The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: High Peaks, Cold Seas & Our Climate Code Red

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Melting ice caps. Raging wildfires. Record-breaking heat waves. The climate crisis is here, and we’re not doing enough about it. Suffice to say, no wonder Greta Thunberg is so pissed off. Aside from discussing burgeoning climate disasters, in today’s edition of ‘Roll On’ Adam Skolnick and I pontificate on the positives and pitfalls of perfectionism, arctic swimming, laundry done right and more, all rounded out with a cameo from renowned yoga instructor, endurance coach, and friend Ted McDonald. For those new to this segment of the podcast, aside from being my bi-weekly sidekick hype beast, Adam Skolnick is a waterman, writer, 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. Other topics covered in this episode include: lessons on productivity & workflow learned after Rich’s trip to Telluride; endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh’s 10km swim around Greenland; the chaos ensuing in Afghanistan & the arrogance and destruction of imperialism;  takeaways from The International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent climate report; and why sustainable land management, regenerative agriculture, and reforestation are critical to saving the planet. In addition, we answer the following questions: What do you do when your self-care routine starts to feel stale? How do you find the right coach when training for an endurance race? As an athlete, how important is it to maintain a yoga practice? Thank you to Nate from Colorado and Heidi from Northern California for your questions, and Ted McDonald for your help answering them—including one of my own. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone]. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rich Roll Podcast. What's good, my beautiful hypebeasts of all things health and wellbeing. I hope this transmission of goodness finds you well and thriving. My name is Rich Roll. Once again, in deep communion with my literary minded

echo warrior, swim run bro-barian, Adam Skolnick, snorkel mask wearing friend of sharks, rider of currents, penner of words. Together once again, and for those who are new,

roll on as our view askew edition of the pod, wherein we prognosticate, pontificate, expound, and expatiate on matters both noteworthy and trivial, all buttressed with other bits that have leapt across our transom, underscored by a few winds of the week

and piloted to safe harbor with listener questions dropped on our voicemail at 424-235-4626. Adam, how goes you? I don't know. I'm apparently unverifiable. What does that mean? Instagram can't- Are you quietly petitioning Instagram

to get verified or something? Instagram can't and will not verify me. Therefore, I am questioning my own existence. Am I me? It's an existential void. Is this all in a simulation? Your self-worth is inextricably connected to your verification status.

I can verify you, but that's all meaningless. Does your verification of me include a blue check mark? The invisible star chamber that is the Instagram verification board has yet to acknowledge your presence. We're just going to have to do more podcasts, I guess. The only thing I can think of- Is there another Adam Skolnick out there that works at Ben and Jerry's? That's my problem. There are no other Adam Skolnicks on Instagram. Therefore, I will never be verified.

Maybe if you change your account name to the real Adam Skolnick. The real. Official Adam Skolnick. I might just go the other way and just go the real. Yeah. It's always funny when somebody on Instagram has the account name official something,

but then you're like, yeah, but I don't even know who that is. I've never heard of you. Are there a bunch of other pretenders to the throne? Story of my life. I don't know who's famous anymore. The people I think are famous are getting less famous. I mentioned your employment with Ben and Jerry's. We should clarify for the record

because I think there's some confusion out there. When we joked about that the other day, some people actually believe that you literally got off your shift at Ben and Jerry's and came to do the podcast. No, I did. I do, I scoop ice cream at Ben and Jerry's and came to do the podcast. No, I did. I do. I scoop ice cream at Ben and Jerry's.

Okay, now we're clear. Yeah. I just want to make that clear to everybody. Three days a week, I work a Ben and Jerry's graveyard shift, whatever that is. In between posting stories on the New York Times. Yes, in between.

Sometimes there's downtimes in the career and you have to pick up an ice cream scoop only the vegan flavors i won't even touch the dairy stuff which is a problem in my shit right is that you have to talk to hr about that like four days a week i talk to hr and the other three i work the shift okay i got my own i got my own scooper too. I don't use the community scoopers cause it's pandemic. So I bring my own scooper in and that I actually. Right, that's never touched.

Right, I whittled my own scooper. Right. I whittled it. I think there's a whole podcast we could do on just this and this alone. The whittler? Yeah. I don't know.

I'm at a loss for words. I will say since we last convened and we shared about you out swimming with that photograph of the white shark nearby, that caused quite a reaction in people. Yes. We shared that. Yes.

It was interesting. It was back out there again on Friday and I've been in that area multiple times since then, but it was back out there with the Malibu artist. He said he was going to post a video version of that, but I haven't seen that yet. No. I mean, he, I, we were out there and he had, he had a shark. We were watching him before I got there. He was following a shark. I got there, he's following a shark and these swimmers were swimming right to the shark before I even got in the water.

And as soon as the sharks heard them coming or felt them coming, it boned out. And we saw it like disappear off video, the swimmers didn't even know. Because like I said, many times before, there are, or I said last time we talked about this, there are swimmers that are there almost every day. And it's, you know,

especially for triathletes in the Santa Monica area, they're out there. And so, you know, they just didn't, they didn't see the shark. They didn't know shark was there. Shark saw them, took off, which made me feel better about the whole thing. Yeah, on the Malibu artist account,

there's video of sharks swimming directly underneath surfers and they're completely unaware. That's San Diego. Oh, is that where that is? Yeah. But yes. And, you know, he also was sharing with me that he is like, he found this aggregation point that the scientists, marine biologists didn't even know about at the shark lab down in Long Beach. And now he went up there to check it out again. And we're talking about an aggregation site, 30, 50 sharks up North of Los Angeles. And they're out there in the night all day. And we don't really know what they're doing there,

but a different size shark, different ages. Most of them are like under 10 feet, but still it's a big amount of sharks. And a 10 foot fish is still a big fish. Right. And apparently the shark lab was there on a liveaboard and they were pull spearing tags onto the dorsal fins. So it's like piercing an ear,

except they didn't go and ask to have their ears pierced. So the shark lab is a tag. An unheralded benefit of drone technology. The fact that he's been able to identify these sharks that flew under the radar of the scientists who are studying them. And nobody believed him until he dropped the footage. Because no one believes this Joe Blow off the street.

I'm the marine biologist guy, I know. And they didn't know. And so then there was this ABC, KBC did something on the area where I swim. And they said there were a dozen sharks in the area. He's never seen a dozen there. He saw six there one day when I was swimming. There was four there on Friday.

They're there. Yeah. Well, you're looking good, man. Hey, thanks, buddy. You posted on Instagram in your swim run attire. I did. And you're looking fit, man. Hey, thank you.

Yeah. I'm in my sans neoprene swim run attire. I know, right? Zuma's turning one soon. I have to- Balancing your swim run training against raising an infant through the first year is no small thing.

Dude, I am trying to stave off dad bod at all costs, but it wants me. Gets harder and harder, man. I'm telling you. Zuma's first birthday is proof that I do exist. When does he turn one? At the end of this month. Wow. Yeah. Congrats, man.

That's cool. Yeah, it's cool. And he's walking and he's, you know, vocalizing all the time and he's saying some words and he, you know. Becomes like a real human. He's moving from primate stage to almost sapien stage. It's very exciting.

Very cool. Thanks. How are you, man? You were in Telluride. I was, yeah. I was in Telluride for four or five days. It was a quick trip. The occasion was attending a wedding there,

but we have some friends there. So it was great. It was, you know, Telluride is, aside from the fact that it's just an absolutely magical place, anybody who's visited there can attest to that. It's really a beautiful part of the world in Southwestern Colorado.

It's not easy to get there. No. And Julie had gone ahead of time with the boys. They drove, I was following with the two younger ones and we were flying. We had a layover in Phoenix before catching a flight to Montrose, which is still an hour and a half drive from Telluride. But we only had a half an hour layover in Phoenix.

Our flight left late out of LAX, we missed the connecting flight. Ouch. And the next flight to Montrose wasn't until the next day. So when we disembarked in Phoenix, I went to the gate attendant and said, I don't wanna wait a whole day, I'm just gonna rent a car. But we had checked two bags

and I needed to get those bags back. And they sent me down to baggage claim, promised me that they would come through with the rest of the luggage for the flight. They did not. I went to another gate attendant and they said, you're gonna have to wait two to three hours to get your bags.

Sure enough, it did take three hours. And this is because, you know, the airlines are in disarray right now. They're laying people off, they're understaffed. They're canceling flights all over the place. They're laying people off and are understaffed? Yeah, it's because the economics of it are all upside down right now, I guess.

So anyway, we left our house at like 6 a.m. but we didn't leave the Phoenix airport until like 5 p.m. and ended up getting a pickup truck, drove to Flagstaff, spent the night, drove into Telluride the next day. So it took a full two days to get there, which was not great. I mean, I love road trips, my younger kids, not so much. Although that ended up being fun.

They were less enthusiastic about the whole thing, but you drive through some, you know, once you get north of Flagstaff, you're in all this native country and it's quite spectacular and beautiful. You go through four corners up into Colorado and it's magical. And when you get to Telluride, it's like a real life Whoville. I went on some amazing runs. There's this gondola

that takes you from the old Telluride downtown up in the mountain village. That's like free public transportation. It's really spectacular. It's like three sides of mountains, right? It's like crazy. Yeah, you're in this like slot cauldron, you know, and there's just waterfalls everywhere. And it's really magical. The wedding was great. It was attended by our mutual friend, Ted McDonald. Teddy Mac.

Just might be dropping by later today. Teddy Mac. More about Ted a little bit later. But yeah, it was great. My wife is still there. The boys stayed longer too. They just got back last night. It was really a cool experience, but there was some interesting things

that happened when I was there. Not the least of which was, there was a death on the Via Ferrata. Do you know what the Via Ferrata is? I do not. So Via Ferrata is a term, I don't know the exact translation, but it's a general term for climbs

where there are cables kind of pinned into the side of a raw like rock face. Like half dome has. Sort of, and it allows you to kind of clip in and go laterally, like horizontally along the rock face. And you're like thousands of feet. Yeah, on the face. So you're like thousands of feet up, but you're clipped in.

And it's quite a tourist attraction in Telluride, this particular Via Ferrata. And every time I go, people are like, you gotta do the Via Ferrata. You gotta do it. It's like, I'm being bullied into doing the Via Ferrata. I'm terrified of heights. I'm always like, I'm good. I'm not the via ferrata. You gotta do it. It's like, I'm being bullied into doing the via ferrata. I'm terrified of heights. I'm always like, I'm good.

I'm not doing the via ferrata. Like not for me. Stop with the via ferrata. It sounds like, you know what? It sounds like- I just feel like I'll be trapped, you know, clipped in on this rock face, looking thousands of feet down,

terrified and unable to like escape or get out of it. Like it sounds like a mafia- Which probably why I should do it. Yeah, like in a mafia assassination plot. Hey, Rich, come with me to the via ferrata. And don't, you don't need anything. Don't worry about it. It sounds like a mafia. Which probably why I should do it. Yeah. Like in a mafia assassination plot. Hey, Rich, come with me to the Via Ferrata, huh? Yeah. And don't, you don't need anything. Don't worry about it. Don't bring anything. They say you need to clip in. You don't need anything. Trust me. Yeah. We laugh and we jest, but there are tours, like proper tours where a guide will take you across and it's all safe and you're always clipped in and all of this. But apparently two women went up on it while we were in town without a guy doing it on their own.

And a woman apparently unclipped for reasons unbeknownst to anybody and fell to her death. Like she's down, I think like a thousand feet. So she's walking like face down on this thing or whatever. You're just kind of going, you know, from, you're just going, you're like facing the wall and you're moving laterally on a ledge and you have two clips. So you would, you unclip one to move

and you always have one clipped in. So I don't know why this person would have been completely unclipped, but apparently that's what happened. And she perished. I had dinner with David Holbrook, who's the founder of a thing called Original Thinkers, which is sort of a Aspen Ideas,

Nantucket Project sort of festival that I've spoken at at the past. It's a really cool event. In Telluride? In Telluride, yeah. He lives there. it's a really cool event. In Telluride? In Telluride, yeah. He lives there, he's a filmmaker. The son interestingly of Richard Holbrook. Okay.

And he's a filmmaker, he made a documentary about his father called the Diplomat that you can hunt on HBO. Super interesting guy who was living in New York City and relocated his family to Telluride in like 2013. And his son who's 19 leads, he's one of the people that takes groups up on the Via Ferrata.

He's like a really accomplished climber, but he also participates in search and rescue. So he was part of the search and rescue team that had to recover this woman's body. And we saw him, he was quite shaken up by that. So yeah, man, that stuff's for real. But other than that, Telluride is just, it's unbelievable. Had a great time.

And I think what I wanted to share about that experience is getting out of LA and kind of putting some distance between me and my work, et cetera. It's one of those experiences that allows you to kind of reflect on what you're doing with your life, how you're doing it, things that you wanna change. I did a bit of a life review and had a bit of a epiphany around the systems

that we have here at the podcast and what we can change, what we should change, what we should hold on to, what we should let go of. And it really connected me to this profound kind of tendency towards perfectionism that I have and balancing that against efficiency. Because I think I have this proclivity towards being a perfectionist,

this idea that I'm the only one who can do this and I have this proclivity towards being a perfectionist, this idea that I'm the only one who can do this and I have to do it and it has to be this particular way. And if it's not, it's a failure. And I think I've held onto that because, or I've created a narrative around that, that that has fueled part of my success, but at the behest of kind of hamstringing us in terms of like how we grow and how we kind of expand and the many ways in which I think it continues to hold me back and

the show back and reflecting on how I could get into a headspace of letting go of those, some of those things so that we can work a little bit more loosely and more efficiently with how we do things. Because I think there's positives and pitfalls of perfectionism based on my experience. For me, it's allowed me to set a very high standard and strive to adhere to that.

But ultimately I ended up becoming the bottleneck for every decision. And now we're running this operation where there's a lot of people involved. We have a brand new hire, Dan Drake is here. Shout out to Dan. Dan Drake. His first day. And so that involves managing people,

that involves empowering people, that involves a decision tree where lots of decisions are getting made. And we have a system right now where I end up like having to yay or nay a lot of decisions that I really shouldn't be in a position to do. And I think like it's part and parcel of what leads to burnout and exhaustion.

Like when I was in Telluride, I still had to get a show up. And then the night that I was flying back, there was a show going up and I couldn't just like take a break because the post-production cycle, and I think a lot of people don't realize this, is really protracted with this show.

Like I've got to get this, you know, we get this blog post up and we have all these photographs and how do we create, it's like publishing a magazine for every episode because the web piece of the show is kind of an aesthetic cornerstone to the whole thing. And yet the truth is, I don't know if anybody who listens to this show

goes to the blog post and the webpage to listen to it or to watch it. It looks great, but we're spending so much time getting that up on its feet when truly it's not really that related to moving the needle in terms of- But you've always had that. When I was a guest on the show years ago, I was struck by how everything like your, the look is all very cool and stylized and unique. And that has always been part of your package. And I think it has set it apart.

It must've attracted visitors. Having that aesthetic has always been part of what you're doing. Sure. And that's what keeps me wedded to it at the same time. However, like when I listen to a podcast, I never go to the website. No. I think the percentage of people

that go and visit that page is probably really small. And when you balance that against the number of hours and all the toil that goes into creating that, the question then becomes, is that worth it? Right. Especially when we're putting out a book every year, excuse me, where people can have that experience in book form versus trying to make that happen

every single week. However, in the process of creating those pages, we're doing a lot of the legwork for stuff that and for social stuff. Right. So, but I wanna work towards a place where as soon as we're done doing the podcast, I can walk away and I don't have to worry about it,

which is the way most people do it, right? Other people get it up on its feet. You trust them, it's good. You move on to the next thing. And if I could free up that time, would it not be better to add another show or two every month? Would that be more impactful or important

than creating this pristine webpage for posterity? I don't know. So that's just one of the things that has been on my mind and I'm not sure how to solve that. And as somebody who's always been kind of a solo operator, I struggle with growth and the responsibility that comes with that. Because I think managing people and figuring out systems

really doesn't meet my strengths or nor my past experience, but this is what growth is, right? Yeah. So anyway, the other thing I will share and we'll put the Telluride trip to rest is on the way back, the travel saga continued because we made our connecting flight in Phoenix, but in the Phoenix airport,

there was a guy who was kind of creating a little bit of drama. Oh yeah. And I knew that if he got on our plane, there was probably gonna be a problem. Like he was sort of flagrantly taking his mask off and he was hitting his vape pen. And I was like- In a lounge.

In the airport terminal, right? Because he was trying to attract attention. Like his goal was to be the center of attention. Not only does he get on our plane, he ends up sitting right behind me. And the volume just turned up to 11 on this guy trying to attract attention to himself. And he was gonna do it through charm or jokes

or the volume of his voice or if need be conflict, all of which ensued to the point where finally a gaggle of flight attendants descended upon him, demanded his ID and told him that he was banned from American Airlines. And when we landed, he got escorted off the flight. And when we got off the plane, he was sitting with a couple of cops.

And this is a weird thing as somebody who's been- That's anxiety driving. You know, a patron of commercial aviation for a very long time, I've never seen anything like that happen. But if you peruse social media, it would appear that this is happening all the time. It's one of those common things that you never see, right?

Their minds. Yeah. Like that video. Did you see the video of the guy who got duct taped to his seat after he was trying to fight? I don't know the circumstances around that. I did see that.

But people are on edge, man. People are angry. And it seems that commercial aviation is this Petri dish for acting out in a way that seems new. New, the commercial aviation is a capsule for acting out. It's like the new subway. It used to be like the New York subway

was the place that you saw the crazies every once in a while. And now it's taking to the skies. Or it's almost like a pulpit for people to, you know, act out in a very particular way, knowing that they're gonna be filmed. It's a stage. I don't know.

The whole world's a stage. It's the Shakespearean comeuppance of aviation, commercial aviation. Somebody should put a theatrical production on of, you know, shit that goes down on airplanes. You know what? I wish he had just gotten up and said, listen, you can ban me if you want,

but I am doing the final monologue in Macbeth. Well, the interesting thing is that when he was told that he was being banned from American Airlines, he was gleeful. It was almost like his goal was achieved. And I'm like, that's such a strange, like he actually wanted that to happen. Yes. So what is going on with the individual who is so in need of that kind of attention,

no matter the circumstances? You know, I am not a psychiatrist, but I will answer that question. You are a Ben and Jerry's employee in good standing is what you are. I think that that's what you need. You need to add another show. It's just me at Ben and Jerry's employee in good standing is what you are. I think that that's what you need. You need to add another show. It's just me at Ben and Jerry's,

just scooping ice cream and talking with my coworkers. That sounds like a new TikTok channel for you. All right. Anyway, before we move on, you are on TikTok now, sir. I am. How do you like it? How's the water? Well, first of all, the account Rich Roll was taken

by somebody who's never posted a TikTok. So I am, my account is at I am Rich Roll. Oh, I like it. Our boy, AJ here in the house has been creating TikToks for that channel, taking clips from the podcast. But I think that, yeah, so I am there and it's growing it's growing. People are enjoying like taking some of the best of the show and putting little.

Dude, we need a dance number. Slivers up there, but yeah, I haven't done a TikTok in the true kind of spirit of TikTok performing for the camera, but my behind the scenes mentor on all things TikTok is, is Joanne Molinaro, the Korean vegan. I was just thinking. She's my consult. So I just haven't, like right now, AJ's handling it. I haven't made a TikTok myself. I should say that.

Joanne, we're gonna need three of your best choreographers over here. Yes. And then we'll do a roll on dance. The lighting, the camera, yeah, exactly. Like we need something. I don't know what that's gonna be yet. Something has to happen. Much to my children's chagrin, I we need something. I don't know what that's gonna be yet. Something has to happen. Much to my children's chagrin, I am on TikTok.

You're saying Davey, photographer Davey Greenberg. Davey Greenberg, he's a beast on TikTok, sharing all of his training in the lead up to his first marathon, Davey's killing it. He did his longest run to date, 10 miles at an 8.01 pace. Is that correct Davey's killing it. He did his longest run to date, 10 miles at an 8.01 pace. Is that correct Davey? Yeah, man. He's gonna be ready to go come LA marathon time.

All right, let's pivot. Let's do it. Enduro corner. I love Enduro corner. Yes. What have we got this week? We got high peaks and cold water. First up, we have to give kudos to Robbie Ballinger.

We're kind of checking in on him every week in the spirit in which we, you know, checked in on the iron cowboy. He is closing in on his Colorado crush update. For those that are new, he's in the midst of this summer long quest to conquer the Leadville Marathon, which he did. Then he ran the Colorado Trail, which is 500 miles.

Then he did the Silver Rush 50, which was also in Leadville. And he's almost completed summiting all 58 Colorado peaks over 14,000 feet. I think he's on 56 today. As of yesterday, he had done 55. And then he's gonna culminate this whole thing with a Leadville 100 on August 21. But all seems to be going to plan.

There was one peak that he was very close to summiting and then had something going on with his ears or his eyesight. Oh, really? He was only like hundreds of feet away from the summit and he backed down and went back down according to what he shared on Instagram. So I don't know if he went back up that peak or not.

I'm a little unclear on that, but he appears to be healthy and enervated and excited. Enervated? Enervated. Meaning low energy. Oh, enervated means low energy? Enervated I think means drained of energy. I've been using that word wrong.

As somebody who prides himself on vocabulary. Your vocab is one of your strengths. Yeah. Plead guilty to misusing that word wrong. As somebody who prides himself on vocabulary. Your vocab is one of your strengths. Yeah, plead guilty to misusing that word then. Energized, I should say. I didn't mean to. And interestingly, it's being chronicled by Reese Robinson who had a tenure working with us on the podcast, making videos and stuff.

So shout out to Reese as well. So we'll keep you posted on that. In a similar sort of endeavor, Scott Jurek made an attempt at an FKT, his second FKT attempt on the Appalachian Trail. He set the record going south to north a couple years ago, completing that trail in 46 days, six hours and seven minutes.

This time he was going north to south. It's a 2,193 mile trail. His goal is to do it in 40 days or under. The problem with starting in the north is there's these crazy elevation changes. There's not a lot of opportunity to kind of acclimate to that level of rigor.

And he ended up pulling out after a week with a torn quad muscle, which is kind of a bummer. Bummer. Yeah. So hopefully he'll heal up and make another attempt on that. The FKT for going north to south is set, is held by Carl Metzler who did it in 45 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes.

He did that in 2016. And Scott's FKT going south to north was bested by Karel Saab. I mean, that's how you say his name, Saabi. Karel Saab, I think that's how you say his name, Saabi. Karel Saab, I think is how you say it. Okay. Who did it in 41 days, seven hours and 39 minutes. So he beat Scott's record by almost five days.

So Scott had really shouldered a pretty ambitious goal with trying to do this in 40 days or under, and hopefully he'll heal up and get after it again. Let's catch up. Karl Metzler, that's the name that's in the Goggins book. He was the, he won the hurt 100 when David was trying to qualify for the first bad water that he did. And he remembered it.

Yeah, I mean, he's a legend. Yeah, David remembered him coming down. He just never seen a better athlete at that point in his life, seeing Karl run on his crazy slick trails. I mean, Scott is an absolute beast. So the fact that Carl has the north to south at 45 days, I mean, that's wild. They're both, I mean, they're both, yeah.

Two of the legends of the sport, unbelievable. No doubt. Yeah. All right, well. Two of the legends of the sport, unbelievable. No doubt. Yeah. All right, well, moving from high peaks to cold water, we're gonna spend a little time on cold water right now. Is there an update on Lewis Pugh and his code red Arctic swim, his speedo diplomacy? Speedo diplomacy is good to go.

He got approval for his charter flight from Reykjavik to um elulusat um but there were only seven seats that he was allowed to have and uh apparently ridley scott is sending a film crew wow so uh there is going to be a documentary at the other end of this, and so there was no spot for your humble reporter. Um, no seat, no seat for Adam Skolnick, Adam Skolnick in the Ridley Scott universe. The unverified are not invited first of all. And second of all, um, is swim moved. So originally I was going to do this story and it was going to be around now that I was going to be out there. Um, because he was planning it for like the window is opening from like the ninth or so.

And when we were planning this, commercial flights were available, everything was open. It would have been super easy to get there. But now the swim is taking place on the 25th. So the only way I could do it is either only get there for the first couple of days of the swim because it's a 10 kilometer swim, but he's only gonna do about a kilometer

to a kilometer and a half every day. Right. Because the body, because it's the coldest ocean in the world, basically it's literally right where the glacier is melting into all the, the ice melt that we're hearing about is happening where he's swimming. Right. And so he is going to be, you know, in rough kind of mush ice or whatever it's called that like where the glacier, there's going to be times where he's actually in slush right possibly possibly doesn't want to be because it's rough and and not so good on the body but he's only doing about 20 to 30 minutes in that water every day and anyway long story short he the swim starts on the 25th of august uh zuma's birthday is the 29th of august i'm not missing first.

I've missed a lot of stuff in my life. I'm not missing my son's first birthday. So I did try to get there after that. I looked into getting out on the 30th and trying to get there for the end of his swim. And that, you know, commercial flights are just impossible to come by. There was a seat on the 23rd,

but again, that wouldn't work for me. So one of your listeners reached out and tried to get me through all the scientists and how they get there, sometimes on a National Guard plane the US provides, all these different interesting ways. And they've been like a listener of yours who's Danish, but lives in Norway,

has been like calling Air Greenland for me. I mean, the community has come to try to get me there, but it's just not going to happen. So unfortunately I won't be there, but I'll be paying close attention. Uh, you know, he, it really is kind of the, the, um, eloquent Al Gore in speedos that we need right now. And he's kind of, um, different than Greta Greta's, you know, leads with, with her fire and Lewis is really, he's also very motivated and passionate, as passionate and he's alarmed. He's been doing this for a long time.

Yeah, he's exactly where she is in terms of knowledge of the stuff and how alarming it is, but he's just got a polished, more of a diplomats kind of tone. I mean, how old is he now? He's probably like 58 or something like that. Yeah, maybe he's just got a polished more of a diplomats kind of tone. Well, I mean, how old is he now? He's probably like 58 or something like that. Yeah, maybe he's a little older. I think he's 52, 50.

I think he might be your age actually. Yeah, so for those that don't know this swim, as you mentioned, 10 kilometer swim at the mouth of the Alulisat Ice Fjord, which is basically in Greenland, the world's fastest moving glacier. It moves at something like three meters a day, near freezing waters, wind chill.

It's crazy what he's attempting to do. And he's been sharing on social media, his training swims, cause he's in Iceland right now. And he was swimming in some river the other day and there was a drone shot from above that was pretty spectacular. It's amazing what he does.

It's kind of cool to like merge adventure with a mission like this. And I would really want you to, I've been wanting to write about him for years, just didn't happen this time, but that's the way it goes. Yeah, pivoting to Antonio Arguelles. So Antonio Arguelles was attempting someone I know

who I covered in 2017 when he did the North Channel, the last of the Ocean Seven, and he became the oldest at age 58 to ever accomplish the Ocean Seven. He was the seventh to ever do it. Do you know what all seven of them are? Yes, let's rattle them off. Catalina, English Channel, Gibraltar, Cooks Strait,

Japan, it's at Sugaro Strait in Japan, the Molokai to Oahu and the North Channel. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, in 2017, he swam from Northern Ireland to Scotland. So that's the North channel. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, in 2017, he swam from Northern Ireland to Scotland. So that was, that's the North channel. And so that's the coldest one. That's like 55 degrees. It's the one that it's really hard.

That's the one Kim Chambers came out of him was like, basically had to be hospitalized immediately after. It's 35 kilometers still. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, and, but you know, Kim Chambers actually introduced me to Antonio. They, they did a cross border swim from San Diego to the other side of Tijuana. Oh yeah. I remember her talking about that.

Right after Trump was elected. So I did that story and then stayed in touch with Antonio. And then I reached out to him. He happened to be in North, in Ireland, preparing to do the North channel. And, and so then we did that story and he made it. And, you know, I actually also ghost wrote something I haven't really spoken publicly about too often. I ghost wrote his memoir, the forever swim. Um, he approached me around the same time that Goggins did. And so I, I finished the Goggins book and then finished his,

um, I didn't, I didn't even know this until this morning. Well, it was published on a Spanish language. So we translated it. And then now it's available in English, I think on Amazon. And also the audio book's available, though he didn't narrate. I wish he did. He's a really interesting guy.

He was inspired by the 1968 Olympics, the first Mexican to win a swimming medal in the 1968. And he immediately signed up for swim to get into swimming at his local YMCA. And then over the years, he and his brothers all got into it and they sold like there was no good at that time. It was hard to get a license to import goods from other countries into Mexico. It was very controlled economy. It wasn't an open economy. And so they ended up selling on the black market

at these swim races, Speedo, whatever they could get, good goggles, decent swimsuits. He ended up connecting with the person who had the Speedo license in the United States in North America and started to get the good stuff. And over time through his high school career, he was going to try to become an Olympic Olympian at age 17. He narrowly missed making the team at age 17, but ended up at Stanford, uh, through his, through his connections, uh, in, in the Speedo world, he finished high school in the Bay area

and was involved in, in the swim clubs up there. One of the best swimmers up there ended up in Stanford, but he, um, you know, he just wasn't, he wasn't elite enough to, to, to really make a splash. And so he, after a year, he got out of, he quit the team and focused on his academics and ends up being, uh, in high, high up in government in Mexico. And so his book is about his swims, but it's also about kind of the modern history of Mexico, which is really interesting and his life story. So. I didn't know anything about him and he's old enough. He's, I think he's like eight years,

seven or eight years older than me that we didn't overlap at Stanford. And I read that when asked about why didn't you swim at Stanford, he said it wasn't the right fit. And that's usually code for like, I don't get along with Skip Kenny. Like anybody who is, you know, has some connection to the Stanford swimming universe has heard some version

of that story. Cause Skip is a, you know, he's a, he's a, he could be a challenging character for certain people. So I immediately assumed that, but that was not actually the case. No, so he got along fine with Skip. What he didn't like was basically his role on the team was he was breaking water for the best women.

And so like, he just didn't like being in that position of not being good enough. And he felt like he just wasn't right. And so he backed off and he doubled down on his business. He ends up like getting the contract to supply all the swim gear to the Pan Am Games while he's still in college. Becomes this wheeler dealer entrepreneur.

And he still is, but he is. So anyway, he was attempting to do the double. He did the Cataly, the English Channel double. He did the Catalina double in 2019, became the oldest to ever do it. He's 62 now. And his goal was to then do the English double. And he, it was a really glassy day, flat day. And he got to France in 13 hours or so.

It was doing great. Came back, got within two miles of Dover and he'd been vomiting all day and he hadn't been feeling well in his stomach and he started hallucinating, which sometimes happens in these 24 hour swims. He thought it was cause of the hypothermia, although it was only like 62 degree water, which is,

Not cold. Not cold, it's cold if you're gonna be in it for 24 hours, but it's not cold for him. Um, but he just wasn't feeling it and he got a complicated current. And so with two miles to go, they made the decision that it was getting dangerous. And also, you know, the boat, apparently the boat was breaking down. And so he was drifting away from the boat. He didn't realize the boat was breaking down. So it was getting dangerous. So he came out and then he got to Dover and the plan was for him, he and his wife, Lucia,

to go to Paris and enjoy a vacation. He always kind of does that after one of these swims. And the stomach just wasn't getting any better. And it got to the point where he couldn't even stand up and he was rushed to the emergency room. And it turns out he had gallstones while doing this. Oh my God. And one of the gall, one of the stones got in the canal

between I guess the gallbladder and the stomach maybe. The duct. In the duct. And so it got into that duct and it was lodged there and he ended up needing a procedure, but like, so he had gallstones and still almost made it. Wow. I mean, he's amazing. That's wild. Is he gonna make another attempt, you think?

Yes, definitely. Well, speaking of cold water swims not going to plan, our boy, Chris Hout, my coach, Coach's Corner mainstay, made an attempt last week to swim across Lake Tahoe, Trans Tahoe, it's a 21.8 mile swim in very cold water. I don't know many of the details, but on Instagram, one of his crew members was sort of sharing clips.

It began in the dark, I think maybe at something like two or three in the morning or something like that. And after a few hours of swimming, Chris ended up with hypothermia and pulling out of it. And all I can tell you about that is Chris is one of the hardest men I've ever met. So anything that fells Chris had to be brutal beyond. So I had some texts with him this morning.

Apparently his kids were ill in the days leading up to this. And then he got quite sick in the day or two, like 48 to 72 hours after this. So he wasn't tip top, I think is basically what happened. So that's cold water. He may be making another attempt in September. I don't know, but unfortunately that one didn't go to plan. And you know, Chris is, you know,

he's got that Nordic blood, but that cold water, you know, unlike, unlike Antonio, I mean, Chris is very lean. He didn't put a lot of these open water, cold water swimmers. They put on all this heft. They look all paunchy. They're fit. They just need that subcutaneous fat to keep them warm. Chris Nung got none of that.

Antonio has what he calls bioprene. Yeah, exactly. Well-earned. That's good. Chris was putting in monster swim sessions to get ready for this. So my heart's a little bit broken. And all I gotta say is,

I don't know how these guys do it. I can't stand cold water. It's really hard for me. And on the subject of cold water, before we take a break here, I gotta share my new streaming obsession, which is this show called The North Water. Have you checked it out yet?

I'm trying to get April into it. We watched the trailer and she looked at him, she goes, Colin Farrell's in this? Yes. So this is a new mini series that's streaming on AMC+. You can get it on Amazon Prime. I'm only two episodes into, I guess it's five episodes total.

And it's a show that's set in the 1850s in England about whaling, set on a whaling ship. It does star Colin Farrell as just, I mean, this guy explodes off the screen. He's like a barrel chested, homicidal, alcoholic, like a barrel chested, homicidal, alcoholic, completely feral master harpoonist called Henry Dax. And he's just a fucking savage in the show. It's unbelievable.

And then Jack O'Connell who plays this surgeon on the whaling ship who's suffering from PTSD from his experience being deployed to the colonial war in India. And he's addicted to laudanum and he's kind of like the ballast. I feel like in every 19th century drama, someone's got laudanum. Someone's taken laudanum. Yeah. He's way down the rabbit hole on laudanum. Someone's taken laudanum. He's way down the rabbit hole on laudanum. There was laudanum in the Berlin thing, right? Babylon Berlin. Babylon Berlin, I think, yeah.

And Deadwood has laudanum. Oh, Deadwood does too. Well, and then in the Nick, it's like opium and heroin and morphine. So they moved on from laudanum in the Nick. It seems to beum in the neck. It seems to be part of the time. Well, look man, nobody knew better, right?

Why not? There's a scene where he goes into the pharmacy and he's trying to finagle extra laudanum with the pharmacist before he gets on the whaling ship. So he has a supply that's gonna last him for the tenure of this adventure. But this show is just unreal. Do you have any extra laudanum?

You already asked me that. Did I though? Must be pretty good. I mean, he nods out like it's heroin. I don't know exactly what laudanum is, but- It's like morphine, I think, right? It's liquid morphine or something. Yeah.

And look, I gotta say, Colin Farrell, I just think it's fascinating. He's making, it's an extraordinary performance by him. He layers this murderous nature that he has with a certain kind of gentility. And the more I see him in recent things, the more I'm becoming increasingly convinced that he truly is one of the all-time greats.

He's making super interesting career choices. Yes. Starting with the lobster, and he did true detective. Did you see the gentlemen? I did not see the gentlemen. He is on fire in that movie. You know, my favorite is in Bruges.

I think that's incredible. In Bruges is incredible. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't take your eyes off of him. And it's just like, I mean, they get on this whaling ship. I'm not gonna spoil too much of it,

but they start venturing north to Greenland, past Cape Farewell and into the Baffin Bay. Maybe you could have hitched a ride on this whaling ship to get up there to see Lewis Pugh. It doesn't look like a good time, but there's plenty of laudanum. Lewis, it's me, I'm here. The time passed.

And they kind of decamp onto these ice flows and Colin Farrell gets off and he's walking around on the ice, just clubbing seals. Yeah, as you do. It's just unbelievable. It's so vicious and harsh and visceral and disturbing. It's sort of like, you know, apocalypse now meets Joseph Conrad and you know, with Warner Herzog vibes, but you have better.

Or the revenant meets Master and Commander. Yes, the Revenant meets Master and Commander might be the best subtitle. But which belies, which you kind of, there's a question there is like, who is going to watch this? Like I liked it, you liked it. But like, and it looks like a massive production.

Like how many, how much money? I mean, they have a legit, like a legit vintage whaling ship that they're literally on. Like they're filming on this boat. I think they filmed, they filmed in the fjords around Norway. Okay. I'm pretty sure. They got the cheap fjords.

But they spared no expense on this thing. It's super interesting. Well, yeah, I mean, and so you love thing. It's super interesting. Well, yeah, I mean, and so you love it. So this is great. I'm gonna watch this thing. We have a cold water theme running through this show today. We're ice cold baby. We haven't even gotten to the next cold water subject.

Yes. Which is kind of hot. That's true. Before we take a break, I should say also on the subject of things that I'm watching that I'm enjoying, I just finished the White Lotus last night, which is amazing. Have you been watching that?

No, I've opted out of the White Lotus so far. You gotta check it out. Really? Mike White is a genius. What did he do last? What was his last thing? Enlightenment, he did that show Enlightenment. He used to have a production shingle with Jack Black

called Black and White. He's great. He just has this incredible ability to kind of capture the zeitgeist and create these characters that are archetypes that are all identifiable. Like each person in the show, you're like, I know somebody like that. Right.

I'm interested in it, you know, being a long time travel writer and seeing like some of these five-star properties and just kind of, so that aspect is interesting. Well, he definitely minds the territory of colonialism and kind of, you know, like the idea, you know, it's sort of almost like Westworld, like they go to this place and they kind of artificially craft this Hawaiian experience within the enclave

or within, you know, behind the enclave or within, you know, behind the walls of a very, you know, fancy resort. And they filmed the whole thing at the Four Seasons in Maui during the pandemic. Oh. It was closed down. They took it over and were able to execute like eight episodes of this show

when everything was shut down. In a short shrift, like it looks like it all came together and he wrote every episode. I mean, the guy is brilliant. Damn you, Rich Roll. I'm in a reading phase. I'm in a reading phase. These are both very literary shows though.

Okay, so you can use that excuse. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more interesting thoughts. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well

just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it.

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

It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide.

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

To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. And we're back. Should we share a few parting thoughts on the Olympiad? Let's do it. Where do you wanna start? I think, for me, the final event, which is the marathon,

Kipchoge winning that, running away from the field with eight miles to go and basically sweltering, you know, 98 degree with 90% humidity type conditions. And the way he finished it was just spectacular. And then friend of the pod, Knox Robinson, wrote something for the Tracksmith Newsletter that I loved. You know, I always love reading his stuff. Such a good writer. He's amazing. I just want him to write more, youmith newsletter that I loved. I always love reading his stuff.

Such a good writer. He's amazing. I just want him to write more, that's it. But he had these quotes, this is from when he was at a training camp, cause he wrote a profile on Kipchoge for GQ, but this kind of were outtakes from a training camp when he visited there in the Rift Valley in 2019. I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it was 2019. And he had this great quote in his story. This is Kipchoge talking, "'In our place here, we actually don't believe in success. "'We believe in great preparation, "'which will be translated to success. "'We don't wanna actually put success in front of our minds. "'If we do, we are not doing the job.

We want to do the job first and then success is realized. It's so profound. It's like, but like that's for everything, right? Yeah, everything in life. The work I do, I often think of results first and then you have to stop yourself. But like, it doesn't matter. Like that is so immaterial of the process of writing some, of creating something great.

You know, like the creation of something great is in the day-to-day process. Like Davey's experiencing now with his training and all of that, it's like that, like you can't worry about what's gonna happen in the future. Process over results, journey over destination. And it's what you learn along the way

that kind of girds you for whatever success you, like either you succeed or you fail and you learn something along the way. It's like you leave it out on the floor and live with it because you've done everything you can do. Right, but detaching from that kind of goal oriented mindset and just falling in love with the grind is the journey. And I remember from when Knox was on the podcast

and talking about, I think he's made a number of trips to that part of the world and spent quite a bit of time with not just Kipchoge, but like a lot of those elite marathoners experiencing how they live their lives day in day out. And it's very simple. We get caught up in the gadgets and the metrics

and the goals and this and that. And they're just literally going out and like just the basics. The habits, building the habits. Sleep, eat, train, run, have fun. So apparently the other thing that I kind of was struck with my last thought in the Olympics were these two mothers that dominated.

And one is Faith Kipyogan, also Kenyan, trains with Kipchoge or started to in the last couple of years. She won the 1500 meter race five years ago and she was defending her gold medal, but she also just had a baby two years before. And so she's a mother and now she's running faster than ever before.

She wasn't even necessarily favored in her race. There's a dominant Dutch runner that had won the 5,000, 10,000, she was going for the triple. And she'd been winning all the races at the 1500 level. And she just took off last 200 meters and dominated. And her posts about what it was like to get back to elite status and to be faster even than before, as a mom,

really, really, really moving stuff and how much it took to get her body back into that competition mode. And then Alison Felix, of course, another champion, the most winningest, the winningest track athlete ever in the United States history for the, I think maybe in history, 11 medals. She won with her own shoe after she had gave birth,

Nike low balled her on some offer. Yeah, that was big news when basically she was pregnant and the way that Nike works its contracts with its female athletes, there was something like a 70% drop in her salary and just basically a lack of long-term support with its female athletes, there was something like a 70% drop in her salary. And just basically a lack of long-term support for people that are having children.

Basically the message being like, well, you're never gonna be back to form. So we're just not gonna pay you in a manner that can measure it. That created a big kind of hullabaloo. Lindsey Krauss wrote a bunch about that, that put Felix in into kind of a mainstream conversation around female athletics and to see her not only come back

and perform at a high level, but to just absolutely crush it. And that image of Alison walking with her daughter to me is like one of the iconic images of Tokyo. Absolutely, she won, I think ended up being bronze in the 400 in an amazing race that the Bahamian legend, she defended her gold, her name's escaping me, but she was amazing.

Alison came in third and then the four by 400, the women just destroyed the field. I mean, they were ahead by so much. And she was one of the members of that. And now like the winningest track and field athlete ever. 11 medals. Eclipsing Carl Lewis is 10 medals. And she did it wearing her own shoes.

Sash, I think, S-A-Y-S-H is the brand. So Sash or Sash, I don't know. But that's her brand. And so, you know, props to two moms. Cause you know, Serena Williams gets a lot of credit for being the mom that's coming back and how hard it is to come back and be at the top of her sport.

And she's gotten to the finals multiple times. So now we're talking about, this is kind of the first time I can remember mothers with young children actually winning gold and becoming the world champion. I mean, that's- And also, you know, without the resources that Serena has, you know, at the same time. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, it's cool that Serena's doing it too. It's not to knock her, but just as comparison, as a yardstick, like that's the level these women are at. Yeah. Also shout out to Molly Seidel for the bronze in the women's marathon. Her second ever marathon or something. Yeah, I know it's crazy, right?

That's maybe the craziest story ever. I know. Second ever marathon or is that right? Or third? I'm not sure. First ever was the trials. Yes, I think, is that true? Yeah, I think that's wild.

Pretty cool story. It is interesting looking back on Tokyo and I'll fully admit, I think, is that true? Yeah, I think that's wild. Yeah. Pretty cool story. It is interesting looking back on Tokyo and I'll fully admit I wasn't wed to the television in the manner that I have with past Olympiads. Part of that's just being busy. Another part of that is just being untethered from, we don't have cable, so it's not as accessible for me.

And the time difference, there's a lot that's been written about a drop in viewership. I don't know how much of that has to do with it being pandemic oriented and just a weird Olympics in general versus this age of social media where it's impossible to not know what's happening

when it's happening. The idea that you're gonna wait, not know, sit down at prime time and watch it unfold on NBC is just not reality anymore. I think it's also lack of star power. There was no Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps, I mean, Simone was there, but even she didn't, she ended up having to pull out of some events.

So I think there was a lack of star power to be honest. I think the idea that you can look at like Nielsen ratings or whatever and say, viewership is down, but I would suspect that engagement was as high as it's ever been. It's just that people are consuming this in short clips on social media. They're going to YouTube

or they're seeing a little clip on Twitter or Instagram. They're consuming it. They're just consuming it in different ways. So the traditional notion of gauging, you know, viewership and engagement with the public, I think is antiquated. No doubt. I mean, it's happening across all sports.

You know, all major sports are having to wrestle with the same thing. Yeah. And I feel, I still feel for the athletes, like the idea that as soon as you're done competing, you have like, I don't know, 24 or 48 hours to skedaddle and get out of there. Like the whole experience was shortcut

or truncated due to COVID. And there's a really interesting piece that an athlete called Race Embedin, who's a fencer, I believe, wrote for the Guardian and basically just giving his firsthand experience of what it was like to be there. This was his third Olympics. And just lamenting the fact that typically,

the value of the experiences in all the people that you meet and the encounters that you have and going to the dining hall and just meeting all the athletes, it's like none of that. It's like everywhere you went, there was nobody there. Like it was just lonely. He had his teammates, but a lot of athletes

like feeling lonely and isolated. And on top of that, he points a sort of finger at the IOC, which is an easy target and it's inherent hypocrisy in that it stands for supporting the athletes, but really it's just about profiting off the shoulders of the athletes and not really catering to their needs. So, I think there's some issues that we need to unpack.

Alexi Pappas came by the house the other day, who is an Olympian for those that don't know, was competed in the Olympics for Greece in track and field. She made a movie called Olympic dreams. And a lot of that movie is about being in the dining hall and meeting all these other athletes. And I said, what is your, you know, you weren't here, but like, what is your,

do you have you talked to some of your friends who were there? And she just said, I feel bad for, you know, all those athletes there that were kind of robbed of the type of experience that made it so meaningful for me. So anyway, cause that's what makes the Olympics. But hey-

So anyway, LA is next, 2024. People don't know this, but you and I, when we first started talking about doing something together, it was gonna be built around maybe going to Tokyo and covering the Olympics in a profound way for the RRP. Should we roll out that game plan for LA? I think we should, man. I think we should too.

We got time to plan for it. I think it could be really great. It's here. There's no reason not to do that. You got friends of the pod that could be really good. Like Alexi would be great. Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course we could build a team around it. I mean, yeah, I guess we can sort of say it publicly now, but there was a plan afoot for us to take the podcast to Tokyo, set up shop, get a lead sponsor involved so that we could get a location that was either in the village or just outside the village and create a lounge where athletes and all the kind of fancy people

that attend the Olympics could drop by, eat food, hang out, and we would just podcast every day, live stream it, get these athletes off the podium after they did their five minutes on the Today Show to get the real story and kind of beat the networks at their own game by creating really rich content. And we were gonna do some narrative stuff too, man on the street stuff, I think, yeah.

Yeah, so now we have LA to look forward to for that. Plenty of time to plan. Gotta do it. Doing a daily show. Yeah, but you gotta figure out where your studio- Where it would be. Yeah, the makeshift studio. Wherever like the kind of center of gravity is.

I mean, being inside the village is really, I don't know that that's really where you wanna be because only the athletes can get in there. But you know, like any big event, just outside of the village, there's basically these locations that corporations take over to create experiences for the attendees and the athletes like to go there.

So it would be about figuring out where that might be. Right around the SC campus, right? Isn't that where it's all gonna be? I guess, I mean, LA is so sprawled out. So it would be a matter of looking at where all the venues are and finding it. I would assume is the village gonna be down by USC? They're building a massive, another big arena,

like right next to the Natural History Museum right now. I was just at the Butterfly Garden, so I saw that. Listeners, the Butterfly Garden is fabulous. Stop playing your man card. Sorry. Sorry, I'm a dad now. I don't know if you know, I go to the Butterfly Garden. All right, well, more to be revealed on that.

Let's pivot to a couple more serious matters. Obviously it's Monday, what's the date? August 16th when we're recording this, this will go up Thursday the 19th. Today, as of today, we're in the midst of quite a bit of chaos in Afghanistan with everything that's going on there. Just to kind of recap,

not that people are unaware of this, after two decades of US occupation, $2.26 trillion spent, the US pulled its troops out recently and the result is of course this power vacuum that's quickly been filled by the Taliban, which has moved unbelievably swiftly to seize control of the entire country,

culminating in President Ashraf Ghani fleeing and the occupation of Kabul in the last day or two. Taliban just took the presidential palace, I think today, if not yesterday. We've all seen the scenes at the airport. It's absolutely horrifying. And there's a lot being written about the Biden administration dragging its heels

despite weeks of warnings being incredibly slow to extract US citizens and civilians and embassy employees. There's this delayed withdrawal that's been causing death and chaos. I don't know if you've seen Edward Snowden's rants on this on Twitter right now, but he's like all over this. Is he really? Yeah. Because apparently Biden,

there's an article that I'll link up about this, but Biden had said, I think just a couple of weeks ago that the likelihood that there's gonna be, the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country would be highly unlikely and kind of dismissing comparisons to the fall of Saigon as being out of hand. And of course, that's exactly what we're seeing.

I mean, he said point blank, the Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's gonna be no circumstance where you're gonna see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. And that's exactly what you're seeing. Just hours before I came into the studio today,

I saw a video of one of the C-130s taking off from the airport and two people, I mean, the plane must have been a thousand feet above the ground. I saw at least two people falling to their death who had been clinging onto the wheels or something. There were more people as it was taking off. I think some people slipped down and decided not to die.

And the other two thought they could stay on there. Absolutely. That shows you what people are feeling about the Taliban taking over everything. I mean, the Taliban might not be as great as the North Vietnamese army, but possibly the Afghanistan military that we helped build is not as good as the South Vietnamese army.

I think that's probably really where the truth lies. There's some something there. The fact that it just toppled so immediately is unbelievable. And in such stark contrast to the dollar spent and the soldiers deployed over two decades. But not shocking. Like if you've read anything,

I brought in this book, CJ Chivers wrote the fighters. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times, the best war reporter, possibly of his generation, Iraq war veteran of the first Iraq war, and then spent a lot of time in combat zones. And it's just a master work of battlefield nonfiction.

And if you read that, you can't but think this is exactly what was going to happen. And also that we should be out. So as opposed to like, for me personally, my feeling on this is when 911 happened, I was all for Biden. I was all for the US to go in and get the Taliban out.

Cause obviously we know Taliban gave safe harbor to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Taliban are zealots that were murdering gay people and women and assassinating them in soccer stadiums. They blew up the Buddhist statues. They were anti-intellectual, anti-human rights and pro-Sharia law. And so, it would be good to get rid of them

is what I thought. And I still thought that, I still think that that was the right move. I didn't anticipate 20 years of war and occupation. I mean, basically trying to repeat what the Soviet Union failed to do. It just doesn't make any sense. And listen, if what you built with 20 years

and $2.26 trillion topples in a month, then maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. And if you look at it from the perspective of the guys who are the war fighters, the guys in the US military, as horrible as this pretends to be for women across Afghanistan and all sorts of people, but basically intellectuals and women and LBGTQ

in Afghanistan as awful as this could become for them. It will become. Almost certainly will become almost certainly will become you know is that like should we be should we be there bolstering stapling together this hollow structure

that can get blow over as soon as we're not there I mean is that what we should be doing is that what we should be asking our children and brothers and sisters to die for I mean mean, it's an open question. If you read this book, you will think no, because if you're not wanted there, which we weren't wanted there

by a large swath of the population, then it's not going to work. And there's an argument to be made because we were there, the Taliban is more tolerated, not less tolerated. Now the Taliban has to run the country. And there's gonna be bloodshed, it's horrible. But at the same time, it's like, who should be doing that work?

And that's what we're gonna find out what's gonna happen. That's not to downplay it, I'm not downplaying it. There's a great episode on the Daily from one woman's perspective, what she's going through in this process. It's very moving. It's horrible, but that's my thoughts on it. Yeah, it's amazing how fast it's happened.

And I was seeing just today, the media landscape there has already shifted. Like people that own storefronts are taking down posters of women and they've removed music from the airwaves and the news channels are already reorienting their reporting to ensure that they're not offending Taliban sensibilities.

Like it's unbelievable that it feels almost overnight. And I think when it comes to judging or addressing the immediate decisions, pulling out, not pulling out, how quickly did we get there to evacuate people? What could we have done differently? All of that really seems futile. What we really need to do is telescope up

and evaluate the arrogance of imperialism in its totality. And this sensibility of like, we're the saviors, we're here to help, and we're gonna impose military force. And that's gonna transform your country into a democratic utopia. I mean, how many times does that experiment have to fail and how many lives have to be lost and how much money has to be spent

before we get the message that this is not, you know, our problem to solve. And it's not, you know, through our, it's not our sensibility to impose on such a foreign country to begin with. I don't know. I agree with you. Yeah. I mean, I think the question is how,

what happened like Afghanistan in the seventies was like, like the jewel of the backpacker trail. Like when the lonely planet guides were first coming out, the very first guide, you know, Kabul is like, well is like they, they loved Kabul and they, and they spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and travelers were there all the time in the seventies, it wasn't far from India,

India and Kabul and Afghanistan and Pakistan. But then the Cold War started, the Soviets started encroaching and then we propped up the Taliban to compete with the Soviets. We didn't prop up the Taliban. So we definitely got weapons and funds to different, I guess, I don't know if it's tribes,

but different factions of this kind of, cause Afghanistan is- Well, it's the progenitor of the Taliban. Well, what ends up happening, I think, Charlie Wilson's war is this movie that we both love, Mike Nichols movie, Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay, and it talks about this whole Soviet era. And I think what happens after they routed the Soviets

and came out, there's that scene at the end where Charlie Wilson is trying to get more funding to get social services back going in Afghanistan, and basically they didn't wanna fund that. Nobody wanted to fund that then. And so what ends up happening in that vacuum, I think you had forces from Iran and elsewhere coming in with money.

And that's when the kind of the more Sharia law Islamist, but I'm not a hundred percent sure, but that's what I think is what happened. And that's when that started to take place in the 80s. There's an interesting perspective that was shared today by Dean and Aisha Shirze, friends of the pod, neurologists who actually met in Afghanistan.

They were both there during their younger years. That's in contrast to this idea that our occupation was this paper tiger and it was all in futility and look how quickly it disintegrated. And their perspective is like, listen, yes, that's true, but at the same time, a lot was done to empower women, support women's rights

and create two generations or a generation and a half of women who are in a very different place as a result of that influence. And now us evacuating the area and the intrusion of the Taliban and the overtaking puts an end to that. And not only puts an end to that kind of movement, but also of course imperils the very lives of these people.

No doubt about it. I agree with that too. A lot of people are gonna get executed. It seems that way. Christiane Amanpour on CNN, who I love, was interviewing a spokesman for the Taliban who happened to be in Qatar. Like another, like why is the spokesman

for the Taliban in Qatar? Like what is going on? Like who is funding this operation? And that person was saying that we've put out word, there will be no reprisals. We will not X, Y, and Z. No one's gonna get assassinated. Nobody to be, no reason to be afraid,

come to work, blah, blah, blah. But there's also been reports already of summary executions of soldiers that were in the Afghan military, some civil servants. So that report happened and she confronted him with that. There's a five or six minute clip that I've got here that was on her Twitter that we could put up there. So, you know, it remains to be seen.

It doesn't seem like it's gonna be good. And I'm in that sense, but like, what are you supposed to do? Like, you know? I don't know. Like, what are the choices? I would say this no matter what, like, what are the choices?

I remember when Obama was running for president and he was like, we're gonna get out of the wars. And he didn't get out of Afghanistan, probably because he didn't get out of Afghanistan probably because he didn't want this thing happening. But at some point you have to either decide, okay, we're here for a hundred years or you pull out like eventually.

So. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, but more will be revealed soon. Shall we pivot? Pivot to another. Yeah, this was gonna be the big story. We're like an hour and a half into the podcast. It was supposed to all be about

what we're gonna talk about next, but you know, this is how this goes, right? This is what happens. The climate change conversation. Yes, no wonder Greta is so pissed off. No wonder Greta is so pissed off, climate change gets real. So we're bringing this up because the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change

released its sixth report on climate change and land. It came out last week. It is the culmination of 500 plus authors, I believe, with 14,000 papers cited. And it's this really robust synopsis essentially of where we're at with climate change. And it ain't good. No, essentially what it says is that by 2030,

we're gonna be at 1.5 degrees warmer than what would be natural without human influence and the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And no matter what we do between now and 2050, it's 2050, not 2030, no matter what we do between now and 2050, we will not be able to stop that rise to 1.5. Right now we're at one or 1.1.

I think we're at 1.1. Yeah, 2050 should be in the next 30 years. Okay. 1.5 is- Right, no matter what we do for the next three, 30 years, we're gonna see this rise, this escalation. And there's gonna be obviously repercussions of that that are unavoidable at this point.

That's if we completely shut, if we just said, and this came out in the daily podcast that came out yesterday, today on this? Two days ago. Two days ago. Basically saying like, if we just flick the switch on carbon emissions today and went to zero immediately, we'd still have 30 years. Of rise. Of rise.

To 1.5. Yeah. But there's this window where we can take action because if we don't, if we do nothing, if we keep it as it is now, it won't be 1.5. No. It'll be two or three or four perhaps. And each little chunk means more fires, more flooding, more potential crop failures

and geopolitical instability. Yeah, and irreversible no matter what we do is ongoing ocean acidification, ice cap melting, rising seas, we've just experienced July. I think July was the hottest month on record as long as they've been recording this stuff. Fires, the floods in Germany, all these things that we're seeing.

So the report is coming out in the midst of an experiential, experiential experience, can I say that? Yeah, you can say that. Where we're all kind of having a tactile relationship with climate change. Because it's happening. In a way that does feel unprecedented. Like it does feel like a tipping point.

Because there's droughts here, there's fires in Turkey, there's fires all over, there's heat wave, there's that crazy melt in Greenland. So yes, everyone's feeling it. And I think that what's a little bit different about this IPCC report is that it's so irrefutable and it's so vetted with so many authors and so many papers cited

that it becomes just absolutely undeniable that this is happening right now. And yet, and the Daily Podcast pointed this out as well, there is this sense among the public, like, okay, you know, you're sounding the alarm again. Like this is the same, you've already sounded it. Like we become, it's sort of a cry wolf thing. Like we've heard this and there's a numbing,

I think that happens with people and a disconnect between good intentions. I think most people don't want these things to happen. And if they were given an opportunity or an on-ramp to participate in meaningful change, they would take it, but there's a lack of agency or a lack of education, understanding and opportunity to get involved in something that would be helpful.

And I think that creates a sort of paralysis among most people. It's like, okay, well, what do you want me to do? And meanwhile, I'm gonna go to work and live my life. Or you post something you think you're helping and really- Right, or yeah, some of the things that were diluted into thinking are helpful are actually like placebos

or pacifiers. Right. Aussie actor filmmaker, Damon Gamow, I think is Francis name has a- Damon Gamow. Damon, Damon, Damon Gamow. Damon Gamow. Damon?

Damon, I love Damon's work. Damon has a great, I call it a ramp, but he's kind of more calm than that. And he kind of is imploring people to find their agency because there is this window of time that we can fix things. And what's cool about this report is there is kind of like also a how to, to keep things down.

One is sustainable land management, reforestation, regeneration, and soil preservation. Alternatives to animal agriculture, wind, aquaculture, kelp farming, that kind of stuff. Create more carbon sinks so we can pull carbon out of the atmosphere and then have a more sustainable future. But also, one thing that I read in this report

was income stratification, economic stratification is really bad for climate. If there was less poverty and less, those extremes were a little bit closer together, we have a better chance of getting under that three degree, two degree marker. And this is all based on computer models. So if you haven't read up on this, basically what happens is we have more data than

ever. The data started to kind of get accumulated in 1961. Apparently that's like the big, big time when it started happening. Now there's more Bowies out there collecting water temperature. There's more weather models and computer models and better computers. And so what they do is they feed this data into one computer model, to a computer model that says, okay, what's gonna happen, extrapolate out 10, 20, 30 years from now. And then they do this, they take that same model, but they feed it basically the old numbers,

the numbers without human intervention, without the greenhouse gases being admitted and what would have been the natural climate in that same period of time. And that's how you get this stuff. Right. And so it's not an exact science, but it's kind of like what's likely,

what's extremely likely, what's most likely. And those models and those algorithms are just getting better and better and better at figuring all of this stuff out. You know, it made me think of Elizabeth Colbert's book, "'Six Extinction." She has another book out now. It's more directly related to climate change.

And I brought it in here, but she talks about how humans transcended evolution. As soon as we painted like the woolly mammoth on the cave walls, as soon as we created a way of communicating that was not verbal, that was the beginning of us transcending evolution. By that she means beyond the control of nature.

Now we can dictate our own lives no matter what nature throws at you. Not exactly that, but like basically, obviously nature is still king, but you can innovate around it and still create, nurture your lives and communities and villages. And it's this whole entire agricultural based societies. And that requires a certain number of genius

and a certain manner of genius, but you can't separate genius and madness. And like, if you're gonna have genius, you're going to have madness. And so we have madness, right? We have like the madman on your airplane ride, the mass shooter, the Taliban, you know, zealots. There's madness kind of within our genius.

And part of the madness is what do we do? It's paralysis. You know, it's like we have this pandemic and we didn't do anything about it for months, because we are like in some ways, the frog in the boiling water, we don't believe it until it's there. And maybe there was a little bit of that in Afghanistan too.

And we see it with climate change now, the pandemic certainly saw it in a more compressed nature. And that's happening with climate change right now. What to do is a great question. Like, what do you do? What does Paul Hawkins say? Yeah, I mean, I think what to do answering that question begins with going back to the sixth extinction

and the thesis of that book, which is that the minute humans created a dualistic relationship with the planet through innovation and genius and madness, it created this sensibility that there is us and there is the planet. We are who we are, and this is nature outside of us. And I think that mindset is at the core

of everything that we've created and destroyed. So Paul Hawken to, you know, piggyback on what you just mentioned, came on the podcast last week. He's got this beautiful new book called "'Regeneration Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation." It's an incredible solution-based book. And he came on the day that the IPCC report came out

and irrespective of the kind of doomsday dystopia that that picture paints, he still maintains quite an optimistic disposition in that the solutions to this problem are available to us now. And this book kind of goes through all of them, energy, land, food, et cetera, all of the different ways. It's sort of a follow-up to draw down,

but it has a very kind of spiritual holistic approach. It's less about like, oh, here's a company doing something interesting in, like growing seaweed underwater. It's more macro like, oh, here's a company doing something interesting in, you know, like growing seaweed underwater. It's more macro in terms of systems. And I think the sensibility or the intention behind it is to get us into a mindset of non-dualism in our relationship with the planet.

Like short of having a spiritual reconciliation where we understand that we don't live outside of nature, but we, and we're not part of nature, we actually are nature. And we move towards a regenerative symbiotic relationship with the planet until we're able to do that, we're not gonna be able to solve these problems. Like you can hang your hat on, you know, like,

oh, we should do wind power and that's great. But what we really need is a collective consciousness upgrade in terms of how we're thinking about this problem and approaching it. And he's a gift, the book comes out, I think the podcast is coming out in mid September or something like that. So there's a little bit of a wait before that happens

and you could pre-order and I highly suggest everybody pre-order his book. I think it's gonna be a big deal when it comes out. But I think what's so kind of amazing and frustrating at the same time about all of this, and this comes up in the daily podcast, is that we have all these solutions right now. It's really a function of will.

And most of the will being political will. Like imagine a situation in which we appointed like a global dictator or some kind of global star chamber that could supersede the decision of any president, right? Who just said, here's like, you have one month before you have to stop producing, you know, cars that work on, you know, traditional engines. And you guys over there,

you have six weeks before no more fracking or something like we don't have that world. It doesn't work. And so we're trying to turn around these Titanic sized systems that have so much history and momentum behind them on a ticking time bomb schedule. And I despair of our ability to do that. So, so I think you've nailed it. They can't be, we can't turn them around. They have to turn themselves around. And so that

that's happening with shareholder activism, where people are actually going into these companies, buying in and hitting shareholder meetings. It's happening with lobbying of governments because governments do spend a lot of money and subsidize X, Y, and Z and can help in that regard. All of that takes agitation from the outside. And so- Yeah, it puts pressure to create the political will. Yeah. The question is, is it enough pressure?

But the institution has to self-govern itself. It has to accept this is science. And if we wanna be in business, we have to do X, Y, and Z. If we wanna continue to function, and it's happening. Ford's putting out electric, like that stuff is happening. Now, electric vehicles is also one of the drivers, correct me if I'm wrong, of this like desire to mine the bottom of the ocean.

So it's like the problem, which gets us back to Colbert, is like, you know, beware of the unintended consequences of good intentions, like all of these fixes, what is that going to engender? Right, because that, well, that goes back to dualistic binary thinking, right? And instead of holistic systems thinking, and that's what regeneration is all about.

It's like, these systems are incredibly complex. No matter how well-intentioned you are about like this being a solution, there are all these downstream implications of whatever decision that you make, whatever technological innovation that you push forward that you can't necessarily foresee. And so truly the only real solution

is to live symbiotically in nature, in accordance with the rhythms of the planet. And that requires us to develop a new appreciation for indigenous wisdom and how millennia of human, not millennia, but however far back humanity goes, where people were so in touch with their natural environments that they understood how to live in a manner

that allowed them to survive and thrive while also tending to the greater wellbeing of the macrosphere. And so can we do that? Is it possible in our technology first age to pivot society back to that level of, engrossed rich relationship with the natural environment that supports us?

Or are we just gonna punt and go to Mars? Mars won't work out. And hang our hat on like, well, we've always figured out a way to innovate our way out of this. And so we're gonna punt and go to Mars? Mars won't work out. And hang our hat on like, well, we've always figured out a way to innovate our way out of this. And so we're gonna do it again. That's one line of thinking. I don't buy that because like that's not being a steward

and that's not the type of thinking that you're talking about from that Paul Hawken is promoting. Yeah. A circular more kind of holistic way. We will see, but I think watch Daman's great rant because he's, Damon is asking us to find our agency. He's asking us to find our agency, which is why we're talking about it, right?

We're talking about it so that everyone starts talking about it, like amongst each other, at work, wherever, we need to talk about it. Cause it's exactly what Greta has been saying for about three years now. She's been saying this same stuff. Like she must think that like,

like who does she live with? Yeah. She's been saying exactly what's in this report for three years, if I'm not wrong. Yeah, but it begins with changing ourselves to bring it down to a Buddhist perspective. Like you can't change the world until you inhabit this, you know, the sensibility that you're living your life

in accordance with those rhythms yourself. Like that puts you in a position to create a ripple effect out. Right, I mean, there has been, this is not to say there hasn't been examples in human history where external fixes have worked. I mean, it worked in World War II, but like that,

there was a lot of self-preservation involved in that because Nazi Germany was invading other countries. Right, and now we're asking, and the Daily Podcast points this out as well, like we're asking people to self-sacrifice for the betterment of a future generation, to be, you know, communitarian in our choices. And so that's asking a lot of people to do.

We've seen people do it in the past. Yes, their backs were up against the wall, Nazis, et cetera. This is a little bit different, but in an era where we don't have a draft and people are not acclimated to any kind of civil service, are we able to kind of cohere around this idea? And when you look at, all you have to do is open up Twitter

and see how we can't even agree on a shared reality to think that's a moonshot. It is discouraging. And you look at Afghanistan as an allegory for the failure of an external fix, how you can't fix something from the outside. You can't kill a dark thing. You can't, from the outside, you can't do,

you can't, that kind of thing won't be sustainable. It may be, may work for 20 years going to remission, but it's gonna come back unless you're always, always there with your thumb on it. And so now we're talking about this type of thing and external fix, you know, can we adjust or do we have to all adjust, you know, at the same time, like come together and all adjust.

We've done that, you know. The pandemic is also a lesson that we can do some things pretty quickly. It hasn't worked a hundred percent. We've had a problems. We still have Delta, blah, blah, blah. But we did get a vaccine. We have gotten people, there's less people getting hurt now

in the city that we're living in or getting sick now than there were before. It has worked to some degree. Right, but I look at it through like an addiction model. Like imagine, you know, we're all addicts to our lifestyles and the conveniences, you know, to which we orient our lives. And we need to have, we need to hit a bottom with this.

So the elevator's going down. How far down does it have to go before we go, holy shit, like I need to change. Well, also like the- How much more pain does the earth have to suffer? How many cities are gonna have to be underwater? Well, cause you never imagine yourself in the city underwater,

because like with the pandemic at least you're like- Well, that's the denial. It's like, well, I'm good, it's cool. Like, look, we did these other good things, we'll figure this out. Like it's very similar in that regard, our relationship to it, because we're so terrified of having to let go

of the things that we've become accustomed to. Right, there was a certain amount of self-preservation involved in the lifestyle adjustment with the pandemic. But this is like, you can't really imagine yourself in the city that's in an indented by floods. Like one of the things in this report is that these tidal floods that used to happen once a year, maybe are gonna happen four times a year

or something like that. Like all these, the rainfall gets worse, everything gets worse. The droughts become more frequent and common. Yeah, and we're seeing that, right? We're seeing that in our lifetime. I don't know, man, but just to like, end this with a couple things that we actually can do in our lives that are practical.

Here's an idea, it has to do with laundry and washing your dishes. Do you do your own laundry, Rich? Sometimes I do, but I'm now gonna do it differently than I have historically done it by virtue of revisionist history, Malcolm Gladwell's latest episode called Laundry Done Right, where he digs deep on laundry, which sounds weird.

Yes. And of course has a revisionist take on how to do it correctly. So I will freely admit that my approach to laundry in terms of trying to be a good ecological steward has been to make sure that I purchase the eco-friendly soap that's made with natural ingredients, trying to limit the number of loads that I do.

But what I have not done has paid is it has been to pay attention to water temperature. And what this podcast explains, it's kind of fascinating is that all of our focus on the chemistry of our soap is misplaced when that focus should be placed upon water temperature because I don't know the stats, I'd have to listen to it again. Maybe, you know, offhand,

because I think you listened to it more recently, but most of the kind of ecological damage is a result of using warm and hot water. It's something like 70% of energy can be saved. So it's about carbon. It's something like 70% of energy can be saved. So it's about carbon. It's about greenhouse gas emissions. So you save 70% of emissions

if it's warm water versus cold and 90% of it's hot water versus cold. And so rather than getting the eco-friendly soap, we should be looking at the chemistry that goes into creating a detergent that allows you to effectively wash your clothes in cold water. Right, because most detergents,

they end up washing better in warm water. Right, we all go to warm, especially with the lights, or I mean the whites and stuff like that, which I've done many times. And getting soap that causes too much suds because it uses more water, because the cycle won't stop until all the suds are gone. And you wanna be using like ridiculous amounts of water

and the amount of energy that it takes to heat that water is really where the environmental damage is taking place. So if you had a polymer that would allow you to wash your clothes in cold water with very little suds, that's kind of like the Holy Grail. So Malcolm goes and visits like this chemical engineer, Procter & Gamble,

and he just falls in love with corporate America. Well, specifically with the engineers of Procter & Gamble, yes. But it was interesting, and it has changed how I think about this. And of course, the close cousin to laundry, But it was interesting, you know, and it has changed how I think about this. And of course the close cousin to laundry, which is detergent or-

Dishwashing. Dishwashing detergent. Yeah. Similarly where, you know, I often, I generally like rinse my dishes before I put them in the dishwasher. And apparently, at least with respect to the latest dishwashers, you don't need to do that.

And most of the ecological damage because the new dishwashers are so eco efficient and capable that you shouldn't rinse your dishes beforehand. And you would save a tremendous amount of water. They say that if you have eight dishes or more run the dishwasher every night. Right. And that saves more water and energy than if you had the hot water on for two night. Right. And that saves more water and energy

than if you had the hot water on for two minutes. Yeah. And so, which I would never do either. But I will say this, I am a cold water clothes washer. I've been a cold water launderer for at least 10 years. So this is the thing that comes up in the podcast. They're like, they make this decision that if you're gonna hire somebody,

the first question, maybe the only question you need to ask them is how they do their laundry. If they say they're a cold water person, you hire them immediately. Because the idea is like, he actually hires his friend's firm to go and do like market research into who are these cold water washers. And they all end up having like incredible detail oriented like recall and what models they buy and why they're doing everything. And I am like not that cold water washer. I'm not the guy that's like super hyper detail oriented about every deep thing they do.

I'm more of an intuitive cold water washer. You just knew, you just like, I feel like cold water is the way to go. I'm an intuitive. It makes sense. I do the right thing intuitively most of the time. Do you, okay. Would April agree with that? I think so. I think we just found the quote for the podcast.

I am an intuitive person who, wait, say it again. I do the right thing intuitively. Most of the time. I think that's how you should introduce yourself. I'm not, I'm not not, well they said that like, who are these super humans that know all this stuff? And I'm like, I'm not that cold water washer, but I am a cold water washer.

I also like how the episode is like, what's cool about it to me is he's kind of, even though it's funny to hear him go into Procter & Gamble and talk up the people who make Tide and Tide being, apparently Tide is the best detergent to use in cold water. Cause it keeps your it's engineered to do it. And Cascade is apparently the cutting edge of science

in terms of washing dishes. But you know, he backs it up because like apparently Procter & Gamble's whole campus is wind powered. Like they are doing the right, this is an example of an organization that is doing what we're suggesting. Right, and I think what's cool about it is that it's so easy to just vilify

these gigantic conglomerates. When in truth, reality is more nuanced and complicated than that. And we have to rebuild trust institutions, right? Like from both sides. And it's not just right wing who's been going after institutions like the news media. It's also people on the left doing it,

especially in the health and wellness and the lifestyle industry. And there is a time now to rebuild trust institutions. And it feels super weird for me to say it since I felt like a rebel most of my, especially from my teenage years until I was in my thirties until just recently, really. And now I'm the guy like,

yes, we need to have more trust in our institutions, which is just so, it like doesn't seem like even sit right for me to say it, but it is true. I do believe that. And this is an example, this episode kind of shows you why that's true. Yeah, and I think it's important

to really unpack these counterintuitive narratives in the sense that, listen, if you're the proprietor of an all natural laundry detergent that creates a lot of suds, I'm sure you're very proud of your product and none too pleased to find out that actually your goal being to save the planet,

you're working at cross purposes with that. You know, that's disturbing to find out. And at the same time to understand that these big corporate players might be onto something worthy of exploration, because our instinct is we wanna celebrate the little guy or the person who's, or all natural is by necessity good. And it doesn't always operate that way.

You see the same thing in philanthropy. Like we are emotional beings and we wanna donate to the causes that we feel strongly about. And yet from kind of an effective altruism perspective, that's not necessarily the best use of your money. Like you could save more lives if you just gave it to a company that makes malaria tents, as opposed to, you know, some organization that's trying to feed underprivileged kids in a food desert, urban environment. But our emotions

come into play and we want to believe certain things. And I think that complicates all of this. One reason this is important is just to underline is that he says in his podcast episode, 25 billion loads of laundry are done every year in the United States and Canada. And so these small decisions actually do extrapolate and create quite a big debt. It's unbelievable.

So if everybody just started only washing with cold water, that would be huge. Or if Procter & Gamble or whoever comes up with the ultimate laundry detergent that allows you to clean your clothes effectively without heating the water at all, like that makes a huge difference. Didn't Adrian Grenier have though a counterpoint

to detergent pods? Yeah, he did. So he's coming, I did a podcast interview with him a while ago, it hasn't gone up yet. You know, kind of actor environmentalist for a long time. He put up a video on Instagram recently about detergent pods and I talked about it with him on the podcast.

Basically those pods that are wrapped in a very thin layer of plastic are sold on the premise that you just put them in and that wrapping completely dissolves and allows you to wash your clothes and it cuts down on container costs, et cetera. But in truth, and I haven't vetted this, so I don't know whether this is true, but from what I understand what he said and some other experts that he was interviewing or speaking to about this, that plastic becomes invisible and porous,

but it actually doesn't dissolve. It becomes like this imperceptible gooey gel that just never ever goes away and ends up of course, seeping into our waterways and ultimately into our seas and no doubt, contributing to all manner of ills, whether we're aware of them or not at this point. So no detergent pods.

Right, well, that could end soon because Marcus Erickson at Five Gyres was telling me that he's actually in touch with the people at plastic companies that are looking at a new polymer that will make plastic itself, just all plastic that's wrapped up could become biodegradable at some point. And if that is true and that does happen

and that's maybe not in the too distant future, there's actually some tests happening right now, then that could be a replacement for that. We gotta get rid of plastic. I know. It seems like- It's an innovation that, it's our attempt to innovate out of this mess.

Yeah, well, let's take a quick break and pivot to listener questions, shall we? Let's do it. Presto, we're back and we materialized a new human. What's up, Ted? How are you, man? Good to have you here. Ted McDonald is in the house. He's gonna contribute to answering these listener questions.

Ted is a longtime friend of both Adam and I, but for separate reasons, like our lot, like it's weird, like we've known each other. I think, I mean, I've known you for like 20 years. Yeah, solid 20 years. And you know Adam through a completely different set of circumstances for an equal amount of time, which is wild.

You guys know each other through LA Yoga? That's right. And when LA Yoga, when I was helping to start that publication, we got in contact because he was doing adventure yoga, which he still does adventure yoga retreats and was already a yoga stalwart in the community. How do you guys? Through the yoga community in LA,

through Maha yoga originally, I think. We used to go do yoga together. So Ted is not only a very accomplished yogi and yoga teacher, you're a yoga studio owner, you're a yoga practitioner, you're an adventure athlete, an endurance athlete, an Ironman, a coach, what else? You do lots of stuff, man, a dad. A dad, a dad, yeah, kindergarten parent as of Wednesday,

but lead groups around the world. I think that's one of the big things, the retreats that have been a huge asset and bright point in my life, I would say. And he joins the yoga kind of left, I guess, would that be left brain? Like the yoga world with the high performance athlete world in his own life,

but also working that way with different athletes and clients, right? Well, yeah, and I think, interestingly enough, I ran my first marathon and took my first yoga teacher training with Max Strom. Do you remember Sarah Powers? Yeah. And T.S. Little.

I remember Max for sure. Yeah, right, exactly. Sarah Powers and T.S. Little way back 20 plus years ago. At the same time I did my first marathon. Never thought I would ever do a marathon and sort of got convinced. I always say I got suckered into doing my first marathon and just fell in love.

I fell in love with training. I fell in love with racing. I fell in love with racing. I fell in love with the experience and the people and the energy and the vibe. And it was just so great. And I'll never forget crossing that finish line and in tears because I, first of all, wasn't even believing that I could actually do it.

But then I thought, wow, if I could do this, six weeks prior was not part of my sphere of consciousness. Now, what else is there that I don't know that I can do? And that's started this whole like, well, I'll try a triathlon and then I'll just start adventure racing and then we'll just keep going. And it was that whole thing.

At the same time, the yoga for me was always the glue that kind of kept it together. Right. There you go. Yeah, it's cool. It's really cool. And he left something off his resume. What's that? He coached me to the fourth place finish

in the Catalina experience. Oh, you were coaching Adam? Yeah. Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah, right. Oh, wow. How did I not know that? I think I might've told you. You did, I don't know. I don't remember hearing that, but that's cool.

Yeah, and then he fired me. No, just kidding. He got fired, right? Now you're with the Envol guy, right? Like what happened? I don't know, you know, things change. That's right. We grow out of these relationships,

but I never grew out of my relationship with Ted. We haven't seen each other in a long time, but we were both at the same wedding in Telluride. It was super nice to reconnect and meet your family and all of that. And I invited you to come by the studio. Adam was like, he should join for the listener questions. We have questions that are right in your wheelhouse.

So why not, right? Why not? I love it. I appreciate it. I will bow out of listening questions this time because you guys will be there. No, go back to Ben and Jerry's. I've got to get hit by shift. There is a whaling boat with your name on it

headed to Greenland right now. Yeah, it's true. I am the ice cream guy on the whaling boat. Just stay off the laudanum. All right. All right. Our first question is from Nate from Colorado. Boom.

Hi, Rich. Hi, Adam. This is Nate from Colorado. And yes, it is okay to play this on the air. First of all, I just wanted to say thanks for everything you guys are doing. Roll On has quickly become one of my favorite parts of the podcast, and I look forward to it every two weeks. I love the off schedule, off program banter too, so don't be self-conscious about that. Last episode, you guys answered a question about what doing the work means. But what I am wondering is what you do when doing the work becomes stale, stagnant, or an added stressor to life to try and fit in.

I've been, quote-unquote, doing the work for a few years now, having adopted a whole food plant-based diet and always having a morning routine that has consisted of some combination of journaling, meditation and exercise. But after doing this for several years, I find the practice becoming stale and unfulfilling and it has developed an almost negative connotation for me. It feels like a chore and has sort of become a list of conditions I need to meet daily in order to feel okay about my day as well as feel good about myself mentally. And at times it feels like it's adding stress to my life rather than helping me cope with life. So my question is, have you guys ever experienced this? And if so, how did you handle it and what advice would you offer? Thanks again for all you guys do. It's a constant source of helpful information and inspiration. Thanks again. When self-care becomes OCD.

You know? Yeah. Ted, you want to tackle this? Sure. Sure. I think that it's important to be aware of the present moment. And I think oftentimes we get into the rituals that we're doing and we lose the fact that every single moment is a frigging miracle. And it's so intense and overwhelming that I think oftentimes we step aside and we don't allow that in.

So I just remember on yoga retreats years ago with Max, and being in triangle pose and looking out the window and seeing, it's Zaka Lake. I don't know, did you ever go to Zaka Lake? No. Anyway, just looking out the window and seeing this beautiful blue sky and these green hills and then all of a sudden just weeping.

And I thought, what is that? Why is that? And I think I realized it was just because I was so overcome by the beauty of the moment. And I think oftentimes we lose, and I share this a lot on retreats or different conversations. It's like, you know like this glass, right? We can just feel the shape of it and the immense thought that goes into it. Or one thing I was thinking is, when you're journaling,

how often do you stop and look at, take a magnifying glass and look at the fibers inside the page or like Deepak Chopra used to say, don't just look and go, oh wow, those flowers, they look so beautiful. Like stop for a second and feel the immense miracle that really is the moment. And I don't know if this happens because

being someone who had, who felt like I was gonna lose my life at some point, right? And then being a sober guy now and having that sort of deep sense of gratitude for the moment, or if that's something you can develop as someone who hasn't had an experience like that. But I really feel like no matter what it is, no matter where you are, no matter what you look at,

whether it's a person or a thing, there's this and it's perception, right? And they talk about this a lot, but it's shifting your perception. So just one more thought, which is they talk about ashrams, right? You go to ashrams, you need to be happy shoveling the shit before you can be happy doing the other stuff, right?

And until you can be happy doing that stuff, I think it will become monotonous. So a solution I would say, Nate, is either to shift your perspective on what is actually happening or maybe take a break. I think the simple thing is just take a break for a moment and live free and don't be attached to that routine

and have this free experience of doing things and see what comes up from there. Should we just get up and leave and let Ted take over? Yeah. I think he just solidified his value. I'm sorry for loafing for all these months. Yeah, no, beautifully put, I love it. Yeah, I think it's about your relationship

to the practices and the rituals. And what I sense is an extreme level of rigidity where there's a lot of self-judgment packed into the doing or the not doing, right? There's a referendum on how you feel about yourself and who you are that's based upon whether you're adhering to a very strict set of circumstances. Yes, of course, that becomes unsustainable.

And I think the solution does lie in holding these things a little bit more lightly and anchoring yourself in the moment and understanding that it's not the ritual per se or the practice as much as it is your awareness around the practice and your ability to be present with these practices that are the conveyor belt to the transformation that you're seeking.

So it sounds like you're holding on so tightly and you've been doing it for so long. Like I would suggest that if you've been meditating for this amount of time and the result is frustration, there's something broken in this practice altogether because that's not the intended result that we're looking for here, right? So what exactly are you doing?

What is your relationship to that doing? And if you're coming out of it resentful and burdened, then something is fundamentally wrong. So it's about letting go of the attachment or the meaning that you're attaching to the results of this practice that's causing you to self flagellate and letting go of it altogether.

And I suspect that if you stop doing these things and maybe do nothing, you'll have an uncomfortable period where you're like, well, I'm supposed to be doing this thing. So my life's not gonna move in the right direction until I go back to doing that thing. That's what you need to examine here. And if you are gonna journal, journal about that.

Right, right, right. And I'll just add one more thought that came into my head is, spent years listening to Ram Dass, right? And Ram Dass, he said, all these different techniques are ultimately supposed to go away and you're just supposed to be living in the moment.

And I think it's a little different if you're analyzing your journaling and your thought thinking and you're just supposed to be living in the moment. And I think it's a little different if you're analyzing your journaling and your thought, thinking and you're drinking water and you're having your vitamins and you're doing all that stuff. I think there's some stuff that you wanna do because that's your medicine. But I also think there are certain things

like you're saying that you get stuck in. And I think at some point, some of those need to just go away and then you just live. Right, I feel like it's upside down. Like the priority is on like the practice as if the practice itself is the result as opposed to what you're really trying to do is become more connected.

Well, it's mindfulness, right? You're trying to take mindfulness away from the mat, away from rigidity and into the world. You know, like behold the glass. Like I think of, I know- There is no glass. Right, there is no glass. It's like, you know, you wanna take that out

and be in awe as like, you can't live your life that way, but you can find moments. And so like those mindfulness moments, maybe that's it, mindfulness moments. Mindfulness moments, mindfulness moments. Yeah, because if the practice is drained of its beauty, then you're missing the whole point altogether. Well, he probably feels that he is missing it.

That's why he's asking that question. But also, I mean, I don't think it's that unnatural to hit a plateau, is it? I mean, like a, you know, like the plateau is happening. Obviously that's like you're on the precipice of a breakthrough. Like something is trying to be communicated to you that could take you to a higher plane.

So focus the mindfulness and the journaling on what that block is and the frustration that you're having. And I think there's, you know, there's this golden opportunity for you to kind of ascend to the next level in your awareness. The resistance is like overcoming that's like going to be beautiful. Yeah. I like it. All right. All right. Let's move on to the Bay Area. Aloha, Rich and Adam. It's Heidi here from NorCal. So awesome to hear you guys back on a regular roll. No pun intended there. I have a question for you about finding the right coach fit.

Ultraman yet. So I'm really excited. And I've trained off and on for the past 10 years with a triathlon team, taking on some one-on-one coaching before the pandemic has closed everything. So anyway, this year, my team is back and they are training together, kind of like rising like the Phoenix. And now I'm thinking about my own coaching situation. And my question is, what are the best questions to interview the coach for a good fit? I think most coaches, including myself as a nutritionist, take an intro screen call. I'm interested in data, but it's not the only thing that drives me. And also, I manage bipolar type 1, and it's connected to my why. So I'm inspired by Courtney DeWalter not having a coach. I plan out my self-coaching by one week at a time.

It's worked out well, but I think I could benefit from having an objective, fluid structure, feedback, and yeah, we'll see where it goes. You can have permission to play this on the air. Mahalo. Thank you guys both. Thank you, Heidi. This question has Ted's name written all over it, so I'm going gonna defer to Ted. But I will say this one thing, when interviewing a prospective new coach, the only question you need to ask this coach is, what are your laundry habits?

Exactly. Right? Yeah, apparently. Do you wash in cold water? Yes. That's it. If not, you're out. Yeah.

I was wondering about the dryer because we hang our clothes as often as we can. There you go. Obviously, that's the best thing to do. Of course, you're out. Yeah. I was wondering about the dryer because we hang our clothes as often as we can. There you go. Obviously that's the best thing to do. Of course. I mean, is it better than hot water in the wash? Like should I cold water? You still should cold water.

Cold water and still cold water. And get tied. Yeah, like opting out of the dryer and washing with hot water does not absolve you. Right. Well, I'm glad that's what I got tied because now I've got this whole, I'm gonna talk to DK about it.

I think there's all these old school brands that I'd like us to consider for ads. Brogan and I have been talking about it. Twinkies. Oreos are vegan? Twinkies. Come on, Oreos. The under reported nutritional benefits

of pre-packaged hostess products. Yes. All right, Ted, coaching. Yes, Heidi, I would say that, I mean, I don't know, for me as a coach, one of the first things that I, if I'm gonna hire a coach, whether it's a, so I've hired coaches for different events, specific events, right? I train myself pretty well, but then if I'm doing like Ironman, I had a coach, whether it's a, so I've hired coaches for different events, specific events, right?

I train myself pretty well, but then if I'm doing like Ironman, I had a coach, right? Kilimanjaro, I put together a team for that just because I felt like I wanted to make sure I had the right body stuff and nutrition stuff and supplement stuff and training and all that sort of thing. I, as a coach and as an athlete, I would like to know that someone, that I feel

like someone can get me there, right? I mean, that's, it's as simple as that. Like, can they, can they get me there? That's the first thing. Is there a vibe, right? Because you're going to be spending some time with them. There's going to be conversations. There's going to be back and forth, email, texts, workouts. Do they understand you? Do they not understand you? I personally like someone who has had some experience. I don't know, like they don't necessarily need to have done the Ultraman, but it, you know, some sort of.

Have they coached other athletes who have done that race? Either that or do they understand what it's gonna take to get through it? Meaning, have they suffered a certain amount? Do they understand what it's gonna take to recover from one day to the next, right? Cause it's a stage race versus a 24 or 48 hour nonstop race. So I think those kinds of questions,

but I think ultimately have they had some experience? Is the vibe there for you? And do you think that they can actually get you there? I talked to a guy recently who tried to climb Everest and didn't make it. And he said that he thought it was his coach. So that's either A, passing the buck, right? Or it's maybe the coach was not right.

Maybe there was not the right vibe there. So I think that it's an important relationship when you take on a big event like that. Yeah, so that's what I would say. I mean, I think that's all right. I would agree with all of that. On the vibe piece, I think you need to be clear on what your needs are.

Like, do you need somebody to be an emotional support for you or do you just need the workouts? Like, do you need feedback and what does that feedback look like? Do you need emotional feedback? Do you just need metrics feedback? Do you like to be left alone? Do you want somebody to tell you what to eat for breakfast?

Like all of that is gonna be different depending upon the athlete. And you want to make sure that you're in a good fit with a coach who can meet the needs that you require, but it requires clarity on what those needs are, first of all, so you're not mismatched. Right. And that's a good point because there's so much that goes into, see, I look at as a coach, I want someone to be getting body work done. I want there to be more balance. I don't want it to just be metrics and numbers and speed.

It has to have, nutrition has to happen properly. Sleep has to happen properly. So there is that and life happens, right? So in any relationship, in any event that we do stuff happens, kids, you know, we get sick, kids go to school, they they're sick or, you know, is this coach going to be understanding of what the kind of gestalt of your life is? Yeah. And, and, and it depends on how deep it is, right? Is it just a simple plan to say, here's the plan, see you later, or is it actually going to be more of an in-depth relationship? So, and do you respond to positive feedback or negative the plan, see you later? Or is it actually going to be more of an in-depth relationship? And do you respond to positive feedback or negative?

Like, do you need somebody to say good job? Or do you want somebody to say, hey, you're really like off the reservation here. Like, are you gonna bulk if they give you, you know, some negative feedback? Right. Is that gonna be a problem? Like all of that is very personal.

And I think with respect to Ultraman as somebody who's done Ultraman a couple of times, it's very different from Ironman. So most people that coach Ironman athletes most likely have not coached somebody for Ultraman. Ultraman is completely different. Like Ted said, it's a stage race. It's fundamentally a cycling race more than anything

with a couple appendages tagged onto it. And the way that you train for it is gonna look very different from the way that you train for any other kind of triathlon. You don't need to do any transition work. You don't need to do brick work. You don't really need to do any kind of tempo

or speed work for the most part, unless you're already super accomplished and you need to sort of hone that razor's edge. So it depends upon your skill level at the time as well. So finding somebody who can meet all of those needs, I mean, it's a tall order, but very doable. And I'm glad that you're looking for a coach because I think you should have a coach

for a race like this. There is this temptation, and I've heard this not just from you, but from other people like, oh, I heard Courtney DeWalter and she's all about intuitive. And it's like, you gotta understand, like she is an outlier.

Like most people left to their own intuition to train the way that they feel are gonna lead themselves down a dark alleyway and it ain't gonna be good. And she had plenty of coaching along the way. Right, she has a foundation of that. Absolutely, absolutely. So isn't it a 10 kilometer open water swim

then like a couple of hundred on the bike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the 10K swim, whatever, but like, yeah, you're gonna, you're going 90 on the bike the first day and 171 on the bike the next day. And then you got a little double marathon. You gotta run in there, but you know, it's all very doable. That's hilarious.

That's the dessert. My advice is to make sure they can do that whistle without the pinkies in their lips. Like that would be key. While swimming the 10K? I want a coach that can whistle me like that and then wear a headband at all times on Zoom. Okay. Yeah.

And the proper snorkel mask for the swim. Yeah. And do they make you wear a swim mask slash snorkel mask? Mandated. All right. We'll do one more question. And this one's for me and it's tailored specifically to Ted since he's here.

And I think it's a question that I think will be beneficial to a lot of people. And it's basically just about how you, Ted, see the role of yoga in the context of being an athlete. Like I often look at yoga and wish that I had been an avid practitioner of yoga when I was in my competitive swimming years and understanding the benefits of that,

not just for kind of strength and balance and agility, but also restorative and injury prevention. And of course, you know, the true benefit of it, which is kind of, you know, spiritual awareness. So how do you think about how yoga fits in to being an athlete and performance specifically? And how do you sort of talk about how you recommend yoga for the kind of everyday or weekend warrior athlete?

I recommend yoga for the everyday weekend warrior athlete, you know, two to three times a week if they could, but the truth is most people are like once a week, right? And that's it. And I almost see it as if you were gonna go run once a week. You could go for a jog once a week and go slow and go two, three miles or four miles or five miles. Once a week is not really gonna get you to a marathon

if you're doing that. So yoga, I think is a similar thing. And in my opinion, it is again, like I said earlier, the glue that brings it all together. The first class I ever took was Brian Kest back in Santa Monica, right? When you used to go up the stairs and then there'd be like a little chest

and you could just leave whatever money you wanted there. It was like donation only. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Early days of the LA yoga scene. I think that, so that day I fell in love with yoga because it was as an athlete growing up playing basketball and football and lacrosse back on the East coast.

I started that and I was sore for four days and I couldn't believe it. And I could barely hold my body up. And I thought, wow, this is real, first of all. And it just made me feel so good. And just having stress in life. And I was at that time, I don't know how sober I was. It was maybe a few years, right?

So it was just still stressful. And it was a big sigh of relief for me. And every single class that I went to was a big sigh of relief. And then I started doing more. So I did that for almost three years, just yoga. Then I started running. I thought, I want a little cardio in my life.

So I'm gonna add a couple of miles, a couple of times a week and ran two miles and was sore for four days because I didn't run for almost three years. Then started to run again and realized how much the yoga practice actually helped me just balance out my body. So from a physical standpoint, in my opinion, I think that it is absolutely 100% necessary

because from an athletic standpoint, you're just pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and trying to get faster and stronger and faster and stronger and faster and stronger. And there's not really a sense. I mean, now in the last maybe decade, there's been a lot more attention to recovery, but in my opinion, yoga is definitely something that people should be doing on a regular basis.

Now, obviously the word yoga is such a huge umbrella. So what I would recommend is, you know, one or two classes a week, that's a little bit more of a flow style and at least one or maybe two classes a week that's yin. Because sitting in those poses for a really long time and lengthening your connective tissue, I think has a huge benefit. I feel like that's one of the reasons why I've been able to keep my flexibility, even though

I'll do endurance events still. So from a physical standpoint, I think that's a big thing. I think that, you know, back when I was adventure racing, 2001 through five basically is kind of my four or five year stint in adventure races and anything from two to five hour sprint races all the way up to 24 to 48 hour races. And I remember passing team balance bar and the guy was cramping up and he was freaking out because his body was just locked up. And our team practiced yoga.

I mean, we also hydrated and we had probably, we thought about all this stuff back then. And in a way it was sort of like, oh, wow, that hasn't happened to us, thankfully. Now, whether it's the yoga or whether it's the nutrition or whether that guy was having a bad day or just got over some sickness, we have no idea, right? But the point is that I feel like it balanced out

my athletic ability and continues to this day. That was 20 years ago, 15 years ago. My goal ultimately is to continue to do what I love to do for as long as I possibly can. And yoga will absolutely 100% be part of that. And so I don't, to me, I don't know that I'm gonna be doing, you know, a hundred milers or, you know,

ultimately maybe a half marathon trail run when I'm a hundred years old or hike, you know, I don't care if I walk or hike, but the idea is to be active, right? And I think that the mental aspect and the spiritual, I think spiritual aspect is a whole other episode. But the point is that I think from a mental aspect, you see yourself a little bit differently.

And I think that the yoga develops that over time. Oftentimes people come, as you know, they'll come in because, oh, I have the shoulder thing, or, oh, I have a back thing or whatever it is. But then over time you start to realize, oh, wow, I have the shoulder thing or, oh, I have a back thing or whatever it is. But then over time you start to realize, oh, wow, I feel better. And then you start to perform better outside. So, we've talked in the past about the BMC guys.

So I used to work with, for about a decade, I worked with a professional cycling team and it was like pulling teeth to try to get these guys in the yoga room. Cause there's- You would share like videos and they're trying to get in the poses, like comical. Yeah.

You'd go on their training camps and stuff like that. That's right. And, but they're so steeped in their idea of what cycling, professional cycling is supposed to be that to have them veer a little bit was so challenging. I think that that's changed in general among athletes. And I think that's a huge, huge thing. I think that ultimately it helps us with everything.

It helps us with how we live and how we operate and how we communicate. And I think the yoga practice brings a softer side. It brings the yin to the yang, right? Instead of, you know, a hundred miles, 200 miles, 900 miles. It's sort of like, hey, you know, let's experience this. Let's experience the fiber of our network, the fibers of our journal,

and have that be part of the experience, not just the numbers. And all of us are not competing as professionals. So I don't know about other people and maybe it's different when you have to meet these certain metrics and perform at a certain speed, et cetera. But I think for me, it's a must do for sure.

You know, and two or three times a week, I would say minimum. Right, well put. I don't know if that's too much. No, also like just qualify your bona fides here a little bit. I mean, you did Kilimanjaro, you've done all these adventure races.

How many have you done? You've done Ironmans, right? Yeah, so I actually have only done one official Ironman. I remember, so my first marathon was in 2000, then I did the Malibu Triathlon. That was my first ever triathlon. And then I went immediately to adventure racing and started with what used to be

the high tech adventure racing series. I don't know if you remember that. So I got a couple of people in and I thought, oh wow, if I can get into the elite division, you know, that would be great. So we found, I was at a mud run. This is before Tough Mudder and Spartan, right? So we were at the mud run at Camp Pendleton

and the second place woman was right behind me. First place woman was a bit in front of me, second place. So I just kind of followed her to the showers and heard her talking about marathons. And I said, oh, hey, by the way, ever done any adventure racing? And she said, oh no, but we were gonna try to do this high tech.

I said, well, I'm building a team. We just did this one. So why don't we start training together? She said, yeah, moving up to Pasadena. She became our female and we started competing and we did the balance bar 24 hour adventure racing series. And then we do the Cal Eco series. And it was amazing.

I mean, it's funny because this goes a little bit back to Heidi's question too, which is there's one thing to do a workout for an hour, 45 minutes an hour. It's another thing to do a workout for an hour, 45 minutes an hour. It's another thing to do one to three hours. It's another thing to go three to five or six. It's another thing to go 10, 11, 12 in a day. It's another thing to go overnight, right?

And you mentioned with Courtney, as we're talking about hallucinations, right? I mean, so it's a whole other experience when you sort of walk through that looking glass and that's what happens when you go overnight. It's obviously not something, it's gonna be a different thing, Ultraman, right? Because you get to actually sleep a little bit. But anyway, and then I would say that then Leadville

and I eventually did Ironman. And then Kilimanjaro was a few years ago, which was amazing. What did you do at Leadville? I got frost bit, frost nip, frost nip from Kilimanjaro. Yeah, I did the Leadville mountain bike, sorry. Yeah, that's right, not the runs to be clear. Cause the, and the bike just happened actually

a couple days ago. That's right, yeah. Alex Howes. That's right, yeah, he was, I think. Well, there was the, there was the, they did a gravel version also, I think. Is that right? Maybe I'm wrong. No, I think Steamboat seven or something. They did a gravel version also, I think. Is that right? Maybe I'm wrong.

No, I think Steamboat was the next day. I think there's like a Steamboat gravel. I think Alex Howes won the gravel, I'm not sure. Stetna was pretty high up in Leadville. But he's now racing gravel, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, he was on BMC. But you did a 50 mile race too, a run, right?

Or 50 mile run? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 50K a few times, right? So a hundred milers in the future, little kids now. So training is not as ample all that time. But I love seeing what my body can do in a healthy way. So I have no interest in pounding myself into the ground sooner than I need to be, but I do love to experience the unknown in a way.

So I love setting up these experiences. That's why I said, let's do a Tilo in November. We're gonna be teammates. Oh, you are. I'm gonna be tethered to him and he's gonna run. Oh, wow. And I'm gonna try toethered to him and he's gonna run. Oh, wow. And I'm gonna, yes. And you're gonna pull him and just run. I'm gonna try to find a chair with, like not a wheelchair, more like a lounge chair with wheels.

Uh-huh. And then I'll be the guy on the water, I'll lead the swim, but we're still only gonna do, I think we're just doing the 15, whatever the 15. Whatever, yeah. I don't think we're doing the full. That's super cool. I don't have time to train.

I'm in the zero to three hour category. Exactly, yeah. The other thing I'll add to my, you know, I've been patting myself on the back here, but the Inca Trail. So the Inca Trail was a super fun. So normally it's a four day event and I was leading a retreat to Peru

and we had about whatever, 17, 20 people. And my friend who's an ultra guy now, he said, Hey man, why don't we, why don't we run the Inca trail? I said, why, you know, why? Can I do that? Right. And he goes, why not? You know, I said, Oh, good question. So we talked to Carlos, my guy that I've been dealing with since 2006 going down there. He's my travel guide. And I said, Carlos, come on, man. We gotta, We gotta run the Inca Trail. He goes, how many miles is it? Why would you wanna do that? 22, I think it's just 22.

And it goes over a 14,000 foot peak and then down to 11,000, then over 13,000 foot peak. So it's not that big of a deal as far as like a big deal goes, but no one goes in one day. And so, and it took, we trotted it and it was kind of run hike and it was his we tried, we trotted it and, you know, it was kind of run hike and it was his first thing, but to do that and then to get, have you been to Machu

Picchu? No. Have you been to Machu Picchu? Oh my gosh. So there is the sun gate that as soon as you come across and you see the sun, then you're looking down onto Machu Picchu and every single retreat that I've ever led there, I always walk people up and I have them close their eyes and then they just open their eyes to see Machu Picchu. And you get that same kind of awe inspiring feeling and to have run all of this over the course of the day and then get there, we were both just going, oh my God, just in tears from the experience.

So it was a very cool thing. And the reason I say that is not because it was any athletic feat. I mean, it was a very cool thing. And the reason I say that is not because, it was any athletic feat. I mean, it is a decent athletic feat, but more so about that's the motivation, I think, is to find these experiences like that, like running the backbone trail, or mountain biking the back, like different things.

And you've alluded to that on your podcast multiple times, but is to find these things that just push us a little bit more and to give us an experience that we wouldn't necessarily have instead of living in that little box that we sometimes tend to just fall into. Cool. Yeah.

Will you come back and do a formal Coach's Corner? Yeah. I'd love to. I'd love to. Coach's Corner, Dean Warren. Beautifully put my friend, thank you. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me, absolutely. If people wanna connect with you,

where's the best place to direct them? Do you have any retreats coming up that you're putting together? Yeah, I'm in the midst of putting together a Malibu retreat in November. And then next year I have a few things. I started doing a little research into Bhutan and Nepal. I just, I think that I'd like to hike up a little bit

to some Buddhist temples out there. But as far as connecting, you know, Teddy McDonald on all the social media, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, not as active on Twitter, but I would say that Malibu and then we'll see what happens next year. But I just, again, I just, I wanna continue to kind of create the unknown.

And are you looking for coaching clients? Is your roster full? Of course, yeah. No, it's not. No, it's not. Right. Yeah. So we got the yoga studio in Malibu

and then we do some online stuff, five point yoga. Is it open now? Are you teaching in the studio or is it still? I am. You are. So yeah, so since April, we slowly started coming back and I thought, oh, yay, we're coming back, we're coming back. And then all of a sudden the Delta variant

sort of like put a little bit of a damper on that. But people do still come to the studio. So if you're in Malibu, then definitely come by and check us out. We have a limited amount of classes, but we also do online classes. So if you're looking to get into yoga, I'm happy to sort of give you a little bit of a thing.

Actually, I started streaming once the pandemic hit, I started streaming. Adam did a little piece for the New York Times actually. Yeah, he did a New York Times piece. Which was great. But I just, because I felt like back then, it was really important to start to share our resources as individuals.

I really felt like that was important. So I thought if there's anything that I know how to do, it's help people move through stress. And it was a really stressful time. So I felt like that was important. And I kept doing that once a week. So usually on Mondays, I do a little yoga for athletes. My friend is the race director

for the Malibu half marathon, which happens in November. So we kind of stream to my channels and her channel and otherwise it's for the members that come and join us, but I'm happy to have any of your listeners be a guest. And you do a Jackson retreat in the winter, right? It's snowboarding. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So every year we go to Jackson hole, uh, Tony Horton, who's a good buddy of mine, creator of P90X. So he and I lead Ted and Tony's, uh, ski yoga trip too. I laugh because it's,

it's like one of the most fun. Sounds like so chest pounding though. Like a little intimidating. Yeah. Well, it's funny people like, I'm a snowboarder or I can't really see, and Jackson Hole is intense, right? So there's plenty of things to do as far as plenty of terrain for beginners, intermediates. And there's plenty of people who will come on the retreat and not ski because it's Jackson, it's Jackson Hole,

the Grand Tetons are right down the block. Yellowstone is around the corner. So it's an amazing place. So you don't necessarily have to. And the thing is we do yoga in the morning, yoga in the evening. Tony's a little bit more of a chest pounder where my whole idea is to help people in the beginning,

in the beginning of the day or the end of the day, either recovery at the end of the day. So yin or in the beginning of the day, just kind of set you up for the best ski day. And if you're a skier and you haven't done yoga before skiing, it will change your life because you just feel like a different human being. You just feel ready to hit the mountain.

Sounds dope, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanna go. Yeah. Cool. You should go. Right on, man. We did it. We kept it under three hours. We did.

Yesterday at this time, I thought there's no way we're gonna be able to talk for more than 45 minutes. Really? I go through this every time. Yeah. Imposter syndrome? A little bit of that. Also just a sense of being like unprepared.

But look at us, we read a climate report. Yeah, we did. You feel good? Me? I feel good, I feel verified. All right, you are, I verify you. I am thus verified. You have a blue check in my heart. Oh, thanks man, that's all that matters, mostly.

Ted, thank you for dropping in, I appreciate it. Absolutely man, thanks for having me. For sure. Thanks everybody for listening. I don't take your attention for granted. Again, you can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. I'm at Rich Roll on all this stuff. If you'd like to send us a question

for consideration on the show, leave us a message at 424-235-4626. You could check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll have links to all the stuff that we talked about today. And that's it. I wanna thank everybody who helped put on today's show.

Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Blake Curtis for videoing the show. We got a new team member I pointed out. Dan Drake is in the house. He's gonna be doing lots of video stuff and all kinds of other yet to be determined stuff.

So welcome Dan to the RRP. Jessica Miranda for graphics, David Greenberg for taking portraits today, Georgia Whaley for copywriting. We got our boy DK on advertiser relationships and theme music as always by Tyler Trapper and Harry, my boys. Appreciate the love you guys, see you back here soon.

Until then, peace. And congrats to Jason, 400th episode today. Is that right? Yes. I didn't know that. Thank you, Jason. He is the OG of this organization. He's the OG Coyote. Thanks, Jason.

Namaste. I feel like Ted should say that. Namaste. Namaste, everyone. Namaste, everyone. Namaste. Namaste. Thank you.