. Yeah. Here's to Stoddard and Plummer. Yeah, here's to those guys. But on the subject of talented athletes, do we wanna talk about the ascent of the Norwegians?

We must. Yeah. They've announced themselves. I don't know if they've, they have been announced. It's the age of the Norwegians on the triathlon slash Ironman landscape these days. You know, I would let Norwegians just run the world personally.

Like having met some Norwegians and seeing how they run their country. I'm open to- They make a very nice safe car. Yeah, I think I'm open to the Norwegian. Wait, is Volvo Norwegian? No, it's Swedish. Yeah, no, that's Swedish. That's a faux pas.

That's a faux pas. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Norway doesn't make automobiles. That's what I mean, they're above the fray. Well, somebody has gotta make the cars. I wonder, I know, well. So you can't have them completely run the world. No, they can be the administrators.

All right, well, let's get specific. You wanna talk about Christian first? Christian Blumenfeldt and Gustav Eden. Christian, the Olympic champ that no one expected was in his first ever Ironman. I know, the first Ironman he's ever done. He's ever entered in Cozumel. And he rocked it in a world record time of seven hours and 21 minutes.

It's not officially a world record yet because the swim, which he completed in 39 minutes for 2.4 mile swim, which is bonkers was current aided. And I think they actually measured it and it came up like 500 meters short or something like that. So it's unlikely this will ever be considered. For triathlete and said, yeah,

whether or not it will be considered a world record. I mean, it almost doesn't matter. I mean, he was like six minutes faster than the previously fastest recorded time, which was that Jan Frodeno. I think it was Jan Frodeno who gave him major props online on the socials. But the bike is four hours and two minutes amazing, but the run is what blew me away.

2.35 marathon. It's crazy. It's crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah. After a 112 mile bike ride. And also not for nothing being like really hot and humid. Right.

It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And he thinks that he could have run much faster. That's incredible to me. I know. Yeah. It's amazing, his first ever Ironman. There's some weirdness around this. Brad Culp had done some reporting on this as well,

that the Ironman organization made like no reference to this for like days. Yep. They were covering a different Ironman race that was going on at the same time as Ironman Cozumel. I mean, later on, like they ended up tweeting some stuff, but I found it to be very strange. I don't know what that is about. Do you think it has to do

with the race organizers and Cozumel? Do you think it has to do with like not being there for the course? I don't know, somebody, I tweeted this out. Like why, how come like no love from the Ironman organization for Christian's performance or even more broadly anything about I am Cozumel to begin with.

And somebody said something about how the Ironman organization had like licensed the name to the Cozumel race, but it wasn't like, it's not part of like the hardcore family of Ironman races. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know. But I don't know why that would color whether or not they would report on it

when it is an official Ironman race. I'm gonna get into it because I'm doing a story on Christian for New York Times Sports to come out in late December. It's obviously inspired by this incredible performance, which was, and I got the idea because you messaged me about it. Right.

And I'm like, oh, that is a good story. Well, and I had the opportunity to meet him. I met him at an event in Century City that was like a day or two before the Malibu Triathlon and got to chat with him a little bit. And then I saw him at the race because I was doing the celebrity relay and he was doing a celebrity relay.

So even though he went 721, let's be clear. My relay with Alexi Pappas and Mary Kane beat his relay. Alexi reminded him of that. The important thing, yes. But he's such a sweet, like sort of soft-spoken, you know, Uber talents of a guy. He's very humble and grounded. I interviewed him before and he was really cool

and accessible and I'm really looking forward to this. And he's racing again in Jacksonville, I believe in December 5th. But the key races for him are St. George in May and then Kona in October. And he's also part of this sub seven project. Do you know about this? Yeah, I've heard of it.

I think Talbot Cox told us a little bit about it when we were together in Utah. So akin to the Breaking Two project where they created a scenario conducive to Kipchoge breaking two hours in the marathon. They're doing something similar in Ironman where Christian and Alistair Brownlee are gonna go for a sub seven Ironman.

And then Lucy Charles Barkley and Nicola Spirig are gonna go for a sub eight. And they throw the rule book out, much like how Kipchoge did it on that track and he had pacers and wind blockers and all of that. They're gonna do something similar in Ironman. Peloton and Pacers. Yeah, Pacers, Peloton.

And I read an article where Christian was talking about like how that's gonna work and how he wants to use, take advantage of those tools. And for the run, he wants his high school buddy, Gustav Aiden or Eden, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, to pace him on the run. Now, Gustav, fellow Norwegian, these guys went to high school together.

They've been trained, like it's incredible. Just went 234 in his Ironman debut, which is unbelievable. On the run? No, oh, I'm sorry. He went 734, I believe. Okay, unbelievable. Sorry, I misspoke. But Gustav is a better runner than Christian.

And Christian said something in this article to the tune of like, well, Gustav can get up and run a 220 like any day of the week. Like it's no big deal. So to have Gustav pace him on the marathon, Christian thinks that he can go like 220, 225 or something like that, which is just unbelievable. Will they do a pool swim to make sure

that they don't like do too many, too long a distance? Probably not, no, I doubt it'll be in a pool, but the details of this, like the date and the venue and all of that is to be determined. Like they haven't even figured out or they haven't announced like what the course would be. But he'll get to have all of these athletes will get to have pacers on the bike.

Like if you have somebody, if you can draft on the bike, that's a huge thing. Well, it's like what we saw with James. So can Christian drop 21 minutes off his Ironman time with those extra advantages? We'll find out. But it's cool that they're doing it and it makes it exciting.

Well, it's gotta come off the, I mean, if he thinks he can shave off the run, which he says he can. So if he can shave five minutes off the run and 15 minutes off the bike. Right. I would think he could get with, I don't know if you can do a whole Peloton.

Like, I don't know how they're structuring it, but if he can just be in a pack on the bike. Or is it gonna be a Criterion or is it? I don't know, I don't know. I guess we'll find out. But the point being these Norwegian guys and there's a third guy as well are like crushing it at the moment and it's cool to watch it unfold.

It is cool. Yeah, all right, well, why don't we take a quick break and we'll be back with lots more. 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

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

and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. Thank you. disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen,

or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, and we're back. Should we talk about Kyle Rittenhouse and Ahmaud Arbery? I feel like we should, even though on the date that this comes out,

there's been a million takes on this. It's sort of been in the news cycle and we're at the risk of it, like sort of not being in the news cycle anymore. Maybe people are tired of hearing about it, but I feel like, you know, because social justice is an important theme or subject of the roll-on and the podcast in general,

that we should at least spend, you know, a couple of minutes on this. Yeah, I mean, a couple minutes on this. Yeah, I mean, I think that's how Roll On kind of started. It launched with talking about these, wrestling with these issues. And I think people wanna hear your take on it, especially as someone who was a lawyer,

you're gonna have a viewpoint on these two cases and that kind of the nuances involved. Well, what is your take on the Rittenhouse acquittal? Let's start there. It didn't surprise me. I was not surprised by the acquittal. I was, you know, I'm not surprised by it,

but it does bother me that someone who is a juvenile, who obviously has some sort of emotional problems, had someone buy him a gun and came from out of state to defend businesses, even though no one really invited him to do it. He wasn't really connected to these businesses and then comes with a gun and then everything happens. And then even after that,

the police kind of let him walk by with the gun, which shows you, you know, there was a lot of misreporting, especially during the trial, people thinking that he killed black people. That's not what happened, but it doesn't matter who he killed, but that was the assumption that I saw on social media.

But I think it is fair to say if he was black and he'd come there and shot two people, there's no way the cops would let him just walk by them with a loaded weapon. So, I mean, you could argue with me, but I mean, I find that very hard to believe. So that's a problem. The idea of vigilantism in general is a problem, but the, you know, it looked to me and I

didn't, I didn't watch the whole thing, but it looked to me that the prosecution was overmatched, that the law wasn't necessarily on their side and that he made a credible case for self-defense and he was emotionally stunted. And so, you know, when I think of it, I think of it as a great tragedy for all involved, including him. He probably doesn't see it that way himself at the moment, cause he's getting a lot of love from kind of people

who are using him as a pawn and they're happy to do that. And it's just a sad state of affairs, but that was my take on the Rittenhouse situation. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a solid take. It was challenging to see all of these misguided narratives on social media that were mischaracterizing what was actually going on. I mean, my understanding was that

it's illegal to buy that weapon in Wisconsin, but it's legal to own it. You just can't purchase it. And it's open carry. Hence the state line thing, but he's from Kenosha, right? Like this is his hometown. but he's from Kenosha, right? Like this is his hometown,

purportedly he was defending a car dealership or something like that. I think, if you bought into a narrative that was factually incorrect, that he was out there to, mow down a bunch of black lives matter people than to just hear the verdict without really understanding kind of what was going on

led to that kind of uproar in the wake of the verdict. But the truth is as a lawyer, like the prosecution had a very difficult uphill job here. They had to establish first guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the offense itself. Plus they had to defeat the self-defense argument, which means they had to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.

So that burden is very high. And the facts of the case were just not favorable to garnering a conviction on that. But I think that the idea that two people are dead and a third is injured and nobody committed a crime is a difficult pill to swallow, right? Like how could nobody have violated any laws and this tragedy occurred?

And I also think it's hard to swallow that he was found not guilty on a number of lesser charges like reckless endangerment, where the burden wasn't so high, like the jury just went in 100% on acquittal across the board. But like you said, none of this undermines the tragic nature of all of it. And it is disheartening that there is this characterization of Rittenhouse as this hero,

like he's been offered an internship by Matt Gaetz, things like that. I mean, I think he is being used. That's disturbing. Real people are dead. And there doesn't seem to be a regard on the far wing of the right that that really matters because we have a living vigilante and that vigilante is useful in this political battle. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's really disheartening. It's beyond his heart.

It's disgusting. He's a tool in all sense of the word and he's being used that way. Someone will go away. I think the friend who is, I think dated his sister and then they became close and is a little bit older. His name is Dominic Black, according to Washington Post story I read,

he bought the gun for Kyle because Kyle was too young to buy it for himself. So that is, I think he's gonna go away. So it's just, yeah, I mean, I think he'll have to do some time because that gun was illegally purchased and given to him. So, you know, someone's gonna go away and it probably won't be Kyle, which is odd.

The whole thing, and then there's the judge. Right. I mean, the judge, he also was kind of used as a kind of a declaration from people on the left saying, see how unfair this whole thing is. But then the legal scholars for the networks were saying, actually, he hasn't been as unfair as some of this narrative online on Twitter is saying.

But I did watch Roy Wood Jr's kind of thing on Daily Show and where he is pretending bailiff and he's going back and forth with this judge. And if you watch that, which we should link to. Yeah, I didn't watch that. You mentioned to that to me last night, I forgot to watch it. You see how like the judge himself

and how he displays himself. It is as if like it's a casual moment for him on camera as if this isn't a tragic thing. It just, I was very offended by the judge's overall comportment. And it speaks, this is a very American issue. No other country would look at this and see these guns and vigilantes

and think that that's legal. Yeah. And this narrative that guns make us all safer, I think we can throw that out the window. It's preposterous. I mean, the fact that like, what is he 17? Yeah. Could acquire one of these weapons

and walk around with it. And if you're carrying an AR-15 and you're walking into a tempestuous situation because there's protesting on some level, conscious or otherwise, like you're soliciting conflict. Something is gonna happen. And just by dent of your presence, you're making whatever is happening more dangerous.

And he was not advised appropriately by whoever adults were in his life. And maybe he did it without telling anybody, it's probably he did. But like, you know, the only thing I can think of where there's some semblance of justice that comes out of this is I hope the victims sue him, sue his parents and take their houses

because he does deserve some sort of, there needs to be some sort, and we'll talk about this in a bit, but there needs to be some sort of correction and some sort of reconciliation. And if you don't have that, then you have this gaping wound that's just gonna fester. But if you can have some sort of civil resolution,

it's not necessarily gonna appease everybody, but somewhere where there is a price to pay, then I think you have a chance at reconciliation. And I think, obviously they probably wouldn't lose their houses. Some big wealthy donor would just pay the fee, but I do think, I do anticipate a civil case out of this. Yeah, I think that's inevitable.

Civil suits aren't inevitable. Because you tell me the burden of proof is much lower. It's a different burden. Yeah, it's a different burden completely. All right, do you have any thoughts on Ahmaud Arbery? I mean, this went a different way. Different way, also wasn't surprised by this. I mean, I predicted both things

in the comfort of my own home. I didn't predict them online, so I shouldn't. Yeah, I predicted everything. Okay, Nate Silver. I predicted the last earthquake. No, I thought that this was different all the way around. The prosecution was incredible in this, that there was this concern

because there was only one black juror that this was gonna be another one of these cases where the killers got off, but that didn't turn out to be the case, which is great. There's this temptation to celebrate these things. It's just, it's another tragedy of a different sort. This is someone who's a runner in the neighborhood. We talked about this.

It was so unjust. It was a modern day lynching. The only acceptable thing would have been guilty. But then when you realize that they are guilty and they got convicted and the prosecution was fabulous and all these things are true and the, you know, they did have to take the case out of the local district. They did have, it did take months of protest

to get this case into court to begin with. You know, there was this period of time where maybe nobody would have paid for this crime. So if you look at both of those things, while it's great that there was a conviction, it didn't come without the pressure. And so what we have here, you look at both of them, you have a criminal justice system

that still doesn't seem to work the way it's been imagined. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, I don't know what else to add to that. I mean, I think it was a different scenario from the Rittenhouse situation. You know, Aubrey was unarmed and the facts, you know, lent themselves more favorably to the verdict that we all bore witness to.

But I think it's a situation also where we have these perpetrators who were emboldened by this citizen's arrest law, which ultimately becomes part of their defense, but doesn't win the day because they never declared it to Aubrey. And there was no felony being perpetrated in the midst of that, which of course,

basically allows you to make the argument that in many ways this can be characterized as a modern day lynching. But I think ultimately what I take away from this is from both of these cases is the situation that the United States finds itself in where we have these expansive open or concealed carry laws. We have these protective open or concealed carry laws.

We have these protective self-defense laws. And then we have these stand your ground law, self-defense stand your ground laws and citizens arrest laws. Like all of those together can be weaponized to create a very dangerous toxic situation. It's almost like one day maybe people might storm the Capitol and try to affect a presidential election.

That might happen. Yeah. Some dystopian future. Yeah, God forbid something like that happens. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's all horrible and sad. It is, I mean, what do you take out of this as a sliver of some sort of hope or shining

some sort of shred of goodness? You know, having a spotlight on these things, you know, creates a situation in which we're talking about it. And those conversations are the only thing that can ever lead to any of the kind of legislative regulatory change that I think we need. But the flip side of that is that spotlight also serves

to further divide us and create this rift between these two narratives of, Rittenhouse as vigilante hero, or an indictment on the systemic racist nation that we all live in. So how do we move forward from that productively? Well, I think that's a good segue actually, but I wanna say one thing about Rittenhouse.

I do not put Rittenhouse in the same batch of the people that killed Ahmad. Yeah, of course. Rittenhouse is a stunted. He's a confused young man. A confused young man. It's horrible. He did not seek to follow someone and kill them.

And he wasn't the instigator the whole time. He really wasn't. He sought maybe to, no one carries the gun if they don't wanna use it. So that's a different story, but I don't put them in that same batch. But in terms of the segue, what we don't have here is,

what we end up having whenever we talk about these kinds of issues is we have two sides that are dug in and we don't have this idea of the collective. And especially on the side that is for gun rights and all that stuff, they don't wanna give an inch. No one wants to look at this thing as we're all in this together, really. There's this growing gulf and people don't want

to think about how to move forward together. They wanna think about how to move forward in. They wanna think about how to move forward in this other future, but it typically comes at the expense of this other, you know, the expense of the opponent. South Africa is getting ready, just transferred Oscar Pistorius, you know, the blade runner, the guy who had no legs,

but was a remarkable sprinter anyway, was an Olympic. And I think he was in, was he in the actual Olympic games? I think he was. Yeah, he was. He was in the actual Olympic games. And, but then he killed his model girlfriend, claimed that he thought people were breaking in and she had barricaded herself in the bathroom

because of a break in. But you know, it could be that he was beating on her over the course of time and she was protecting herself from him. He ends up shooting her, claims that there was invaders. It turns out that wasn't the truth. And he gets sentenced to 15 years in prison, which sounds light to people here in this country.

But in South Africa, they have something called restorative justice. And he's now eligible for parole at having served half that 15 year sentence. But to get parole, you have to have a sit down with your victims or the victim's family if the victim is dead. And so they moved him to a prison in the town where his,

and I don't know why I'm spacing on the woman who he killed. Let's get that real quick. I don't remember her name. spacing on the woman who he killed. Let's get that real quick. I don't remember her name. Yeah, we gotta get that. But her parents, it was, Ravika, yeah, Riva Steenkamp is her name. And her parents live in this town that he just got transferred to.

And apparently there's seasoned professionals that bring these two parties together and it's a brutal multi-day, multi-session therapy session where you have to come to some sort of mutual understanding and forgiveness is the goal. And taking responsibility is the goal. Talk about mutual, you know, like this idea that we're all in it together. That's how it works.

And I know having covered some prison reform stuff for long reads, the person I was following in that story, Laurie Dawson is a big believer in restorative justice. We'd like to see restorative justice here in this country. How did that, what is the inception of that in South Africa? You know, I think it comes from a post-apartheid era to try to get people who are out of prison to empty the prisons,

because there were so many political prisoners back there. I would have to do more research, but that's my understanding. And is there data that this is effective? The data that I'm aware of is more in that the reason that 15 years seems light for a murder case to us is because we put people away forever. But the data that I'm aware of is

there is actually a limitation to how long you put someone away to what becomes of their life afterwards. And 15 years is like gives someone a chance to actually rehabilitate. So it allows you to look at the person as though, we wanna punish them forever because you took someone away forever.

And I get it, I understand that impulse. I also grew up here. Punitive is only one arm of justice and rehabilitation is another important prong that we don't really value or prioritize in our system. No, we don't. But, and you see it, you know, look, when we talk about prison reform

or criminal justice reform, restorative justice is definitely very much a touchstone with people who are really active in that community. And typically, you know, because it's poor people, it's people of color who go away for crimes they commit, maybe when they're 18, 19, 20, this is the typical thing, right? And we'd like to see some pathway towards rehabilitation

so that we have less suffering overall around this one crime, right? So we can create something productive out of it. And there's plenty of people who have come out of prison and created productive lives, but it's typically because they just resolved to do it. And it's the exception, not the rule. And so when you look at,

but then, you know, the shoes on the other foot, you have the George Floyd case, you have this case of the Maude Arbery, and typically the people on the left who would be more into criminal justice reform, definitely wanna see their pint of blood. They wanna taste the pint of blood and I get it. But when it comes to things like restorative justice,

you have to believe in it for everybody. It's really interesting and compelling to see South Africa go this far with it. And it's actually seems to work because they wouldn't be continuing to do it if it didn't. And it's interesting kind of point. It is interesting. I mean, it's very, to me personally,

it's very reminiscent of the Amy Beale story. I think I've told this story on the podcast before. I can't remember. So forgive me if you've already heard it, but Amy was a friend of mine at Stanford. She was on the diving team. Amy was a friend of mine at Stanford. She was on the diving team. And she went on to become an anti-apartheid activist.

She got a Fulbright scholarship. She went to South Africa to study and she ended up getting murdered in 1993 by Cape town residents. She was, I think she was driving a friend home to one of the townships and she got pulled out of her car and stabbed. I think she was stabbed in the head.

It was a horribly vicious, violent crime that culminated in her death. And in the wake of that, four men were convicted of the crime, but they were pardoned in 1998, like only five years later by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because at that, and under that rubric, if your crime was politically motivated,

you could get this lighter sentence or your sentence could be commandeered. And they established that it was a politically motivated crime, which was very controversial. And this was a big story in Cape Town and across South Africa at the time. But what makes this story so compelling and interesting

is that Amy's parents supported the release of these men. They had to testify about it. It was like a big thing. And then in 1994, like, can you imagine your, your daughter's murdered and then you go to the hearing or whatever and say, yes, you know, release these people. Like, can you imagine what that would require? No, I also can't imagine the pain involved.

I mean, I think it, it must have something to do with forgiveness and moving forward, but it takes a lot of courage to get to that spot. So no, I cannot imagine any of that. But the legacy of this lives on. I mean, in 1994, her parents created the Amy Beale Foundation that was set up to empower township use. And two of the convicted murderers ended up working

for the foundation, which is unbelievable. Amy was like honored by Nelson Mandela. And there's actually two schools, like a high school and some other school in New Mexico that are now named after her. It just shows that there was obviously some sort of restorative justice element. So that's, yeah, that's why I bring it up

because I don't know, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission obviously comes out of the apartheid era as well, but it seems sort of a close cousin to this idea of restorative justice in a different form. Yeah, I mean, restorative justice belongs, you'd think belongs to the future of some enlightened society

when we're all able to let go of pain easier and stop pointing fingers, because it does come from, the punitive side comes from the shame, shame, we will stone you to, it's very old school. Right, but moving forward requires forgiveness and it requires a belief in rehabilitation

and these other things. It requires a very evolved point of view. And I'm not saying I would be the guy rooting for that if something terrible happened to people I love. So it's not that I'm saying it's an easy thing. I just point out that it seems remarkable to me. And then the real takeaway is that our sentences probably are too, I mean, I think we know they are too harsh,

but then what's the, because we already, we see it all over the states now, there's been stories about DAs that have been trying to empty the prisons and empty the jails. And that seems to be backfiring with theft and murders going up. So, we're in this messy in between time

where vigilante ism is up, crime is up, prosecutors want to abolish the police. Like we're in this weird tectonic plate shifting time. It is weird. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. Where do we land? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know, but we need more,

we need more like Bryan Stevenson's out there. We do. Talking about this. His book's insane. I know, it's so good. Yeah. All right, should we switch gears? Well, we are switching gears,

but I think what I've realized halfway through this, this is, we're touching on these stories. This is legal corner. Yeah, it is kind of. This is Rick Roll legal corner. I was not a criminal attorney though. So my like acumen around criminal procedures is let's say weak.

Okay, but this is not a criminal case that's coming up. Right. We have a new case that's kind of right in the RRP wheelhouse. And I became aware of this because of my friend, Alice Drivers reporting. She is a gifted freelance journalist. She's been, her stuff's on CNN,

her stuff's been in Time, I believe. She's starting to write for the New Yorker now. She's got a book deal that's happened and she's got that going. She has written for Longreads. She's very gifted, very talented. I met her years ago and we've just stayed in contact, big fan.

And she has been reporting on the COVID deaths in the meat packing industry. And she was kind of talking about this on social media and made people aware of this lawsuit and kind of posted the link to this landmark. Looks like class action suit brought by workers alliances for the food chain workers alliances, community workers alliance,

different unions against Tyson food, Tyson fresh meats, Keystone foods, JBS USA and Pilgrims Pride Corporation. These are the main meat packing industry. And this case is focused outside of Alice's home state, which is Arkansas, which is she's been focused on. But I'll talk about this case and I'll talk a little bit about what she told me is happening in Arkansas.

But so the premise of this case is these meat production companies have received over $150 million in federal funds since the pandemic started. This was part of the food insecurity concern. Processing workers are mostly people of color, which we know often migrants. They're typically Southeast Asian and Latino now,

but there certainly are some African-Americans as well and some white people there, but it's the vast majority is POC. And over a hundred have died in these states where this lawsuit, these lawsuits are taking place. Under the employment of Tyson. Yes, under the employment of these various meat production companies.

Like meat production employees broadly, just a hundred that worked for Tyson. Tyson and these other companies that I mentioned. So it's a handful. While white managers have managed to remain healthy. And that hundred we should say is based on official statistics and Alice doubts those numbers.

And she's been working in Arkansas and she says in Arkansas, they claim it's between a hundred and 200, just in Arkansas alone and that's just Tyson. But Tyson has such an influence there that she doubts those official statistics. And she actually does this by going to these small town cemeteries

and counting the headstones of people with Karen names. Cause Karen state for me is immigrants. So a lot of them are there, Thai names and finds that it's over 200. But the idea is that when we focus just on Tyson, Tyson has incentivized workers to come in during COVID by giving them $500 bonuses twice while the office staff worked remotely.

So the premise of this lawsuit is your white office staff got to stay home. Your white office staff didn't have to come to work. The POC had to come in and you're taking money from the federal government. POC had to come in. And by June, 2020, when the pandemic was still rolling at its peak, they were brought back in

and the pre-pandemic policy of workers being fired for missing shifts, even if they're sick was back implemented. Now, when you're talking about migrant workers who live in company housing and their rent for the company housing gets taken out of their paycheck, getting fired is a big fucking deal. Cause you lose your housing.

You lose your housing. So that's what's happening. And so even if they've been exposed to COVID, they were encouraged to come in. In fact, they were told they had to come in. Even if they had known exposure. Known exposure. That's what this, this is what this lawsuit alleges, right?

Meat processing plants is also another allegation have been COVID hotspots from day one. As of May, 2020, six of the top 10 per capita COVID infective counties had a meat processing plant. They had higher infection rates than New York City and LA when they were the quote epicenters. So, you know, these- Higher per capita? Per capita.

So in these small towns, more people were getting COVID per capita than in New York at the height of the first wave. Like I said, Arkansas, 100 to 200 people have died officially, but Alice is, it's well in excess of that. Clarksville is a town of 9,000 people, 300 Korean refugees live in company housing there

and work at Tyson. She is now seeing Afghans come in. Afghan refugees are being assigned to places in Arkansas. She predicts that they will be working for Tyson. And then there's the other side of it, which is, she's interviewed some of these people. And if they're coming from Corinne State, which we just talked about, they look at this

and they're like, well, it's worse at home. This is better. And so that complicates a journalist narrative, which wants to paint the evil picture, but that doesn't mean they're not entitled to the same protections as people here in this country. Sure, and that can be leveraged like, it was so much worse at home,

so who cares how bad it is here? Like the company can take advantage of that. And why are these places hotspots? Well, you're working in refrigerated areas, you're working very close quarters. There's no six feet separation. Yes, you might have a mask and a shield, but that's not going to save you from these other problems that are part and parcel of this kind of work. And then pan back and you see, we're talking about chicken plants in these lawsuits. I mean, chicken waste piles up, it ends up being flooded,

going into our rivers and streams and causing a whole host of environmental catastrophes. I mean, this is, talk about intersectional politics. I mean, this is like the way the food system has basically created this problem that is so intersectional is remarkable. Yeah, have you seen they're trying to kill us yet? Not yet.

It confronts this very issue, particularly through the lens of industrial poultry farming and how these farms are in these rural communities of color, these underprivileged communities, poorer communities, and the toxic waste sludge, like basically the fecal matter, like all of the waste that these packed in chicken farms create, they put them in these reservoirs, these pools,

and then they spray it all over the place. It goes into the air and in the movie, there's a scene where John visits this woman who lives nearby one of these farms and they go inside the house and they test, they like swab inside the house. And there's literally poultry fecal matter residue all across the house. And people die of respiratory illnesses or die earlier

and have all these health complications as a result. And of course, this waste finds its way into our water system, into our creeks and ultimately our rivers and then into the Gulf of Mexico. Kills fish, kills reefs. It's really bad. I covered this with pork in East North Carolina. I've been into homes where they've had to deal

with pig shit, literally slapping the windows in their house, covering their houses and saturating in East North Carolina. And the thing is when you actually pan back from that process, the chicken producers, the pork producers, the people actually farming the chickens, raising the chickens, raising the pigs, they barely get by.

The money is the big companies and the processing plants. So they own, they're profiting. So that's why they're going after this. And there is, Alice tells me there'll be other states where there are similar lawsuits are gonna happen. It's all gonna start to unfold as we go forward. She couldn't tell me where, but there are gonna be other lawsuits.

This is the first of a cascade. So this was just filed and who's- This was filed a couple of months ago. Who's the plaintiff? Who's the- The plaintiffs are the unions for these employees. I see. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

I wonder if the ag-gag laws get in the way or create a barrier when it comes to discovery. That's a good question. You know, I mean, I think we'll find out, you know, just got filed and we'll see, you know, with the problem with some of these class actions is you never seize the light of day, they end up settling and, you know,

the lawyers make some money. And I hope that's not the case here, but it's interesting how it all kind of comes around where current state has their villages burned out, people refuge, they end up, the lucky ones get to come to the United States and this is the reward. So, Afghanistan has its issues, people escape,

the lucky ones get on the plane and where are they gonna land? They get plugged right into this other system. And, you know, it's just the way of the world right now. And it's always has been, I think with migrants, there's always been people who've gotten lucky and worked there or have worked their ass off and gotten out of it.

Some of those people will go to these Tyson foods and will work their way up and do very well. And some people will, could end up statistics. I mean, that's just the way it goes, but it is the food system as we know it right now. Well, speaking of the food system, as we know it right now, we have another legal dispute that we're gonna get into.

Legal corner continues. Yeah, and as much as I celebrate the innovation and the advent of all of these new plant-based food companies who are creating meat and dairy analogs that can supplant the Tysons of the world and render them obsolete, that's a good thing for everybody, right? But some of these companies are now becoming the behemoths

that they're trying to supplant. And they're not immune from behaving badly from time to time. And I think it's important just from an objective point of view, as an ambassador of the plant-based movement and somebody who wants to see a plant-based future for all of us.

I think it's important for our environment, for our health and for a number of reasons that anybody who's listening to this or watching it understands about where I'm coming from. But we're in a situation right now where impossible, impossible foods, the impossible burger, most of you guys know about it. I had the founder and CEO, Pat Brown on the podcast.

We had a nice conversation. Well, Impossible is now a massive company. They're valued at $7 billion. I think they've raised 2 billion. Their most recent raise was something like $500 million, which is great because we have a huge plant-based food company that's providing an alternative to everybody's favorite cheeseburger. So that's something to be celebrated at the same time.

It's important to hold these companies accountable and in check. And right now Impossible Foods has sued another company called Impossible that is essentially a blog and a series of sort of online content created by this guy, Joel Runyon, who's an ultra runner, he's a blogger. He does like motivation stuff and talks about, I think maybe he has a supplement line

and talks about like fitness gear and stuff like that. I think he's been doing this for a long time, like many, many years. And he started his blog and his company back in, I should pull up the article, but I think it was like four years before Impossible Foods, even maybe you can pull that up Adam. Four years before Impossible Foods even existed.

And he filed a whole bunch of trademarks. 2010 is when he began it. And he filed his paperwork and secured these trademarks, created a logo and this brand that he's been building ever since for the last 11 years. And if you look at his logo, it does look relatively similar in terms of typeface or font to Impossible Foods.

Well, Impossible Foods is now suing him for trademark infringement. And they wanna obviate all of his trademarks. They're seeking to cancel preexisting federal marks that he established over a decade ago. And Impossible Foods has hired Wilson Sonsini for this, which is, Wilson Sonsini is like the biggest Silicon Valley law firm.

Like they represent all the tech companies and it takes a lot of money to defend against these suits. And Joel's just a dude, I think he lives in Austin or something like that. So it's truly a David and Goliath situation. And Joel claims that he thinks that they're just basically using that muscle to get him to give up. Right. But they also want him to pay their legal fees or something.

Yeah. Crazy. And he's just a dude with a blog and a small brand, who's been doing this before Impossible Foods even existed. So it does appear to be a situation in which he's being bullied to relinquish these trademarks that he rightfully and legally secured a long time ago. Now I haven't read the complaint. I don't know- It got thrown out.

What Impossible Foods, well, there was an article on Bloomberg that I couldn't read because I'm not subscribed to it. But it said that it was tossed on jurisdictional grounds, but I couldn't, I wasn't sure if that was the same case or not. It seemed to be the same case. But Joel has not commented on it

as of the time of us recording this. So I'm not sure on the state or the status of this dispute at this moment. But I think irrespective of how this pans out, it's just not a good look for Impossible Foods to be suing the small guy over something like this. Like, look, I'll applaud the plant-based companies when they're suing over labeling restrictions

that say they can't call their plant-based meat a burger, or you can't call oat milk milk or all of that. I think it's bullshit. And I'm glad when, you know, people like Miyoko's Kitchen stand up and fight that, but to be beating up on this guy and bullying him out of his trademarks, when you're in a situation where you're trying to win

the hearts and minds of people, because we're trying to blaze a better, brighter future for all, it doesn't seem to be a very politically wise move. It comes off as an elitist asshole thing to do. Right. And you don't have to be an elitist asshole just because you've got a good idea.

I know, and it's like, does this guy with his blog really, is he creating reasonable confusion in the mind of the average consumer that he might be the guy behind the Impossible Burger? Nobody cares, but you know, the bottom line is though, that like the reason they get away with this and all these big companies do get away with it, Joel sees himself as kind of an example

of this happens all the time. He made a video on Twitter and a lot of people shared it. So there's been some chatter online about this. But nobody really cares. Like the average consumer, when he orders an Impossible Burger and such and such, is not gonna even know about this. That's why Impossible Foods

is not making a statement about this or whatever. They're just gonna pursue their claim and whatever happens, happens. And they got 500 million the other day, so they have the money for it. Yeah. And Wilson Sonsini is billing them. They are billing them.

Some lawyers are working hard right now on Sand Hill Road. Yeah. Some lawyers have Joel's face on a blackboard. Poor Joel. Poor Joel, man. Joel seems like a nice guy. He does. Anyway.

I'm with you on this. And I like Impossible Burgers. I'm not eating them that often anymore because they're not- Good for you. Good for you. More whole foods. They don't agree with me. More whole foods. I mean, you know what I take

from these last couple of stories though, is that when you're talking because- Is that we're gonna make this all about legal disputes now? No, this is a food comment. As much as I do like the flavor of an Impossible Burger, it still is a processed kind of food that comes from a centralized location. It's still part, it's still kind of a stepchild

of the food system as it exists. And I think the healthy way to eat is local farmer's markets or local markets where you can know where the food, like blueberry, it's astonishing to me that blueberries from Oxnard and Santa Barbara are more expensive than blueberries from Peru. I mean, the idea that the way that people eat

in the industrial food that's delivered to your average grocery store and we just buy it, it doesn't taste the food that's delivered to your average grocery store and we just buy it. It doesn't taste the way it's supposed to taste. It's not as good for the environment. It's not as good for you. You really have to try to get local with your food and that's the only way to eat.

And then you're not part of this. Yeah. and then you're not part of this. Yeah. Impossible beyond all of these companies are a pivot away from the ills of animal agriculture and as such should be celebrated. The fact that these are alternatives that have found their way into fast food

and fast casual restaurants and grocery stores, et cetera, all across the world is a step in the right direction. But just so we're clear, the Impossible Burger is made from a monocropped series of ingredients that are GMO. It's a processed food. It's not, essentially it's not a health food, right? It's problematic in that regard.

It's not a perfect thing. So there's like anything, there's pluses and minuses with this. There's good people on both sides. Yeah. So next time you go into whatever restaurant, demand your locally harvest Impossible Burger. Yeah, it's a tough sell at Taco Bell,

but I try it every time. You do. Do you have any locally harvested blueberries that you drive through? Where's that tube of avocado paste coming from? Right, you'll be met with a blank stare for that. I wanna shout out my buddy, Toby Morse, friend of the pod, friend in real life,

one of the most positive, optimistic, cool people you're ever gonna meet, punk rocker behind the band H2O, just a great guy. And he wrote this children's book called One Life, One Chance. I'll hold it up for the camera. Which is just such a cool, like sort of self-created thing that he made, that he's self-publishing.

And it's just a cool book for kids. So if you're looking for kind of a groovy gift for the holidays for a young person or for a parent to read to a young person, I would recommend picking this up. It's got a forward. Well, first of all, I made a little cameo in there. Can you see? Oh, really?

Can you pick me out in the lineup? I believe I can. Yeah, on the upper left there. Top left. Made a little cameo. But it's got this beautiful forward by our favorite Instagrammer and action hero, Josh Brolin. The bard of Instagram. Which is such a cool thing that like Josh

would write this forward for a children's book. And it's so kind of heartfelt and just lovely. Josh seems the opposite of a client of Wilson's Suncini. He does, doesn't he? This poet, this Baudelaire stuck in the body of an action hero. That is Josh Brolin. Yes, you sent me his shout out

to Jimmy Chin's new book, There and Back. And obviously we're both huge fans of Jimmy's. Sure. And that was pretty moving, pretty cool. Yeah, Josh published just a handheld talking to his phone video of him expressing how touched he was by Jimmy's book and he's paging through it. And he becomes progressively more emotional

as the video goes on where he's literally welling up in tears talking about how it has inspired him to try to, you know, inject more adventure into his life and his remembrance of friends lost and things like that. And it just, I don't know, it just, it touched me. I thought it was really beautiful. Yeah, his wife comes in like two thirds of the way in

and she could, obviously she heard him talking to his phone again and has to heckle him. I know, that was funny, wasn't it? I loved it. I wanna get the link for Toby's book so I can shout it out, but I know I'm pulling it up right now. I think it's, oh, it's h20merch.com.

Okay. Yeah. That's where you can find it. One Life One Chance is the name of the book by Toby Morse with Forward by Josh Brolin. What else do we got? I think we're heading into the movies. Yeah, we're gonna get it. We're pivoting away from litigation.

Yeah. And we're getting into streaming. Should we take a break? We've, yeah, why don't we take a quick break and we're gonna be back with some hot picks for your holiday viewing. All right, we're back. We're gonna talk movies and streaming,

but Adam had a little bit of a revelation during the break. Yes, Alice Driver just messaged me with national statistics as of October 27th for COVID cases in the meatpacking industry. There has been 60,000 nationwide COVID-19 cases among employees of meatpacking plants and more than 250 deaths. Those are the official statistics and that's nationwide.

So more than double that quote that you gave previously. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Interesting. But she, like I said, she believes that the deaths far exceed that number. Yeah. Yeah. All right, movies. Yep.

We haven't done this in a while. So much content has come and gone. I know. Since we last, I could do like a movies and TV podcast every day. I consume a tremendous amount of content. But we're gonna have to restrict this to two projects. I've been telling you, you need a spinoff.

A spinoff show. You need a spinoff. How long have I been telling you that? My movie and TV recommendations. It doesn't stop Bill Simmons. That's true. But he's owned that for a very long time. I mean, he started as a sports and as a movies guy.

And pop culture guy. His movie acumen is impressive. Very impressive. And he has an incredible memory. Like he can remember scenes and it's quite amazing. My point is there's room for another RRP. Well, we're gonna spend a few minutes today. I will say before we get into the two projects that we're gonna focus on,

that I could talk for three hours about Dune, which I loved and I've seen twice in an IMAX theater foundation. You've seen it twice? On Apple Plus. Yeah, I've seen it too. Of course I've seen it twice. Of course I've seen it twice. Of course you've seen Dune twice.

I'm a huge sci-fi guy. I watched Dune. Dune is unbelievable, but we're not gonna get sidetracked, Adam. I do wanna shout out my boy DMACC, Dan McPherson, who has an incredible role in Foundation on Apple Plus, which I really enjoyed. It's a breakout performance for him.

And I really enjoyed not just watching Dan, but that series as well, which is very inextricably linked to Dune. They share a lot of DNA. Succession, of course. I mean, there's nothing new or revolutionary about being a big fan of Succession. I'm obsessed with that show.

I saw Power of the Dog the other night, which I thought was remarkable. The acting performances are amazing. So check that out. Before we get into the first thing that we're gonna focus on though, is there anything else top of mind that you just saw recently

that you wanna at least just check a box and- Sure, I watched King Richard. Oh, you did? I haven't seen it yet. And when I watched the original trailer, I didn't, I watched King Richard. Oh, you did, I haven't seen it yet. And when I watched the original trailer, I didn't, I wasn't, I mean, it looked, I thought it looked a little corny to be quite honest. You also had a, I remember we talked about this weeks ago

and you were like, really King Richard? Like it's gonna be about the Williams sisters, but it's about the dad? Here's the thing about me, I'm a cranky asshole sometimes. You are a cynical. And I'm gonna have to debate you or throw you down to the mat here when we get into the movie

we're gonna talk about a lot, I think. We're gonna disagree. But be that as it may, I actually thoroughly enjoyed King Richard. My problem was when you have the two greatest, two of the greatest, including the greatest women's tennis player ever. And then to tell their story and call it King Richard,

I thought was problematic. It is a little weird. But this is actually the point. The movie only goes to the point where Venus is 14 and she just first turns pro. So it's everything before that. And I'm guessing there was a carve out in terms of life rights that is going to allow

for hopefully like a Michael Jordan-esque 10 part series about the Williams because that has to come, they fully deserve it. And this though was extremely entertaining. You learn a lot about how much they worked and how much effort it took to get the girls to be taken seriously by the tennis elites.

Establishment. And then how many times they were tried to be taken advantage of, how many beatings Richard took both in Compton and then before that, just a remarkable family, a remarkable American story and some great, great, great performances, not just from Will Smith, but from the girls,

from everyone in the film, who play Oracene, the woman who plays Oracene in the film, let's get her name, she's fabulous. And just a really fun movie. So I've watched that and I've been watching a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is an epic season. That's very character consistent. Yes.

With the crankiness. It is, but this season is spectacular. And it's to me, like everyone loves Curb. I love Curb even when it's a down season, but the last couple of seasons, it felt like an old guy trying to get it back. They got it back. I mean, this is a great season.

Seth Rogen's in it. Vince Vaughn has a more prominent role. It's really fun. I watched the first episode of the new season, but I fell off. So I gotta get back into that. But on King Richard, I mean, first of all, Oscar bait completely, right?

Like this is gonna get a ton of nominations. And although I haven't seen it yet, my understanding is that it really buries this myth. I mean, my recollection of that time, which is relatively vague, cause I'm not a huge tennis person, was that Richard was sort of a daddy Marinovich, like this hard driving,

like really super aggressive, you know, when at all costs kind of dad. And he got painted that way. So this movie really fleshes that out, the real character and the real human. Yeah, he wasn't that. He saw those types of tennis dads and he didn't like them. Right.

And he wasn't that. And the fact that, you that, you see all the, his whole thing was about avoiding burnout. He didn't have them play a lot of juniors. They played juniors for a little bit and then he shut that down and that pissed off the coaches and no one wanted to, you'll never get the sponsorship. You'll never get X, you'll never get Y.

He proved all that to be bullshit. He said no to the first several big dollar contracts that were offered to Venus when she was 14. And it wasn't just his decision. He had Venus weighing in on it. Just incredible what they've been able to do. And he said it from the beginning, they're gonna be the two greatest of all time.

And Venus was the pioneer that was the first to go through the hell and paved the way and Serena came up behind her. And you could also see how Serena, cause you know, Venus got to play juniors and Serena wasn't supposed to. Venus got to go pro and Serena wasn't allowed to. You could see that how that might've cultivated within Serena this like, you know,

a world-class fighter was gonna take what she wanted and what an incredible athlete. All right, well, I look forward to checking that out, but we have to pivot our attention to the greatest documentary ever made. Okay. The Beatles get back, Adam Skolnick.

Yes. Thoughts. Well, I don't know why you think we're gonna disagree about this. I enjoy it. I'm enjoying it. Yeah, we have a little bit of a difference of opinion, which we can get into in a jocular way. I mean, I'll just share like,

I was, I'm halfway through part two, but after watching part one the other night, I went into it, I saw the trailer, but I tried to avoid reading anything about it because I wanted to go into it fresh. And I love the Beatles when people say Beatles are stones, like, I don't understand the question. To me, there's no contest.

Like I'm not like a Beatles fanatic, but to me, the Beatles hold a very special place in the encyclopedia of music. I absolutely love them. But I did go into the documentary, maybe with high expectations, but also not knowing what to expect. I wasn't even sure about the timeframe

or what it was that they were gonna focus on. Other than that, there was all this found footage and Peter Jackson was gonna take it and turn it into something. And I found myself just absolutely riveted by this documentary, which for a lot of people might be an acquired taste because it takes its time.

It's not story driven. It's a fly on the wall scenario in which you're observing the band trying to put together a variety of songs for a live show, an album and a documentary. And this is footage that was taken in the winter of 1969, the month of January of 1969, chronicling this process that at times can feel

for the non-fan to be painfully slow and laborious, but I found it to be like this, like the unearthing of an historic document that belongs in the Smithsonian, because it chronicles the birth of some of the greatest songs ever written. And you see them as they emerge in the, in the dynamic, in the challenging dynamic that the band is facing

at the time because they're on the precipice of breaking up. Yeah, I agree with you. It's like a fly on the wall in a room with geniuses, plus George and Ringo. And I kid, I kid, I kid. Jason's gonna come out here and strangle you. I gave Jason, major Beatle fan, George and Ringo fan editorial overview over your words.

So if you speak out of school, it's getting cut from the podcast. First of all, I love George and Ringo. I especially love Ringo now. Cause like I watch- Ringo comes out really like, I think if you just sort of take Twitter's temperature on this, there's a lot of love for Ringo comes out really like, I think if you just sort of take Twitter's temperature on this, there's a lot of love for Ringo right now.

A friend of mine married the, a friend of mine married, Brooke Fine, married the guitarist of, who was the lead guitarist for Ben Harper for years. And he also played with Ringo and raved about Ringo's musical acumen. Watching this, I watched the first, the full first episodes, two and a half hours,

or 240 or something like that. Right, the whole thing, all three parts is something like eight hours. Eight and a half or something, eight, yeah. And I could see why, because the thing is there's 40 plus hours of footage and- There's like 56 hours. There's 56 hours, okay.

And then like over a hundred hours of audio. So it's, you know, if I'm Peter Jackson I wanna give the most I can. And I think he's done it. He has such a light touch. You don't see him in it, but you know it's so artfully edited that he's obviously done such a great work.

And so anyway, Ringo, I love Ringo in this. I think he's there, he's working hard. He's basically attached himself to Paul's hip, but he's also like always present. Shows up on time. Yeah. Never a negative word comes out of his mouth. If Paul is in studio, Ringo's in studio.

But Ringo, because he's not writing the songs and because he's the drummer, he has to sort of sit quietly while this songwriting dynamic is playing out. Yeah, he surfs it. And I watched part one with my boys Trapper and Tyler and Trapper's a drummer and Trapper was like, never have I ever seen an onscreen persona that I more heavily identified with

than Ringo. Cause I've been present for, I don't know how many hundreds of hours watching the boys rehearse with their cousin and different band members. And Trapper being the drummer, he, I mean, there were lots of times where he's just sitting at his drum kit,

like reading a book or looking at his phone while everybody's arguing or working something out. And that's exactly kind of the Ringo vibe. Like he's just chilling at the kit, ready to go whenever they figure out what they wanna do. Yeah, Ringo is the tweener that's wondering when mom and dad will stop yelling at each other. You know what was cool though to see,

like I love seeing Ringo at the piano. I love seeing, you know, John on bass and he could see Paul tell Ringo what riff he wants and talk to George about the mechanics of what he was looking for for a particular song. I think it's Get Back or one of the songs. And to be able to see Paul just like rock in his chair and actually create Get Back in such a riveting way.

You thought Ringo looked bored. I thought Ringo got it and was hooked. Like I felt him like getting it whereas George seemed like he was yawning. He's like, oh, this shit again. Yeah, I mean, I tweeted that. There's one scene that's just unbelievable where Paul is literally creating get back

out of whole cloth in real time. Like you can see it percolating up in his consciousness and he's playing it and you hear the kind of, you see where it's going and there's George yawning and like, look, it's not a slight on George. Like maybe they'd been there like eight hours and he'd been doing that for three hours, who knows.

To me, Ringo looked bored too, but the idea that you're a fly on the wall and you're seeing the inception of these phenomenal songs just percolate up out of nothing is really miraculous. The same thing happens with Let It Be. Paul's like at the piano and he's starting to play, he's working it out and everybody around him

is like talking about a bunch of bullshit. They're like distracted, they're doing other stuff. And you're like, do you realize what's happening right now? Like how incredible that there were cameras rolling at that very moment. And it seems like he starts with a melody and maybe a hook in the vocals and then he builds the rest of it.

He is not worried about the words as much. Yeah, the lyrics like, yeah, they just come through a lot of the lyrics and they kind of figure it out in a group setting. Yeah, and then John. And they're very cavalier about the lyrics. John is much more the words guy, it seems to me. Although then Paul edits him a little bit,

like this is like too on the nose or too corny. And that stuff to me, to be able to see the creative process of one of the greatest partnerships in all of creation, certainly in all of, I guess, Western popular culture, to be able to witness that is spectacular. The reason that you're saying that it's not for everybody is that some people just wanna listen to the hits

and they don't really need to get into the minutia. So for them, and that's certainly the case of people I watched it with, they thought it was a little bit too slow and that it was a little too aimless. And it was like a little too, a little too. See, I would sit through all 56 hours of it unedited because I think it's such a rare and precious glimpse

into not only genius, but the creative process in general. Like if you have any interest in how creativity operates, especially in a group setting, whether you're a musician, a writer, a screenwriter, a TV writer, anybody who's trying to birth something unique and creative into the world and has to do it with other people, to observe how some of the greatest songs ever crafted

came together with a group of people who, you people who were having issues at the time. And I think it also was a litmus test regarding like how attuned you are to what those creative processes look like. Like have you had experience with them or not? People who have not been in bands or haven't been in TV writing rooms or things like that could observe

what was happening with the band and say, oh, you could tell they're not getting along. You could tell like this band's about to break up. This is all falling apart. But if you've been in a band or you have like tried to collaborate on something creative, like I saw that and I thought they have a really,

cause there's this narrative like, oh, they all hated each other and they were breaking up. They couldn't communicate. I saw very healthy communication. They would disagree about things. They didn't seem to hate each other. They always treated each other with respect and grace. They maintained their equanimity at all times.

There was always levity and comedy. Like they're always cracking jokes. They had their difficult moments and I don't wanna spoil it for people who haven't seen it cause things actually go down, like shit hits the fan and stuff like that. But overall, like I saw a group of people who really love each other and were trying to do something.

Yeah, George did seem a little pissy, I will say that. Well, we'll let people watch it and form their own opinion about that. I know you have issues with George. I always loved George. But let's also remember- Here comes the sun. You know, what's the other one I love? Yeah. There's something very special

between Paul and John. Yes. That made it very difficult for someone like George who is extremely gifted to have his voice being heard. And that's gotta be really challenging. And Paul and John, you know, are admit as much in the film. And so that's kind of where things start

to go a little bit sideways, but let's not forget how young these guys were. All of them were young. I mean, George was 26, I think. And I think Paul and John were 28. I think John was 28 and Paul was 27 or something. 27, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

It's unbelievable because I would have thought like even being a fan, like, oh, they broke, like if you said to me, how old were they when the Beatles broke up? I would have said, I don't know, 35. Right, no, no, I knew that they were like 29 or something like that. That's amazing.

And I thought it was fun to see Yoko and Linda and Ringo's wife who I'm spacing on her name, looking so good. And then George's Hare Krishna buddies look great. Yeah, so. Sorry, sorry Jason. Yes, George brings in, there's a couple Hare Krishna monks

that sit in the corner at, what's the studio called again? It has a very British name, like Wickenham or something like that, Twickenham. Yeah. And then Yoko, who pulls up a chair and kind of sits right with the group. And what you notice over time is,

although there is something a little bit presumptuous about her kind of inserting herself right into the middle of this dynamic, she never says a word. She's not bothering anyone. And it really upends that narrative that like Yoko Ono broke up the band. Like it's hard to make that argument

after you observe this documentary. I said that to a friend who has not seen this yet, but who said the Let It Be documentary is kind of the opposite of that. And I didn't see the Let It Be documentary. Did you see that? Where it makes it seem, it kind of plays up the divisions a bit more.

They are angry at each other that Yoko is kind of getting in the way. It doesn't seem that way in this particular setting. Well, in part two, Paul kind of addresses it directly and kind of puts those rumors to bed. I mean, they acknowledge like, okay, like they acknowledge like, oh, well, Yoko's here. What does that mean?

And they talk about it. I think the bigger issue is that when Brian Epstein passed away, they didn't have like a team captain anymore. There was a power vacuum. Explain who Brian Epstein was. So he was like their manager from the get go and somebody that they, you could tell in the movie, like how much they loved and trusted and respected this guy.

They call him Mr. Epstein. He was their dad. He put them in suits. He told them what to dress, how to do it. And they would do it. And then when he's gone, there's a power vacuum that I think, you know, I would intuit that Paul fills. Like when you watch this documentary,

you realize like Paul's really the leader. Like nothing gets done without Paul. He's the only one who has any interest in any organization or productivity here, because it's a bunch of artists and they think and do things differently. And he's really trying hard in the best way to try to drive this train forward and get something done.

But without Paul, like nothing gets done. Yeah. That's clear. But without Epstein, I think it created this weird dynamic where Paul had to fill a certain power vacuum, but then that can lead to resentment. Right, right.

It would allow Paul to be Paul with someone else for them to talk to. George could have talked to Brian or John. Yeah, and because you need Paul as the engine, he's always gonna be the engine. He is the conductor in a way, but to see them all together and make their magic and to have George come in with a fully realized song

he wrote in an hour or at home that the night before, and then have Paul just invent them in front of your eyes. Yeah, they're like, oh, I had this idea last night. And then they sit down and it's like 70% of the song is there and they're working it out and they're trying different things. And because you know the song so well, you're like, no, no, don't do that, it's like this.

And how about the original words for don't let me down was like on the road to Rishikesh or on the road, something like that, that John was singing and playing. And then he did one, he brought in a vinyl demo of across the universe for them to listen to. And then they all got into it. I mean, like, so the different approaches that they take,

like he actually did a whole demo of across the universe for people. And, you know, there's this other thing I wanna get out. Cause I've read, I did a little bit of reading on the show before watching it. And I, like you, I I've read, I did a little bit of reading on the show before watching it. And like you, I stopped whenever a spoiler kind of came up. But one thing that I noticed a theme of was

"'Let It Be' is considered this lesser album." And partly because of Phil Spector kind of doing some, you know, desk fuckwit stuff with it later. But in reality, there's five classics on this album. Across the universe, let it be, get back, don't let me down. And two of us, which I think is great. And then you have George, some of George's songs, which are great.

And I mean, to me, I love the album, but it is considered a lesser album, which I don't quite understand. Yeah, that's interesting. Can we talk about Glen Johns? Glen Johns? I mean, what a superstar this guy is. Wait, Glen Johns?

In the background, he's the- The Hammer? He's basically, no, that guy, no, not that guy. Glen Johns was the sound engineer slash producer slash sort of silent Beatle member, who first of all, always has the best outfit. Like that guy's just rocking it. Comes in with the scarf and the crazy sunglasses

like alligator skin jacket and the whole thing and is in charge of creating the sound for all of this. There's one song I can't remember because I watched part one a couple of days ago at this point where they have a hurdle with one of the songs they're working out and they keep going back and forth and it's not working.

And that was one of those situations where I was like, no, not that, not that. Glenn says one thing and it like solves a problem. Yeah, right. You remember that? Yeah, I do remember that. And then he's really like kind of this unsung hero and the whole thing behind the scenes.

Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like just an absolute legend. Did he produce the record? I don't know. Jason, do you know? Like Glenn is just an absolute legend though, right? Yeah, Zeppelin, Stone's Who.

Yeah, and it's Let It Be. He comes up with the declining line. Right, the Let It Be. Right, exactly. Sorry, Jason. Sorry about what I said. Jason just gave me a dirty look. Getting the stink eye from Jason?

How dare you? Jason, I dirty look. Getting the stink eye from Jason? Yeah, he's upset with me. How dare you? Jason, I love you. So the film comes out and Jason just basically sits and watches the whole thing in one sitting, ostensibly, right? Jason. Yeah. Jason like didn't get dressed that day, he just sat there.

I mean, I literally, my head was exploding when I was watching part one. I just couldn't believe what I was witnessing. I was so grateful that this thing exists and that we got to have, you know, be able to witness this thing happening. It was, I just, I just thought it's absolutely magical. Like you said, maybe it's not for everyone, but for me,

I was like, just injected into my veins. How did Peter Jackson get ahold of this stuff? Did he just get offered? Yeah, I haven't read up on that, but I know it's taken him quite a long time to like pull this thing together. And there's been a team of people working on it for a while. Well, he lives in middle earth.

It's hard to get the footage there. Well, the footage was sitting in a vault somewhere owned by Apple Corps, right? And somehow he got permission. They never used it for anything. The intention was that there was gonna be this documentary that for whatever reason they decided, well, there's nothing here.

It's funny, cause in the thing they're like, how's the documentary going? And the director who's a character in his own right with the cigar and the whole thing, he's like, I don't know. He's like, I don't think we have a documentary when things start going sideways. And John's like, what do't know. He's like, I don't think we have a documentary when things start going sideways. And John's like, what do you mean?

It's taking off. Like this is, it's now it's getting good. It's pretty funny. How about the guy that like- And it's all like, and it looks like yesterday. Like, I don't know how much cleaning up of the footage had to be done, but it literally looks like yesterday. And the fact that they have,

there's like a boom mic over all these private conversations that they were able to capture. Yesterday. I like the hammer swinger, the hammer swinger who like is a close talker as well. No, he's like, he's become a meme on Twitter too. It's like, he's such a hero. Like he gets to bang the hammer on the anvil

to chime in on the song. Jason, what's that guy's name? That was their road manager. The road manager, right. He is a close talker, is he not? Yeah. But he's great. If you see the footage of the Beatles like early 60s playing in DC,

Matt Levins is the guy that comes out on stage and spins Ringo's drum riser. Oh. He's one of the guys from like the original. That's cool. that comes out on stage and spins Ringo's drum riser. Oh. So she's a crowd on the other side. Oh. Yeah, he's one of the guys from like the original. That's cool. And what's the director's name is?

Michael Lindsay Hogg. Lindsay Hogg, right? Yeah, that guy. So he's the guy with the cigar. And it's so funny, like Taika Waititi tweeted. He's like, this guy again, trying to get them to go to Libya for the concert. It's like, they don't wanna do that.

Pretty funny. I just love watching them in that room together. How about when Linda comes in and starts taking pictures and then you see the pictures that she's taking. It's unbelievable. Soft focus. I know. I mean, I get emotional just thinking about it.

And then I'm like, why am I so emotional about this? But it's music history. It's beautiful. It's okay to be emotional. It is music history. It really is a beautiful thing. So what else can we say? About that?

Just about the movie. I mean, I still have two episodes to go. So I'm pretty stoked. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. I saw the end of the first episode. I was like, woo, I got to see Ringo's fat estate. Ringo is a hero to many, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Just his disposition throughout the whole thing is so laudable. It is. You know, team player. He's a team player and he's like chill. But here's the thing, like it's funny. The others are pretending to be spiritual, but Ringo is spiritual.

You've got your George issue and blah, blah, blah. I never did though, I never did. But like here's the thing, these guys are artists. They don't function like, it's like who cares who showed up on time? Ultimately all that matters is how great the album is. Ringo cares, okay? Obviously all of those personality peccadillo's

can either make the band grow closer together or split them apart. So it's not, you know, it is important. But what you see is Paul being this guy who shouldered the mantle of being responsible for getting stuff done. You have John who's consistently coming in late, but in good spirits.

And it takes John a long time to get warmed up. But once he gets warmed up and he gets in sync with Paul, magic happens. And then you see them telling jokes and screwing around and having fun. And you think, well, that's not productive, but that's important for the whole creative process. Like you can't have one without the other.

And artists, they're sensitive beings and they don't function. Rationality isn't necessarily a priority. I agree. Look, I'm not saying it matters. You don't have to be on time, especially if you're John Lennon. So here's the thing.

George didn't have to show up on time, but he damn sure had to get there before John Lennon. And Ringo couldn't be last, you know, Ringo had to be first. So yes, it doesn't matter, but it does matter. There is still standing, there is still the hierarchy. John could be last, Paul could have been last too, but John, but he would never be last because he knows someone has to be there first.

And if he gets there, he knows Ringo will get there. So then there's waiting for two people. I mean, that's just part of the workman like thing. That's what you're seeing in this, which I like. I'm not criticizing John for being late at all or George, but I just think it is interesting. George definitely was, he was late, but he wasn't as late as John.

I got you. Also, I appreciate all the little details like the kind of roadies who come in and give them tea. And there's always toast. I love the tea and toast. Toast and marmalade. And the sound record is for the documentary is Alan Parsons.

Amazing. It's unbelievable. Yeah. All right. Well, so watching that alongside this other doc that you turned me on to Todd Haynes directed doc, the Velvet Under, it's called Velvet Goldmine, is that right?

Yes. No, Velvet Goldmine was another movie that Todd Haynes did. That was a narrative. So this is Velvet Underground doc. It doesn't really have a title. I think it's just Velvet Underground. Velvet Underground. And it's kind of like a partner to this other thing,

whereas Peter Jackson's got the invisible hand doing incredible work. Todd Haynes is definitely mixing it up. You see his hand, but it's remarkable. And he's using incredible filmmaking techniques to create this hypnotic split screen tiled artistic vision that not only gets you into Lou Reed's mind and John Cale and Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker

and all the entire band, Nico, but also the factory itself and Andy Warhol who managed the band. And man, I want you to talk about this and I've got some things to say, but to see the two of them back to back, it really set my mind and my brain into such a lovely swirl. It really was a kind of got me thinking about the nature of creativity in general.

Yeah, I mean, these movies, I think, go very well together for that reason. They're both time capsules about very romantic periods. I mean, I have a irrational romantic attachment with New York City during the period of Warhol's factory. And so this is like, you know, right up my alley, this kind of movie. But I think what's interesting about both of these movies

and in particular, the Velvet Underground movie is that most rock documentaries are talking heads reflecting upon the past. Whereas both of these movies really immerse you in a present moment, they're experiential. Like you're with the Beatles when they're recording this album. And similarly, you're with the Velvet Underground

because they have a lot of footage of them in their Genesis phase. So you're experiencing that band at its inception and living with them as they try to kind of put the pieces together and create something. Of course, there are some talking heads in the Velvet Underground. But it's spice.

It's not, it's not. It's not, it doesn't form the architecture of the whole movie. And the movie is crafted so that it feels like an Andy Warhol experience. Yes. And he uses much of Warhol's film, like Andy Warhol would put a camera on somebody's face

like Lou Reed and just let it roll for like an hour. Right. And Lou would just look into the camera blankly and he uses the split screen in the movie to use those clips, a lot of black and white. So you feel like you're in downtown New York City in the early 1970s. And you can like taste the grit

and you can feel the energy because that was a period of time in which there was this flourish of interesting alternative creativity that was happening. That was very special that birthed like so many amazing artists, not just in music, but in art and film, theater, et cetera. And I think that's why I have such an obsession

with this period of time. And certainly the Velvet Underground occupies a very special place in that, you know, in that kind of conversation. Interesting because I wasn't, the context of Velvet Underground I had all off. I thought they were early seventies. I didn't realize they were like late sixties.

And so. And this antidote to the kind of flower power. They were the counterculture within the counterculture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were the first punk band, I think you could say. I mean, I would say it. Like you would look at it and it's like the sound on the dark side of the doors, you know,

or like the drone and- But it was more performance art than punk. And what was fascinating was learning about how it all came together, which begins really with Kale and his Welsh upbringing as this classical musician who got intrigued with experimental music that was going on in New York City, moves out there for the purpose, sole purpose really,

of kind of spending time with these artists who were really pushing the boundary of what even music was, just playing around with tone, right? Like just let's, how long can we play this tone and immerse ourselves in this sound? You know, just really pushing the envelope of like what people would tolerate and what that experience would look like.

The son of a coal miner. Yeah, amazing story, this guy. But also fascinating is that so many of these important people end up in the same apartment building at 56 Ludlow, which much like the Chelsea Hotel becomes this ground zero for all this incredible art that comes out of it. And it was that the kind of proximity of these artists

and the free time that they had, cause I think it costs like they all live there cause it costs like $25 a month. So they didn't really have to work that much to pay their bills. And they could fuck around all day, experimenting with tone and sound and all of these things. Get their 10,000 hours.

Do these kind of salons where, you know, all the hipsters would come together and they would indulge themselves with whatever kind of artistic kind of thread that they were pulling at the time. But the truth is it might not have gone anywhere because they were playing this cafe and that actually people hated it, except for one person who was in with the factory,

I forget her name. And she sees it and tells Andy that they have to go there and they need to see it. And then next thing you know- But there was a cache to it, even though like mainstream people were hating it, there was a core group of people who were like the cool people who were into it.

And the real inflection point was when, and I think Kale says it in the documentary, like at some point during this tonal experiment, somebody put like an electric guitar pickup on it. And then everything changed. And then Lou Reed wasn't even part of it at the time. There was this guy called Lou Reed and he had a satchel full of songs

and he enters it after this tone experience is already kind of well underway. And it becomes this perfect storm that creates this whole new thing. And then they add, then Andy Warhol becomes the manager and then brings in Nico. Which I didn't know anything about. And basically insists and foists Nico upon him.

And Nico is this glamazon, like gorgeous, you know, Scandinavian who has this androgynous voice. So it hits on so many Warhol levels, the model type look with this androgynous voice. So it hits on so many Warhol levels, the model type look with the androgyny and with this drone and, you know, obviously Lou is in that, you know, Lou came up when he was a teenager, he was playing the gay clubs in New York City, you know?

So like, it was all work and they, and like you said, they hated the hippies. And so it's this very interesting mix. And like I said, to me, like the two of these things together kind of had me contemplating the nature of creativity, which is not something I do very often, but sometimes it comes up and you know, what is art?

What is music? What is literary form? What is any sort of scene or culture? Isn't it just a collective dreaming of what it means to be alive, to be human and all its ugliness and its beauty. And now you have to, the stuff has to hit for money to be made.

So you can continue that dream together, but that's not the primary driver. And it's not what brought John and Paul and George and Ringo together. It's not what brings these people together. You know, it's not the underlying motivator of any scene and or any collective. You know, like, and to be a part of a scene,

how cool is that? Like, you know, like that was always the dream coming up when I wanted to be a writer with my buddy, Kelton Reed, when we joined forces and we thought we loved the beats and we love this era too. And, you know, I love reading just kids, Patti Smith being a part of that scene. Right.

And you know, you are actually part of a scene. You're like this early podcast. I mean, this is its own type of scene. It's more, it's a little bit more removed because everyone's dislocated in different places, but you're very much on the forefront of this podcast scene. And you're connected to some of these people who are early innovators in the space, which is, I think, another interesting art form that's just starting to flourish. And I was talking to, not long ago, the head of PR for Audible about to flourish. And I was talking to not long ago,

the head of PR for Audible about something else. And she mentions like neuroscience studies about how part of the reason people love podcasts and love audio books is when you listen versus when you read, it hits a different part of your brain. And it gets into the intimacy part where that kind of lights up.

And so, you know, it's in its way interacting as a different art form. And the way people used to feel about music, the way I felt about music or my favorite bands and the merch we wore is now like shifting into the podcast and YouTube space. And people are getting merch for their favorite, you know, creators in a whole different realm.

And so this is the kind of stuff I was thinking about while I was watching. It's funny to hear you say, I mean, I will take it as a compliment, that's cool. But like, my brain is thinking, well, I would like, if this is a scene, I would trade this scene to hang out with like Spalding Gray and David Byrne and like Lou Reed and Andy Warhol

or whatever was going on down there. Like that just seems way more exciting and interesting. Yeah, and it's less sober, I think. No, very much not a sober scene for sure. Perilous probably would have killed me. God spared me from being reared in that time and place. But you know what I'm saying, right? Like, yeah.

I understand. I mean, it's cool. Like I do think, and it's interesting because my sons are musicians and I'm always thinking about like the power of community, like what those scenes are. Like you think of grunge and you think of Seattle or you think, you know, it's like what's going on

in Nashville and country music. And so I'm often like, or even LA at a period of time when like Beck was coming up, there was kind of a scene at Spaceland and Silver Lake and all of that, but that doesn't really exist anymore. Or Guns and Roses and the, you know. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, like the whole Sunset Strip,

like metal era kind of thing. So I always talk to them, I'm like, tell me what is the scene like in LA? There's like, they're like, there's not really a scene. I mean, there's a little bit of a scene. I thought that Phoebe Bridgers has a scene. Yeah, there's a little bit of that. And they're kind of on the, you know,

outer periphery of that, I suppose. But not like that scene where you feel like, oh, this is the place where this stuff, like there's that palpable sense of like, something's happening here. Because media is so siloed now and there's so much more of it. So there's like the saturation of so much content everywhere

you can't possibly all be tuned into the same channel. But back when the Beatles were coming up or, and you know, there weren't that many channels. But if 56 Ludlow Street didn't exist, does the Velvet Underground ever come to be? No, but like Elizabeth Gilbert would say something else would. The world didn't need Velvet Underground.

It's nice that it existed, but something else would have been there and it'd been just as cool. It just would have been different. But now it's like, there are so many more scenes. And so then you have these kind of microclimates within that world, within the content world. Cause it's so everything's refracted and diffused now.

There is no monoculture, but these movements are always a contrast to whatever the monoculture is, right? No matter where culture exists, the artist pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction. And there is something to be said for proximity. Like now we have digital proximity that kind of resolves a lot of that. But the idea that there are a bunch of artists

who are basically squatting in an apartment building with nothing better to do than to collaborate all day long. There is something unique about that. Yeah, right. And then the fact that cheap rent is a key to kind of getting artists together is obviously well known. That's what happened with Williamsburg when Williamsburg became a thing at the early 2000s

and plenty of bands came out of that era, Seattle in the 90s, you know, like plenty of bands came out of that era. You can't take real estate prices out of that realm there. And so, or rents, you know, like plenty of bands came out of that era. You can't take real estate prices out of that realm there. And so, or rents, not real estate prices, but rent rates. So, but it is interesting to think about. And plus now it's more global, right?

We have access to Korean bands and African music. And like, if you like drone music that you're hearing in the Velvet Underground, like, you know, check out the desert tour guys that are coming in Mali and Algeria and, you know, listen to those guys. Cause that's all like blues meets drone. And discovery is at your fingertips now. Whereas it used to be difficult to find new stuff

if you didn't have the cool older brother, the guy to take you or the guy at the record shop who could tell you what was happening. Right, right, right. So it's right there for you. So it's just a different era. A couple of final thoughts on this documentary though. I thought like it was cool.

Like I didn't really realize that, I mean, you talk about Andy Warhol kind of being in charge, right? Like that had its pluses and its minuses. Like without Warhol, does it ever get out of the gate? And yet after a period of time, like they become stunted as a result of that relationship and resentment around Nico and all of that kind of occurs

that leads to ultimately the dismantling of the band that never really saw the level of success that I thought that it had. Like it was interesting to hear like, oh, they never really like penetrated culture in a way that I thought that they had. That comes much later. And, you know, obviously Lou goes on

to this successful career outside of the Velvet Underground. But what I thought was amazing was like Sterling Morrison goes and gets his PhD in English and is like a professor for a while. And then he becomes a tugboat captain. was like Sterling Morrison goes and gets his PhD in English. And is like a professor for a while. And then he becomes a tugboat captain. And then Moe, the drummer is like an IT professional. Like, can you imagine like you're at your company

and like you have to go deal with the head of IT or whatever and you realize she was the drummer in Velvet Underground. But only the cool ones realize that because a lot of people went in and out of that office without even having any idea who Mo Tucker was. That's amazing. Yeah.

That these lives, you know, having full kind of careers and lives, you know, in the aftermath of being part of something that was so culturally seismic. Herman Melville became a customs officer after Moby Dick. He did? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow.

All right. Let's do some listener questions. Let's do it. All right. Let's go to Al from D.C. Hello, Rich and Adam. This is Al in D.C. I'm calling with a question about ramping up my endurance training.

I've been doing time-restricted eating and feeling great doing about an 18-6, eating lunch at about 2 o'clock and stopping my caloric intake at about 8 o'clock. But recently, I've been ramping up my running miles, training for 50K in the spring. And I'm feeling like morning runs, 12 or 15 mile training runs and then going another four hours fasted after that run may not be optimal my gains and recovery. I'm just curious if you have any insights on how I should be adjusting my caloric intake to optimize my gains during this ramped up training period. So I'll put the question on the air. I appreciate what you guys are doing. Thanks very much.

Thank you for the question, Al. DC is a great running city, great place to train for 50K. I think your instinct and your intuition is correct. I appreciate the interest in self-experimentation with restricted eating windows. And I think it's fascinating the kind of science that's coming out around this and the experimentation that so many athletes are doing.

My take on this with the caveat that I think there's a lot of science that needs to be done before we can get total clarity on this. But as I see it now, my perspective is that occasional fasted state workouts are okay. And the science does support that there may be a mild adaptation to that stress that enhances aerobic state fat burning.

And I've experienced that myself and I enjoy playing around with that. But I think the emphasis has to be on occasional, because if you're training for a performance goal, which you are doing right now, the key, I don't have to tell you, to success is consistency, consistent training with an emphasis on not only killing all your workouts,

but perhaps even more importantly, optimizing your recovery between sessions. And I think your current approach of a persistent fasted state will not bode well with this. You simply cannot perform day in and day out with this fasting regimen without something going sideways at some point, because, or at a minimum,

failing to timely nourish yourself is only gonna deplete you, which you might be able to get through your workout for the day and the next day, but at some point it catches up to you a couple of days later often, and this is gonna impede your recovery. It's gonna impair,

potentially even depress your immune system. It may even lead to illness, depriving your body of needed nutrients, which is only gonna undermine recovery and thus the gains that you're seeking to achieve. I don't think that, I could be wrong, but I don't think there's any elite athletes out there

who are trying to train in this manner or who would entertain doing this. You've got to feel, you've got to feed yourself. You've got to nourish yourself. And as your training ramps up and it becomes more and more, burdensome is the wrong word, like more and more onerous. Like you're gonna, you're taxing your system in a way that perhaps you haven't before.

If you wanna be able to bounce back and do it the following day, you're gonna have to feed those muscles and your body. So again, fasted state, okay, from time to time, occasionally. I think it's good to stress the body and establish physiologically and also psychologically that you're capable of going out and doing a long run

and not eating right away afterwards. I think there's something to be said for that, but not on a daily basis. If you do wanna continue to play around with this, I would suggest restricting those fasted training days to maybe one at the most two days a week and to do it around your purely aerobic workouts and to avoid it when you're doing tempo

or more anaerobic workouts. So that's my two cents on that. Again, I think what's going on here is interesting. And like I said earlier, more science is needed to figure this out. Oh, science, quotes. You and your science. You and your science.

I would fully agree with everything you just said. Thank you, Adam. I'm experimenting with a avocado toast diet right now. Pre-workout or post? Pre, during, post. How long after your workout? And there's zero fasting involved. Every hour, it's more avocado toast for me.

When you're not eating, I guess technically you're fasting. You have like a 20 minute fasting window. My biggest fasting- Your fasted state. My biggest fasting window is on roll on days. We've gone a couple hours without you eating. Are you okay? Get me some avocado toast.

Stat. You're in your fat burning zone right now. Great question. All right, cool. Let's go to Kendall from Boulder, Colorado. Hi, guys. This is Kendall from Boulder, Colorado. My question and or point of discussion, I guess, is the idea brought up in the conversation with Rain and Riz around the idea of the pursuit of happiness, which is an American, obviously an American thing. And I think it's something I see show up on the pod a bit. But I guess I ask, are we dismissing that aspect of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because we think that the idea is to achieve happiness, whereas it possibly could be that the forefathers wrote the idea of it being a pursuit without the end ever being achieved. I know that that was brought up in a couple of different philosophers, but I'm kind of curious what you guys think. Do you think that the pursuit of happiness is an end or do you think that it was always meant to be a pursuit and therefore the process

along the way is what creates the happiness? That's my question. Thanks, guys. Love the conversations. Getting deep and philosophical with Kendall from Boulder. Deep and philosophical with the founding fathers. I know. Are we gonna be so bold as to try to read the minds

of the founding fathers, Adam? A lot of people are doing that lately. Not in this vein. A lot of people are doing that currently. Currently. Across the spectrum. On a lot of channels. Did the founding fathers ever comment on this?

Has a legal scholar tried to interpolate what that means? Like whether their focus was on pursuit versus happiness? Has anybody parsed that to your knowledge? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that George Washington was Brian Epstein and Ben Franklin was John Lennon. Right. And-

Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was Paul. Yeah. Very industrious and productive. Who's George? Who's Ringo? John Quincy Adams. Okay.

How do we layer that archetype? No, one of them is Hamilton. Yeah, Hamilton. George is Hamilton. Maybe. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, I can't read the minds of the founding fathers. I have no idea what they were thinking about.

My interpretation though, is that it's about the liberty of the pursuit. So whether it's the pursuit of, I don't know whether they ever expounded upon how they define happiness or whether happiness can only be found through the pursuit. I'm not sure that they really thought that through all that they did. I don't know.

But for me, it's about the liberty to pursue, right? And I don't think, you know, it's good practice to be orienting your life around this aim of happiness. I mean, happiness is a choice that we have in every moment. We can choose to be happy, we can choose to not be happy. And in my opinion, the pursuit should be focused on meaning and fulfillment and giving back,

service, things like that. And I think happiness is a byproduct of doing other things, not an end to be pursued in and of itself. And personally, I mean, the things that make me happy are really kind of temporal states like, oh, I like jumping in the ocean or something like that. That makes me happy, but my life isn't in pursuit of jumping in the ocean.

It's a fleeting thing that I enjoy that gives me happiness. But more broadly, like the things that create an extended sense of happiness in my life are not the things that were kind of force fed in our culture like luxury and convenience and what your bank account says and all of that. They're really the result of strain or getting out of my comfort zone, tackling hard things,

trying to find a way to give back, pushing my own limits. And as an American, I'm very grateful to have the liberty to explore these things, which in turn ultimately lead to a greater sense of happiness. But I don't think about my life

in the context of happiness every day. That's really how it works for me. I don't think that's how it works for anybody. I think that's what Kendall's getting at. I think he wants you to speak to, I mean, I think he's kind of teeing it up in that way. I think he agrees that it's about the pursuit of some meaning or about the,

but I think you're also getting at what they're, they're not trying to define pursuit or happiness. So while I agree with you, and I think Kendall is saying the same thing, and that's why he wants us to speak to this. So the idea isn't to happiness as this goal, but the happiness can come in the pursuit. I don't disagree with that.

But I think what they were getting at was more creating the environment so that everyone felt the feel like they can pursue whatever they want. And so obviously they didn't. Obviously they didn't create that environment, but in their mind, they created it in their narrow construct of what they thought was appropriate

and good for the white male. But that was that time and that's what they did. But I think if you look back, they weren't actually creating that, but they thought they were, or they tried to frame it that way. But because when you look at studies, if you're in a country where it's harder to get a loan,

you can't start a business. If you look at Venezuela or Cuba or these places, there's a lot of unhappiness because the structures of that society aren't allowing for the pursuit of anything really. And so I think the idea was let's create a place where the crown's not getting in the way, where taxes are low, where you can really just go out

and do what you, in this young country. Equitable access. Right, equitable access, which is the thing that we would like to expand because obviously it was imperfect then, it's imperfect now, but that idea of that democracy is obviously something special because it has been replicated in many places.

And so I think it was creating the conditions to where we can have discussions like this without having to be stressed out about any sort of overlord or, you know. Yeah, I mean, sure to be a mind reader, I mean, pursuit of happiness in the context of how they were contextualizing it or thinking about it, I think meant or means like the freedom to go do whatever

the fuck you wanna do basically without the crown getting involved, like you said, right? Happiness being a catchphrase for essentially like living the life of your choice. Right, exactly. Have we created that here? I don't know. And your idea that you don't pursue this

jumping in the ocean every day as the father of a 15 month old, it's something I pursue on a daily basis. I don't get in there. It takes a lot of pursuit and quite frankly. But what is the half-life of that feeling of happiness that is produced by that? 15 to 30 minutes.

So that's the thing. Yeah. It's not a lasting state. It's not a fasted state. No. That happiness, is it? No, that's why I've moved on to the avocado toast. Right, all right.

Do we answer the question? I think so. Kendall could be the judge. Yeah, Kendall, leave us another voicemail. We're moving on now. Let's go to Abby from Colorado. Abby. Hey, Rich and Adam's go to Abby from Colorado. Abby. Hey, Rich and Adam.

This is Abby from Colorado and I've been a huge fan of the podcast for around four years now. So thanks for all you do. My question to you revolves around reconciling two different topics

that I know have come up on the podcast from time to time and that are challenging for me to try and balance in my life right now. The first of these ideas is resisting the need to be a people pleaser, and the second is maintaining a service mindset.

No matter what obstacles in life someone is facing, helping others is one thing that will always bring more joy and fulfillment to anyone's life. In my eyes, the simplest and easiest way to serve others is by being kind. However, I'm also trying to become less of a people pleaser by staying true to my values and opinions and not bending them to fit the idea of what other people want from me. As an Enneagram Type 9, which is the peacekeeper, my natural tendency is to avoid conflict and be liked by others, reinforcing my need to please people. I pair that with the mission of

serving others through kindness and warmth, and I find it really hard to be authentically myself while navigating day-to-day life. So this is one long way of asking, where do you draw the line between people-pleasing and serving others? Thanks, and you can definitely share this on the air if you'd like. Bye. Well, Abby, in addition to that being just an amazing question, I feel the need to applaud you for extraordinary self-awareness. Yes.

I thought it was a phenomenal question. Yeah. It's unbelievable. I wish, I don't know how old Abby is, but like that level of self-understanding, I think is huge. I agree. And I love this anagram type nine.

I don't even know what that is, but like I remember getting really into tarot and astrology and stuff. I love reading that stuff. You haven't done the anagram yet? I haven't done the anagram. All right, this is your assignment before the next roll on.

You gotta go do the anagram and come back and we'll analyze it. Okay. All right. All right. I'll refresh mine and see where I'm at. We can hash it out. All right, let's do it.

I think it's a really interesting question. I relate to it a lot. I understand that tension between people pleasing, serving others and trying to establish some kind of healthy boundary. And I think unpacking that begins with, And I think unpacking that begins with, first of all, kind of a peek into your motivations. Like is your service, this kindness,

or these other things that you're doing on behalf of others, is it motivated by a desire to be liked? Or is it motivated by the impact that it has on others? And I guess then in turn, your own sense of self, like sort of getting clear on what your motivations are, I think is important. And perhaps even more elementary,

getting clear about your values, like what are your values? So when you're acting in a way that feels like it's not authentically you, that's an indication that your behavior is not aligned with your core values on some level. So developing a practice of checking your decisions against that value set will help you calibrate your behavior and your level of alignment.

So again, clarity about those values, if you have to write them out, what are those core sets of values? And when throughout the course of your day, when you're people pleasing and trying to be kind to people or whatever, where do you feel like those behaviors come into conflict with your values?

I think is a good place or a good lens through which to kind of deconstruct all of this. If you're people pleasing out of a need to maintain the peace, but that ends up being contrary to your values or violate some kind of personal boundary, then that's good information that you need

to realign your behavior to get it more consistent with your value system. So your value system, value set dictates the boundary and protecting that boundary at times demands that you potentially place yourself in conflict with others, which then violates your peacekeeping disposition. And that's where the discomfort comes in, right? Like you don't want to bum anyone out, but you also want to be true

to yourself. And I suspect that you're somebody who would rather say the thing that makes people feel comfortable rather than adhering to a boundary or making sure that you're being true to yourself. adhering to a boundary or making sure that you're being true to yourself. And I think that's the growth opportunity, like recognizing that. And when those moments arise, can you set a healthy boundary, do it graciously so you're not upending the peace unnecessarily,

but also respecting yourself. And I think when you do that as uncomfortable as it is, there's a little kind of dollop of self-esteem, like a little kernel of self-esteem that you're planting that allows you to start to get more comfortable with who you are. And I think you'll also find that, look, the peacekeeping thing, the people-pleasing thing,

that comes out of a lack of self-esteem. Like, oh, if I don't tell them what they wanna hear, then they're not gonna like me and my opinion isn't valued or whatever. But in truth, people respect you when you demonstrate self-respect. So by setting a healthy boundary and saying, I'm sorry, I know you want me to do that,

but I can't do that, or whatever the case may be, may be uncomfortable and every instinct inside your people-pleasing body will be saying, oh my God, they're gonna hate me now. But ultimately they end up respecting you more. And then you end up feeling better about who you are. And then that muscle once flexed becomes easier to flex the next time.

I love it. Yeah, I mean, I'm a natural people pleaser and wanna be kind and all of that too. I find that like there is a self motivation though to act in kindness and grace because it means you just like move through the world cleaner. You don't have these hangups of, you know,

if you create conflict needlessly, you carry that with you. I think it can be a drag. But I think that, you carry that with you. Sure, yeah. It can be a drag. But I think that, I get that. I mean, I don't think there's any disagreement around that. I think it's when that urge or disposition to people please, like let's say you're around a bunch of people that you have issues with or that, you know,

say things that you don't agree with and you just kind of like nod and go along to get along because you don't wanna ruffle any feathers. And then you leave and you feel like you have a toxic residue around you because you didn't stand up for yourself or you didn't acquit yourself in a manner that would be more consistent

with what you think is right and true. Yeah, so it sounds like to me, it's about when to, service is such an important thing and it's cool that she has that in mind. And then not being a pushover is important to be able to serve people. Right, but kindness is not antithetical

to self-respect and healthy boundaries. You can still be kind and be strong. Right. So figuring out how to combine those two. Michelle Obama seems kind and strong. Yes, right. She is who we should all be. How about Sylvia Earle or Jane Goodall?

Like they're both very kind people, but are very convicted and very clear on what their values are and strong in their opinions and don't suffer fools lightly, but are very kind people and are amazing examples of service to humanity. How about that for- I think that's a good- The triumvirate of role models.

We landed it. We landed the plane. Did we crash the plane? I don't think we did. No, there was turbulence. It was a pretty smooth landing. Yeah. Yeah, well, we had to steer clear

of all your controversial ideas about George. I know a lot of George. The stabilizers. Hey, dear listeners, a lot of George fans in this building. Yes, yes, there are. No one wants to hear me sing. Yeah, we do.

All right, we're gonna end it. Let's get the karaoke going. It was a pleasure sharing space with you, Adam. How do you feel? I still have this blister right under my toenail. You ever had one of those? I like how you brought it all around like a good comedian, brought it back to the beginning,

but I'm not indulging you on that. We're ending it, all right. You can find Adam online at Adam Skolnick. You can follow me at Rich Roll. If you want to leave a question for us to consider talking about on the podcast, you can do that at 424-235-4626. We will have copious show notes

on the episode page at richroll.com. So check that. Please, if you haven't done so already, subscribe to the show on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you enjoy this program. And that's it. I wanna thank the team for putting together an amazing episode.

I certainly do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo, Beatles fan extraordinaire with equally strong opinions about the Beatles lurking in the shadows over there. He is our Glenn Johns. He did the audio engineering production, interstitial music, all the behind scenes stuff. Blake Curtis and Dan Drake are the, what was the name of the Beatles director again? What was his name? Michael. Michael Hogg. Michael Hogg. Michael Lindsay Hogg.

Blake and Dan are Michael Lindsay Hoggs. We have Daniel Solis on graphics, AJ for TikToks, Davey and Grayson for portraits, and Georgia for copywriting, DK for advertiser relationships, and theme music as always by my own Paul, Ringo and George, Tyler Trapper and Harry.

Is this our last one of the year? The last roll on of the year? I don't know, is it? I don't know, you tell me. I think maybe we have one more. We have one more. I can't remember. We might have to chamber a timeless one before I take off for January or whatever

that isn't wedded to the new cycle in any way. Cause I think we might have to put one up when I'm gone. So we'll figure that out. But until then, appreciate all you guys. Thank you for listening. We don't take your attention for granted and we'll be back when we're back in some general vicinity of bi-weekly,

whatever that means to you. Final thoughts. It's been a pleasure. Always. It's good to be back. Thanks, man. I think we did it. bi-weekly, whatever that means to you. Final thoughts? It's been a pleasure. Always. It's good to be back. Thanks, man. I think we did it.

We did it. Good enough. It's great. Bye. Bye, Rich. Bye. Bye, gang. Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok Thank you.