The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: Owning The Matrix

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Cryptocurrency. Blockchain. Digital trading cards. Burnt Bansky & NFTs. And of course, flying cats with pop tart bodies. These are just a few of many internet developments dissected in today’s edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein Adam Skolnick and I usher you into the digital age with droll repartee, raillery, and shrewd observations on concepts, issues, and matters relevant and whimsical. We share good news and bad. We perform a bit of show and tell. We banter and blather. And as always, we answer your questions. Aside from serving as my cogitative, neighborly, and magnanimous sidecar hype-beast, Adam Skolnick is an activist and veteran journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. Adam writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently using the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Other topics we explore in today’s conversation include: Adam and Jason’s 4 x 4 x 48 Goggins’ challenge recap; an update on the Iron Cowboy’s ‘Conquer 100’ challenge; Rich’s new cold plunge routine; NFTs and the way the internet is upending finance; Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the future of digital assets; and the nuanced ways in which human beings are becoming human avatars. In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you stay motivated in your fitness journey? How can you be a lighthouse of conscious living for your children? What are the best ways to prepare for high-altitude endurance races? Thank you to Will from Portland, Oregon, Tanya from Lucerne, Switzerland, and Christopher from Boston, Massachusetts 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/richroll588 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon588 Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Roll on his back and coming right up. But first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more.

Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe

everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal

designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, 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. Okay, so we got a lot in store for you today. Adam and I recap his recent Goggins Challenge experience. We dive into the bizarre and quite fascinating world of NFTs. We take listener questions and a bunch more stuff. So let's do the thing. Hey everybody. Thank you for allowing us to once again,

hold you pod hostage for another rendition of Roll On. I told you pod hostage for another rendition of roll on. We're in my cogitative neighborly and rather magnanimous sidecar hype beast, Mr. Adam Skolnick. And I indulge you with droll repartee, raillery, shrewd observations on concepts, issues and matters of importance, both great and probably not so much.

Yes, usually. Right? Yes. We also do a wee bit of show and tell, and of course, answer some of your listener questions from our voicemail. You can leave us a message at 424-235-4626. So lean back or lean in, smash that subscribe button,

hit the notifications bell, wherever that is. Click the like, leave your comments in the comment section below as all those YouTubers are fond of saying, and let's get into it. Adam, how you doing? Doing great, man. Feeling good.

I've enjoyed the rain a little bit. Got in the water yesterday. It rained pretty hard. Rained this morning pretty hard last night. You don't want to be getting in the water right after a rainstorm. We snuck one in yesterday. It was nice and crisp, 55 degree Fahrenheit. That's pretty good. Yeah.

How thick is your wetsuit, your website, your wetsuit? My website's so thick. Your website, your wetsuit. My website's so thick. I have a few different ones, but the one I used yesterday is like a triathlon suit. So it's kind of piecemeal. So there's a five millimeter in the chest, four in the thighs,

and then it's like 0.5 in the shoulders and just different places. So you're not wearing your swim run wetsuit for your adventures around the point? No, but then when you do a few dives after a while, like the area where it's 0.5 starts to, like you feel the cold there first and it just starts to radiate down, but it's fun.

You know, I wear some weights, so the swim out and back against the current with weights is kind of a challenge. Right at the end of Zuma there, where you go around the point. Yeah, we start at different places. Yesterday we walked down to the last lifeguard tower and launched from there. And then I went out and back.

My friends usually go around the point, but for me, I have the family on the beach. So it means I don't get to see big doom, but if I can grab an hour at the reef, that's like. Also, you're more likely to steer clear of predatory marine life that way. I don't know if that's true. Going around that point is dicey. When I tell people that I swim around that point with you, they look at me like I'm a crazy person.

We've talked about this before. Right, but like where even the pinnacles themselves have so much life that anything that could get you around the point can even the the the pinnacles themselves have so much life that anything that could get you around the point can get you at the pinnacles because that's where the like the main reef structure is that's not making me feel better but um about my next outing with you at this moment though it's like the beginning of the whale migration i mean it started a few you know a few weeks ago but it's becoming more and more every day there's more whales coming through so if you can go so an out and back you have a better chance of seeing them because you It started a few weeks ago, but it's becoming more and more every day. There's more whales coming through.

So if you can go, so an out and back, you have a better chance of seeing them because you often see them off the beach where the waves are more often than where the pinnacles are. What about the sharks though? How are the sharks impacted by the whale migration? There is a shark season and you start to notice it when the sea lions wash up on the beach

with bites taken out of them. Yeah. But- Also a confidence booster when you're putting on the wetsuit yes but uh i think i have to i have to look at it but i think that the shark season is coming up i think the main shark season is like in may june um it doesn't really dovetail as far as i know in terms of the breeding because what's happening is just not too far off shore and in santa monica bay i mean sunset where the surf break is right like a half mile out there that's a shark nursery as far as i understand it and there has been more juvenile whites this season than they've seen in a long long time at least that was what the reporting was, excuse me, last season.

So I'd have to look, you know, offhand, I forget when the breeding season is, but that's the pupping season. Cause they're live birth, you know, they're like one of the fish that actually gives live births. Right. Yeah. I haven't heard of any attacks in recent memory though.

No, we don't have a great history of like fatal attacks. You know, we have had some bites and stuff. Usually it's, again, it's connected to a swimmer swimming under the pier and the fisherman had a juvenile white on the line and it was angry and it hit the swimmer. That was the most recent one. What is the conventional wisdom

about how long you should wait after a big rain to go in the ocean. Cause there's so much toxic runoff. So I know that you're not supposed to do it for a couple of days. Three days. Three days. 72 hours is what they usually do.

Yeah. Yeah. If it's rained a bunch in a row, probably you can get away with two days. Cause it's not like the first coat of that slick grime from the streets. Cause what happens is that all that gets into the storm drains.

The storm drains end up in the ocean and that's the main reason. So it's like the toxins and the fertilizers and things like that. Have you ever gotten sick because you got in too early after? I have not, I've been lucky, but I usually do abide by the 72 hours.

I don't mess around. Surfers are less likely to abide because they have to surf when the waves are there. But they're not underwater the same way. So they're mostly above water. They're not getting a lot of water in their ears. What would be the symptoms? Like what would you catch?

I think ear infections would be the first thing. Ear infections could be sinus infection. Diarrhea, dysentery. It could be. If you like to drink seawater. Yeah. I just remember when I was, I've probably told this story before,

but it's been a really long time if I have. When I was living in New York City, right after college, like 89, 90, 91, my roommate, Matt Nance, who was a teammate of mine on the Stanford swim team, decided that he wanted to do the swim around Manhattan that they hold every year. Yes. At that point in time,

I was not interested in endurance sports. So I opted out of that. In fact, he wanted me to crew for him and I had a family vacation in Michigan. So I missed the whole thing. But I remember when he was training for that and getting ready for it, they send you like a binder full of information

that includes all the shots you have to get before, because you're literally swimming in the Harlem river. You're going all the way around Manhattan. And he had to get all these shots. And then he told me that, especially up in the Northern points, he would just run into garbage like constantly as he was swimming in.

And then he got a terrible urine infection afterwards that he claimed had nothing to do with the swim, but I can't imagine it didn't. Right. And I also remember that near, sorta near the George Washington Bridge is this, I don't know if it's still there or if this is still a thing,

but there was this giant like suck hole. Like there's something under the water that was like, basically creating a vacuum effect in this whirlpool and you had to steer very clear of that or suffer. Or suffer, get sucked down into the black hole. Right, right, right. Was that the East river or the Hudson? No, no, in the Hudson, in the Hudson.

I think like a little bit South of the George Washington bridge, if memory serves me. I could be wrong about that. Yeah, that's the East river to Harlem river to Hudson, right? Isn't that the route or something? You start down near Wall Street. And I think you go up the East River first

and you come down the Hudson. Okay. Yeah. And he got second place. I think at the time it was probably 90 or 91. He broke the men's record, but he got beat by a 15 year old Australian girl who was like this, the queen whose name escapes me,

but she was like the queen of open water swimming. Well, I mean, that was the triple crown, right? So for many years. And his crew was comprised of like my hungover buddies. Whoever you could find. Dude, I need you to just hand me water every 30 minutes. Right, who had no idea what they were in for. And now I feel I have tremendous regret

that I wasn't there for him to support him in that way. But anyway, I don't know how we got off on that tangent. Open water swimming. Yeah, speaking of the rains, in anticipation of it raining last night, I had to go and get a new tent because which is something I have to do like every six months because the sun beats down on my cheap tent

and it becomes like tissue paper and it frays. So there were all these holes in my, it was like raining in there, I was getting wet. You slept through the rain? Well, there were portions of it where like water started to pool and I was just too busy or lazy to go replace the tent. So, I had like the bottom of my sheets would be wet

when I wake up in the morning and I was like, I gotta fix this. So I went and got a new tent and I was kind of taking everything out and setting it up and putting everything in. And I realized some stuff has mold in it. Like this is not good. So the thought occurred to me

since I am sleeping in a tent basically every night, like why am I spending four or $500 on a new tent every six months? I should get like a proper outdoor, like canvas glamping tent that could stand the test of time. So I've been researching, like I could just get a huge tent and like create like a whole room.

So now I'm excited about this. You're going from REI to Vegas Cabana? Something like that, yeah. So I'm looking into like some cool tent designs. If there's any canvas high-end glamping canvas tent manufacturers out there that wanna talk to me, I'd love to hear from them because yeah, these tents just get shredded.

Like they're just, the sun beats down on them and then literally they just rip and tear. Wouldn't canvas also kind of take a beating up there or no, not really? Well, I would imagine, but they're gonna last a couple of years. Yeah, like a year up there. Yeah, we have a teepee,

but it's way down far away from the house. I don't know. So anyway, just that's what I'm thinking about. Teepee could be cool. A glamping tent, Adam. Imagine the possibilities. You wanna glamp on the roof? Yeah, so we're sort of constructing this new

little section of our home, like on the side, where, which is where my container office is and where I have this tent. And we just got a cold plunge. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit. I saw that post. I guess we could just talk about it. We could just talk about it right now.

These guys, Michael Garrett and Ryan Dewey, who are out of Sacramento, have this new company called The Cold Plunge, thecoldplunge.com. And they reached out to me and just wanted to gift me a cold plunge, which is one of the side benefits of hosting a podcast, I suppose.

They create these next level cold baths that are really beautiful, like these beautiful tubs that have a filtration system and a temperature gauge on them. So you can just set the temperature and it has a cover on it and it's always good to go. So you don't have to worry about buying tons of ice or trying to Jerry rig a top door freezer so that you don't electro to worry about buying tons of ice or trying to Jerry rig,

a top door freezer so that you don't electrocute yourself. Which is what a lot of people do, which that's what I was thinking of doing. Cause I've done cold plunging before, but never consistently, cause I don't have it at my house and I'm not gonna be, just going to the store and buying bags and bags of ice all the time.

Like it's sort of like- So most people like take one of those freezers, the top drawer freezer? The top drawer freezers, yeah. And you have to customize them. And I think you have to put like a lining. It's like a, it's a little bit more of an elaborate process than you might suspect rather than just filling it

with water and getting into it because it's not built for that. Right. But these guys just created like a standalone situation that is very aesthetically cool and works really well and doesn't require like almost any maintenance whatsoever. Must be so easy to clean.

I think you just have to put, they were telling me you just have to put, I can't remember how much, like a quart or two of hydrogen peroxide in it every two weeks or something like that, but it's filtering the water all the time. So it's always filled with water. It's always, yeah.

You don't have to amputate it. No, it's always filled with water. Okay. Yeah, and it's filtering the water all the time. And then it has a temp gauge on it. So you can set the temp wherever you want it. It will go down to 39 degrees. And I hate cold water so much.

Like this is part of why I'm doing this is because I have such an aversion to this. Right. That I started it out at the wimpy temperature of like 58 and I've been going down two degrees every day. So I'm down to like today will be 48. Okay. It's a pretty good place.

That's great. And I'm digging it. It's been really great. How long are you in there for? So I do three rounds of four minutes and we also have an outdoor tub right next to it. So I fill that with hot water. I eventually wanna get a barrel sauna, like a proper sauna.

We don't have that now, but until that point, just alternating between getting in the cold plunge and then getting into the hot tub and then doing three rounds of that, four minutes each, which has been great. And it's so refreshing. It is addictive, you hear that? And it's not that it gets easier.

There's always that like, I definitely don't wanna get in this freezing cold tub, but I've gotten better at it. And it's really a great kind of meditative practice because it forces you to be present. Like you can't be thinking about anything else except your breath. The brain gets white.

The brain is white. So I wanted to thank those guys publicly, Michael and Ryan. If you wanna learn more, you can go to thecoldplunge.com. It is an expensive item and it was just so gracious of them to gift it to me. And this is not a sponsored thing. Like they didn't ask me to do anything,

but I just wanted to acknowledge them and let them know that I really appreciate it and that I'm putting it to use. So that's been really fun. What's that been doing physically for you? I definitely sleep better. Sleep's like my whole thing. I'm always trying to optimize that.

So I've noticed that it's not that I, I don't have problems falling asleep, but like around the middle of the night, I'll often wake up and I found that I'm sleeping more soundly throughout the night and in a deeper state, according to my whoop, which is good. It also has, because it's so anti-inflammatory, it's really been helping my back.

So when I'm like in the hours after doing it, like my back feels better than it's felt in a long time. So that's another initial, I mean, I've only been doing this for five days or something like that. But you're already feeling stuff. I'm making it a daily practice and I can definitely feel the difference.

And it's also a mood enhancer. Like when you kind of in the middle of the afternoon, you're a little, you've worked and you're kind of burned out, you're a little bit tired. If you do it midday, it's sort of like taking a power nap. Like you just feel completely fresh again. So that's been cool too. It is cool. I love it.

So you do it in the morning and then also sometimes midday? It's just been based on my schedule. Like yesterday I did it after a long bike ride. Doing it in the morning is great, but I did it in the afternoon the other day. I'm like, I haven't had a consistent, like I do it at this time every day, kind of catch can, but I'm digging it.

It's been fun. You'll have to come over and check it out. I gotta do it, I love that thing. Kevin Roos went up on the podcast. That was super fun. I felt like I was cheating on you a little bit. Not at all. Fellow New York Times writer.

He's a tenured professor over there. He is. He's an elder statesman. I'm an associate professor. He's higher up in the New York Times pecking order. I'm not on the pecking order. But it was really fun. Actually, there were moments during that podcast

where I felt like it would have been good to have you also on the mic. So he's got an open invite to come on the show next time he finds himself in LA. So maybe if and when that happens, we'll do it as a threesome. Perfect. But that was really cool

since we talk about his work so often on the show, we've been such champions of rabbit hole. It was really fun and cool to talk to him. I should also mention that Alex Honnold dropped by I've heard of him. Late last week. For those that don't know who he is, he climbed a very steep wall in Yosemite without any ropes.

They made a movie about it that won an Oscar. And that was really cool. He's been on the show before a long time listeners know, but it was cool to have him back on. He's got this podcast that he's starting called Climbing Gold. It's about the history of climbing and also about the upcoming introduction

of climbing into the Olympics. So we talked about that, but a couple of cool things about that experience. He brought the van. So the van was here at the studio. He's still driving that van around. Which is amazing. And it's got the little finger grips inside the door

that he does his workouts on. And he was doing like two finger pull-ups with one arm and stuff like that, which was crazy to see. And that interview was cool. It was a little bit different from, I think most interviews he has done of late because it's not about free solo.

It was more about kind of what he's up to now. How do you move forward for something like that? He recently spent a month in Guyana for a Nat Geo project. So we talked a lot about the environment, all the work that he's doing with his foundation, the Honnold Foundation, solar energy, renewables. And that episode is gonna go up, I believe March 29th. So everybody has that to look forward to.

It's very cool. I can't believe, I'm really surprised he's still driving around. I shouldn't be based on- I think it is his second one though. At some point he upgraded it. I mean, it looked, it didn't look new. I mean, it looked like, you know, he was staying,

apparently he was gonna sleep in it. I'm sure he is. Yeah, so. Like he parked it here, hopped a flight to Guyana, came back here. He lives in Vegas, so he drove here and then he had some other press stuff, but his plan was to just, he was gonna see some friends

and I'm sure he told me he was just gonna sleep in the back of the truck. Yeah, right. So of course, right? It's comfortable for him. Right. Yeah. Should we recap the Goggins challenge? All right. It's comfortable for him. Right. Yeah. Should we recap the Goggins challenge?

All right. It's been a week. You've had time to reflect on the profundity of this endurance feat that you accomplished. How are you feeling? You know, I feel good. Like my body feels totally fine. It was fun to do.

It was, I mean, I'm, it was, it was fun to do. It was, uh, I mean, I, I, I'm very appreciative of, you know, you came out to, to visit. I had other friends, uh, pace me, you pace me on your bicycle. Other people have paced running. Um, I was getting messages galore from listeners, uh, and their interest and encouragement was just like I didn't expect it. And so it was really cool. It was cool to be a part of. I mean, I think early on after the first run, the first run I was kind of too keyed up. And so 8 o'clock hits and my legs are heavy and lactic acid on that very first run. And I'm thinking to myself, that's okay.

Cause after this first run, I can take care of my body, hydrate up and, and then that'll be over. And then, cause, cause it, you're going to get tired eventually. So it's fine if it happens early on, because the point is to run when you're tired. So that first run, I was a little bit, not feeling that great uh but but pushed through and then from then on it just was kind of like a clockwork thing and uh yeah i i was able to get through each phase and jason caniolo who's right behind me right now he did it as well so you guys were i i know you guys were on the blower with each other throughout the whole thing. Yeah, messaging after every single one.

And I'd say like the second run, I stayed up till midnight the first day. Well, let's take a second and just, if somebody's brand new and they don't know what we're talking about, the Goggins Challenge is this challenge that David Goggins proposed as kind of a crowdfunding, not crowdfunding, but a participatory challenge where you run four miles

every four hours for 48 hours straight. It starts on a Friday night at eight o'clock, right? And you go through late Sunday afternoon, basically. And so like the first run kind of, I was a little keyed up and my calf, my left calf was tightening up a little bit, but that was fine. I had a bit keyed up in my calf, my left calf was tightening up a little bit, but that was fine. I had a bit of an adrenaline crash after, and I didn't wanna sleep before the first midnight.

I wanted to stretch and be ready. And so I didn't. The second run was a lot better, slept a little bit after. And then it was like the 4 a.m. run, which was not very fast. I was running past people who sleep in their vans. How much did you sleep before that run? Probably two and a half, three hours.

That's pretty good. That was probably the longest sleep in the entire situation. And then the fourth run found a rhythm again. And I was listening to earbuds for the first time. That was 8 a.m. on Saturday. And I found that it kind of took away from the experience. Like I thought I would get through all of Bravey

or something or like the whole, I was just gonna listen to books. But I found that it just wasn't working for me. Like I'd rather have the quiet. And so I stopped doing that. April ran two of the segments with me and usually I push the pram, but she was pushing the stroller the whole time.

So she did, I think I pushed it for maybe a half a mile at one point, but she did 16 of the miles. So she was with me and she rocked it. And the fastest of the weekend was that sixth run, the 20 to 24 miles. And then all of a sudden people started calling me, wanting to pace me.

My buddy, Adam Dole calls me- Early podcast guest. Early podcast guest, yeah. And shout out Adam Dole. And he called me and he's like, hey, do you want, or texted me, do you want a pacer? It's okay if you say no. I'm like, sure, at that point I'll take any help.

And so he came in, another friend, Reese Pacheco, who runs WSL Pure, the environmental organization. He came in for noon and for the last day. Adam was at 8 p.m. then he came back for 4 a.m. I mean, just incredible. That's cool. Yeah, and so through it all, I didn't sleep much them. I mean, just incredible. That's cool. And yeah, and so through it all, like I didn't sleep much the second day I slept,

but after the 8 p.m. to midnight, and that was the craziest time because I set my alarm for 11.30 instead of 23.30. And so then I slept through the midnight and I woke up just like in a start, like drenched in sweat at 12.20 a.m. And I'm like, fuck. And so then I had to-

Disqualified. And I had to like race to get my shit because at that point I knew Adam was coming at four. So there was no pushing the 4 AM run. So at that point, that's all off. Right. So I just ran out the door. And so then I stopped kind of like,

my legs started tightening up. My knees started to hurt a little bit, but for the most part, my body held up really well. And it was just a great experience. Like I have to say, it's the greatest athletic feat, I think of my lifetime that I've ever done. So, and I didn't go into it thinking that was gonna be the case, but looking back,

I have to say, I don't think there's anything close. Maybe I climbed Kilimanjaro, but I think less people have done this than have climbed Kili. How would you compare those two? I mean, it's apples and oranges, but in terms of- This is way more demanding. I mean, if you're in shape, Kili is not a killer.

There's difficult moments and you're going into altitude. So altitude is a game. Anybody could suffer from altitude at any time. So there's some variables that are beyond your control with altitude, but if you're in shape, it's not like that hard of a thing to do. But this, 48 miles in two days, I don't know. Is that an ultra or is it fake ultra? Well, I don't know, is that an ultra?

Or is it anything? Well, I don't know. It's a fake ultra. Technically an ultra is defined as anything longer than a marathon, but I don't know when you break it up, how that, who cares? You know what I mean? You did a hard thing.

You had to put a label on it. You know what it's like? It's like the breaking it up made it easier for sure. Yeah. No question about it. And that was the accessibility that you were pointing out. It's like the breaking it up made it easier for sure. No question about it. And that was the accessibility that you were pointing out. That's what's so cool about it. Right, and it sneaks up on you. Cause you're like, I could run four miles

every four hours slow, but then it incrementally, the degree of difficulty gets notched up as the sleep slips away. The second night's tough, second night's tough. But you know, like I think there were a couple of moments, I think after the first 16 miles, I looked up and I was like, okay, 32 to go.

You try not to check the scoreboard, but then once you get past the first day. You just focus on what's right in front of you to do, which is get through those four miles. I mean, I rode my bike down on Saturday afternoon to do a temp check on you and you were in good spirits and April was out there with you pushing the baby and you were all smiles and laughs.

Yeah, I mean, I try to keep it that way. I think, look, a couple of things, I didn't go into it saying, I'm gonna try to do this. I went into it feeling like I'm going to do this. So it was never really, and especially once I realized how many people were paying attention. Like there was no graceful bow out.

Yeah, then it becomes a whole other thing. Which I did to myself of course, but I did it casually without realizing. Well, that was part of me posting it on Instagram and the stories too. It's like, you can't back out, man. This is like public. Oh, I never was going to.

And in terms of like the why, cause Misty from Nantucket called in, she's not gonna, we're not gonna play her question, but her question was basically, did I find a why? Cause I couldn't answer that. And she said, you scolded me. Did I scold you? I was challenging you.

You challenged me. So my why, I still didn't really figure it out in the moment, partly because the pacers take some of that introspection away, which I don't think is a bad thing. It's just the way it goes. When you have a friend next to you in life, you're just not thinking about yourself as much.

But listening to Steven Pressfield on your podcast and just thinking about, and what you guys were talking about around finding your hero's journey and going through that hard thing and thinking about my life, which for a long time was defined by travel and going to different cultures and

being kind of alone in those scenarios and having the pandemic come through and that's completely wiped out. And then of course, life changes. You know, I do think there was part of me was just hungry for some test like that, a test of self. And so I do think that was like this subconscious pull. I didn't realize it. I didn't even think about it when I got her message, I thought about it listening to you guys talk about it. And I do think there's something there

that there was a call to action and to find out what was inside me to see if I could do it. And the fact that I could do it, stay good humored and stay positive, I think is a good feeling. I'm satisfied with that answer. I'm not gonna scold you on that. I think what happens is, yeah, you have that pull,

that call to doing something hard and then you do it. And what that does is put another brick in the wall of this identity that you craft around being somebody who does hard things. Like I do hard things, I can do hard things. I'm not afraid of the degree of difficulty or the unknown of something I've never experienced before. I welcome that into my life. And each one of those experiences that you have

is like another like notch in the belt that I think leads to greater self-esteem and kind of how you navigate the world in every other facet of your life. I do feel like I got a self-esteem bump. Like I felt it like the next couple of, the day after I was a bit of a wreck, and I had a deadline.

I was like blew that off. Did you ever have any like grumpy, grousey moments where you were like short with April or like? No, no. That's what happens to me. Yeah, but I mean, I think part of that is I didn't push myself to the edge in terms of pace. I was very relaxed in my pace. I was worried about you at one moment

because you were talking about how your knee was acting up. I just didn't want you to bury yourself and injure yourself because you felt the public pressure of completing this thing. Well, I would have kept going. You know, even if the knee was a problem, I would have walked, you know, I wasn't gonna stop. So, you know, when you work with David Goggins,

you don't stop when your knee dies a little bit. And since you are working with David Goggins, you don't stop when your knee dies a little bit. And since you are working with David Goggins, you couldn't have not done this anyway, right? Well, I could have. I mean, David didn't put any pressure on you personally. No, I brought it up to him. And then once I brought it up to him, it was basically a done deal.

Yeah. But he was really, I mean, let's put it this way. In this time where everyone's so polarized and at each other's throats, he creates this thing, some 30,000 people. Is that how many people? Yeah, it's like in the 20 to 30 range, I think closer to 30, signed up to do this thing,

this really hard thing all together. There's a real feeling of unity among the people that were doing it, camaraderie. And it just shows what if you focus in versus focusing out, the positive repercussions are, I think, impossible to calculate and it's just a ripple effect. And so kudos to David for recognizing that, seeing that, leading that.

And yeah, definitely he was leading. I was checking in with him on his Instagram stories every time. And then afterwards I had a little debrief with him, but not during, during I kind of was left to my own devices and him too. And he was doing a bunch of pull-ups and pushups in addition to all of this too, right?

So he was doing a combo of like a circuit because he's recovering from injury, which I'm sure he'll get into at some stage. But so he did a circuit. He wasn't running, cause he's got a run in. He was on treadmill sometimes and then he was doing stair mat. He was doing a circuit.

Right. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. 20 to 30,000 people. I think it also speaks to, you know, we're in this moment where there's no races, right? Yeah. Normally people would be signing up for this or that. And, you know, without that being available to people,

they have turned to these virtual events and that kind of digital community that can be created this way. It's pretty cool. It is cool. And people raised, you know, millions of dollars for different charities. Right. digital community that can be created this way. It's pretty cool. It is cool. And people raised millions of dollars for different charities.

Right, so everyone was kind of raising money for their own various whatever. Yeah, and he put out a story like last year, he's always said, if running, if you can't run, get on a bike, if you can't bike, do whatever you can. He pointed out to a guy who was 500 pounds when he heard about this last year. And his whole goal every four hours

was just to get up out of his chair as many times he could every four hours. And so he did that. A year later, he's 300 pounds and he was running it. Wow, that's cool. So it just shows you, you don't have to do it that way. You could have done, if you have a Peloton at home, go do that at a low pace or walk around the block,

10 times, whatever it is. So where does that leave you? You've got some momentum now, you just did this hard thing. Does it make you enthusiastic to keep it up, continue it, put it into figure out another new challenge? Well, yes, so shout out also to Nicholas Ramirez, who I've been talking to about my goals. Your Envol coach.

The Envol coach, the team Envol, who's a champion swim runner and has this team, swim run team called Team Envol. And you could join it for pretty cheap price and he gives kind of group workouts, or you could work with him personally and he gives he gives kind of group workouts or you could work with him personally and he can give you some personalized stuff and i was telling him my goal one of my main goals is just to get faster at zone two and he told me this little tale that

many years ago his whole thing was to try to get a sub three marathon and it was like took him to his ultimate limit to barely get under sub three. And then last Saturday on an empty stomach, a little bit hung over, and just delivering something across town in Stockholm, he decided to run there and back instead of driving, ran a marathon in zone two and a little bit in zone three at under three hours.

And just the fact that the human body can do that. And it just inspired me a bit more. So I'm definitely interested in continuing that zone two journey to see how comfortable I can get running. Because for so many years I was uncomfortable running. I could do it anyway. But in terms of activities,

we're looking at cactus to clouds. Hopefully my wife can break away from the baby long enough to where we could do that together. What is that? And that is a 10,000 foot elevation climb from the desert to the top of San Jacinto Peak in Palm Springs. Out in Palm Springs, yeah.

Yeah. That's cool. I'm thinking about that for the fall and then Otulo Catalina. Right, that's in November, right? That's in November, yeah. Are the pools open in Santa Monica? Is Santa Monica College open? You never swim in the pool, do you?

I don't go to pools. You might wanna think about that. I know, that's my next talking to. Team Envil might have an idea or two. No, he doesn't mind me going in the ocean. He's like, just do my drills in the ocean. And I'm like, so far my drills have just swim there. The great thing about Point Doom is that

it's the only like part of the coastline in our vicinity that approximates a swim run experience because you have that steep ascent up the cliff and all of that. Whereas most of the shoreline around here is very flat. So it's hard to really get a proper swim run workout that's gonna approximate the kind of terrain you're gonna have in one of those races.

Yeah, I mean, most of my, if I'm just swimming, I usually just go right down in the Palisades somewhere. But Doom is kind of, I did chat, when I was training for Catalina, I did use doom and that's probably what I would do again. Yeah. Are you gonna do Catalina this year? I think so.

I've done no swimming though. Like I, you know, unlike you. That's your, you don't need to. Yes I do. Well you will, but you don't need to now for November. Yeah, I would like to be able to do that. I mean, there are some pools open, but you gotta fill out these online forms and schedule your time way ahead of time. for November. Yeah, I would like to be able to do that. I mean, there are some pools open,

but you gotta fill out these online forms and schedule your time way ahead of time. And my week, the way it unfolds, every day is different. And I would go through periods of, you know, filling out time slots throughout the week and then only hitting like one out of the five or whatever. And it's just, you know, that's my own stuff or whatever. There are pools open.

You just have to be, I have to be a little bit more organized about my training than I have been. Yeah. And they only let you in for like 45 minutes. Right, and that's not enough for you. Not enough. But you know, it's better than nothing. You can do two miles in 45 minutes.

I've been really enjoying gravel riding. That's been my thing lately. So I'm just building a base on the bike right now and exploring all these trails that I've never experienced on two feet. Like this whole world has opened up to me, which has been really fun. Maybe a Sandy Tijuana to Vancouver ride is in your future.

I don't know what is in my future. I do shifting gears a little bit, I do wanna shout out the Iron Cowboy. Yes. Where today's Monday, what's the date today? The 12th? No. The 13th.

The 13th. The 15th. Today's the 15th. James is on, as of today, day 15 of his attempt to do 100 hundred Ironmans in a hundred days. He's been sharing all of this on Instagram. Like the stories, I watch them every day. It's pretty cool.

Like to see him just get up every single day and do an Ironman. He's been going strong and he's not without his challenges. I mean, he like, I think I'm like the third or fourth day, his ankle had swollen up such that anybody in their right mind would have pulled the plug on this thing. And he was just walking the marathons until in his mind, the way he articulated it,

like his body, you know, sort of clicked in and adapted to what he was trying to do. And now he's back to running. And, you know, this is all happening on the outskirts of Provo, Utah. So the other day, the whole thing, it was snowing and sleeting like all day. And he's out there with a smile on his face,

high vibes, tons of community. It's cool to see so many people turn out every single day to do a leg or a portion with him. And he's getting it done. Like the guy's just an absolute machine. But I think most impressive is like this positive attitude that he's, I mean, he's like, he's on his 15th consecutive Ironman,

but he's still got 85 to go. You know, like how do you, it's just unbelievable to wrap your head around that. I now have a taste, like a minuscule taste of that kind of thinking though. That must be in any ultra event, that's how it is, right? You've done, you just- Here we go, this is what we're doing.

You ran a marathon. Now you have to run still 110 more to finish Badwater. Right. It's crazy. It's crazy. He did have, I think with all the weather, the inclement weather, that definitely presented some challenges.

And he posted on Instagram a caption, today James Lawrence goes away and the iron cowboy comes to life. And I love that, that idea of the alter ego. This is something that I spoke about with Todd Herman, who's an author who was on the podcast a couple of years ago. He wrote a book called the alter ego effect, which is all about this idea of kind of transposing

your identity into this, you know, superhuman like avatar. And this is something that David does Goggins does, right? It's like there's David and then there's Goggins, right? And he goes into Goggins when he does these things. Like it's almost, it's not fair to call it a character but it's something outside of the self that allows you to create like an arm's length relationship with the feet that you're trying to accomplish

that I think is empowering and instructive in terms of how you, and it's not like somebody told David, create an alter ego for yourself or told James create an, it's like these were just natural like survival tactics that they crafted in order to survive these difficult challenges.

Right. And I think it's cool, it's empowering as a means of helping you exceed your sense of personal limitations. So much love to James, AKA the Iron Cowboy. Amazing, that's an amazing effort. How long are his times? Is he sharing his time?

Yeah, it's all on Strava and there's a live tracker and they're very transparent about all of it. I mean, he's going slow. Like his marathons are like six hours, or five and a half hours or something, or his bike rides the same. It's like, it's just about like, look, I got the whole day to do this.

I just have to do it such that I get enough sleep. Like that's enough. And recovery in between. And he's got so much community around him. Like tons of people are showing up every day. And then in his house, he's got PTs and his family and his kids are involved. Like his daughter is always on the Instagram

talking about the live tracker and where you can meet up with him. So if anybody wants to go and support this guy, you can just show up in Linden, Utah and go ride your bike with him or go run with him. Incredible. So very cool. This party you wanna get out there?

I might at some point, we'll see. I mean, I did it last time when he was finishing his 50. I showed up in Utah and ran the final marathon with him. Amazing. Either way, whatever happens, he's definitely coming back on the podcast to tell us about it if he survives. No doubt.

And I have no doubt that he will survive. He's gonna make it. Yeah, he is. It's incredible. It is incredible. I've never even heard of anything close to that. Unbelievable, right? And he's just banging them out like,

oh, another Ironman, another Ironman every single day. It just becomes normal. Yeah, on the same loop, like the mental drudgery of all of it as well. You know, the same loop is good though. Like I use the same loop for my, I mean, terrible comparison, but for my little thing. Are you comparing yourself to the Iron Cowboy right now?

But the point is, is like, some people said one piece of advice was use different routes. But I found that I used one different route and it was just, it was actually distracting. You always know what to expect. And you can mark, you know, how you like mentally you take notes like this is how I felt last time

when I crossed this intersection. And this is how I feel now. But again, thank you to everybody who support because like I was really surprised and your community was like fully rallied. Well, it's a huge accomplishment. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of Jason, Jason Camiolo, who also did it as well.

So lots of love here for all you guys. It was nothing for him. He's done a hundred milers. He has, but his whole thing is like, he just shows up and does it. It's pretty impressive. Which is its own form of very impressive. I think he was worried about me after the midnight,

second midnight when I didn't turn up. Like he's like, what happened to him? Yeah. All right, well, let's take a break and we'll be back with the big story. The big story. All right, and we're back. Adam.

Yes, sir. Do you know what an NFT is? I do now. It's unbelievable what's happening with all of this, isn't it? It's literally unbelievable. I could not believe it when I heard about it. Right. I'm fascinated by this.

I wanted to do a little bit of a deep dive. I will couch the conversation to come with a disclaimer that I am the furthest thing from an expert in the blockchain or anything crypto. So this is definitely coming from a lay person's perspective in every regard. So to the extent that we get anything wrong here and I'm sure that we will, don't at me with this. Yeah, don't bother you.

All the crypto heads who get pissed off because we've mischaracterized something here which I'm sure we will. Don't bother us with our own ignorance, we're aware. Yes, I am self-aware of my limitations. All right, NFTs, for people that don't know, this is all about ownership rights to, at least right now, digital art, ephemera and media.

It's really one of the craziest aspects of an already insane year. And I think under, maybe not underappreciated or underreported, but perhaps not discussed enough is the complete upending of finance that we've been seeing, not just with the insane swings of Bitcoin and crypto and all these surges, but also with the whole Robinhood GameStop thing

and the kind of crowdsourcing of energy around stock purchases, the advent of SPACs, which are special purpose acquisition companies that are like the new hot thing in M&A. We don't need to get into all of that, but like there's a lot of interesting things happening. Yeah, but can I say something about that? In finance right now.

Like SPACs, like there was literally the Jay-Z story about how he started his own SPAC and all the stars were doing it. And then immediately it's wiped off the front pages of business when the NFT story breaks. Like you're not even hearing about them anymore. There's a lot of SPAC activity though. And I only know the very surface level

of like what all of that entails. But we're gonna talk about NFTs today. What is an NFT? So an NFT is, it's funny. I was riding bikes with a buddy of mine the other day, who's a big private equity guy. And I was like, let's talk about NFTs. And I started talking and he was like,

I don't know what that is. And I'm like, you're a money guy. Like, it's amazing. Like this finance guy, this was like news to him, which made me more enthusiastic about talking about it today. Because I think there's a lot of people that really have either never heard of this

or only caught a headline about a crazy price that was paid for a piece of digital art. So an NFT, NFT stands for non-fungible token. It's an asset verified using blockchain technology in which a network of computers records transactions and gives buyers proof of authenticity and ownership. The current boom is mostly for digital assets like images, gifts, songs, videos.

And it's different from crypto in that crypto is fungible. You can use it as a mode of, you can use it as a currency, as a method of exchange, but an NFT cannot be traded at equivalency. Cause it's unique, it's one of one. And in diving into the history of all of this, I mean, I don't know about you, but the first time that I came across an NFT

was watching Feels Good Man when it got to the rare Pepe's thing. And I was like, what is this? I didn't quite put it together there. And then it jumps to this story with Beeple, which we'll get into, but like that's when it kind of first hit my face. But now that you mentioned it,

yes, we heard about it in Feels Good Man, but I just didn't think about it in that context. I thought like, well, that's gotta be the craziest, most fringe thing ever. And in the period of time in between that documentary and now like it's become a completely different can of worms.

Now Matt should drop. I think that he is like, those guys did post something. I wish I'd looked at it before we were talking today, but they posted something on Instagram about how somebody did an NFT around something related to Pepe. And it garnered an amount of money that would have financed their entire movie.

Really? But Matt should make all of his artwork, even the print that he gave to the studio here to us, that should definitely be an NFT. Well, here it is, Rarus Pepe, most important NFT in art history. I'm looking it up right now and it sold for 320 grand. Wow, yeah.

So real money is getting exchanged for these things in diving into the history of all of this, like all things internet, of course, it started with cats because everything important about the internet begins with cats, right? And ends with cats, it's going to end with cats. It's going to end with cats, right? So the technology has been around since the mid 2010s,

but it didn't hit the mainstream until around 2017 with CryptoKitties, which was a site that allowed people to buy and breed, quote unquote breed, limited edition digital cats with cryptocurrency. Right, which sounds so weird, but fast forward to now. It sounds weird. And Christie's is auctioning Beeple's piece of art.

And it goes for, how much did it go for? 63, 69 million. 69 million. 69 million dollars. Yeah. And I was trying to wrap my head around what that means. Like what exactly is being conveyed in terms of ownership? What's interesting is there is no acquisition of trademark or copyright or even sole ownership. It's really bragging rights and knowledge that your copy,

if you purchase something is the quote unquote, authentic one, which is a mind bender, given that these works don't exist in the three-dimensional world. These are digital works that are easily replicated. Like you could just take that JPEG and copy it a bazillion times, slide it onto your desktop. But it's the idea that this is the authentic one

and it's locked on the blockchain. And you're the one who has the certificate of authenticity or ownership of that. The internet is the museum. The art is in the museum of the internet and everyone can see it because they're also at the museum, but you're the one that owns it. Right. Right.

Which is still weird. It's still, yeah. It's like it bends the noodle completely. Yeah, like why? Right? What's also interesting is that you can then sell portions of it like a stock. You could sell like a percentage of ownership of your NFT to a variety of people.

So it becomes like the mortgage. Well, it could, yeah, I mean, it becomes a financial asset in a very interesting way, I think. And as a 54 year old man trying to wrap his head around this it's very easy to be dismissive or cynical or just think this is all insanity. But when you think about it, this is the future.

And I think it portends much more than a change in how we think about the art world. It really brings up a broader conversation about what ownership means in the digital age as we slowly progress towards this matrix-like existence, exacerbated of course, by the pandemic where we're all at home and we're living our lives more and more online than ever, right?

So rather than going to the fancy store and buying a wristwatch that's gonna impress your friends, the digital version of that is owning a piece of artwork on the blockchain in the digital world because we're all interacting digitally now. Right, and it's interesting that you're saying that. It's like, because if it changes the way, like would you rather own a piece of a multinational company

or some digital art piece and trade that as your commodity? You know what I mean? Like it changes what commodities are too. It actually democratizes art ownership in ways if they're gonna start taking away pieces of the $69 million thing and you can own a piece of it. Right. And cause I don't think you can do that

with art on a wall anymore or before. I don't know, I think it's interesting. At the same time, it's kind of like the epitome of manufactured need. But that's what all consumer goods are on some level. Like if you look at, like, look at the companies that are thriving particularly during the pandemic. And they're the ones that are very good

at manufacturing demand by sort of messaging around limited supply, like a sneaker drop, right? Like the sneaker that goes for $500 because it's a limited run, costs the same to manufacturer as the one that's at the outlet store. It's like $5 of plastic or whatever. And you know, rubber.

And yet one is lauded and coveted. And the other one is, you know, basically considered, you know, not valuable at all. Why is that? It's all imagined. Right, like it's like baseball card values. Right. But baseball cards are limited

because there's only so many players. Right, because like the Honus Wagner card, which is the most valuable card, he only allowed a certain amount to be printed because he didn't wanna do business with the cigarette companies. And so because of that, it was this need that was created by the moment.

And there's only a few. And in all of their cases, there's so many, but only a few survived because people throw them away. And so then it becomes collectible or like the same idea with what's it called? Action figures and that kind of market. And in sneakers, similar idea. But in the digital landscape,

there's no limitation on supply. Right. Right, it could be anything. And right now all the attention is around art. And in particular, this work by this artist called Beeple. He's got this piece called the first 5,000 days. It's a collage of 5,000 images that he created like using some kind of, he's like a digital artist.

Each one of these little images that are a composite of this larger work are all very interesting in their own right. Christie's, the white shoe auction house, auctioned off, it's not the first time that they've auctioned off an NFT, but it's definitely the biggest one that they've done. And this thing went for 69.3 million.

It was purchased using Ethereum, which is the preferred crypto for NFTs in this NFT like economy. which is the preferred crypto for NFTs in this NFT like economy. But I mean, it just gets weirder by a guy called Medicovan. Like we don't even know his real name, right? Who claims that he got it at a steal. Right.

And that makes Beeple the third highest selling artist alive. Right, and no one had ever heard of Beeple. Right, I mean, street artists did. There were people in the digital art world knew who he was, but it's not like Jackson Pollock or Picasso. No, Picasso never did that well on one piece, I don't think, until he died.

He missed the NFT boom. Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head with the pandemic playing into this because art galleries were closed. Art dealers didn't know what to do. Artists didn't have an outlet to sell their wares in any way. NFT has created a way for digital artists to sell something without having to put it in a gallery

and not only sell something, but sell something at such a high price point that they never had before. And so now everyone's look, Pepe the frog, everyone's going for it, cause it's a gold rush. There's one aspect to it that is getting a little bit of buzz but not as much as like the big price tags. Something I never knew was native to blockchain and and all cryptocurrency

but just the fact that there is a huge carbon footprint associated with blockchain right which i never knew about really until i started looking into this uh basically the idea of mining which is what you do when you have when you're creating cryptocurrency or any sort of blockchain is uh you have a huge amount of computer power being sucked by this network of computers that are running millions and millions of cryptographs, which is basically checking each block in a chain

for sequencing errors, making sure they're all original and minting a transaction, a transaction meaning here's this new string of letters and numbers that is completely unique. Blockchain is being used, not just in art and in currency, it's been used, there's people who wanna use it for voting. There's people who wanna use it for, or it is being used in fisheries right now to be able to authenticate where a certain harvest

is coming from and which fishery, I know that's happening. So, the fact that it's being used all this way and there is a carbon footprint is interesting. Ethereum is really bad. It's not the worst of the cryptocurrencies, but it's really bad when it comes to its carbon footprint. And a Turkish digital artist named Memo Akten, I hope I'm pronouncing that um correctly with a phd in

artificial intelligence so a pretty smart dude right um he started seeing everything in the nfts and he was excited about it like everybody else and then he started looking into the crypto uh carbon footprint and what he found out was a single nft transaction demands the same amount of energy an average European union household would need for an entire month. Right, the average NFT. Right, the average NFT. So that's gonna run the gamut of course.

But the main point is being that like, there's a huge carbon footprint here and it just seems like, oh, it's all happening digitally. And what we don't see is what's powering this whole thing, which demands a tremendous amount of energy and computing power. Right, and the sum of all these 18,159 NFTs has consumed an average EU residents electricity consumption

of 2000 years, using a laptop for 54,000 years, boiling a kettle 78 million times. I mean, just crazy. This is all from Memo's great, great medium post. There's another artist who, a French artist who became a climate activist. His name is Jean-Yves Le Mercier. And he's based out of Belgium.

And he has been an artist for a long time, digital artist, has his own studio in Belgium. But when he became a climate activist, he used his art to kind of highlight issues with climate. And he dropped some NFTs. And he was approached by Memo and explained what was happening and how it kind of impacts. Cause he's taken his studio and he's done a lot of work on that studio

to make it as energy efficient as possible. And he found out that his first NFT drop consume more energy in 10 seconds than his studio had in almost two years. Wow. So like it's a crazy amount of energy. Yeah. Who knew?

For something that doesn't exist in the real world. For something that doesn't exist. That just bends the noodle even further to even like appreciate or understand that just because something is online, like we think it's just, there's a seamlessness to it. Yeah. And there's no kind of real world repercussions to it.

But there's real world repercussions, but there's no real world thing. Right, right, yeah, exactly. Which is even weirder. It's weirder. I do know that Ethereum is working or planning to cut this absurd energy consumption with plans to reduce it by 99%.

And I don't know enough about blockchain to know how that would be accomplished or how realistic that is. I would suspect though, with advances in technology and creating greater scale that they will figure this out at some point. Do you have a sense of where things stand with that? So basically the pushback from Ethereum and SuperRare,

which is one of the platforms where you can buy these NFTs is that if you read that, you're assuming that there's no carbon footprint associated with regular art dealing, which there is with miles of travel and airfare and all that. But in reality, that still would pale in comparison to what's happening.

Ethereum has a new software they've been working on. I think it's called 2.0. They wanna cut their carbon footprint. This new software will allow them to do that. It's not out yet. Two years ago, we were told it was happening. And now it's two years, now, now it's two years away from being two years away,

which is probably where it stands. So I don't, I'm not an expert in that. I can't really say when it'll be available, but they're not saying it's coming around the corner. So they're saying they're working on it. Right. Yeah. Hopefully they'll figure that out. And the idea is if it scales,

it should be able to be worked out. But that's like the excuse we use for a lot of things as human beings. It's, you know, yes, it's a problem now, but when it scales, it's gonna be a lot easier. This is something I talked about with Alex on the podcast the other day. That's an argument that comes up to poo poo renewables,

because when you have a renewable, you still have to sort of supplant the old technology. And there's gonna be a carbon footprint to that that's gonna exceed what it will eventually become if you just continue to push it forward. So that's part of the evolution as well. It's like a transaction cost that's built into it. I don't know.

In the case of Ethereum, I don't know enough about it. The super rare people are saying that same thing is that like people are using the climate deal as an excuse to not change the world. But my question would be, do you know how this world changes from here? Because what happens is, it's the unintentional consequences of good intentions.

Like I'm not saying the intention is to ruin the environment. I'm saying it's an unintended consequence of something that they think is great for the world. And that is like basically the recipe for a lot of disasters that we've had. So, the idea of thinking a hundred years down the line is not something that's happening in Silicon Valley.

Yeah. Right. And never has in America really, since the native cultures are kind of subjugated. Cause that, thinking what happens after you're gone, three generations, seven generations later, right? Seven generations. That's something that we don't do. It would be nice to start doing that

considering where we're at in the environment and climate crisis. The energy around NFTs has been in the context of art and the art world. But I think what's more interesting, that's just like NFT 1.0, which is where we're at right now with pieces being auctioned. There's all these sites where you can,

they call it minting. Like you can upload your work and then hold it out for sale or auction, all these sites like foundation, foundation.app. But we're also seeing Twitter posts being turned into NFTs. Jack Dorsey has turned his first tweet into an NFT and it's at like 2.5 million for charity. Logan Paul did a run of like collectible cards,

and musicians, Deadmau5, Grime, Steve Aoki, Kings of Leon, 3LOW, this guy like got 11.7 million on NFTs related to like an old album where he was also providing access to new music and like a vinyl version of some of his work. So I think that we're gonna see it expand into other areas of creative expression beyond just like digital visual arts.

So like the first episode of the Rich Roll podcast? And I think, well, it's funny cause I thought about that. Like Kevin Rose just launched a new podcast called Modern Finance, which is all about like crypto and NFTs. And he made that initial episode in NFT. And I thought, oh, it'd be cool.

Maybe I should make the very first episode of this podcast in NFT. The environmental considerations that get packed into that are probably going to prevent me from doing that right now, but it would be cool, right? Just to experiment and see what would happen. I really wanna understand the environment implications of that before I do that.

But I think where we're gonna see value is in artists or creators who create an NFT that isn't just the thing itself, but also packed into it are all these other kind of benefits. Like if you're a band or a musician, if you purchase this limited run of NFTs, you also get a backstage pass or you'll get access to the new music first or all these other things that can be built into the blockchain. Because part of what the benefit of the blockchain is, is you can create these contracts, right? That work in lockstep with technology.

So when X happens, then Y gets this. And as we see this kind of ecosystem become more robust and mature, I think the broader implications on culture beyond just, oh, this painting, this digital work of art sold for this much is gonna be impacting all of us. And I think to kind of telescope out even more,

it's an interesting philosophical exploration of what ownership means. And we were talking about supply and demand. Like how do we think about the material world and the digital world in terms of our relationship to it? And this is bringing up a new way of seeing all of that. And I find that to be like endlessly fascinating. I mean, there are these guys called Burnt Banksy

that own Banksy paintings, at least one of them, and like burned the banks, like scanned a work of Banksy, burned the original, and then minted the scan as an NFT and sold it for like three times the value of the actual original physical three-dimensional piece of art. So what does that tell you about how we think about ownership and value?

What does it tell you? Well, I think that it's changing. I think that it is an indication that we are inching closer and closer to the matrix. Like we're entering into this liminal space between the material world and the digital world where we're grappling with how we want to live our lives. Are we living them here in the here and now

in the tactile world, or are we living them as avatars in this digital space? And the pandemic has accelerated something that I think was an inevitability. But the fact that we're seeing more people value these things in the digital space more than they value things in the real world is a very interesting concept.

It's fascinating because like really in the end, you and I can still go and see these same things online with a click of the mouse. Right. But the argument is you can see, you can do that with a click of the mouse. Right. And, and. But the argument is you can see, you can do that with the Mona Lisa as well. Well, you have to go to Louvre.

Well, yeah, but you can see a JPEG of it. Right. Like, why would you, why do people line up in front of the Mona Lisa and take a photo of it? It's Leonardo da Vinci's charisma. Is that what it is? You know what I mean? Like, like there's plenty of photos of it. It's, it'sci's charisma. Is that what it is? You know what I mean?

Like there's plenty of photos of it. It's yeah, what really- And why would you wanna own that painting when there are images of it? And you can eat with one click, you can enjoy an image of them. Right, yeah. So how is this different?

It's like our art is freighted with history and stories, right? So we're told things about where a piece of art comes from and who made it and all that together creates certain amount of value, plus the rarity aspect of it. And I guess the same thing is true in the digital world. I just have a hard time.

Cause you can also get an NFT of sports highlights and they're selling for a lot of money, like a lot of money, like millions of dollars in NBA highlights. Right, the NBA. So you a lot of money, like a lot of money, like millions of dollars in NBA highlights. Right, the NBA. So you can own a highlight, like a poster. Like I used to put a Michael Jordan poster on my wall.

I can now own a Michael Jordan highlight in NFT. But what is that? Like I can go on YouTube. What is the value of being the original certified authentic owner of that clip? In my estimation, it's zero. Like that does nothing for me in my life. Could the argument, and I'm just saying this

from a perspective of being a devil's advocate, how is that different from owning the Mona Lisa when it's a ubiquitous image? Yeah, that's a good question. It goes back to feeling and ego more than anything else, right? The ownership ego? Yeah. Yeah.

I think there's also a crypto punk sensibility that's at play here too. Like let's blow up the system and we're gonna, Mr. Ethereum gajillionaire is gonna buy this digital work for an insane amount of money as like an FU to everything you ever thought about the art world. Right. Because he can.

And that's very punk rock. It is. And there's something cool about that also, like let's blow up the system and just reimagine this entire structure. It's all online and digital and it's unhackable. Cause that's the idea is like a blockchain. That's why it's good is that it's unhackable, right?

You can't hack it. But it's also important to understand that this is very early days and there's no question that this is like a crazy bubble. It's like internet 1.0, right? Like this is gonna blow up. There's some people that are gonna make a lot of money and there's gonna be a lot of people

that are gonna lose a lot of money and this will sort itself out and over time mature into a more kind of robust ecosystem. But right now I find it to be very, like if you were gonna spend an insane amount of money on a digital work of art right now, like that is so risky. I agree. Crazy risky, right? So Seth Godin wrote about this.

I don't know if you saw his piece. He's basically saying the title is NFTs are a dangerous trap, which is basically walking you through this bubble idea. Yeah, he thinks it's a bubble. And there's another aspect of it that's dangerous in that even though the NFT itself will be certified as one of one,

you actually don't know if the seller is the creator. So there's a rights aspect to it because what's, what's lagging behind is the authenticity of the seller. Right. Because right now people are using, you know, avatars and handles and you don't know who they are.

But I do think what, if there's another thing to celebrate about all of this, it's the empowerment of the creator, right? Like the artist no longer has to be hat in hand. It puts the creator of artistic works in more of control over the destiny of the work that they create. And it allows them to get value for it. And this can be anything,

like you could write a series of short stories or a book and do a limited run as NFTs. Like there's so many different variations on this that I think we're gonna start seeing. So this is just the very beginning. I think it's only gonna continue to get more and more fascinating. So like the on the road scroll as NFT.

On the road scroll, what is that? You know that there was a famous, Jack Kerouac glued or taped pages together so that when he was writing high on Benzedrine, his first draft of on the road, it like came spooling out of him in a matter of like, you know, a couple of weeks or something. And he had it on a scroll so that he never had

to add type paper to his typewriter. And he just kept going, kept going. And that scroll ended up getting edited down over the course of months or over a year. And it became the manuscript, but that scroll itself was, and the scroll itself was republished eventually, but it was bought by a collector. The guy who owns the Indianapolis Colts bought it.

And he, and the scroll has all the characters as the people who they really were, Jack and Neil Cassidy and all those. And so that scroll is the original because it's the one of one. But that's the antithesis of what we're talking about because that is like a relic that exists in the real world. But you were saying like an author could do that with his first manuscript, could mint it.

Or anything like an author right now could just say, I'm not gonna publish my book with a traditional publisher. I'm gonna make it an NFT. And whoever wants to buy it can buy it. And then those- Like if you're, what if Malcolm Gladwell said, my next book is gonna be an NFT. And then on pub day, he uploads it,

he mints it on one of these sites, and then that's it. I mean, it exists in the digital world so you can copy it, right? But who, you know, would that at auction, would that go for a lot of money? I bet it would. Just one of one, just publish it,

one copy of his book? Yeah. And then let it replicate out? Yeah, and then let it replicate out and see what would happen. Would he still have the rights to- Yeah, because he's not transferring copyright. Okay. So it doesn't give the owner,

the buyer permission to replicate it. Just have the- Only a certification that they have the authentic original copy of this. Even though originality is like the wrong word because something that exists in ones and zeros that can be duplicated with absolute precision begs the question of what original means to begin with.

You are bending my needle right now. Do you think if Kerouac was around now that he would be into crypto? And like NFTs? Do you think if Kerouac was around now that he would be into crypto? And like NFTs? No, I don't. No, I don't. All right. Maybe we've talked enough about this for now.

Anyway, I'm gonna be keeping an eye on this. I think it's super interesting. And this came up with my conversation with Kevin Roos too. Cause he was like, I wanna learn more about this. I wanna write about this. I was like, you should write a book about NFTs and release it as an NFT. And it would be like this weird Charlie Kaufman adaptation,

like meta experiment. Was he into it? I don't know, maybe, we'll see. You know, it does show that like we had talked about on the phone earlier, Rich is like, it's the cleaving of culture from you're right about that. Like the crowbar of the digital world is cleaving culture from the original owners.

So the creators, but creators narrowly defined like the creators that choose certain new mediums are the beneficiaries. And then people like your buddy, the hedge funder, or my friend, the screenwriter or whoever, these people who are used to things the way they used to be. And all of a sudden they don't even know, PewDiePie on YouTube is the most powerful person in media

or whatever, or Joe Rogan is in podcasts. And when they get hip to it, that train has already left the station and they're gonna do everything that is in their power to hold onto the reins of the traditional mechanisms because all of this is a threat to business as usual. And that's frightening. If you're like, when I see Christie's

doing what they just did with people, like they're trying to be current and modern with where all of this is going. But if you're the competitor stodgy auction house and you're like, NFTs, that's bullshit. We're not doing that. You're gonna get pushed out and antiquated pretty quickly. Because this is where culture is heading.

And the fact that this has been around for 10 years, it's now hitting this really interesting and strange inflection point, but the blockchain is not going away and it's gonna continue to revolutionize so many of, it's not just crypto and it's not just art. Like it's gonna have massive implications on how we do pretty much everything.

Yeah, it's already is in different ways. This is in this way, it's like, it still has that, that whiff of individuality, individualism, not individuality, individualism of look at me, look what I own and which the internet is really good at. Right, I know. Can you imagine having enough Ethereum lying around that you could just shed $69 million worth of it

for a piece of digital art? I mean, how much Ethereum does Medicoven have if you can do that, right? Well, less now. Which is insane. Less now. Because if you were hoarding crypto way back in the day, like the amount of money that a lot of these people

have right now is absolutely bananas. Do you have crypto? No, I had like three or four Bitcoin years ago when I picked them up for like under, when it was like under a thousand and then I was broke and I had to get rid of all of it to like pay some bills. But I never, and I have friends way back who were always telling me, you've got it.

You've got, you should be, you should be in your Bitcoin. You know, it's always that like, you know, FOMO meets it's too late because now it's so high, but I think it's gonna continue to go up. I know when there was a period where we bought a little bit of crypto and we were like, we don't want even Ethereum was like, it was so high. Like you end up with like a couple of Ethereum

or something like that. Yeah, or percentages of Bitcoin. Instead we're like, no, let's find the one that might pop. So we have Ripple, but it hasn't popped. Well, I have other friends that spend way too much time just watching the graphs all day and trading in all these smaller cryptos and then putting it into Bitcoin

and it monopolizes all their time and energy. Exactly. Anyway. I'd rather be in the ocean. Right. Well, you're yeah, all right, okay, boomer. That's the ultimate okay boomer. All right, let's switch gears here.

We have a little news piece here that I know you wanted to share about. Oh, yes. Just a few minutes about it. I don't know if you've been keeping tabs, but there are mass protests in Myanmar. They've been going on for quite a while. Myanmar is a country in Southeast Asia.

It borders Thailand, China, India, Bangladesh. And I've covered it quite a bit. There's been humanitarian crisis in Myanmar for generations. Basically what happened after World War II, you know, it was an English colony after World War II. General Aung San tried to get all of these different ethnicities that were all part of this country called Burma at the time to come together

in a democratic self-governing way. And he got all these different warring militias and ethnicities to come together and do it with the majority Burman population. And then he was murdered right on the eve of the constitution kind of happening. And ever since then, the military has controlled the country in various degrees.

And for much of our lifetimes, it's been a straight up military dictatorship. I've covered it in that these, the same military has been running people off their native lands and exploiting the natural resources for private gain. And when I mean private gain, I mean, they're actually take, the generals are actually

taking money and just filling their bank accounts with it. And the crisis, anyway, so fast forward to 2007, 2008, You know, the crisis, anyway, so fast forward to 2007, 2008, there was a big uprising. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time and she was the freedom fighter and there were mass protests then, but they were stomped down pretty quickly by the military government.

But a few years later, they decided to allow for voting again. And so they've allowed the political parties to engage in debate. And 25%, I believe of the parliamentary seats are reserved for the military, but everyone else is competing and voting. That was the way it was.

And Aung San Suu Kyi, this hero was elected president. She's been president ever since then. But then on Februarybruary 1st after another landslide victory for the nld national league of democracy which is su chi's party um she was arrested along with other leaders in the nld um and the military took over again for the first time in years and uh and basically they've been using all sorts of cyber security um technology to crack down on pro-democracy activists and party leaders.

And people have taken to the streets ever since February 1st. And at first there was tolerance of these peaceful protests, but then rubber bullets came out, tear gas came out, and now they're literally shooting into crowds. And dozens of people have been murdered by security forces. And that's where it's at right now. What is America's foreign policy stance towards Myanmar?

So for years when the military was in charge and Suu Kyi was under house arrest for, Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San. And so she was this hero that came, that rose up at different times to speak truth to power. She became this, she won the Nobel priest prize. As president, she's had her own problems because of what's been happening in with the,

why am I spacing on the Rohingya population? She was in power when the Myanmar military was running the Rohingya off their land. And she didn't speak up for the Rohingya at all. And all of a sudden people were calling for her Nobel prize back. So she's kind of, she sided with the military in certain ways.

And she was doing that, I think, to preserve peaceful power sharing, but it didn't work. So not only did she sell her soul, but then she ends up getting under house arrest. And so for years when she was under house arrest, the first time, it was a sanctions policy. So we sanctioned the Myanmar, we weren't helping them whatsoever.

We were helping with some humanitarian stuff in the ethnic states that were at war, because there was active war. Like there were militias in Shan State or Karin State where I visited, many times going to see displaced people in their displaced people's camps, spending time with rebel military. There was active war and there was some aid,

but for largely our stance with the Myanmar government was sanctions. And then when Obama was in power and they gave power back to the people at in various degrees, at first it was like 50% of the parliamentary seats, then it was 25%, the Obama was engaging and not just Obama, but Europe too.

Europe started engaging with Myanmar. Myanmar's economy was growing and it was actually a really vibrant place to be because the people are wonderful and they want to engage and they wanna grow and they just want freedom. And now it looks like it's coming back to where it used to be, where certain people get rich and everyone else suffers.

And what is, is the UN doing anything about this? Right now, everyone's sitting on their hands, like what can you do short of invading? You know, like what can you do? And we never did invade because China has interests there. You know, for the UN to come up with a peacekeeping force, you need to get, the UN Security Council needs to vote in favor.

And any one dissenting vote kills the resolution. So that means China. China does business with Burma or Myanmar and China's not alone, but yeah. So how does this play out in your estimation? It's a good question. I'm kind of flagging it just so people kind of pay attention to what's happening.

Thanks to right now at first after the coup and I think it's still happening, the news got cut off, cable got cut off, internet access was spotty. You have to find it. In all of Yangon, the main major city, there was one hotel that interacts internet access for a little bit. I don't know, I've been thinking of the business owners there

and what they're going through and what they're thinking. Like imagine sinking your life savings into a business there. You can't leave because there's no money to leave with. Yeah. Is there an egress though? Are there refugees that are fleeing? I have not heard of mass refugees fleeing yet,

but if they do, it'll be the Thailand border. That's how I always accessed it. I would go to Thailand and then get into the ethnic provinces from there, which a lot of journalists do. And you can do it legally. So we'll see. There's already refugee camps on the Thailand border

that have stood for 20, 30 years, but people have left them and gone back and started businesses and done well. But now it's all coming back around and those same villages that people went back to are getting overrun by military again now. Right, all right, well, we'll keep an eye on this. Yeah, sorry, I feel like I'm talking too loud.

I think you're all right. Okay. Jason will modulate you. You'll end up sounding like butter. Always. Let's do some listener questions. Let's do it. Hey, guys.

This is Will from Portland, Oregon. I had a question. I was vegan for a while. I was inspired by rich when you first started the podcast uh read your memoir and and all that and did my first marathon about seven years ago shortly after my father passed away and as life happens you kind of just lose all motivation and stop being vegan stopped running completely and i'm a lot heavier than i used to be and i just wanted to know for heavier folks who are trying to get back into a game or just start it, there's not a lot of information out there of how to do it.

It's hard to ego check yourself and know that you can't do what you once used to do. I just wanted to know if you guys had any advice on starting over for folks who have kind of lost it all and are trying to grasp the reality of where we're at and where we once were and just the mind game that that plays sometimes. Feel free to play this clip. Thank you guys so much.

I love listening to you guys. Big fan. Bye. Thanks for your question, Will. It's a good question. I think it's a question that a lot of people can relate to. And I have a few thoughts on this. I mean, first of all,

the only day better than yesterday to begin something like this is today, right? And the good news is you've done it before. So you actually already know what to do. You mentioned that there's not a lot of information out there on how to do it. I disagree. I think there's plenty of information.

I don't think that we're thirsting for information that doesn't exist on how to make this kind of transformation. So information, in my opinion, you did this this before you read my book, you went vegan, you ran a marathon, like information is not your malfunction, action is your problem. And I think that you're a victim of your own kind of shame at the moment. So my suggestion is to find a way to bury that shame spiral

and to put an end to the pity party and just begin by putting one foot in front of the other. What is right in front of you to do right now? Can you go out the door and go for a walk? What is your next meal gonna be? And I think with that, with those tiny steps, you start to create a little bit of momentum

and there's huge power in momentum. If you can create just the tiniest positive change that's a little bit different from your daily MO, that will help free you from this position that you're in right now, which is being stuck in a negative cycle. So the focus should be on what can you do right now? You can't run a marathon.

You haven't been vegan for a while. You put on a bunch of weight. You can go for a walk. You can eat a salad and you can celebrate those tiny wins until you slowly get more emotionally connected to this arc of improvement. And with that, the path will present itself, right?

You don't need somebody to deliver you an information packet with your plan for the next two years. What you need to do is to take action. And I think at odds with that right now, this enemy that you're facing is comparing yourself to this person that you were seven years ago. Comparison is the thief of joy. So stop comparing yourself to your past self

or to other people. It's this idea of not training where you think you should be like if you go out for a jog and you get tired after a block and you feel like you have to walk and then you're beating yourself up because I used to run a marathon and look at how much weight I put on. It's not about that.

It's not about training where you think you should be. It's about accepting and embracing where you are right now and doing what you are capable of doing, because that's the only way that you get anything done or make any progress. So you have everything you need. And I think you need to disabuse yourself of this idea that you're going to stay in your status quo until you experience some windfall of motivation. Like you're waiting to be motivated. Like you've said,

I just don't feel motivated. I don't have any motivation. And I think when you're in that mindset, you're waiting to feel motivated to do something. And that's not how it works. Like that's in fact a trap. You don't need to be motivated to make change. You just need to do. Like mood follows action, which is what I always say.

So a day at a time, just like they say in 12 step, like what can you do today? Can you eat a little bit better? Can you move your body in a way that you didn't yesterday? Can your head hit the pillow with a little bit more self-esteem because you exercise some self-care and some self-love by moving the needle ever so slightly in the right direction.

And when you start to string some days together of doing just that, it doesn't take long before you wake up a little bit more excited for that walk that turns into a jog that eventually over time will turn into a run and just might bring you back to the starting line of another marathon. I love it.

It reminds me of like, baseball season around the corner, it reminds me of like those hitters that are in a slump. What do they do is they just focus on their approach to each at bat, because you can't control getting a hit, because there's so many bad bounces or the way the ball, you just don't know.

Balls and strikes are called differently every day, but can you change your approach to each at bat and then start stringing some good ones together and then eventually you start seeing a couple hits and the momentum turns and your confidence turns. Yeah, I mean, I just can't stress the importance of tiny little actions. Like if Will's running shoes are in the closet,

pull them out of the closet and put them in the hallway. Like if all you did was that, well, that's more than you did yesterday. Next time, put them next to your bed. The next day, like, why don't you put them on when you sit up in the morning and like, you know, walk to your front door. Like, what can you do?

And then do those tiny things that are very digestible and doable. Count them as wins and build on that momentum. That's great advice. And the fact that you're listening well shows that you're still, your head's still in the game. Right, of course. Yeah.

All right, we're going to Europe for this one. Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Tanya from Lucerne, Switzerland. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. So I've been living plant-based for over five years. I try to mostly buy things like in hand. I always love to hear your thoughts on this topic. So I've been living plant-based for over five years. I try to mostly buy things secondhand. I always stop to question if I don't want to buy something that I really need. And I do this partly because I'm really concerned for our planet's future and its resources,

but also because I have a one-year-old kid, and I really want him to grow up living consciously and making deliberate choices. So I try really hard to remind myself that I'm in control only of myself. I often struggle with older people from other generations who live very frivolously with seemingly little concern about the impact they're having on the planet. I know that grandparents can have a massive influence on their grandchildren. So have you found good talking points to address this or do you try to not think about it too much and let people live how they

want to? Thanks so much. Yes, it's okay for you to play this on the podcast. Thanks guys. Take care. Tanya from Lucerne. Yes, Lucerne is the house. Isn't that where they make the butter? Is that where they make the butter? Is it? Shout out Lucerne. I think so. Thanks for your question. This is tricky. I think it's important to, of course, make the best choices that are in alignment with your values and that's what Tanya's doing.

She's conscientious about her needs and her wants and tries to make sure that her consumer choices are in alignment with her values. And that's something to be celebrated. And certainly that's healthy modeling for your child because it's not about what you say, it's about what you do, it's about your behavior. But I also think this question has a lot to do

with controlling the controllables, understanding what you can control and what you can't control, and really having a healthy mindset around how you calibrate all of that. As a parent, you lead by example and action. Again, you model this behavior for your kids, but it's also important to not be a martyr,

especially if part of your interest is in trying to inspire the next generation. If you're suffering, then that doesn't become an aspirational way to live your life. And ultimately that's gonna set you up for your kid to just rebel saying, I don't wanna live my life like that. That doesn't look like any fun.

I wanna thrive and why was I deprived of all these things? I'm gonna go out into the world and get them. Like kids are always going to differentiate in that way. And they're gonna wanna explore the opposite of what they've been presented with. So you have to be mindful about that a little bit. And I think it's important to not overly in an unhealthy way,

attach to how your child's moral compass will evolve. And I think it's important to not overly in an unhealthy way attach to how your child's moral compass will evolve. And I say that as a parent of four and two teenagers right now, like I've experienced a variety of permutations on this. Everything from, we love the way that you parented us and we wanna model our own value system based upon how we were raised to,

I don't want anything to do with this. Get that vegan butter out of here. And a lot of that just has to do with how they come out of the womb. You know what I mean? But my point being that you only have- The ultimate blockchain. You only have so much control over these things, right?

Yeah, exactly. The ultimate blockchain. And I guess I would also say that I can appreciate how it can at times feel dispiriting that perhaps you feel like you're not making enough of a difference. Like you make these small choices in your life, but how much is this really moving the needle?

But I do think they hold symbolic power and they do model for other people in your orbit, like what's important to you. And it sends the message out that this is something of value to you and perhaps would be a value to other people. But because there's so little we can control in the kind of climate trajectory of our planet,

there are other ways that you can contribute through activism or charity or organizing, because ultimately the real change, the big change is going to have to be systemic. And that's gonna come through legislative and regulatory changes, not by a few isolated people sacrificing all of their happiness and wellbeing

on the altar of like martyr sacrifice. So I think it's important to thinking about all of this to reframe how you approach the mindset of your parents, I assume your parents, your child's grandparents, this idea that you're gonna change their minds or that you think- I think it's in-laws. Is it in-laws? I'm sensing in-laws.

We don't know. We don't know what's going on in Lucerne. No. Is it butter or in-laws? I think it's in-laws, I'm sensing in-laws. We don't know. We don't know what's going on in Lucerne. No. Is it butter or in-laws? I think it's in-laws. You know, that's, you're setting yourself up for a losing battle there. Like these people are set in their ways.

It's very unlikely that you're gonna get them to see things differently. And you don't wanna leave yourself, you know, frustrated and irreparably eroding a relationship that is perhaps healthy in other ways. I think that you have the opportunity as your child gets older to contextualize where your grandparents are coming from

and their life experience for your child as he gets older. But in the meantime, all I have is like my own kind of approach to all of this, which is less about being in the business of trying to change other people's minds and more about just being a lighthouse. Like if you could just be a beacon of positive energy and positive change and living your life

in accordance with your values, that's much more attractive. And I also think magnetic and powerful than bitching about how other people don't get it. No doubt. You have in-laws. I have, I don't really. Do they live in Lucerne?

I don't really, I have, my wife is like Jason Bourne. She comes from nowhere. Oh really, interesting. She's got a past. So no, we're not really super, I do have in-laws, but it's not like it's a close thing. They're all in Australia, but she has in-laws.

I'll tell you that, my wife has in-laws. Right. So maybe she should be sitting here. No, I think, and she's vegan, but it's different. Like my parents aren't trying to yet feed. He's obviously still nursing and he's just getting into people food. And so at some point he'll be spoiled with ice cream and things that she won't feed him in that exact way, I'm sure. But that's not really on our plate.

I think this is interesting. really on our plate. I think this is interesting. I think you made a really good point in that all the people I know involved in environmental activism from a consumer perspective, like the marine plastic pollution people, like the real professionals, Five Gyres and other organizations like that, they will tell you the fight is upstream. It's not about learning how to do everything with reusable. It's not about like, you can't erase all plastic from your life. It's about stopping the production of future plastic, stopping those plastic plants.

Exactly like you were saying, the fight, the changing of the world is upstream. It's not necessarily in your daily life. Now, on the other hand, I can see how having a certain ethos is a lifestyle in and daily life. Now, on the other hand, I could see how having a certain ethos is a lifestyle in and of itself. And it can actually be a confidence booster for you, but you're flagging that it could also be repellent

for the child as the child grows. Child's one years old. Right. It's not a problem yet. But like- More will be revealed. More will be revealed. But I think those are all interesting points and great points.

And you know, the boomers are the boomers right what are you gonna do boomers gonna boom boom boomers good boom all right let's go to shout out boomers we love you let's go to christopher from boston all right hi my name is christopher hicks i am currently living in boston massachusetts but i'm from montana but nonetheless big fan uh i'm an alcoholic and in recovery for quite a while, but nonetheless, catching the endurance bug and finding endless inspiration from your story. Right now, currently training for the RUT 50K, a sky running ultra endurance race in Big Sky, Montana. Some friends and I are racing from around the country. But my question is how to

optimize training for altitude. The race is actually ranging between 7,000 up to just over 11,000 feet. But living at sea level, how is it that I could optimize my training here at sea level in order to benefit my race coming up in September? So anyways, any tips, tricks, or just opinions that you have, that would be great. Thank you. Good question, Christopher. Thanks for that. There's a couple things that you can great. Thank you. Good question, Christopher. Thanks for that. There's a couple of things that you can do. Some are expensive and some are free.

And I'm sure you've probably already heard of these. I mean, you can of course purchase an altitude tent, right? And sleep in that every night. What is an altitude tent? You haven't watched Alexi Pappas' movie. No, I have not. Track Town. Yeah. Her whole bedroom is set up as an altitude tent? You haven't watched Alexi Pappas' movie. No, I have not. Track town. Yeah.

Her whole bedroom is set up as an altitude tent in this movie. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's basically a pressurized tent that you can put in your bedroom and sleep in that approximates what it's like to be at altitude by like, you know, it's a reduction in the amount of oxygen basically

that acclimates you to altitude. And then when you go out and you go out of the tent and then you train, you're obviously at sea level. So you get this boost. So it's the back and the forth. Like a decompression chamber kind of. Sort of like that, yeah. And I actually don't know how expensive those things are.

I just assume they're probably crazy expensive. Hardcore endurance junkies swear by them. Of course, you could take a weekend trip to altitude and try to get some training in at 7,000 feet. I don't know if that's possible, especially during a pandemic. And obviously that's something I'm sure that's occurred to you at some point.

So I don't know how helpful it is for me to mention that. Another thing that some people have expressed positive results from is wearing a training mask, which is basically like it kind of looked, we're all wearing masks right now, but it has like a gauge on it and it reduces the amount of airflow that you get. I think it's just trainingmask.com, but. Yeah, there's running in your mask alone could do,

could you do some of that, right? Basically, but there is a difference between, at true altitude, there's a lower oxygen content in what you're breathing, but you're not restricting airflow. And there's something different about restricting the airflow while the oxygen ratio remains the same that scientists have basically said,

this is a pretty ineffective way of approximating altitude training. There's an article on train right about this. I'll link it up in the show notes that basically do altitude training mass work for endurance athletes. The essential conclusion is really not so much. It might be good for mental training though,

to like feel what that feels like, to have a little bit of a reduced, just to sort of prepare yourself for that experience. But short of an altitude tent or being able to train at altitude, there are certain things that you can do in training. You might wanna over-index a little bit more than you would ordinarily on interval training and hill training.

You're training for a 50K trail race. It's probably a pretty zone two approach that wouldn't require a lot of interval training or like hill repeats, high intensity stuff. But there are indications that weaving that kind of work into your daily routine, not your daily routine, your weekly routine can have some benefits in how your body's going to process altitude.

I also would suggest arriving at the event as early as possible, as many days in advance as you possibly can. What would you say would be ideal? Well, seven know, as many days in advance as you possibly can. What would you say would be ideal? Well, seven days, it really takes seven days to acclimate. You may not be able to go a whole week ahead of time to reap that benefit, but every day, I think is gonna be a little bit better if you can do that

so that you can get used to it a little bit. I also think you're gonna have to boost your hydration and your caloric intake at altitude. Your needs are gonna be different. So over-indexing on hydration and carbs is gonna be important. And short of all of those things, as you just go out and train on a daily basis,

anticipate that the suffering you're gonna experience is gonna be different than what you're experiencing in Boston running around Massachusetts. It's gonna be harder. So just start to wrap your head mentally around that and adjust your expectations accordingly because nothing really compares to training at altitude or racing at altitude.

So you gotta let go of whatever goals you have around pace and time and focus on exertion, right? Because that's really the only metric that's important in trying to train at sea level and race at altitude, right? Like whatever your Garmin says about your pace, like is meaningless because it's just gonna be a lot harder and you're gonna suffer. Is your hydration 2X, would you say?

That's a good question. I think it's a personal thing. I wouldn't say 2X off the bat. I think it's something that is gonna be different for everybody, but just to be mindful and ahead of it, I think is gonna be important. Cause you get that lung burn when you first run at altitude, right?

It's the worst. And then you feel like you're the only one who's feeling that, like there must be something wrong with me or I didn't train or this is gonna be terrible. So I think just mentally, you know, preparing yourself for that is something that would be wise to do. And if he gets there seven days early,

how many runs should he get in? Well, I think you should go, if he gets there seven days early, how many runs should he get in? Well, I think you should go, if you get there seven days early, go to the highest point that you can, because there's probably a variety in elevations, you know, once you get to the venue. So the more time that you can spend at the highest altitude possible

and doing your training leading up to the event, I think will be beneficial as well. Fair enough. Cool. All right. We did well. Fair enough. Cool. All right. We did it. We done did it. How are you doing?

How do you feel? I feel good, man. I feel good, man. Do you feel like a podcaster? I do. I feel like I could be NFT'd right now. That's how I feel. Just NFT your body?

Just NFT me. Yeah. You could do a digital scan. If it wasn't so environmentally- 3D digital scan. If it wasn't so environmentally. 3D print you. If it wasn't so environmentally intensive, I would just become an NFT. Well, that is the future

that we're all looking at right now. Right. Especially if you read Kevin Roos' new book, Future Proof. I can't wait to read that book. Yeah, you should read it. And I might NFT one breath at some point. That's really at odds with your environmental activism. I'm not gonna do that.

I can't see that happening. Unless you buy carbon offsets, right? You can always balance it out. The other thing about NFTs is there's all these hidden costs as well, because you have to pay for the computing costs, I think. So people who've sold stuff or bought stuff then get these bills that they didn't expect for-

Oh, because you have to keep it going? No. I don't know exactly. I read something about that. I should just stop talking because I really don't know what I'm talking about. Signing off. Let's sign off.

We'll be back here in two weeks. Until then, you can find Adam on Twitter and on Instagram at Adam Skolnick. I'm at Rich Roll. Leave us a message if you'd like your question fielded on a future edition of Roll On. The number is 424-235-4626. Check out the show notes on the episode page.

We'll link up tons of articles on all the stuff that we talked about today. You can find that at richroll.com. Again, please subscribe to the show on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the places. And that's it. I wanna thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for producing today's podcast,

as well as audio engineering it and doing all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Blake Curtis for videoing the show for YouTube and all the clips that we share. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers on portraits duty today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships

and theme music by my boys, Tyler Trapper and Harry. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for the love. See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome episode. I don't even know what we're putting up next, but it's gonna be good, I think. Will it be one of one?

It will be a one of one, yes. What if you just made everything that you did on the internet in NFT? Like every tweet, every Facebook post, every Instagram. Sounds exhausting. Just NFT your entire experience. Thank you.