The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: Merchants Of Chaos

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

Perhaps you thought 2021 might bring some return to normalcy. So far we have the Capitol insurrection, GameStonk and Jewish Laser Beams. We need to talk. After a much-needed break, Roll On returns with my hype man Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist perhaps best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me co-author. Adam has written about adventure sports, environmental issues and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently hard at work on a novel. We are also mixing up the format with two special guests, Arthur Jones & Giorgio Angelini, the filmmakers behind Feels Good Man (and RRP 576). Serving as our internet culture decoder ring, the lads join the show to help make sense of recent events insanity. Some of the many topics explored in today’s conversation include: the importance of taking a sabbatical; the Capitol insurrection & the impact on the GOP; how Reddit turned the stock market upside down; the future of stock market democratization; David Lynch’s absurd yet wonderfully soothing weather reports; Ultra-runner Jim Walmsley’s 100k American record; and How Nepalese climbers reached the summit of K2 in the winter for the first time. In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do I focus & contribute when I’m so consumed by current events? How do I deal with colossal failure and set myself up for success? How did overcoming substance abuse change your mindset on fitness & life? Thank you to Kevin from St. Louis, John from the Sierra Nevada, and Sarah from Phoenix for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone]. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll578 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon578 It’s good to be back! Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. We are back. It's 2021 after a much needed respite. Mr. Skolnick and I are in the saddle with a hotly awaited new edition of Roll On. This is the edition of the podcast where we check in on our respective goings on, pontificate on certain current events of interest.

We share some wins, do a little show and tell, and as always, answer some listener slash viewer questions from our voicemail, which you can ring up at 424-235-4626. Before we get into it, quick reminder that if you enjoy all the free content that we diligently toil week in, week out to create, it would be very meaningful and easy for you

if you could take a second to hit the subscribe button on YouTube or wherever you enjoy the audio incarnation of the show. Leave a comment, share the show with your friends or on social media. Also, I should mention, we recently created a clips channel on YouTube, which is rather anemic right now in terms of subscribers.

So if you're into sampling the show or you wanna indulge in just the short nuggets, check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes and in the description below on YouTube, or you can just search Rich Roll Podcast Clips on YouTube. Today is very exciting. We have a tweak on the tweak of our roll-on format.

We're gonna try something new today for the first time in the history of roll-on. How many roll-on episodes have we done? I think it's like over a dozen. I thought it was 14. Is it that many? 14, something like that. Yeah, I know.

We have some momentum here. Well, today we're gonna bring on a couple guests in a few, Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini, who you guys know as the filmmakers behind the wonderful movie, Feels Good Man. You're most likely familiar with them, if not from the movie, from a recent episode of the podcast,

which although it just posted the other day, we actually recorded it back in early December, sometime in December. So I haven't seen these guys for a minute, even though they're just up on the podcast the other week. These guys are our internet culture decoder ring, and they're coming in hot to help us make sense of a few crazy recent events in culture. Just a few. Just a few, right? Just a few. But first, Adam, how are you doing?

I'm good. I just subscribed to the YouTube channel earlier today. The Clips channel? No, the original YouTube channel. It took you this long? You're actually on the show. You don't even subscribe? I don't subscribe to myself.

Here's the thing, like when you look at the analytics on our YouTube channel, we're doing great, but like something like 96% of the watches are from people that don't subscribe to the channel, which is odd. So come on you guys subscribe. Look how long it took you to do it. I know I'm embarrassed about it, but you have a pretty good, it seems like the subscriptions are pretty solid

on the main channel. It's doing well. We're in a groove right now. As I tweeted the other day or shared the other day, the Andrew Huberman podcast eclipsed 4 million views. It's gonna hit like 4.5 in a couple days or something like that. Yeah, I thought it was 4.5 today already. Was it 4, is it 4.3?

I thought it was when I checked today. It's 4.3 or something like that. It's insane, like that podcast was, I don't know, nine months ago or something like that. And it's still cranking the YouTube algorithm gods for whatever reason, maybe Arthur and Giorgio can help us figure this out. Like, I don't know why they decided that one.

It's a great episode of course, but that one is crushing out there and it's bringing all kinds of new people to the show, which is cool. Fantastic. Welcome new people. But back to my question new people to the show, which is cool. Fantastic. Welcome new people. But back to my question, how are you doing? Everything is good. I took January like you, just a little bit half speed.

I was working maybe 15, 20 hours, or at least that was the plan was to just do some reading, catch up on some books that I've been wanting to read for forever and kind of pitch in a bit more with Zuma and hang out with the family a bit more. And then all hell broke loose in Washington and I was like glued to the television for days on end, doom scrolling.

But so that was my downtime. It's impossible not to do that. It was impossible from January 6th to the 20th. I was like, I couldn't do anything. It was impossible from January 6th to the 20th. I was like, I couldn't do anything. It was crazy. But ran a lot. I ran maybe 110 miles this last month. That's got to be your biggest month. Biggest month ever running. You're looking svelte. Hey, thanks, man. I mean, zone two, so I'm not that svelte. But yeah, so that's good. And Zoom is doing well. And my wife wants to buy a house. So I'm growing up.

You're living the dream, the adult dream, right? Late comer to the adult world. Yeah, and maybe if you weren't so late to GameStop, you could be buying that house right now. You know, it's possible. I don't wanna, I don't wanna. I have some material for GameStop. Yeah, we're gonna get into that.

We'll hold on. Trust me. Hold all materials. Cool. Well, this is my first podcast after taking essentially an entire month off. Yeah. I went to Hawaii. Yes, like how are you?

Like that's a- I'm good. I feel really good. I feel refreshed. I feel really good. I feel refreshed. I feel energized. It was certainly needed. I wouldn't say I was teetering on burnout, but I definitely needed a break. I've been grinding the entire year

without taking any time off whatsoever. Wow. So- You get like one day off a week generally or not even? I pretty much work every, I mean, every once in a while I'll take a day off and I do, like they'll be mean, every once in a while, I'll take a day off and I do, like, there'll be, like, in the middle of the week, pre-pandemic, I would, like, go to a matinee or, like, just take little mini breaks. And in the weekends, I work less, but the show goes up

every Sunday night. So, typically, there's a scramble on Sunday afternoon to kind of do last minute tweaks on the show to get it up. So I feel like I'm always kind of working. So one of the goals, I'll get into my break, but one of the goals for this year is to really utilize this new studio and the manpower that we have now to systematize and make things more efficient and create a little bit more bandwidth for intermittent rest throughout the year and the weeks.

But yeah, I took a month off. I started this the year before I went to Australia for the month of December. This year, I decided to go to Hawaii for January. Solo or did you bring the family? Well, Mathis went with me for a week. She had a friend that she was with. She went back and then I was solo the whole time

and it was fantastic. When's the last time that's been that way? First I will say I got tested a lot of times. So I did it safely. Hawaii has things pretty dialed in. If you go to Kauai, you gotta quarantine for 14 days, but on the other islands, they require that you get a test within 72 hours.

You gotta fill out all this paperwork. You get a QR code. When you land in the hours. You gotta fill out all this paperwork. You get a QR code. When you land in the airport, you gotta show them all the paperwork. They scan your QR code and they test you in the airport before you can even get a baggage claim. So they have it. If you're on an island,

you can control things a little bit better. And the case incidents on the big island was very low. It was something like 10 to 30 a day. And people were wearing masks everywhere you went, if you went inside somewhere, but overall it felt much safer to be there. I'm sure. And I was just in my own-

You mean safer than the hot zone on the planet Earth? Of Los Angeles. Yeah, I got out of LA and it was good. You know, I just took care of myself and, you know, rented a bike and rode and ran and swam in the ocean, swam with dolphins, which was incredible. I had one experience- You just rented like a high-end bike

from a good bike shop or something? I did, there's a shop called Bike Works in Kona and I have a good relationship with them because I've spent so much time there and raced there so many times. So Grant, who owns Bike Works, is a friend and he hooked me up with a super sweet ride. That's cool. So that was great. And just

went out of my way to not create an agenda for myself. Like I have friends there and I saw a couple of friends, but I tried to not commit myself to anything and to double down, like to go out of my way to not work, which is its own kind of effort, I suppose for me. And I do want to highlight like swimming with dolphins. I've been open water swimming like my whole life, never had the experience of swimming with dolphins. Never. And I just was out off the Kailua Pier

where they do the Ironman swim and found myself in a pod of like 40 to 50 dolphins. It was like unbelievable. Were they spinners? Were they spinning around? They weren't, I didn't see a lot of spinning, but they were like at all depths and just playing with each other and surfacing.

And it was just the coolest thing. That is the coolest thing. So that experience alone made the whole thing worth it. The Kona Coast is known for that, right? Because they have Kona Now, which is two-step where the free divers go just past Captain Cook if you go south from Kona. Right.

They're known to have spinners around. Voices in the Ocean, that Susan Casey book, which is about dolphins. She did, there's a woman who works out of Kona and does these charters where people go and she, and like, it's very controversial in Kona. Like not every diver likes this woman, I forget her name, but like she takes these people out to swim with dolphins off boats.

And like she has people like, like she talks to the dolphins and sings like dolphin songs when the dolphins come or something. And I saw one of her acolytes, not in a bad way, like one of her disciples, I guess, in Honanau once. And I remember April and I had just gotten in, not too long ago, I was out there for work. And this woman is like singing in the water.

And I'm like, what's she doing? At first, she seemed a little kooky, the snorkeler just singing like dolphin songs or whatever, squeaking. And all of a sudden the dolphins came right to her. So I just stuck with her. I stuck with this eccentric dolphin singer. Why is she controversial?

That just sounds cool. It's controversial because some people just are haters. It is cool. Right. Some people are haters and they think like, oh, they don't believe it. And there's like, you gotta read Voices in the Ocean. She like, there is a spiritual side to it.

There is like a whole thing beyond just like, hey, it's cool to swim with dolphins. But yeah, there's a hater aspect to it around there. But it's mostly I've found like the women who are free divers there, they like the people. And the men are the ones that are dismissive. That's not shocking. No.

Right. Who's the free diver instructor, coach guy that I texted you about who was doing a course in Kona. Kurt Chambers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my friend, Anthony Irvin, who's in Oahu or was at the time, I think he still is, I think did something with him and alerted me to this guy.

And I was tempted to take the guy's course, but then I was like, I just, I really just need to rest and not do anything. So I opted out of that. But yeah, Kurt broke Nick Mavoli's American record. I think he might still hold it or you held it for a while as the deepest American ever. Wow.

And free diving over a hundred meters. He competed at Team USA. He's in one breath and a kind of just an aside. Interesting guy, great, great photographer and a very prolific teacher out there. Right, he has a cool Instagram too. Yeah, very cool. Chambers below. Yeah, yeah very cool. Chambers below.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chambers below. Yeah. But the upshot is I'm back. I feel energized. I feel fit. I've got good momentum with my fitness. I'm excited about 2021.

I do wanna take a moment to welcome Jason Camiolo. Yes. To the studio. Jason, for people that have been on this podcast journey with us for a while, know him as the audio engineer slash producer slash guy who takes care of all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. He had always been living in the Phoenix area

and all of our work was remotely performed. And now he has moved to Los Angeles and he's here full time manning all the dials right now. So welcome Jason. We're excited to have you and it's going to be an amazing year. So I'm pumped. Can I ask you one more question about Hawaii? Yeah. Were you getting Ironman pangs, like being on the terrain? I mean, you're basically riding and running and swimming similar terrain. Yeah, but I've spent so much time on the big Island. Like for me, it's not that exotic to go there because I have logged so many hours training there

and just like living there basically. So it's more like a feeling of coming home. Like it's nice to ride on the Queen K and I got off the beaten track and did some other rides and tried to explore other aspects of the island that I'm less familiar with. But it's very like comfortable for me to just kind of go there.

And it doesn't feel like vacation. It just feels like another place that I've lived in the past. Yeah. So. How was the water? So good. 76, 78.

And there were whales breaching. I was in a condo for half the time and then on this beautiful house on the water in a little neighborhood called Puako, which is a pretty cool area. Is that north of Kona or south? It's north, it's just south of Hapuna Beach and Kauai High, if you know where that is.

So right kind of a couple of miles before the Kauai High turned, if you know the island at all. But it's this little like hidden neighborhood with all these beautiful homes right on the water and whales preaching off, it was crazy. So you didn't leave. But part of the goal was to be off digital devices

and really live an analog life, but the world exploded. And like yourself, I found myself doom scrolling and I could not detach myself from the news cycle, which seemed to be just, you know, getting crazier, you know, by the second, which is what we're going to get into right now. It went crazy. It went goofier than anyone even thought. Like you could say that about the entire presidency or the last four years, it went goofier than we ever thought. But like the end, it was like a fireworks, you know, when they have a firework show,

it was like the finale to the firework show. A little bit, right? So shall we now just dispel the idea that somehow 2021 might normalize, that everything is gonna kind of settle into place? Instead, we give you insurrection, Game Stonk, Jewish lasers, and who knows what else.

And who knows what else. So let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Giorgio and Arthur. 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.

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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. 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 all right and we're back with the boys four in the house we got arthur we got georgio i'm disappointed georgio though i was told that you were gonna dress up today as the QAnon shaman. Yeah, I had my top down on my convertible.

Didn't happen? The helmet flew off. The Viking, the Viking horns. Somewhere on the 101 right now, so. You know, say what you want about the QAnon shaman, but at least he eats organic. He's organic, right? Wasn't he on a food strike when he was incarcerated?

What's the latest update on that guy? Well, there was a fake news. So a friend of mine sent me a National Post article, which is some bullshit tabloid from Canada that tried to claim that the judge actually gave it to him. Gave him organic food. And that started proliferating through social media and outraging people.

How could he get this special treatment? They would never treat a POC that way, blah, blah, blah. But it turns out he didn't get it. Wasn't true. No. Yeah. I think he's agreed to be deposed in Congress and like speak against, I guess, presumably Trump or who else, like speak to the movement.

Wow. So that should be interesting. Yeah. Sure. He'll take it. He'll take an invitation to a microphone. Exactly. No kidding. Right.

He'd been building his brand for a while. Like, I mean, he'd been showing up to all the Save Your Children rallies for months before the capital insurgency. I mean, he kind of is the face of the whole thing on some level. This has to be going exactly as he hoped it would. I would imagine. Perhaps, until he ends up behind bars, I suppose.

I don't know if he planned on that aspect. His lawyer is ahead of that. You know, his lawyer said, you know, he's not a bad person. He's a practitioner of yoga. That was one of the early defense lines. I swear to God. Just like the Bikram guy, right?

Well, it feels a little bit- Bikram's also a practitioner of yoga. Yes swear to God. Just like the Bikram guy, right? Well, it feels a little bit- Bikram's also pregnant. Yes, he is. It feels a little bit weird and dated to talk about the Capitol insurrection because it feels like it's a hundred years ago. Could you have imagined when that was going on that a month later, it would feel like old news in comparison to some of the things that are happening now? It's just crazy, right? I do think we need to like track it a little bit, but what I wanted you guys here for is to help us understand or like decode, you know, how we move from Pepe the frog, how that becomes QAnon, how that leads to the insurrection and the interrelation between that or the interplay between that and kind of what we're seeing right now with GameStop and the gamification of Wall

Street. I mean, it's insane. It is insane. Yeah, that's a lot of ground to cover. Yeah, no, it's true. There's that amazing meme of it's someone standing in front of a line of dominoes and the first domino is very small and the last domino is very huge. And the beginning push of the domino on the small domino is basically Gamergate. And then the final one is all of the COVID deaths. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is all kind of connected. Elon Musk tweeted that graphic, right? Oops. Yeah. He's somewhere in the middle of that dog. Well, he's a player right now. Absolutely. He's basically, you know, front and center

in terms of which memes get traction and which don't. He's a merchant of chaos at this point. But chaos is a good place to start. Like, where were you all, where were you guys? Like Rich, like when it started happening and the riots broke out, I mean, I think we got, we should start there. Where were you?

What were you guys thinking? I mean, I was in Hawaii trying to be off the computer and off my phone and I just could not stop scrolling. Were you getting texts first or were you like, how'd you find out about it? No, I mean, I would check in. It wasn't like I was trying to be completely off the phone, but I would look at Twitter and then you'd see the news

and you're like, I have to understand what's happening. I just could not put distance between myself and the device. but I would look at Twitter and then you'd see the news and you're like, I have to understand what's happening. Like I just could not put distance between myself and the device. It was just so compelling and strange and interesting and disheartening and unbelievable, like every adjective under the hood. Yeah.

Yeah, the guy in our film, Joel, who is part of the network contagion, wait, what's that? I can't remember the acronym. I don't remember. I mean, he works out of Princeton and he has a consortium of people called iDrama Lab. iDrama Lab.

And they had been sort of modeling behavior on all of these different platforms. And so a lot of this stuff, I think was predictable by the academics that followed it. And it was also predictable because this notion of stop the steal, specifically like when Trump addressed the crowd, he talked about stop the steal.

And he's like, this is something you came up with. But the reality of stop the steal is that started in 2016. That was something that was something that Roger Stone came up with. Before the election? Yeah, well, they assumed, I think a lot of people assumed that the race with Hillary Clinton was something that was something that Roger Stone came up with. Before the election? Yeah. Well, they assumed, I think a lot of people assumed

that the race with Hillary Clinton was going to be very close. And so they were already sort of seeding this notion of stop the steal that early, to the point where Stone bought the URL. And so this idea that this was like an organic groundswell is ridiculous. Stop the steal was also used sort of in the midterms. So they're just kind of pulling on the same thread

that's been there for a while. But I don't think anyone could have predicted that the Capitol Police response would have been so lax. But I think this was a moment of coalition building where they had all of the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, all the QAnon people, all the Christian fundamentalists, the white supremacists, all the Christian fundamentalists, the white supremacists, all sort of merging around this one thing. And in the weeks before, we can't forget

that all of these people were coming to different state capitals and showing up in real life as well. And it was the day that they were supposed to certify, right? So it was everything was kind of, we knew they were all going there. That's why we were all tuned in to begin with. Like, it wasn't like I wasn't gonna watch the news that day anyway. Right. So it was almost like plot twist. But the inauguration was meant to be the ultimate moment

in QAnon history, right? It was all supposed to go down at that moment. So there was a lot of energy and anticipation that was circling around all of that. And in terms of the Capitol police response, like in the wake of what transpired, you saw all of these internet sleuths sharing screen grabs from 4chan.

And it's like anybody who spent any time or exerted any due diligence leading up to the inauguration could have easily discovered that this was a possibility or more likely than not, like a plausibility. And so where does the fault get levied in terms of that anemic kind of response?

I think cops. Yeah. I think that remains to be seen. I mean, they haven't released surveillance. Today something came out because tomorrow, I guess the impeachment proceedings or the trial begins. Right, and all his lawyers quit, right? Because he wants to maintain the stop the steal argument

and they just can't abide by that. So now he's got these new lawyers. They don't wanna lose their standing at the bar. So Don Winslow tweeted out a letter that looked accurate to me, but it was from Christopher Miller, the defense secretary, or the army secretary. Someone else had just left that post

and he got put in as the acting secretary. And in this letter, it basically said, it was before January 6th, it was before January 4th, there'd been requests to have National Guard on standby. And in this letter, he basically is saying, you can't have any of that on standby. You need to clear everything through me or nothing happens at all.

And so now there is a paper trail. So that's the first thing that dropped. And that just happened right before I got here today on Twitter. So if you look on Don Winslow's Twitter, you know, the guy that wrote the cartel books. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that's so Joel from our film reached out to me like a year ago and he's been researching Q this whole time. And he basically told me that a year ago that at that stage, like, that QAnon was essentially essentially fully operational at this point. And what the thing that was very concerning

from his perspective was that it was kind of the first time that there's a leaderless movement like this and that it was kind of irrelevant whether or not people discovered who Q himself or herself was at that point because it was like this self-aggregating, self-motivated machine. And that's like what the capital insurrection sort of proved out because at that point, Q hadn't really spoken at that point in like a month. And yeah, where we go from here, who knows, but- Well, what was important though, was that the Q prophecy was actualized

and that certainly did not come to pass. So this bubble gets popped and then you have a fracture in that community. You have the hardcores who are still reconfiguring the narrative to say, well, because of this and this, like it's still a thing. And then you have a whole other larger fraction of that population coming to their senses.

And now we're seeing like, did you see the Anderson Cooper interview with the former QAnon guy who had to apologize to him for thinking that he ate babies? We're seeing a lot of that right now, which is kind of encouraging, I think on some level, but it had to be fascinating for you guys who are so steeped in all of this

to kind of watch that transpire, knowing what you guys know about the power of these movements that for the most part, don't catch the attention of mainstream society. I mean, Adam, you were saying you were, before the podcast, you were talking about how you were researching voting

for a book proposal and you didn't even, you didn't even know anything about it. I didn't know about Pepe. No, I was spending a lot of time in the ocean though, in 2016. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, right down the street from my house. So I don't know. I wasn't like in, I wasn't on the queue. I wasn't in the four chance. Cause like by then I think we'd have, we'd had, um, I wasn't like in, I wasn't on the queue. I wasn't in the 4chan because like by then I think we'd had, we'd had, I mean, this goes to why it's important to dive into this like darker kind of murky, shitty stuff, right?

As, as awake human beings. It's great that you're talking about this because you'd think like when you 4chan, I always associated with the UC Santa Barbara mass shooter who, you know, these incels and these like these righteous, self-righteous incels. And I just like, I don't want anything to do with that. So I kind of tune that stuff out.

So when I'm looking at an election that happened with how Trump won, I wasn't looking at like 4chan at all. It wasn't even on my radar. My radar was like, how could, I was thinking way analog. I was like, Cherrymandering. You know, I'm not a gamer.

I'm not into that world. So I wasn't thinking like that at all. So to, which is why I love the movie so much. Cause it kind of wakes you up. And this shows like if we'd been tuned in, if the Republican party had been tuned in, maybe like if anybody had been tuned in, it could have been stopped, but maybe it couldn't have been, you know,

maybe it was like the, when you have a groundswell like this, there's not, there's nothing that can stop it. I don't know. I don't know that they were necessarily against. I was going to say, I think they were tuned in. I think they chose to ignore it. Yeah. And I think there's evidence of that. I mean, we've been in contact with this Republican Congressman, Denver Riggleman,

who was the one sort of voice in the wilderness, the one Republican that spoke out against Q over the summer. And he claims that he was basically chastised by the rest of the party. They told him to stop talking about Q because they felt like that was their margin in certain states. And so, you know, he tweeted out and said that,

you know, Q, there was no coincidence that Q had the same number of letters as moron. QAnon. QAnon, excuse me. And then also that it's mental gonorrhea. And so, you know, the Republicans, I think, knew this, but they realized that it was something that was to their advantage. Yeah, I mean, and to back up, I mean, it's to the kind of incel shooter aspect of QAnon and

sort of the nexus of when these two coalitions, the 4chan community and like the burgeoning Trump movement coincided in the film, we kind of tease it out, but sometimes it just kind of whizzes past people. So it's worth kind of refocusing on it here because it's really central to the conversation. But it's like there's a mass shooting in Oregon in 2016, 15. 2015. And we don't know for sure, but most likely the shooter himself posted on 4chan

a kind of warning that like, don't go to school tomorrow, there's going to be a shooting. And then at the bottom, there's a Pepe holding a handgun. And then two weeks later, Donald Trump, who at that point is like a dark horse candidate, posts a meme of himself as like smug Pepe.

And for a lot of people, like first of all, that was the first time that Pepe really made it into the national news was during that shooting. But people didn't really know what it was. He was referred to as a Grinch, a sniveling Grinch or something like that. Right, yes. But then also, people didn't really understand the significance of what Trump was

tweeting. But in a sense, it was kind of a wink to this collective of online trolls that were really the vanguard of hacking the internet at that point, right? And like this, the burgeoning click-based economy, like they really understood, they were very savvy at understanding how to manipulate the flows of media. And so Trump at that moment, or well, who knows? If there's one question I would ask Trump,

it's like, did you know what you were tweeting at that point? Yeah, the self-awareness around that is up in the air. Totally, totally dubious. But like, you know, Pepe at that point represented something very significant. It was kind of like a pre-emptor to the stand back and stand by moment, right? And so what he really set off was this kind of wink

to that community who all shared a similar sort of hatred towards PC culture and, you culture and minorities and women. And they all kind of shared the same anger towards the same group of people. And those people basically started creating like a meme revolution that helped him kind of buttress this burgeoning movement of online meme lords into like an actual political movement as older people are starting to join social media and stuff. They start like, oh, what's this funny frog meme? You know, this is fun. And you start to realize that like memes are actually really incredible ways to like capture the imagination of people and like kind of coalesce around a movement

around meme iconography, I guess. So what's the connection? Where's the link from Pepe? Like you were asking from Pepe to Q. When does that happen? When does that start happening? Is there a direct link where Pepe becomes like a Q basically? Well, Pepe in the constellation of Q iconography,

Pepe is sort of a satellite figure. You know, it is interesting. So Pepe became very popular on 4chan, and that's where Q started too. Q started out as one of many jokes where people on 4chan, they pretend to be someone they're not, and they post using various sort of aliases.

And so people would post often on 4chan pretending to have like some sort of government access or secret knowledge. And usually this is sort of all taken as like a LARP or a joke. But Q really started off, you know, when a group of people, when a sort of cohort of people who were all trying to create their own personas very much based on InfoWars kind of found these Q drops and they started to signal boost them within their YouTube live streams,

on Twitter, in these sort of places. And then you started to see Q resonating with a different audience than Pepe resonated with. Pepe resonated with a younger audience, internet savvy audience, an audience that was like very irony, you know, like very irony poisoned. Q found sort of an audience of an older generation,

most of whom were evangelical Christians. And they were looking for some sort of way in which Trump was gonna be part of God's plan, was basically gonna be their savior essentially. And the narrative of Q was that ignore all of the hypocrisy, the corruption, ignore all of that because Trump is actually kind of running a covert, deep state sort of espionage sting

where he's gonna sort of show up triumphant. He's gonna maybe kill Hillary Clinton, maybe hang her, maybe imprison her. Different people thought different things. And so this was a moment where this really like caught wildfire in Facebook groups and it caught wildfire in Twitter. It was another moment

where things moved off of 4chan and into the mainstream. And while this was happening, a lot of the old school people that were using Pepe, maybe in our film were just laughing. They were like, I can't believe these people believe this stuff. This is 2017. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, you started to then see, um, the people who were Q adherents really got kind of addicted to the same sort of like online behavior that a lot of the 4chan people were kind of, you know, it's the same stuff that was the shut-in culture of 4chan, the people that were spending all their time online. This was now happening with a slightly older generation. and they were following themselves. They were going down a rabbit hole. They would call themselves white rabbits, or they would say, follow the white rabbit. And it was this willful kind of crazy making where it was exciting and fun to feel

like you were a part of this other movement. And while this was happening, this is fitting into like biblical revelation. It's fitting into a lot of other sort of presumed prophecy that people are already thinking about. And just a general good versus evil, right? Yeah, the revelations parallel, I think is pretty powerful. Like it was all gonna culminate in this reckoning. Right. And Trump is-

Where the 5D chess maneuvers were gonna come to play and everything was gonna change. Yeah. And Trump represents this really great kind of imperfect hero, right? Which I think is like very familiar kind of character within evangelical community, right? Like you kind of explain away the fact

that he's been married three times and he's a pathological liar. He's like an imperfect person under the light of Christ or whatever. Well, and he's viewed as a protector. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he delivered viewed as a protector. Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, he delivered the Supreme Court nominations.

You know, one third of the Supreme Court now is, you know. Oops. Yeah, is now Trump appointees. There were certain things that he was doing that were really viewed as he was a protector of Christian America. Whether, and they knew he was imperfect.

White Christian America, right? Very much so. Yeah, yeah. Very much so. Right, I mean, for single issue voters where it's all about pro-life, it's much easier for them to overlook all the other indiscretions

because he's taking care of that issue for them. Yeah, yeah. And then of course COVID happens and then just hypercharges all of this because now you can't leave your house and you're stuck inside of your computer and like the funnel just gets tighter and tighter. That's kerosene on the community aspect of this,

which I think is super important, whether it's 4chan and Pepe or Facebook groups and QAnon, it gave these people something to engage with and created like a really robust community that provided a sense of belonging, that gamified the whole thing. And on some level, I suppose was addictive and just too compelling to not walk away from. It was extremely addictive. I mean, there's an alienation problem in America. I think for a lot of people that pre-existed There's an alienation problem in America, I think, for a lot of people that pre-existed COVID, right?

We are a culture that spends more time commuting than any other culture in our cars by ourselves. The film we worked on together, the previous film was about housing. And one of the central data points that really fascinated me, that got me into the making of the film was the idea that 60 years ago, the average size of the family was three and a half people and the average size of the home was 900 square feet. And today it's two and a half people and it's almost 3000 square feet. So we have like fewer people inhabiting more space.

And like, there's just something inherently distressing and alienating about that. And I think like QAnon just kind of exacerbates all these problems and then COVID layers on top of it. And all of a sudden you feel like you're part of a community solving this global cabal of pedophiles. And it like, it becomes inescapable, the seduction. Yeah, I mean, I think in addition to the alienation

and the disconnection that so many people experience, it also gave a lot of more or less people a sense of purpose, right? Like I'm thinking of Cleet Keller, he got a lot of attention, the Olympic swimmer who showed up in the rotunda. I don't know him personally, but I have lots of friends that do know him well.

And this is a guy who excelled at the highest level in his sport, went to multiple Olympiads, meddled like a huge athletic champion. And then in the wake of retiring, hit like some really tough experiences. He got divorced, he lost custody of his kids. At one point for an extended period of time, he was homeless living in his car.

He could not find his groove with his career and he couldn't supplant the sense of purpose that he found in swimming in other areas of his life. And in so many ways, he's almost like the perfect test case for somebody who's gonna be susceptible to these kinds of ideas. Like I tweeted about him being kind of the convergence of Kevin Ruse's rabbit hole podcast series

with the weight of gold HBO documentary. Like he experienced what so many Olympians experience when they retire, they have mental health issues, they have depression, they can't figure out what to do with their lives, meets QAnon or these other ideas. And then there you go down the rabbit hole. And he shows up in the rotunda

and thinks it's a good idea to be wearing his Olympic jacket at the time. So what is the mentality of somebody like that? And when I look at that, I'm trying to look at it from a perspective of compassion and curiosity. Like I want to understand what led him to that place rather than just vilify him. No, like there's something, obviously there's a huge mental health component that we're

touching on here, the alienation, you know, this specific case, but everybody there was part of this who decided to enter the Rotunda, whether they planned to in advance, which there's certainly evidence that a lot, some of them did, I mean, a lot of them did, or whether they just happened to get caught up. There's something about this, a performative attempt to create an alternate reality that you are starring in. And whether, you know, you see people streaming themselves, attempt to create an alternate reality that you are starring in.

And whether, you know, you see people streaming themselves, Cleet is wearing his outfit. So you knew the Q and N shaman made sure you knew who he was. People are like, you know, Darren, what's his face. It's Darren's in the rotunda, you know, the guy from West Virginia. There is something about a pride to be a part of this kind of alternate reality that they managed to create together where anything could have happened.

I mean, like really anything could have happened. Like if they had run into AOC or Pelosi or Pence, there would have been bloodshed for sure. But in reality, it was just people milling around and doing kind of just vandalizing is what ended up happening. But fueled by a sense of righteousness. That's why they were so brazen about taking the selfies and live streaming it because in their minds, they were doing the right thing.

And that Trump would protect them. At the behest of Trump and Cruz and all these other people who in their minds had discharged them for this purpose. Yeah, I was listening to a podcast recently called Design Matters and Marina Abramovich was on. And she was talking about her piece in 1974, this famous performance art piece that she did in Naples, which maybe you've heard about,

but like she basically erected the stage and laid out a bunch of different things in front of her and basically invited the audience to do whatever they wanted to her. There was no rules, but the only agreement was that you were coming up on stage. So you were part of the performance and it went on for six hours. And I'd heard, you know, descriptions of the performance before, but I'd never heard it from her perspective. And what was really striking to me was like her description of what happened afterwards, because during the performance, things escalated like very quickly. And, you know, she was fearful that she was going to get raped.

A guy at a certain point picked up the revolver that was on the thing and put it up to her head and someone intervened and pulled it out of his hand. And she got cut on the neck and someone like sucked the blood out of her neck. And then she said that at a moment where she thought she was gonna get raped, women in the audience were yelling at the men on stage to do something to her, like something terrible. But so after the performance concluded, she walked out into the audience and no one could look at her in the eye.

Everyone was so ashamed at what they had done. And I was like, that is the capital insurrection. It's like the shock treatment test. Or it's the Stanford prison experiment. Yeah, Trump gave them the permission. And you hear it now when like, after these people were arrested, they're like, well, Trump said I could do it.

Right. And like, that is a really powerful- Yeah, the sheer incredulity that they would be held to account for these actions. Like the surprise, like, wait a minute, what do you mean? Why is the FBI calling me? Right. Confusion. The guy crying in the airport terminal

because he got, he was already on the no fly list. Yeah, but the thing is, Trump didn't specifically say they could do that. And so like, I'm not defending him. The whole culture is about cryptic drops, right? Where you have to read the tea leaves. There's a reason he's the best con man in history. He knows what not to say and how to say what he's not saying.

Yeah, and get off scot-free every time. Right. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, Q sort of now, I think, doesn't necessarily represent sort of the adrenochrome and the baby blood and all that sort of stuff anymore. Now it's just basically you're signaling to the world that you have some sort of a spiritual war

against the deep state, that you are a person who feels as though you are working on behalf of divinity in some way. And so over the summer, it went from the evangelicals to kind of a new age crowd. And within that new age crowd, it was a lot of influencers as well. Q initially was a lot of people alone

in their Facebook groups, trading Q drops. And then over the summer, it really moved into a street movement. And it had a different group of people who were attached to it at that point. And I think a lot of those people who were in the rotunda started from those sort of protests that were happening during the summer, the anti-lockdown protests,

those sort of protests. And people were oblivious to their own sedition at that point. They did not understand what they were doing. They couldn't define sedition if you asked them to, most of these people. I mean, let's not be super nice. Like there are some morons in this group.

Like there's some real idiots. I mean, they're not bright super nice. Like there are some morons in this group. Like there's some real idiots. I mean, they're not bright. And some truly evil people do. I mean, you can't under count the fact that they're amongst the group of clueless, like just sort of live streaming. Well, it certainly wasn't a monolith. Like you had, there were actual white nationalists.

You stumbled in there accidentally and just thought it was like a frat party. And then you have the highly trained, super militarized group of people who are wearing earpieces and have zip ties and look like they're in military formation going into the Capitol. Like those are two different types of people. And then there's just like the baby boomers

that are like thought it'd be fun to go to a protest. Yeah. Right? I mean, seriously. It's like the 60s, man. Right. No, I mean, I have some friends who found out afterwards that their

parents were there. They weren't part of the siege, but they were there and then they left before things went really bananas. Or so they say. I went to the Hyatt Regency and had a Chardonnay in the lobby. I guess the larger issue is

I have a bunch of family who are very conservative and they would sort of watch the Capitol riots with a lot of the same sort of surprise and revulsion that maybe we would, but ultimately they're sympathetic because they do feel like the election was stolen. They do feel like that Biden

doesn't have a mandate from the people. And I don't know what you kind of do with that thinking. Right, so in the settling of the dust, are we in a situation in which there's a calcification of like a doubling down on these ideas by a certain subset of this group? Or is there a moment of awakening happening where people are just kind of coming to their senses? Like what is your, you know, how do you take the temperature right now

on the culture in terms of what that produced and what will happen next? I mean, for me personally, I think it just has to come from accountability. I think the Republicans are still, you know, for like a day after that, there was like just like little breadcrumbs that they were offering up to the public for like, I don't know, like recognition that this was maybe had gone a little bit too far. But that was immediately erased like the next day. And now they're saying like, oh, let's just get over this. Why are you going to impeach the president? He's just a private citizen now. So like the reality is that the Republican Party has always been a party of trolls.

And like now it's just only intensified and they can't sort of relinquish that power because to do that is to admit that they're actually not interested in governing. Right? Like they want all of the power of being in office, but they don't want any of the responsibilities. It's much better to just like keep people voting for them just based off of fear and anger, rather than like offering material solutions to people's problems. And so until the Republicans decide to like throw out,

you know, Ted Cruz out of Congress, I don't know that that's ever gonna change. Yeah, I mean, there Cruz out of Congress. I don't know that that's ever gonna change. Yeah, I mean, there was a sense in the immediate aftermath that there was a coming to the senses and some rationality being injected into the GOP. Sure. And perhaps this whole thing could be stabilized.

But as of late, most of the news is about Josh Hawley and about Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and this extreme faction that is a magnet for all the attention and press. Yeah, I mean, I think it's ultimately gonna play out on social media and we don't know kind of how that's gonna play out in part because there's been these mass bans

and the data scientists we talked to in the course of Making Feels Good Man all sort of talk about how whenever there's a massive deplatforming, there is some sort of reactionary response. Don't know exactly what it is, but that is going to happen. There's a lot of people who I think feel a real sense of loss without the ability to hear from Trump constantly. There is a weird vacuum. There's a vacuum. And I think that's happening in the left too.

It's strange, like even, yeah, like just let him tweet for five minutes. Like I gotta hear what he, you know. No, no, no, I love it. The dog needs to hunt, yeah. But there was that stat that after Trump was deplatformed that there was a 70% drop in all of the kind of hate speech that surrounds all of this.

Like it was impactful for that amount. It was a great move. I mean, it should have happened before. And then you have the migration to Parler and everything that happened with Parler. Well, so I think that it was more than just just for a couple of days. There are a couple of significant things have happened.

So one is Twitter de-platformed all these people, Parler got the plug pulled. They'll probably get back up at some point if they're not yet, but at some point- Are they getting Russian money or something like that to be back up and running? Are they back up and running now? Not that I know of, but I didn't check today.

But then the corporate America stepped in as like the moderator of the political world after being the people that pumped the money in and made it kind of created these conditions. All of a sudden corporate America is like, well, we're keeping track of who's saying what and we're suspending our donations, which is why I think McConnell was originally,

again, very vocal anti-Trump, why you had that change and Lynn Cheney speaking out. That had to be part of the consensus or part of the math. But I've always thought because the numbers are on the side of still, they are, the numbers are still on the side of people who want to create a workable country. They still are. And we've had 6,000 people in the last few weeks

leave the Republican party in North Carolina, 10,000 in Pennsylvania. Now, if you've been watching these elections, that's enough to swing an election. 5,000 in Colorado, 5,000 in Arizona. Those are concrete numbers. They're reported by Colorado Public Radio today. I sent you that link.

We can link to it. That's significant. And all we've ever needed is five to 10% of the leadership in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the rest of the Democratic Party to kind of agree on certain things like to be able to deal with climate change and loss of biodiversity and healthcare and racial justice and criminal justice reform.

And that stuff's out there, like that's possible. So it is possible that the radical right have succeeded in creating a consensus that never, that did not exist before. It is possible that the breaking of the glass is the breaking of the problem. It is possible. Now we'll see, you know, like obviously that's admittedly

a very optimistic viewpoint on where things are going, but you know, the Senate right now, as you know, by the time this airs, it may be old news, but today was kind of trying to- I can almost guarantee that it will be old news the way that- But like they're trying to work with it will be old yes the way that but like they're trying to work with biden like there's five or ten senators are trying to work with biden

on a plan to deal with pandemic aid um so there is there does seem to be still possible uh the building of a consensus of people who are not living in that alternate reality in that magical land, in that fever dream. On the subject of deplatforming, as I just wanted to make this point, I mean, I think deplatforming Trump was an easy call in light of everything and should have happened much earlier than it did. So as late as it was, I still applaud Jack and Twitter for taking that action.

But I also think that there is an interesting conversation to be had about the powers that are now held by these gigantic tech conglomerates and the stack that supports these platforms. When AWS pulls the plug on Parler, we can applaud that because Parler is such a shit show or whatever,

but let's take a step back and look at what that actually means. And when that much power is vested in one organization, it's not just the platform. It's like these platforms need all of these other things in order to exist. How does that play out when there's a

paradigm shift in the powers that be? Good question. That's a very good point. I mean, I think Facebook seems to be doing a marketing move right now where they're basically asking for regulation. They're like welcoming it. Like we're ready to be regulated. And it feels like they're just kicking the can down the road because it's not something that they necessarily want to instigate internally. I think it's also important to point out that Parler wasn't sort of a passive takedown. It was actually a group of first-generation hackers who came in and basically showed all these security breaches,

caused a lot of havoc on the back end. They downloaded the entire app, right? Everything that's ever been posted, deleted posts, are? They made a million different moderators. Deleted posts are all now on a hard drive somewhere. And that helped the FBI find a lot of these people, right? And a lot of that group was like first generation anonymous people. Actually, the hacker collective anonymous. Wow, I didn't realize that. And in part, they were mad just because QAnonymous was stealing kind of their branding.

Right. just because QAnonymous was stealing kind of their branding. Right. And so it came from the internet before corporations came in and did their due diligence. That's super interesting. I didn't know that. Are you connected to the anonymous guys? Oh, man.

Oh, a shrug. Oh. We filmed too. No, but it's out there too. It's all out there in the public record if you want to look for it. But I do think that, you know, Dorsey has been sort of acting like a moderator,

but the reality is, I mean, he made a lot of money off of Trump. There was a lot of friction caused on his platform. A lot of people spent time on it. It's where QAnon really became like a place of radicalization. It was in Twitter as these drops would sort of come in and speed along the

agenda of Q. I don't know. It seems like he needs to start acting like a CEO and not like, you know, I don't know. Passive. A passive moderator sitting on the beach waiting for his employees to come and tell him to do something, which is what was happening. It's also in terms of the broader conversation and the ethical conversation about deplatforming, it's also important, I think, to understand that there's basically two cohorts to the conversation. There's the general user who's maybe fearful for whatever reason of losing their several hundred

followers, but then there's the opportunist, right? You have to be wary of the bad faith argument that's often made during these conversations by people like Alex Jones who rap deplatforming in this first amendment argument, which is of course completely specious bullshit because for them, it is an existential crisis for them. If you are a grifter, like, and I mentioned this in our last conversation, but I think it's fair as mentioning, like before the internet, like you'd have to print pamphlets and open up a fake church

and like really do the work to bring in people into your flock and like convince them to give you their money. And then social media came out and just basically like, if you want to be a grifter, it's like, it's a gold rush, right? Not only is it easier to find people,

but people will put in their own bios, like, please take my money, like, hashtag Q. Where we go one, we go all. You're basically advertising to the sheep, I mean, as a sheep, to the wolves, like, please take advantage of me. And so in these conversations about deplatforming, the most vocal people are often the ones who stand the most to gain from like being able to be trolls online. And the most to lose should they be platformed. Exactly. Right.

So how do we, on this theme of like creating some kind of narrative through line from Pepe to present. Oh, right, the point of the whole. Tracking this through Q, like now we have, you know, we've got Josh Hawley, we've got Marjorie Taylor Greene, we got Lauren Boebert, we got, you know, the Jewish space lasers. And now we have GameStop, right?

Like, is there, like, have you kind of forensically tracked how we have gone in lockstep through these various phases? I mean, Pepe- I mean, GameStop seems the most similar to the early days of Pepe. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Rating.

Like that's basically a big part of 4chan is about rating. And like, that's the most, rating is basically the idea of like getting all your online friends to go and focus their energies on doing like one thing. And affecting reality. And affecting reality. And affecting reality.

And Pepe, essentially, all you have to really think about in terms of Pepe's relationship to all of this is that for a long time, Pepe was just the icon for trolling, the icon for that kind of duplicitous online maneuvering. Mischief making. Yeah, so. But there's a glee that comes with this collective energy, like, oh my God,

we're all on the same page and we're all, we're gonna actually move culture through our keystrokes. And that's so intoxicating, especially if you're, you know, in your mom's basement and it's a pandemic and, you know, you're just on Robin Hood or whatever. Like, are you kidding? Like that's, it's impossible if you you're just on Robin Hood or whatever. Like, are you kidding? Like that's, it's impossible if you're like a young male

to step away from the computer. Well, and there's a real sense of, back to the idea of alienation. I mean, in some of the threads I've read for GameStop, you know, there's still a simmering anger from the housing crisis and the bailouts, right? There's a lot of people who saw their parents lose everything and never recover.

I mean, there's some really, I'll send you guys some of the links, but like there's some harrowing stories, personal stories that people have posted on Reddit and stuff about like why they're all invested in this thing, both literally and emotionally. And like the idea for them is like, look, I've been poor my entire life.

I'll invest 300 bucks, even though I only have 600, because like, it's all, it doesn't make a difference to me. It's more important for me to like, use what little power I have collectively with my other friends to like, like screw over a bunch of hedge funds. It's not about making money. It's about sticking it to the man.

And that's why they're able to hold the line even when the stock price is starting to fall and they're refusing to sell. And the power of that is unbelievable. And to kind of canvas the reactions of the institutional investors and the hedge funds. I mean, the schadenfreude is delicious, of course, because it's the people again,

it's like, let them eat cake. No, you eat cake. And who's gonna, it's a game of chicken and who's gonna blink first. And you have this mob that's really, I think you made a very good point, which is, I think we're at a point culturally where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is reached such a point of division

that it's inevitable that we're seeing these things kind of happen. And if you look back in history, when that gap gets to a certain point, that's when the government becomes destabilized and you sow the seeds of this, this is a revolution in a certain respect using tools that never existed before

to exert power against control. That's gonna be the central struggle for the Biden administration is that he has to show the public that government has a purpose. And it has to like, people have to see material improvements in their lives or else we're all fucked.

Because of that gap, right? Yeah, because the accelerationism is happening. It's happening. And I think it's also, talking about context, we've experienced the COVID shutdowns and the stock market has, in many cases, had gains. There's a lot of CEOs that have made a tremendous amount of money.

People are aware of this now. And then we're also dealing with with people have a deeper literacy of cryptocurrency on all of this online trading. And people no longer have a sense of reverence for any of this stuff because they don't see the way that it's affecting them. They're not sort of thinking about their mutual funds in the basement. They're just thinking about causing chaos and then also hoping that this will improve some sort of future that they recognize needs to happen. They recognize a change needs to happen. It's not just causing chaos though.

I mean, they're out to make money. I mean, you know, you have, they're banding together, right, so that like, just for your listener, correct me if I'm wrong, but just to recap it for listeners that maybe haven't read all the game stuff. Is there anybody who doesn't? Like, yeah, I'm just assuming everybody knows. I don't know how you could not know what this is.

A little capsule. You have a group of young investors using Reddit forums and TikTok, and they recruit and explain these kind of mass mobilized stock purchases. And GameStop was one, AMC Theaters the other. It turns out it's all these analog stocks. It's like, instead of like, you know,

the Bushwick hipsters that would use a BlackBerry, these people are buying BlackBerry stock and doing it together. But first, but obviously it was GameStop was the number one. It's the first guy. It's out of nostalgia. Out of nostalgia, but also as a fuck you, because it's strategic.

They see all these hedge funds who are shorting specific stocks and they know. It was the aggressiveness of the short positions that these hedge funds were taking. They had commandeered more shares than were currently available. Like I'm no expert. I don't even know how that works,

but I think if their short positions hadn't been so aggressive, this might not have ever happened. But the WallStreetBets subreddit made everybody aware of how egregious this was and marshaled all of these people to take a stand against it. And I think the other important point to make is that the tools to flex your control over this became so fluid that young people who weren't even old enough to get Robinhood accounts could get them,

not only get them, but knew intuitively how to use them. They're so easy to use right now. And so those things coalesce to create a perfect storm for this event to occur. Yeah, I mean, I think the irony is from what I've read about how the GameStop thing started, it really started like two years ago by one particular user on this particular subreddit, WallStreetBets. But it was kind of rooted in fundamentals, right?

Like he noticed that they actually had a lot of cash on hand. They were undervalued. Yeah. And so it really starts from a pretty shrewd position that came from what, you know, this is the lie that Wall Street tells the public, which is that they know best, right? And here's a perfect example of someone who doesn't have a huge institution behind him, just does a lot of research and sees a hole in the market and an opportunity. And, you know, everyone else piles on, but it took him like two years. But Michael Burry piled on too. Michael Burry was early on this as well. He was saying the exact same thing. He went all in on GameStop, like I don't know how long ago, but quite a while ago.

But what's funny too is that this is a return, it's worth pointing out because we've kind of trashed 4chan for a while here. When 4chan really got at its heyday in its early days, it really came from a more kind of hacktivist position. It was really during Occupy Wall Street that it started doing its first big raids. And some of the first famous ones were against like the Church of Scientology and other sort of financial institution-based things. But this is an interesting cultural turn back towards what you might otherwise call like a kind of uh collectivist perspective on

like how raids can benefit well and and the things that they're trading are um you know gamestop is something that people love yeah like it is nostalgia and it's like people have gotten rich off of their passion yeah and therefore there's some just desserts that are happening oh and your guy you're talking, the guy that started it, invested like 50 something thousand dollars and topped out at over 40 million at one point. And who knows what, but like, so that, but it's also a police operation, right?

Policing these hedge funds. Now the hedge funds are gonna have to watch. Right, but now they're hiring their own meme department. So there's like a countervailing war afoot in the attention economy, right? So they're hiring a bunch of young people who are gonna create their own memes that are gonna contravene the memes

that are coming out of Wall Street bets. And there's gonna be a war of ideas afoot. But essentially, when you step back from this and look at it, what's to stop this community of people from every week just deciding, okay, here's what, we're all gonna buy this today. And then millions of people like buy this stuff. Like they could just repetitively do this at will

and commandeer the entire market. It's hard though. I mean, like ask Michael Bloomberg because he spent a lot of money creating memes and it got him nowhere. Or ask us, we're trying to sell our film to the same community of people. And as fast as we can, it's hard to like get a huge movement. But you know, the truth is- It's hard to go viral.

It's hard to go viral. That's the point. Yeah. No, but this is a lightning in the bottle kind of moment where I think people are dawning, like people are having a system awareness they weren't aware of before. And they realize how easy it is to game these systems. And there's more people willing to sort of be part of that. I think it's also just generational. There is a younger generation who is really enjoying this that doesn't feel secure in their future. And how are they going to find meaning in America?

Yeah, it's a super important point. Yeah, the grand narratives of America are going away and we have to figure out new narratives that we can all latch onto to find meaning in our lives. But the problem is you have these two, now there's two dueling stonk projects, right? Ben Mesrich and the- So this is so, I mean, on the subject of like,

just the velocity of the news cycle, like Ben Mesrick hasn't even, like all he has is a book proposal on GameStop. Right. There's no book yet. He sells the book and the movie rights get picked up by essentially the same team that made the social network, with the exception of Fincher. He's got like the same producing team,

the Winklevier involved. Oh, Fincher involved, wow. No, the Winklevire involved. Wow. No, the Winklevire involved in this project. Yeah. Because Mesrick also wrote a book about Bitcoin where those two guys are like the starring feature in that. At the same time, Netflix just announced another GameStop movie project as well. Right. Right, so the reason that's important though, is that like, you know what it's gonna be, these movies are gonna be like, look at the little guy, got rich at the expense of the big guy.

And we're telling the same story in America. And the story is the answer to your problems is money. And listen, for someone who's been broke a lot of his adult life and just scraping by, but like, and now has made some money, money doesn't buy happiness, it buys happier, it's true. But like the idea that we need to recalibrate who we are and how we function, I think goes that deep.

Like we really need to start to ask important questions about like meaning of life shit, because otherwise this stuff is going to keep happening. It's the cycles are just kind of keep replay keep. But it's more complicated than the money. So much of this is, is just the fuck you to the man against a system that has overlooked these people and not given them the opportunities that they feel that they've been promised. And so the American dream. It's like that's, you know, the guy who's not worried about losing his 300 bucks, even though he doesn't have any money

because of the point that's being made is more important. And that's the sense of emotional connection to a movement and the community aspect of this that's so powerful. But if the story is like, the answer is, you know, fuck you and we made some of your money, which hopefully the movies are more complex than that. But like, cause we don't know how it ends, but some of these people are gonna lose all their money

and it won't just go back to the beginning. But like you're saying, you need to see some tangible, like government has to improve people's lives. There has to be some tangible change in the way we relate to each other and in the way government is viewed. Because a lot of what you're saying, like this entitlement is like, I'm getting screwed.

Some of that's just, it's just a story you're telling yourself. It's not all true. You know, like there are opportunities here in this country to do better. It is hard and the rich are getting richer. It's true. But there is opportunity out there every day you wake up and we all know that. And so not all of those things are true, but that doesn't mean that people aren't embittered. And so there's this,

especially when you look at the rotunda, people who show up like that real estate woman who showed up in a private jet. There are people who are, I know people who have done very well and are still embittered, so embittered that they think the 1619 project is somehow a personal affront to them. Like this crazy shit, like it doesn't make any sense. There's a bitterness level to this that is hard to kind of quantify.

And then you have people like Holly that you brought up, who's trying to ride that basically to the presidency. Or you have these other, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Brobert who are just riding the wave because maybe they're part of the wave, calling for the assassination of the speaker of the house. And that person's now sitting in Congress. Like there's a bitterness level that's just really,

we haven't quite figured out yet, right? Like where it's coming from and how to fix it. But I think there's fundamental questions in this country that need to be answered. And, you know, this is a nice story, but like to fix it in order for the Wall Street to be safe, in order for all of us to be safe, in order for people to feel good in their own neighborhoods, you gotta fix this stuff. yeah the the through line there the thing that connects

q anon and the wall street bets uh gamestop thing is that it's two groups of people who um are experiencing a kind of like um i don't know rejection of of of American dream, but for two completely different reasons. Like the QAnon people have had to confront a reality that like the truth about America, American exceptionalism has kind of eroded around them. Whether it's like the BLM protest this last summer or just the fact that the internet exists now

and that you were exposed to information that you maybe were hidden from for years before. and now you're having to like confront this reality and there's a certain level of of uh what's the term looking for here i'm not sure uh like intellectual what's this cognitive dissonance there we go there's a cognitive dissonance that's happening and they want to maintain that that that perception of american exceptionalism and so q very neatly gives them that that they're on the side of good and the other people are evil and then with the gamestop people it's similarly uh uh a rejection of the american dreamer feeling that like it's not there for them and they're like using their collective energies to like uh and impact it

in ways that they think will help ameliorate the problem. So they're both have pretty direct. I think it dovetails also with just the religious nature of America. We've always been obsessed with apocalypse. Even people who aren't necessarily religious have just, that's become part of who they are and they're thinking. For all of these people we've talked about,

they believe we're living in the end times. Josh Hawley believes that we are living in Babylon. It's something where he thinks that the rapture is upon us. There's a lot of people out there who are just hardwired to think that there is no future because they can't conceive of it. And I think that sometimes even understanding that is part of the problem. We were talking about the GameStop movie. Like I'm sure the end of that movie will be kind of like an anti-corporate idea

at the end of it, but it's being made by a corporation who's making money off of that. So this awareness of the futility is only making us more bitter. Right. Yeah. You know, it's making us circle the drain more. Ultimately, the way this is gonna shake out

is like any casino where the house wins. Like, okay, Wall Street bets upended these hedge funds, but at some point there's gonna be a recalibration where these hedge funds are gonna come out on top if history tells us anything, whether through regulatory measures or what have you, something's gonna occur that is gonna prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

But that's only gonna fuel like that level of frustration and discontent. But in terms of the house winning, like BlackRock owned a significant chunk of GameStop before this, and they made something like $3 billion at a speak. So like they're- And you also, we should point out,

you made a good point on Twitter the other day, Giorgio. It would be terrible and disheartening. Like we need to know more about who's invested in these hedge funds that took these short positions because chances are there are pension funds and teacher's union funds and things like that. People's retirement is tied up in these massive hedge funds. And when those short positions tank and those people lose all their money, and teachers union funds and things like that. People's retirement is tied up in these massive hedge funds.

And when those short positions tank and those people lose all their money, those are the very people that are the same community. It's like the parents of the Wall Street bets people are losing their retirement funds as a result of this. Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time if that ends up happening, it wouldn't be the first time that a 4chan raid has gone backfired.

Here's a question for you. We were talking about this, Adam. In this conversation around the regulation of these social media platforms or how to deal with speech, it seems like Reddit has gotten somewhat of a pass here. And there is the conventional wisdom is that Reddit has done a better job than Facebook and Twitter. I don't know enough about it to know if that's true or not. But what do you, like the Art Donald existed for it. Yeah, no one's criticizing Reddit on television.

Yeah, they've had a nasty, I mean, so Ellen, when Ellen Powell was the CEO, I tried to get her to be a part of the film, but she politely declined, but I would have really loved to have talked to her about this. But she was removed as CEO during the midst of the Gamergate thing.

And I think in hindsight, that was probably a really bad move. And I think they had been living with, I mean, as the board, I guess, they had been living with that guilt of that mistake probably. And I think they've taken pretty proactive attempts at like, you know, they took down the Donald.

Moderation just operates a lot differently there. And by no means an expert, but for sure, they have definitely skirted a lot of blame, but they also took down the Wall Street bets thing quite quickly. Well, they did it, they made it private, right? Yeah. And then it went public again,

but I think they pulled that and now it's up the way it was. Is it private? It was private for a while. So when the trading volume was insane, they made it private for a minute. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert on it either. I think that they always try to like, when they pull down like the Donald,

they pull down several lefty kind of boards at the same time. Both sides. So they try to give people the illusion of parody, which I think ultimately is probably good. But I don't think radicalization happens on Reddit the same way it happens on Facebook or on Twitter. I think also, I mean, taking Parler down, all these sort of things are cursory moves,

but everyone uses multiple platforms and the problems still remain on Twitter and Facebook. And those are the places where people, I think, really lose themselves. It's also like understanding the nature of their mechanics. On Reddit, things get upvoted and downvoted. So there's kind of a consensus there that's much different than, for example, the way 4chan works, which things flow to the top just simply by virtue of the engagement. So in 4chan, if you just post something really incendiary and get a lot of posts, replies to it,

it'll move to the top. So it's like kind of nuanced, but it produces much different thinking. I think Reddit's more of an entertainment site, whereas these other are more lifestyle sites. Oh, interesting. So if you're on Facebook, the way that radicalization will often happen on Facebook is you have these sort of extreme ideas coming into places that are not extreme. You have people liking and sharing this stuff and then ultimately normalizing it in the same feed that they're sharing pictures of their grandkids or memes about Bible verses or whatnot. And Reddit, the flow of information isn't quite so chaotic. You're going there for specific reasons to be part of a specific community. Facebook though, you really

kind of end up absorbing these ideas in what seems to be a relatively organic way. They're fed to you. Yes, they're fed to you. And so, yeah, we're just, we have this problem right now where there's just a lot of toxic waste in the system and it's mutating people. And I don't know how- And we do have a lot of zombies out there. Yeah, totally.

Walking dead was precious. Absolutely. But it's hard to, it's hard, you know, on 4chan as related to Pepe, like there's the big thing people will say when they haven't seen Feels Good Man yet is that like, Pepe isn't a hate symbol. thing people will say when they haven't seen Feels Good Man yet is that like, Pepe isn't a hate symbol. You took the bait, you normie. Right. There was some YouTube comments

on our podcast. Yeah. Like a bunch of those guys. And I was like, did you watch the podcast? But it's like that Pepe represented a way to like, what we call, Arthur referred to earlier as like being irony poisoned, that there's a moment at which you can't tell what is joke and what is real. And for a lot of new users of social media in general, older audiences, it's even harder for them to discern what's newer or what's real or what's a joke. And it just like reminded me,

I was trying to find the article before we came today, but I remember when the Colbert Report went off the air and there was an article in like the New Yorker or something about it. And they said that something like some astonishingly high number of regular viewers of the show did not discern that it was satire. Like 20% of the regular audience

didn't understand that Colbert was doing a bit. And so I think about that. You should have known then. Wow. We should have all moved to Sydney. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I would love to, I'm pretty sure that's, I'm not making that up.

One question before you rabbit rich, was Pepe in the rotunda? Yeah. Yeah, but not as much as you would have thought maybe. Well, I mean, there were a handful of people there wearing Pepe masks and then there were some Pepe signs, but I mean, it is interesting to see. They were all older people.

Some of the people masked were younger mean, it is interesting to see. They're all older people. Some of the people masked were younger. Though it was interesting to see like at the rally in Georgia before the election there, there was a number of people who were wearing like Pepe stuff. Like there was a guy wearing a Pepe shirt, but he was an older guy. He was like 65 and all the people who were commenting

on it underneath the posting were all like older women who were like Pepe, Pepe. So the generational shift is apparent in that moment. I mean, obviously memes played a huge part in the Rotunda riot. You saw the Kekistani flag, you saw all this different stuff. And people were often, you know,

a lot of the Proud Boys were wearing anti-Semitic, you know, the Holocaust didn't happen, six million is not enough kind of memes. It was a very memed thing in part because I think people really wanted to participate in it through social media and this was a way to do it. And then obviously to find each other in the crowd because it was so chaotic.

Yeah. Despite the presence of Pepe though, it does feel like culture's kind of moved on. Like it wasn't omnipresent in that at all. Like it was kind of there, but it's the sense that I got was like, okay, we're onto other things. Pepe's played out.

Yeah, it's played out, right? Pepe is a much, there's a much bigger relationship, like positive relationship people have to Pepe. For example, on Twitch, it's like the number one. If you look at a list of the 100 most used emotes on Twitch, Pepe occupies like 50 of the top 100. And they all are like back to the original Pepe version of just being a funny reaction image.

Matt's getting his push. Wow, Matt, yeah. It's true. I'm still trying to wrap my head around wearing Holocaust denial merch to just stand out in a crowd so your buddy can see you. Yeah, I'm over at 4-H. I'm wearing the six million is not enough t-shirt. I'm the only guy.

I'm the only guy. There's a big space around me. It's okay, folks. I'm Jewish. Be careful though, because a laser might get you from space. Right. Oh my God. Like, can we talk about, is she the dumbest Congress person of our lifetime?

I will say Denver- Top five. Denver Riggleman, the former Republican Congressman who we shot a little bit with last year, he's gotten into it quite a bit with her online, but he made something very, a very like simple point to make, which was just that the starting salary for a congressperson or the salary for a congressperson is like $165,000 or something. He's like, that's more money than most people have ever seen or will ever see. And like, yeah, we're overpaying for what you're seeing is the, is the enmeshing basically of like social media personalities and government.

And it's like, if you're going to be a grifter, it's never been a better time to be in government as a grifter, basically. Because you also can raise money on that. Like, wasn't it disclosed that Trump made, like raised how many million dollars? 31. Oh, well, in the two weeks after the election. Yeah. 200 something million dollars.

And he spent zero on the, it was all under the, well, the one I read was like 31 or $32 million specifically on emails that were about Senate in Georgia. And he spends literally zero dollars. Yeah, because there was like a- I can't wait for the- There was an asterisk, by the way, we don't have to spend this on this.

Exactly. We can keep it. Yeah, I don't know if she's the dumbest or not, but she might be. I mean, it's pretty astounding. It's pretty bad. Boebert and her are wild. Yeah, they're basically just assemblages of memes.

I mean, even when you hear them talk. They can't speak. Yeah, it's just like a regurgitation of internet gab. Yeah, I mean, they're Trump's personality. Which is why I think Holly is worse because I didn't know about Holly's feeling about living in Babylon. Like I think I was reading,

the reporting on Holly is that he was thought of as this star and really an intellectual giant. And the fact that he is like, it's great to see him disavowed by his mentor, but who doesn't have to run for- Danforth? Yeah, but like the way he's saying it's the biggest mistake of his entire life.

And that carries water. Like I'm from Missouri. And so Danforth is definitely a very powerful and well-loved politician in Missouri. I'm curious to see what Holly's future is in the state. In part because Missouri has often been a bellwether. You know, people like, you know, Roy Blunt and John Ashcroft and these sort of people have come out of Missouri and then come into the international stage and had a lot of power. Yeah, Holly is an ideologue. He's unlike Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. He has like a very specific ideological framework

that he talks about. He talks about it in Christian media more so than in national media. But yeah, he's someone who like a lot of the insurrectionists have given up on democracy. It was a coalition of people who have given up on democracy and he's one of them. He doesn't believe that freedom can exist

in a civil society because we're not all Christian. He just wants power. Yeah, completely. And it's frightening because he- And he thinks it's divinely, yeah. He thinks it comes from Jesus Christ. And he's not a dummy. You know, that Politico article was very revealing.

It interviewed a bunch of his professors at Stanford and David Kennedy, who's a professor that I had at Stanford, like I know David Kennedy, said that Josh was the most talented student that he ever had. And like, this is a guy who's bright. His ideas might not align with yours, but he should not be underestimated.

And he cannot be lumped in with the Boeberts and the Taylor Greene's. He's a different animal. When he was 15, he wrote in his Lexington newspaper, Lexington, Missouri newspaper, a defense of the militia after the Oklahoma City bombing and just saying that militia, people who are in militia shouldn't be maligned as racist.

They shouldn't be called terrorists as a 15 year old. So, you know, so even though- He's not opportunist in his idea log. I think he is an opportunist like to your professor. Well, but it's inbred, it's not, he's not a Johnny come lately to these ideas because it's opportunistic to be that way. This is the person that he's been.

I'm curious though because- And he's just been masking it in different company. He comes across as such an egghead. I think there's a part of Republican politics that doesn't necessarily like the Ivy League education. Right. You know, I'm curious to see, I think him, you know, sort of coming out

basically in support of the insurrection was him trying to seem alpha, was him trying to sort of play Trump's game to Trump's audience. Right. And I think they're gonna see through it. I think they're gonna realize- The way they see through Ted Cruz.

Maybe, but here's the thing is that like, so I gave you my optimistic view on how this is gonna work out well for us. Come on, man, we gotta land this. I'm gonna land it. We gotta go hardcore happy. It's gonna segue with Babylon Berlin. And that is like, people were talking about Kristallnacht

as like the Nazi equivalent of what happened at the Rotunda, but that's not what it was. It was the push. I don't know how to pronounce it right. But in 1929 or 30, I forget when it was, when Hitler's first attempt to take over government, he had a mob like this and he was arrested and he was put in jail and he was eventually pardoned

and came out of it and ended up you know we all know where that went we all know where that went so the question really is you know it's easy i i also my instinct is that anyone who tries to play trump's game is going to lose because only trump can play it and i think holly will lose but there is uh like if there's any one of those people that scares me, it's him and we won't know what happens. Like you said, there's a 10 year timeline to where this is going and hopefully we'll come out of it. I think we can come out of it. I think we mapped out how we'll come out of it,

but there are multiple realities. So we'll see. And if we know anything, we know by next week, everything will be something else crazy will happen and we'll be having a different conversation. In the meantime, watch this movie. Thank you. Thanks for having us on.

I love the way you're wearing the shirt. That's amazing. Yeah, thank you. I love having you guys here. That was super fun. Please, everybody who's listening or watching, go out, check out Feels Good Man on Apple Plus, preferably. It's a fantastic documentary.

If you have not listened to the podcast that I did with these gentlemen a couple of weeks ago, check that out. I'll link that up in the show notes and in the description below. How's it going with the movie before we end it here? It's Oscar week, people are voting. People are voting.

We gotta get attention on this movie. We're a dark horse. Yeah, we're definitely a dark horse. I was gonna say, but it's gone great. We did a big Twitch live stream actually with a number of gamers. Lots of Academy voters on Twitch, right? You know, no Academy voters,

but Fury was on the line with us. And it was like great. It was a very like positive, interesting, engaged conversation. We continue to meet people who the film means something to them. Yeah. It's a long tail film.

It's a long tail film that, and yeah, it's something we've been so passionate about. It's great to see it out in the world and people responding to it. Yeah, I mean, the best documentary of the year is definitely Time on Amazon, which you should definitely watch. So by no means do we think we have a chance in hell

of winning anything, but it would be nice to just get shortlisted. Time is a really good movie. I like your movie better. Wow. I like Time. I like Time. It's really fascinating.

That was one, if there was a movie theater, that's one that really breaks my heart. That was the last film we saw at Sundance last year. It's a fascinating how they made that movie. If there was a movie theater, that's one that really breaks my heart. There was that and that was the last film we saw at Sundance last year and it's like. It's a beautiful movie. And Sundance is going on right now. Are you guys doing any panels or you have any involvement with that? No, but our producers who worked on Feels Good Man

with us have a couple films there. They have a film named Cusp. I haven't seen, but I'm excited to see it. And yeah, it is too bad. It's all online. Yeah. I mean, it's such a fun experience to go there and just- Have you seen their virtual waiting room thing? No. It's really dystopic.

Is it really? Yeah. I mean, it's such a fun in-person event. Like I just can't imagine the virtual version of it. Well, hopefully that's how the world will change between this podcast being recorded and put out in the world. It will help. It will help if people can hang out. A hundred percent.

That's true. It will help. Absolutely. If the kids can go back to school. That's the title of this podcast. I just have the title of the episode. We don't do well on our own at loose ends. Yeah, I mean, in a weird way that the anti-maskers

are really just people that are just dying for a hug. That's really all I want at the end of the day. They just can't deal with. That's right, that's right. There was a, I think it was either an Onion article or some other kind of satire piece on the internet that said, proud boy gets turned with one hug from dad or something.

That's hard times, hardtimes.com. That's a good one. It's true. C feels good, man. Thanks for coming on you guys. Thank you so much. Come back anytime. Let's continue this conversation. Thank you both.

All right, yeah. And let's all go hardcore happy. Hardcore happy. Hardcore happy. Well, you have a guest coming up that can teach us how to connect with each other, right? We do, yeah. Yeah, Adam Grant.

We'll talk about that after the break. All right, cool. So we'll take a break. We'll be back with more. All right, and we're back. I love those guys. That was great. Hot.

I thought it might be like 30 to 40 minutes. How long did we go? Like an hour, right? There's no way I was gonna interrupt that. Time stops when I'm with you, Rich, especially when I'm talking. All right. So this is gonna be yet another marathon roll on, right? But I think during the break,

we decided to eviscerate the outline a little bit to not make it too long. But I do wanna do a little bit of show and tell, a couple of wins of the week, and we'll get to three listener questions. And at the top of my list of show and tells, I've got two things. The first thing is, and this is nothing new,

but I just felt like amidst all the darkness, we could all use a little bit of innocent happiness. And I wanted to draw a little bit of attention to David Lynch's wonderful weather reports. Are you familiar with this? I am, I am. Cause I listened to KCRW. And so he pops up on Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Does he do the weather report on the video? Oh, I didn't know that. So I don't know when he started doing this, but on YouTube every single day, he just looks to camera and he says, good morning. Today is whatever it is. And then he looks out the window and he tells you what the weather is gonna be.

And it's just the best. He looks great. I love it. You know, there's a short list of people that can stay cool for like four decades. He's the coolest. Bowie and David Lynch. There's only a few people, Prince.

There's only a few. My son, Tyler and Trapper just love David Lynch. They just can't get enough of him. And how old is he now? He's in his seventies, right? That's what I mean. And he's still the coolest guy in the room. Right. No matter what.

He is. And all's still the coolest guy in the room. Right. No matter what. He is. And all he does is say, this is what the weather's gonna be like today. And I don't know what it is about his energy, but I'm always glad that I watch it. Yeah, he's happy. He's like, he makes you feel happier. I know. Yeah.

It's great. We all need more of that. It was trending on Twitter, I think today, because he announced that he was thinking about not doing it anymore and all the fans revolted. And so his big announcement was that he would continue with his weather reports. He's gonna keep doing it.

Supplemented with also, I don't know if you know this, he also does the number of the day. Yes, but not everyone has a number of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So- Does he play the numbers? No, he just basically says the number of the day is, and he just says a number of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So- Is that like a, does he play the numbers? No, he just basically says the number of the day is, and he just says a number.

Okay. And that's the number of the day, according to David Lynch. Wonder if it's like his parents played the numbers back in New York or something. I think you're attributing too much of forethought to all of this. I'm reading too deep into it.

Yeah, just take it for what it is. I would say a second cousin to this is Anthony Hopkins' little videos that he posts on Twitter and Instagram. They're always full of love and happiness. Really? Really? Yeah. You mean Hannibal Lecter?

Yeah, he's great. Full of love and happiness? Anthony Hopkins, not to be confused with Hannibal Lecter. All right, let's keep it moving. You mentioned earlier Babylon Berlin, which is a TV show that I wanted to share with all of you guys that I've been enjoying. It's a German series that's airing on Netflix.

It was created by writer-director Tom Teichwer, who is the guy behind Run, Lola, Run, and also Cloud Atlas. And I find this show, I mean, I'm like near the end of season two. There's three seasons currently available that are streaming right now. And I find this show to be really fascinating for a number of reasons. First of all, it's exceptionally photographed. It's visually arresting and stunning.

And essentially, it's a story. It's multiple stories that take place in Berlin post-World War I in the midst of this newly emerged Weimar Republic where it's a new democracy, but it's a fragile democracy. And we see this extraordinary wealth disparity. On the one hand, you have this roaring 20s culture of nightclubs and fabulous music and dancing and drinking and revelry juxtaposed against extreme poverty. And the storylines elucidate the fragility of democratic institutions. It's about corruption. And it's about the nationalistic creep that ultimately later leads to Nazism through the lens of the protagonist who is this police investigator

and all the kind of people that he encounters. And a World War I veteran. Yeah, World War I veteran. And so there's a lot of guys with disfigured faces and maimed and he, this protagonist also has these essentially PTSD panic attacks where he has to down some unknown pharmaceutical that I assume is like morphine or something like that.

He just goes into these shaking fits and I don't know. I just think it's standing in and of itself. It's a fascinating look into a particular culture, but I think it also is prescient and relevant to some of the things that our culture is grappling with right now, the fragility of our own democratic institutions and the nationalistic creep that you see

when that wealth gap becomes as extreme as it did in Germany at that time. And as it's quickly becoming in our country. Great movie, I mean, a great show. Thank you for recommending. I just saw the pilot last night and Run, Lola, Run was one of my favorites when it came out. That's great.

And so I was really excited about it. And it's really good. I'm into it. And the best part is that through that show, I finally figured out how to get to subtitles in prestige foreign television on Netflix. Because before it was always these horrible dub things and I couldn't get through one episode.

But you could just select audio and then it gives you all these options now. Hey, I did it. It's interesting that you opt for subtitles. I do. And I opted for the dubbing. You like the dubbing. I don't want to read when I'm watching.

Yeah. But here's the thing. You get the dubbing, of course, it's jarring. I can't watch a mixed match. I can't do that. I can't. It doesn't quite work, but at some point you just get over it

and you just go with it. And the acting's not as good. It's not as good a voice. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you not as good. It's not as good a voice. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you go back to just the subtitles, when you've gotten used to the dub voice and then you hear what their voice actually sounds like,

that's also very jarring. Yes. But anyway. But anyway, I think that the reason it's important, what you're saying is that even today, there's no country that really mirrors what we're going through better than Germany, not because it's as diverse as we are

or has exactly the same problems, but there is this far right QAnon worshiping kind of militia like white supremacist element that has infiltrated into politics and into even police departments and the military itself, shut down an entire special forces unit. That stuff's all been really well reported

by the New York Times. I think we've even maybe touched on it once. And so they're going through the same thing we are. So it's interesting that he's using the 1920s because when it really first started, the cycle, that same stuff was happening here. It's a period of time in Germany that I'm just not that familiar with.

Right. We know about World War I and we know about World War II, but what happened in between those that led to the rise of Hitler? Right, but that same kind of proto-fascist, like leading towards fascism, that leaned, the tear between socialism

and what was gonna become fascism, those same threads, those same currents are running through America at the same time. When you had the Lindbergh candidacy and all of the would be, so all of that stuff was happening. We've been mirrors of each other for a long, long time.

So it's really interesting to watch it now because it's still entertaining because it does transport you. You're not thinking about our problems when you're watching it, but it does give it like that relevance. Yeah, and what's great is there's three entertaining because it does transport you. You're not thinking about our problems when you're watching it, but it does give it like that relevance. Yeah, and what's great is there's three seasons of it. So I can be enjoying this for quite a while.

Exactly. Cool. Why don't you hit me with your win of the week? My win of the week was the K2 climbers, the Nepalese team of nine climbers that got up to the top of K2 in winter. For the very first time, it was the last of the 8,000 meter peaks

to be climbed in winter. They've all now been conquered in spring, summer or winter. K2 has by far the highest mortality rate on its slopes compared to any of the others. It's night and days more dangerous than even Everest. And so it was just, I did that story for the New York Times when it happened. I was turned on to the story

because I knew Colin O'Brady was among the many climbers that went out. Right, he's still like at base camp, right? He's still at base camp. He's been at base camp for months. Yeah, and so he was one of that part of that group. That's how I first got turned on to the fact that people were trying for this. And then one of the people who I knew about,

with that he told me about was Nims Dai or Nims Purja, who is the guy that set the record, world record for climbing all the 8,000 meter peaks within a certain amount of time. who is the guy that set the record, world record for climbing all the 8,000 meter peaks within a certain amount of time. And he shaved over seven years off the record. Wow. And so Nims Purja is this great Nepalese climber, former British special forces and all these other,

and he's not Sherpa, he's not from the Sherpa culture, but everybody else was that was in that group. And so this story is about how they got up to the top and how that all happened. And what's cool, they were greeted back in Kathmandu recently with a hero's welcome, like a big motorcade. They've been treated like celebrities that are the toast of the town.

They were flown out from base camp by the Pakistani militarians and got an audience with the prime minister or the president of Pakistan like right away. It did become a big story. It's a big deal. It's a big deal because what's cool is

all of the 8,000 meter peaks in Nepal were all credit, even though there was always a Nepalese climber right behind whoever got the credit, it was always the European or Western climber that got the first ascent. That's who got credited. So this is basically a correction for that. Yeah, it's very cool.

Yeah. So everybody check out Adam's article in the New York Times. It's called How Climbers Reached the Summit of K2 in Winter for the First Time. You've got comments from Renan, Jimmy Chin, Adrian Ballinger, all kinds of cool people. Yeah, hat tip to Rich Roll to get Jimmy Chin to connect.

Yeah, you did. You're the journalist here, man. Yeah, you did. Good stuff, dude. Well, my win of the week, hands down, goes to Jim Walmsley, who is an ultra runner, extraordinaire, guy who lives in Arizona. For those who aren't familiar, who just the other week attempted to break the world record in

the 100K at this event called the Hoka One Project Carbon X event that was in Chandler, Arizona. Project Carbon X event that was in Chandler, Arizona. He ran a hundred kilometers in six hours, nine minutes and 26 seconds, and ultimately came up just 12 seconds shy of the world record, which was set in 2018 by Japan's Naokizami. That's crazy. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly.

But he did set an American record by 18 minutes and a PR of 45 minutes. So this is insane. Just so people can grok exactly how extraordinary this is, he ran 5.56 pace for over six hours straight. And he clipped a fence at about three and a half hours into this thing and his shoulder was bleeding like it's bananas.

And in and of itself, this is an unbelievable accomplishment. But when you set it in the context of this guy's career, it's really noteworthy because what's unique about Jim is that he excels not just in ultra running, but in many distances across many terrains. He's won a ton of ultras, of course.

He was the victor in the 2018 and the 2019 Western States 100, which is kind of widely considered one of, if not the most prestigious ultra running race in the world. He set the course record in 2018, and then he broke it again in 2019 by 21 minutes. Crazy. But he also qualified for the Olympic trials

in the marathon by running a 64 minute half marathon and then running a 2.15 marathon at the Olympic trials. So this is a guy who can kill it on the road. He can kill it at the half marathon. He can go a hundred miles and then some. So was he incredibly versatile for- Was he set to compete in the Olympics? No, I mean, he can go a hundred miles and then some. So was he incredibly versatile in the Olympics? No, I mean, he ran the Olympic trial. He ran 215.

So he wasn't gonna make the Olympic team with that. But for a guy who, it's unusual for somebody who specializes in ultras or a hundred mile races to be a decent marathoner. Right. Because by comparison, the marathon is like, the level of speed that you have to run the marathon in to be at the elite level is a completely different pursuit

than running a hundred mile trail race at altitude. Have you ever run just a marathon? Like not the tacked on the of the Ironman. No, I have, I ran the Long Beach Marathon before I did any of the Ultraman's and it was not a good experience. But it was before I knew what I was doing, but I'm not, I would never be good at that.

I'm not a fast runner, I'm a tortoise. I was just curious if you'd ever done it, like done the New York, I could see you wanting to do the New York Marathon. Maybe at some point, we'll see. Here's an interesting fact about Jim before we move on. He went to the Air Force Academy and worked as a missileer in Montana,

working underground on nuclear weapons at 24 hour shifts. So he's also, you gotta, I would suspect you gotta be a pretty smart dude. You do, but see, this is always curious to me about people who have dangerous jobs. They shouldn't have 24 hour shifts. I agree with that, I agree with it. Like why are surgeons having-

Well, the article that I read this in, it just kind of put the 24 hour thing at the end of the sentence, but it doesn't make sense. Doctors, like what? I don't want my nuclear weapons guy to not get eight hours of sleep. I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that.

All right. Let's do some listener questions. Okay. We didn't get to the Adam Grant book, by the way. Do you want to get to that? Oh, yeah. So today's Monday. On Wednesday, I'm interviewing Adam Grant for the podcast.

For those that don't know, he is a organizational psychologist, multiple New York Times bestselling author, Wharton's most popular professor of all time, like named the most. He's got millions of views on his TED Talks. He's just an incredible person. And his focus is really on trying to help people figure out how to live and pursue meaningful professional lives. Like it's all about like work life. He's got a podcast called Work Life. Anyway, he's got a new book out called Think Again.

And so he's very much in the press at the moment. And he wrote a New York Times op-ed the other day that was kind of relevant to what we were talking about with Giorgio and Arthur, in that it was about how you interface with and communicate with people who have a very different perspective on either an issue or a worldview.

And our inclination is to kind of come at them with facts about why they're wrong and why you're right, but that never seems to work. And his ultimate conclusion is really, we need to enter into these kinds of exchanges from a perspective of empathy and curiosity and a true desire to try to understand, like from a question asking perspective, as opposed to an indicting kind of, you know, telling point of view. Yeah. Yeah. And that's relevant, I think, when we're in a divided state at the moment

and whether it's politics or some other choose your issue, everybody's in their information silo and being fed a certain type of news that satisfies their respective cognitive bias. And it's important for us to understand that just because we see other people with their cognitive biases doesn't mean that we don't have our own. We all have our own.

And in order to kind of create that ability to communicate healthily, we need to be objective about our own biases. And I think when you endeavor to communicate with another person from that perspective of curiosity, you're in a position to perhaps learn something that you wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, and I liked it because I definitely fall prey

to like my emotions when I get like locking horns on like these issues that I find so important because they are so relevant to like people's lives, right? So you want to, you wanna, I kind of try to tilt towards justice and in that realm and everyone getting equal opportunity and feeling good in life and having opportunities. So when I end up locking horns,

I typically do get a little too emotional. So it was really helpful to see it laid out because the times I've been effective at communication has always been when I've been more, taking a step back and just ask simple questions. It's a really great article. I can't wait to read the book because one point he makes is process matters

in these conversations and how you approach these things matters in who you are and how you feel about yourself ultimately. So there's that take home as well. So more on that in my conversation. Looking forward to that one. All right, listener questions. All right, let's cue it up.

Hey, Rich and Adam. My name is Kevin from the St. Louis area and I have a question about productivity of sorts. So I'm sitting here today watching the events unfold at the Capitol building, trying to comprehend what's going on and how we've gotten to this point. I'm also using this time, amongst other times in 2020, to reflect on my privileges, actions, and my role for a better tomorrow. I also have full-time studies as a medical student that today in particular I find very

difficult to focus on. In the midst of a global pandemic as well, I'm finding it difficult to be productive. I feel the expectations of my position as a student and during normal times school is hard enough as it is. My mind tells me that what I'm doing has less importance when our country is hurting so much. My question for you and Rich is your advice on how to focus on school and maybe for others their job and to maintain some semblance of what you're supposed to be doing amidst all that's going on. I'm finding it hard at times to get in the groove with all of this. Feel free to play this on the pod. Thanks for all your insights and discussion to both of you.

They mean a lot to me. Have a good one. Thanks. Bye. All right. Thanks, Kevin, for that question. Obviously, this question was lodged some weeks ago in the midst of the insurrection. And I think the sentiment that he's conveying is pretty human and pretty normal. I suspect a lot of people will

relate to that. And it's indicative of a very strange and extraordinary time that we're all living through, where we're all trying to do our best. I was glued to that screen. And it's indicative of, you know, a very strange and extraordinary time that we're all living through, where we're all trying to do our best. I was glued to that screen. We're holding ourselves to a standard of behavior of how we would operate in a normal situation. And these are not normal situations.

So the first thing I would say is like, give yourself a break a little bit right now, be a little gracious with yourself. And that's not to say let yourself off the hook, but I think it's okay to take a breather and not beat yourself up for feeling unproductive in this moment. In terms of how to move forward,

I mean, my advice is pretty straightforward and simple and basic. I mean, the first thing is try to control the controllables. There's so much about this that we have no control over. We have no agency over it. The only things we do have control over is our behaviors and our thoughts and our interactions.

You're in medical school. So what's the thing in front of you that you need to get done and break those tasks down into bite-sized chunks and try to execute on them in the best way possible. Just do the least amount that you need to do to engender a little bit of momentum and just look for the next right thing. I think it's incumbent upon you as a medical student and somebody who's clearly very busy, it's okay to take a break from the news.

Like the news will be the news and you don't have to be, you know, hamstrung in your life because of the news cycle. Like you can take that in chunks as well at certain points of the day if you feel you need to, but the news will continue and exist whether you're consuming it or not. I also sense a little bit of guilt or maybe even shame.

Like I feel this person feels like they wanna contribute and be of service in a way that they're not feeling connected to in the moment. And I think it's important to just figure out how to be a giver in your own way. That doesn't mean that you have to raise your hand and be some kind of prominent voice in a political movement, but in your own universe, you can be of service to,

I don't know if you're dealing with patients yet, but your fellow students and your professors, like how can you exercise small gestures in a giving type of way that make you feel more connected to the people around you and engender a tighter community. On the privilege piece, look, it's fine to acknowledge your privilege,

but I don't think that you should feel guilty about the position that you're in. I'm sure you worked very hard to be where you're at. And if there's anything, you don't have to atone for it, but like, I think it's, you should make the most of it and just to be the best doctor that you can be in service to other people. So to the extent that you may not be able to make a difference, you know, geopolitically, you can find meaning and fulfillment in your work. And that is your unique lever for making a difference.

And I think as a doctor, you can make a tremendous amount of difference in so many people's lives. So give yourself a break. It's a pandemic. Things are weird. They're hard. It's all okay. Just do what's in front of you. Beautiful, I agree. I think sometimes like these bigger storylines that are floating over us, they take on this incredible importance because they call into question kind of these stories that we've been telling ourselves about who we are

and where we live and what the people around us are up to. And they're paralyzing also. And they're paralyzing, but in reality, real life happens super local. It's on the ground right around you. And all of that, unless we lived in DC, didn't affect us really.

So it affected us emotionally, but it didn't change our abilities to move around in our localities. And so I think you're right, like finding, keeping it super local keeping it simple sometimes is the answer but you know that's coming from a guy who literally couldn't do anything for like five days so i'm with you yeah i'm with you st louis all right let's go to john all right john from sierra nevada hi guys my name is john uh i live in the sierra nevada mountains in california

uh it is okay if you play this clip on the air and my question for you guys is uh more so directly rich but uh you know how do you how do you address failure and like like the colossal type of failure the type of failure that makes you feel like your, your life's falling apart or, you know, the wheels are falling off and you can't grab onto the reins and get control of things again. Um,

you know, when like, you know what the higher version of yourself needs to do, but you can't do it because all you can feel is the, the lower version of yourself, you know? And how do you tackle things like guilt and shame? And how do you address and like adjust your lifestyle to set yourself up for success?

Anyway, thank you guys. I love the show. I love you guys. You've done a lot for me and I appreciate it. Thanks again. Bye. That's heavy. I can feel the pain in this one.

Yeah. It's tough. You know, it sounds like John's going through something extremely difficult. We don't know the details of what that is. But I intuit a sense of powerlessness in what he's relating, right? It's the idea of the two wolves, like which wolf do you feed?

And the dark wolf is the one who's getting the best of him at the moment. And there's a sense of an inability to kind of arrest that negative impulse. And I know what that feels like, it's really hard. And for me, that was in the form of alcoholism and the solution that I had to come to was breaking the chains of denial

and throwing my hands up in the air and literally surrendering rather than trying to control it, letting go. And letting go for me meant letting other people in. So I think the first thing I would say to John is, I'm empathetic and I feel you. And I think the first thing I would say to John is, I'm empathetic and I feel you. And I think the first thing that you can do to try to get on top of this is to confront those feelings

rather than repress them or compartmentalize them to find a way to bring voice to them. Because things like shame can't survive the light. You've got to shine the light on them. And that's scary. It takes courage to communicate with another person about what you're really going through. It requires a certain vulnerability and it's very frightening, but I can't encourage you enough how important it is to find somebody that you feel comfortable talking to, that you can be really honest with,

that you can convey whatever it is specifically, particularly specifically, I think it's important to be really specific, to let somebody in on this. And the relief that you'll experience just in that alone, I think is tremendous. You have to find the right person, somebody you can trust, somebody that you respect, somebody that, you know, can provide you with solid counsel. But I think the

process of that communication isn't of itself a little bit of a letting go, and it will allow you to get a little more objectivity on what's happening with you to help you find the cause, get a little more objectivity on what's happening with you to help you find the cause, the triggers of those behaviors that are sending you sideways and ultimately help you analyze this story that you're telling yourself that you're a failure and you can't help yourself

and everything's out of control to really deconstruct that and perhaps construct a better, healthier, less negative story for yourself. Along the way, can you find a way to listen to that positive wolf at all? Can you make any kind of lifestyle adjustments that would move you in a positive direction? In recovery, they call it taking contrary action. So when your instinct is, you know, whether it's like, oh, I know I shouldn't drink, but I'm gonna take that drink, whatever it is,

like, what is the contrary action? Like, oh, I don't wanna pick up the phone and tell that guy what I just did. The contrary action is to pick up the phone and tell the guy what you did, right? What is the smallest contrary action that you can take that will break the seal on that and initiate a different direction for yourself.

That's a great little super doable action step to do. If your mind's telling you one thing and you know that's the negative thing, just do the smallest version of that. Yeah, what would the good version of myself do? And as heavy as that phone is or whatever, how difficult it is, if you can just do that one thing and you're like, wow, I did that and I didn't die. Yeah. Right.

I think the other thing is to reframe this word failure and recast it as learning. Like, I don't know what this failure, colossal type of failure is specifically again, that you're experiencing, but can we look at it instead as a learning experience? Like what can be gleaned from whatever it is that you're going through that you can then leverage to be better and grow? And I think in truth, success is about failure. There isn't success that exists outside of failure.

Success is about trying. It's about not being afraid to fail and not taking failures personally. And the thing that you're attempting to do may have failed, but it's important to depersonalize yourself from that. You didn't fail. This thing failed. You had the courage to try. So can you disassociate your identity, your sense of self from the thing itself so that your identity isn't tied up in how the thing does, if that makes

sense, right? That way you create a little bit of distance between yourself, your identity, and your actions. And at the same time, keep showing up at the plate and swing the bat. Because if there's one trait that successful people share, it's that they fail way more than they succeed. They just try so often and so regularly, and we forget about the failures, we only see the successes. And this is another message or theme of Adam Grant's work. Like his book, Originals, was all about this. Like what makes people originals?

And he looks at all these successful people and realizes like these people failed all the time, whether it's Picasso or Edison, like they have tons of failures in their wakes and we don't look at those or think about those. We just focus on the few successes they had, but they took more bats at plate than anybody else. So if you can kind of reframe this whole thing

from that perspective, that might make it easier to get back up to the plate and swing again. And really try to objectively deconstruct what you're going through and find the lessons in there. And if you can do that and start figuring out how to implement those lessons to craft a better version of yourself,

five years from now, you could look back on whatever it is you're going through right now and say, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. And that sounds glib, and I don't mean to be insensitive to what you're going through right now and say, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. And that sounds glib, and I don't mean to be insensitive to what you're going through, but I've heard this, I've experienced this myself, and I know so many other people that have. And maybe that'll provide you with a little sliver of hope to dig a little bit deeper to get yourself out of this hole. Yeah. When I hear his message, I think of myself, 40 years old, marriage fell apart, lonely planet, jobs like going away

because maybe lonely planet is failing. That was what was happening then. And that was the worry then, didn't fail. But I saw all my income going away, which wasn't that huge of an income anyway. I saw my identity as a travel writer adventure going away. I didn't have the life I thought I'd had. And then that was just the beginning of like,

it seemed like everything was working against me, just like one thing after another. And it's hard not to take things personally when it just keeps, you just feel like you're in a vicious cycle. And so I totally feel that. And I know how that can And I know how that is. So, the only thing is it's like weather,

eventually that luck turns, especially if you take these small steps like Rich laid out. I would add just like, sometimes it helps if in the morning you can do one thing physically that is not, whether it's do 10 sun salutations or sit down and try to meditate for five or 10 minutes and turn your brain off.

If you can, I mean, it's hard to at first, but like one physical thing you can do first thing in the morning, right when you get up. So at least that time, right after that, you kind of feel good. Yeah, a little self-care. Just a little bit. And to quote Karamo,

can you look at this as something that is happening, not to you, but for you? That's beautiful, I love that. And I say that you have your version of this story. Look, I've hit bottom as an alcoholic, I've been unemployable, I've been in a situation where my family didn't want anything to do with me.

I've had cars repossessed, I almost lost my house. I've been unable a situation where my family didn't want anything to do with me. I've had cars repossessed. I almost lost my house. I've been unable to pay my bill. I've had so many versions of feeling like a failure and have been able to claw out of it. So I don't know what John's circumstances are, but I do believe and trust that no matter where he is, there is a better place for him

and there's always light at the end of the tunnel. There you go. All right. One last one from Phoenix, Arizona. Hi, my name is Sarah and I live in Phoenix, Arizona. And I'm wondering if you're willing to discuss just something interesting that I've noticed. So I'm in my first year of sobriety after a long struggle with drugs and alcohol. I am a longtime athlete playing lots of sports and loving running. And I was wondering if you were willing to discuss how overcoming

substance abuse has changed your mindset on fitness, your life, your goals, your athleticism, just things like that. I'm a huge fan of the show and I'm super happy to even reach out, but hopefully you'll address these kinds of things in the talk because your story is really powerful and I think it would empower a lot of other people to take hold of their life, their bodies, their fitness. Thanks again and I hope that y'all are having a wonderful day. Cool. Thanks for the question, Sarah. Congrats on a year of sobriety. That's a huge deal. Amazing. And it's a great question.

It's an interesting question. I mean, the first thing I would say is sobriety first, like don't be confused. Like there is a confused narrative out there that somehow like being vegan or being an athlete contributed to me getting sober and staying sober. And that's just not what happened at all. Like I didn't get in stay sober because I went vegan

or became an endurance athlete. I got in stayed sober by overcoming denial, finding people to talk to, being honest, holding myself accountable, working a program in the secret rooms and helping others and working with a sponsor and doing an inventory and making amends. And it's really only when I created a solid foundation

of sobriety that I began to expand in other areas, like being vegan and becoming this middle-aged endurance athlete came many years after. I got sober at 31. I didn't start doing ultras until I was 42. I went vegan at 40. So there's a decade after getting sober

where I was trying to sort my shit out and get my life back on track before any of these other things. So this idea, this notion that addictive personality can just go from one thing to then you can put an athlete, you could make him an athlete instead and he can channel and that compensates. I mean, you could, that's not how it played out for me.

Like I had a decade of being a workaholic and like eating shitty food. I transferred many addictive tendencies onto other things that weren't drugs or alcohol. And it took me a long time in my spiritual evolution to like grapple with those things. And as they say, the road gets narrower. Like when you first get sober, just to not drink is everything, right? Anything else is fine. It's just like, just don't drink, right? And then the more emotionally sober you get, the less tolerant you become of other behaviors

and proclivities that you have that used to not bother you. Like you just can't get away with it anymore because the more emotionally sober and mature you become, you realize that those things are at odds with you being the most actualized person that you can be. So whether it's going you know, going to gamble or shopping too much or working, whatever, you know, shitty self-care habits, whatever it is,

like those things become, if you get sober enough, they become unbearable and they have to go as well. And this is, it's called slow variety. It takes a long time. So in my case, these things didn't happen in lockstep. And so I just wanna impress upon anybody who's listening to understand that things like, you know, running, cycling, just, you know, self-care, physical fitness,

diet, sleep, meditation, these things are all beneficial to sobriety and meditation is actually a core aspect of sobriety, but none of them can take the place of working a program. And I know there's various different ways of getting sober and staying sober, but I got sober in 12 step and that got me sober. It's kept me sober.

It's still the most important thing in my life. I tried all these other ways, they didn't work. This is just what works for me. But I will say in more specific response to your question that getting sober led to performing more esteemable acts on behalf of myself and behalf of other people. And esteemable acts in turn lead to elevated self-esteem, which in turn expands your horizon of what's possible for yourself. In other words, you begin

to believe in yourself. You begin to believe that you can do more and you can be more. And that means that you end up taking on things that you never would have previously. You get more interested in bettering yourself and in improving the quality of life of those around you. And challenges that once might've seemed impossible, you end up welcoming. And in my case, that took the form of these endurance challenges and later writing books, starting this podcast.

For you, it's gonna be different, of course. But these are all practices that contribute and reinforce my sobriety but they're not interchangeable with the program itself. Running specifically I think is interesting. I think swimming is the same way as this practice of active meditation. It's something that's very honest and keeps you honest. It

doesn't care who you think you are, who you tell yourself you are, who you tell other people, you know, who you are, because it tells you who you are. And that makes it this amazing and beautiful template for self-discovery and self-improvement. And it's just one of the reasons why I love endurance sports. And that's all great. Just don't replace your program for running as a solution. Boom. That's it. We did it. That's good.

How do you feel? I feel good, man. That was- It feels good, man. It feels good, man, to like unload the- This is gonna be- It was a lot chambered. There was like six weeks of roll-on energy that needed to be expressed. I don't know how long you've been going on for,

but this was like a pressure valve. It's a filibuster. We're filibustering. It felt good, man. We, you know, I've wanted to talk to you about this. I even suggested we do a remote one. Yeah, I know. And you texted me and you're like,

let's do, we gotta do, maybe you could do a thing, let's go live, we gotta talk about this. And I was tempted, but I was like, no, I'm not working. I cannot do this. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't. It was worth waiting. It's funny, there's the thing in journalism,

the later you are, the smarter you have to be. And so I think it was good you brought Arthur and Giorgio in. Cause they look, they make both of us look smarter. Yes, exactly. I know, right? They made it seem like we actually know what we're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, no, they, I mean, they, it's amazing how much they know the inner workings and what, and it sounds like Arthur's connected to anonymous. Yeah, he was, he was cagey about that. Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, maybe we'll do a little research on that, who knows.

We should also point out that there's been lots of interesting articles that Adam and I read in preparation to talk about the subjects today, which we'll link up in the show notes. Some cool pieces by Taylor Lorenz and Kevin Roos, of course, who are the two journalists that I follow the most to stay on top of these particular issues, as well as that Politico piece on Hawley and some other things.

So check the show notes for that. We will be back here in two weeks time. In the meantime, follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. You can leave us a message if you would like your question considered for the podcast. That number again is 424-235-4626. I already told you guys to check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com.

Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Again, we did create a clips channel on YouTube. So if you do dig short chunks from the show or you wanna just sample a guest before committing, you can find a link to that channel in the show notes or just search Rich Roll Podcast Clips on YouTube. That's it.

I wanna thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo, new to Los Angeles, in the house, audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, and so much more. Blake Curtis for handling all the video aspects of the show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers for portraits. Georgia Whaley for copywriting.

DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music as always by Tyler Trapper and Ari. Appreciate the love you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with, who's coming up next? Oh, Alexi Pappas. Ooh. That's a good one.

That is good. Yeah, have you checked out her book, Bravey? Not yet, not yet. Really good, she's a great writer. I have to, it's getting so much love and I can't wait to- I know, Jake Tapper tweeting about it. Come on.

I mean, she's one of those- Adam Grant blurbed it. I know. That's unbelievable. You know what, I think that's an audio book because she's so cool. I wanna hear her read it. She. You know what? I think that's an audio book because she's so cool. I want to hear her read it. She's super cool.

So I think that's an audio book. I'm going to, I've got credits. I'm with you on that. I'm going to grab it. Cool. All right, you guys. See you back here soon. Much love.

Peace. Lance. Teksting av Nicolai Winther Thank you.