The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On Redux

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Roll On is Back! After a 6-month break, my trusty co-pilot Adam Skolnick and I reunite to talk shop and answer your questions. Specific topics include burnout, sabbaticals, the latest in AI, current fitness regimens & favorite movies of 2023 before announcing the release of Voicing Change III and answering listener questions. It’s been too long. We missed you and are delighted to return to your earholes! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: 15% OFF the Sauna Blanket with code RICHROLL 👉boncharge.com Faherty: 20% OFF my favorite styles w/ code RR20  👉fahertybrand.com/richroll AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 FREE AG1 Travel Packs 👉 drinkAG1.com/richroll Peak Design: Get 20% OFF backpacks & more  👉peakdesign.com/richroll Eight Sleep: $200 off the Pod 3 Cover 👉Eightsleep.com/richroll  On: Get 10% off shoes & more  👉on.com/richroll

Hey, everybody, Roll On is back, and it's coming right up, but first. Hey, everybody, back to Roll On. I can't believe I'm here. It's good to be here. Many tears out in the world from the passionate Roll Oners out there. Yes.

They're checking on me. They're like, are you okay? What's going on? Is there a rift? You know, it's like a Reddit thread about like have Rich and Adam had a falling out. Well, all of you people, we heard you, we're here. I do have a little gift for you.

You do? Yeah, I wanna kick this off with a little special something, something. How about that? I asked ChatGPT to write a little poem to welcome you back to the show. And I'm gonna read this poem right now. This is what ChatGPT came up with.

To Adam, my friend across waves and words, we blend. A bond like ours, no distance can ever end. Six moons have passed the air without your verse. Today we reunite our spirits to immerse. Your heart, a compass to the ocean's vast embrace. With a scuba mask, not goggles, you trace. The depths where silent stories awake. In the blue expanse, your soul finds its take.

A scribe of life's rugged untold tales with goggins you've journeyed through storms and gales can't hurt me never finished your penned might in each word your essence your fight adam my friend through words and tides we roam. In the vast podcast sea, we found a home. Welcome back to the mic where your stories unfold. Together again, our tales to be told. Let this poem be a gift, a token of my esteem for the adventure shared and those yet to gleam. With every word, every dive may you find the joy,

the peace, the wonder entwined. Now that's pretty good. That's a good close. What do you think about that? I like that. It took a couple iterations and versions. Chat GPT can come to my padlock. I know, that's not bad.

I could have passed that off as my own. I should give a quick nod to the guys at Hard Fork because they did a version of this on their show recently, which gave me the idea. Shout out to those guys. I love that show and I love those guys. I also asked ChatGPT to come up with some titles for this poem.

The first tranche of these weren't that great, sort of beneath the surface to Adam, the ocean scribe, things like that, echoes of the deep celebrating Adam's return. And then I said, more Victorian, please. To which it responded, an ode to a seafaring companion in honor of master Adam's return. And then this one I liked, Ballad of the Deep, an homage to Adam, gentleman explorer.

Oh, how about that? And then I said more ornate, 16th century. More desk bound. Yeah, here we got, how about this? Here's one, eloquent sonnets dedicated to the illustrious Adam, scribe of the ocean's mysteries and guardian of its lore. I think it's getting a little too nautical.

Yes, it's getting very drunken. It's confusing free diving and your sort of joy of watching whales into being some kind of seafaring captain. Yes, yes, yes. Long way of welcoming you back. Thank you. Good to see you. It's good to be here, man.

Great to be here as always. Our voicemail number is 805-421-0057. If you want to leave a question on that answering service, that's how you might get it answered here. We're gonna answer some questions today. We thought about what our big issues are we're gonna talk about today, but we dispensed with that.

It's been six months. I think we're just gonna shoot the shit and see how it goes. Two guys coming off sabbatical. Don't need to talk about the world's issues. What you learn on sabbatical is to be apathetic. A-pathetic. A-pathetic. A-pathetic.

A-pathetic. May apathy one day rain. Seafaring Voyager. May apathy rain. We both had the luxury of taking some time off. You wanna go first? Why don't you check in? What's been going on?

Yeah, you know what? It's been a great year so far, I have to say. Last year, I felt like I was gripping too tight on a number of levels. And it just kind of like, it started off kind of in a groove and then I was gripping a little bit too tight. And it like all sorts of, I don't even wanna get into the details,

but work stuff, physical stuff, it just kind of backed up on me. And I was really burnt out. And we decided April hadn't been home to Australia since before the pandemic. She is Australian. She's Australian. She grew up in Sydney.

And Zoom had never met April's mother. And so we basically just said, let's go. So we took, we were supposed to be like eight or nine weeks turned into almost 10 weeks. 10 weeks. We just went, we took the long way. We went through Polynesia. So we went, it was kind of like taking a local train.

We got off in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands and then it's landed in Sydney and spent six weeks in Sydney. And maybe one of those weeks we were kind of road tripping around New South Wales. You saw a lot of different places. We did, we did. It was great.

It was much needed, but like the Polynesia part, it was the winds, the Pacifics were having this crazy winds. And so the winds were howling and work was kind of chasing me down a little bit in that first, a lot in that first month. And we had to like, we, three flights were canceled. You couldn't go out with, the whole point was you got in boats.

We went over to see Denigro Marin and TK Howe. He's the shark diver that I've spent, that I wrote about and I spent time with. And could barely, he couldn't get Zuma out cause it was like 20 knot winds to cross to the dive site. So it was like, we could barely get off the island in some of these places and we, and it was gonna chase us everywhere we were going.

So we had to revamp everything on the fly. And what we learned in that process and it kind of continued through to Australia was this idea of pivoting and flowing and the winds, although they were kind of, it seemed like first week, it seemed like this trip is fraught, like it's fucked. Like Zuma wasn't enjoying it.

It was like this great idea that we'd had. And it was like, it was going. But it turned out the winds were the best thing that could have possibly happened, which is like life, right? Like that year was kind of unraveling in a little bit in some ways. I'm not bad health problems or anything, but just like annoying shit.

And the winds kind of listening to the winds and letting go was like the greatest gift. And so the beginning of this year, I kind of, when we got back, I clued into more revitalizing my meditation practice, getting more mindfulness, mindfulness masterclass. Yeah, tapped into that a little bit and have been doing that more sitting every morning.

And that has really kind of lit up my life in a positive way and kind of let go. And I feel like so much lighter, I really do. What is the modality? Like what is the actual practice? What's the mindfulness stack? I say that because, you know how like, like Silicon Valley software people

always talk about their stacks. Like, I guess like if you're coding software, like there's something about your stacking it, or it's like a verbiage that lends itself to that type of work. Right. But what's interesting is that word has now found its way into kind of all aspects of living in Silicon Valley speak.

So it's like, what's your fitness stack? What is your supplement stack? Like what is your, and it, I don't know. It's that annoys, it's kind of annoying. It's annoying a little bit, but I know what you mean, it's a good word for this. You know, it's like sometimes these words work because it's like, there's no other, it's like, they lack efficiency over there.

It's a very efficient way of kind of putting it together. And so what I do, it's pretty, you know, I don't have a very dense stack. I still have a three and a half year old. He's three and a half today actually. He's three and a half today actually. And he only gets a half birthday every four years. He's August 29th. Oh, right.

Interesting. We're recording this on February 29th. But so I still have, my margins are still small enough to where I have to pick and choose. But for me, it's making sure I get as much yoga in the morning as I can get on preschool days. For me, it's making sure I get as much yoga in the morning as I can get on preschool days. That means no, because I'm busy in the morning

and I don't stretch that morning. But I do get in my yoga on the other days. And then I sit once kind of he's fed and we're kind of moving into the later part of the morning, which would be in my parlance, 8.30 in the morning, I'll go upstairs and kind of sit for 11 minutes and I'll just do silent meditation. And after that, I will read at least one verse

of either the Tao Te Ching or the Hua Hu Ching. What is that? I confess, I don't know what that is. The Hua Hu Ching, it is like the second Lao Tzu book. So the Tao Te Ching is the original book by the Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu. And that's the most known one. Hua Hu Qing is like the next iteration of that.

It's his followup, so to speak. Sequel? Yeah, and so people ask, I tend to the Brian Walker- Tao Te Ching 2. It. Tao Te Ching 2. It's Tao Te Ching 2, I like it, but it's like Terminator 2, it's a little better. Tao Te Ching 2, Dead Reckoning.

Exactly, and Brian Walker is the guy I like, the translator I particularly, I like this version, it's just very accessible, it's not so academic. And so I do that and then afterwards, I kind of get into work and then sometimes I'll dial up the Jack Kornfield podcast. So I'm doing that since I've started this. So that's part of the process.

Cause I love the way he speaks. He's got such an interesting voice and he's an amazing, he's a Buddhist scholar and he's got a Buddhist retreat center and he does these Dharma talks and he still to this day does them. It's a free podcast. You can get on there and some of the Dharma talks date back to like the, you know, the eighties or whatever,

when he's starting out. And some of them are more recent Dharma talks. And so I listened to him. I first got turned on to him through Joe Frank, the great radio guy who on KCRW used to kind of take clips of Jack Kornfield talk. So that's it, it's a pretty small stack, but that's all I've been doing.

And it's, but the key is the meditation has kind of like been a very consistent thing. And when you were away in Australia and traveling, were you attempting to not work or were you trying to blend work into the experience of this extended family adventure? No, I didn't. I had to work the first month.

It was just stuff was coming up, but it was mostly me putting out fires that were raging. So it wasn't like fun work. I did another pass on a manuscript that I'm hopefully wrapping up here very soon. And so I did do that, but that was kind of try to get that done so I could finally get and clue in 100% with the family.

So I would say for the first like three or four weeks, there was a little work in the evenings. And then the last five weeks, it was nothing. Just kind of let it go once I put all the fires out. And what's it like now, what are you working on? So right now I've just been wrapping up this manuscript, a new manuscript that I've been working on since the pandemic started, like before never finished,

I was working on it and then never finished, kind of took over and I set it aside. And then, you know, once that wrapped up, I dove right back into it. And this is like, you like, I love it. I mean, I feel like it's some of the best writing I've ever done and I'm excited about it, but we'll be going out looking for a publisher soon.

And this is kind of the last lap before that. It's exciting. But like, I don't know about you, but it's like all encompassing. And when I get to the end of, it's happened before, I don't know about you, but it's like all encompassing. And when I get to the end of them, it's happened before, I can't sleep well. I'm like, it's all I think about. It wakes me up at night.

It's the first thing I think about in the morning. And it's not a great place to be. That's why going to Baja for a week just now was amazing. I didn't think about it once. I thought I wouldn't be able to relax, but I could, I detached completely. But coming now, it was amazing. I didn't think about it once. I thought I wouldn't be able to relax, but I could. I detached completely, but coming back, it's like been on overdrive

because we're right about to cross the finish line. When you're writing a book, it never leaves you. It's just always hanging over you all the time. And no matter what you're doing, you're thinking about like the fact that you have to still do this thing. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

It's a very uncomfortable feeling. Like it's a good feeling, cause you feel called to it, but it's not without its kind of anxiety producing challenges. No, you're doing it now, right? So it's like, it's the first section, you're always thinking about it from the beginning,

but at first it's kind of fun thinking about it. Yeah, you might wake up and you just make a note and you can go back to sleep. At the end, it's like haywire brain for me. Like at the very end, it's like life, it just takes over my life and it's such a, it's like an alien invasion of my mind. Yeah, you can't just, you know,

this idea that you're gonna work on it in two hour increments every day or something like that is that's, I mean, maybe some people can do that. Some people are wired that way. For me, you have to really become totally immersed in it and the world has to kind of go away in order to really sink into the kind of deep thinking and kind of imagination and creativity that it demands.

I just don't know any other way to do it. No, and you have to, it's not just the deep thinking, but you have to make sure that wiring from brain to your fingertips, to what's appearing on the page, that doesn't, that you have to do that. It's like, you've talked about it before. You have to be there for when that happens. And it doesn't necessarily,

you could be six months into it and the first couple of hours might be nothing. Like, for when that happens. And it doesn't necessarily, you could be six months into it and the first couple of hours might be nothing. Like, and then it happens. So you have to be there when that breakthrough happens. And when you first start writing a book, maybe you have the energy of that and then it kind of fades, or maybe it's really hard at the beginning and you just have to put something down

just to get it done. Cause in the end, rewriting is really everything. And I should say that cause I'm on my 17th draft. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was gonna share about this a little bit later on in this conversation, but maybe it's just appropriate to do it now. Like I did sign up to write a book this year.

I haven't written a book in 12 years. I mean, I guess I was writing Finding Ultra in 2010, really. So it's been, you know, 13, 14 years. We've done cookbooks and other things, but like real writing, like a real book, it's been a long time. And, you know, over the years, I have thought many times

about what the next book might be, but nothing ever really stuck. And I wanna be careful cause I don't wanna share too much. I made this promise to myself that I was gonna keep this close to the vest. But I finally stumbled upon something that stayed with me,

that I couldn't shake. And that translated into rough journaling and morning pages type of stuff that slowly over, I mean, really, I didn't even start iterating on it until a little over a year ago at this point. And then it wasn't until this fall that that congealed into a proposal that then became a book.

And now it's like, oh, I have to write a book now. Yes, yes, yes. And you walk around every day, just thinking about that while you're doing other things. While you're not writing the book. And the difference between when I wrote Finding Ultra and now is of course, that my life is much more full with a lot going on.

Like when I wrote Finding Ultra, I didn't have much going on. Like I could go and work on it for the better part of the day, every single day. That's not the case now. So figuring out how to rewire my brain and also reconfigure the schedule that goes down here at the studio

around how we do the podcast is a real challenge to free up time to do that kind of deep work. And it also involves saying no to a lot of things that I ordinarily say yes to, even things that are like super tempting that you gotta get ruthless with your nose, but I'm up for it. And I think the approach that you have to have

when you feel daunted in that way is to get into that free flowing state, that sort of journaling state to kind of overcome first draft anxiety. So do you outline or do you just go right in free? I mean, I do very loose outlining and then I separate the creative brain from the editing brain. And so when I was in Australia on my sabbatical,

I tried to just really engage that part without, you're not allowed to edit. And the best way to do that for me is to write it out in longhand. Because otherwise, you're hitting backspace on the cursor. And then you're edit, I can't help myself. Like I have to edit as I go. But this way it allows me to just be like,

this is like a journal, no one's gonna see this. And then you can just get into that space and generate pages and pages and pages. And it's just like, then you have this big piece of clay that you can contend with and grapple with later. So I spent the month when I was in Australia trying to inhabit that mind space so that I could come back.

Because then when you get into the editing thing, that's when you get like laser focused and like hours and hours and hours go by. But it's a lot more fun to be in the editing space because you don't have the anxiety of like, what is the idea or the kind of blinking cursor on the blank page. Right, right, right.

That's the intimidating. That's cool, I love that process. I mean, I've thought about that recently, like maybe one of these books, I'm gonna start that way, just like, just hand on page again, just to have that experience. Cause that's how I started when I was writing, just like free of stream of consciousness.

So it's cool that you're doing that. I mean, I didn't do Finding Ultra that way, but this seems to be working for this project. That's awesome. Well, cool. I don't wanna pry too deep into this. It sounds very cool. I mean, like when you found that idea,

like I know you worked on it, was it just like in the course of the day, just came to you like in the course of the day or was it, were you, when do you remember first kind of hatching it? It wasn't like a lightning bolt moment, but it did kind of come to me slowly or it emerged, actually like it kind of came into focus.

It all emerged from like a process of getting really clear on what I didn't wanna write. It was just as much about like, I don't wanna write a book like that or like this, or like this genre. And there were a couple kind of moments that if I shared might reveal too much that opened up my perspective on, what a book in the space where I feel comfortable

kind of writing about, like re-imagining what a book like that could be. Like it was a structural shift in terms of like my perspective about how to organize ideas in a book that contravenes the standard kind of book that you see in the self-help literature genre in general, to which I have a certain amount of resistance. Right.

That just gave me a new lens on what might be possible. And then from there, it was like a waterfall of ideas that all kind of came into focus. And then, but that didn't mean anything happened right away. You know, it's like these things move slowly, you know? So it was still a long time before that concretized into something that I felt like had the potential to be a book.

And with the gentle cajoling of our good friend, Bird, the agent which we share, I finally whipped it up into something that seemed to make sense. So, yeah, I'm excited about it. It's cool. I'm excited. Hey, if you need an early reader.

I'll think about it. I don't know. Can you be trusted? Of course, what do you mean? I will take you up on that at the appropriate time. When I feel like I have something that's worthy of your time, I will definitely enlist you for sure.

Whenever. So how was Australia, man? You were gone for how long? I was gone for a little over four weeks. This was version five of my annual sabbatical and my third time to Australia for that purpose. version five of my annual sabbatical and my third time to Australia for that purpose. It was great, man. At the risk of sounding like I'm auditioning

for a sponsorship with Tourism Australia, you and I together, which actually I think we reached out to them. I'm like- Did you? I would like to, yeah, be an ambassador for Tourism of Australia because I am such a fan of this place and I love it so much. I had a great time.

Unlike you, I didn't travel all over the place. I just went directly to Byron Bay and tried to kind of disappear, but I've been there. This was my third visit there. And now I have some friends and I feel like it's very easy to go there and kind of slide right in. I know the landscape, I know where I like to hang out and what I like to do when I'm there.

But I really detached, I wouldn't say it was a 100% full digital detox. It's not like I threw my phone in the ocean, but I only checked my email twice the entire time that I was there. And shout out and credit to like my incredible team who kept everything on the rails while I was gone. Obviously it would have been impossible without them.

And we're in such a great place where there's trust and the quality of work and all of that, that I felt comfortable, like really letting go more deeply than I ever have in the past, which just gave me such a sense of calm and the ability to really let go and relax. So it was great, man. And I love that place.

It just, the beaches are incredible. The food is great. The people are great. The cycling is amazing. Simon Hill, my friend and host of the Proof podcast was there for most of the Proof podcast was there for most of the time that I was there. I got to spend a lot of time with him, which was really fun.

And it was great, man. I went riding with some really cool people. I met this guy, Eden Saul, who is an Ironman athlete and also a surfer. He's the guy behind a surf board brand called Dead Kooks. He's this incredible shaper. board brand called Dead Kooks. He's this incredible shaper. He makes these unbelievably beautiful boards.

And I was able to go riding with him pretty much like, almost like every other day that I was there. So those awesome rides, you weren't alone. I was wondering like the rides you're posting. I rode alone sometimes, but then I rode with Eden quite a bit. And then he brought in some of the other local guys, Tim Reed, who's a former 70.3 world champion.

He's like the local ringer. He's the guy. He's the ring leader who takes people out. Yeah, and beats them up. He's the Dave Scott of Ironman. I was like, I'll go out with him if it's like a coffee ride. Like I'm not going out for like intervals or anything like that.

Like I'm on vacation. Also Clint Kimmons, who is an incredibly talented triathlete and also big wave surfer, interesting guy. And there's a great gym there, Social Remedy, shout out to Benny Owen who owns that, where I'd work out every day. Drew Harrisburg, who's a friend of the pod, been on the podcast when I was in Bondi in May.

He came down from Sydney, got to work out with him and hang out with him and Simon. There's a guy called Adam Guthrie there, who's this amazing plant-based advocate. He was a big real estate agent person who had a heart attack. He was very overweight and unhealthy, had a heart attack, completely changed his life. He's super fit and trim and healthy. I think he's like 52, 53 now.

And he coaches people on lifestyle and diet and nutrition and all of that. So got to spend some time with him. Ben Gordon, who's the drummer for a heavy metal band called Parkway Drive. He's an incredible dude. This guy, he owns a place called the Byron General Store, which is kind of like the cool place to have breakfast

and have your smoothie and your avocado toast or whatever. But he's in this really successful heavy metal band where he has the huge drum kit, like basically like Neil Peart style. And when they do shows, they play massive venues all over the world. They have this huge following. The stage on which his kit rests elevates

and there's this like scaffolding around him and it rotates him 360 degrees upside down. So he's doing drum solos upside down. That's wild. I know. He's cool. Shout out to Luke Zocchi, Zocco, who is Chris Hemsworth's trainer. He's part of the extended Hemsworth universe.

I got to go to his house and work out. He was great. You connected me with, I emailed with Zocchi at one point. Oh, did you? Yeah, I think you connected me with him at some point. Did I? Or somehow I did for some story. I don't think that was through me.

I know, okay. Maybe. Yeah, he was great. Julie came for the last 10 days and we stayed at this place called Sun Ranch that's owned by this woman, Julia Ashwood. It was this really kind of beautiful hotel that's up in the hinterlands that have these like cabins that you can stay on.

It's just, you know, the place is magnificent. We went to Soma, this meditation retreat center owned by Peter Ostick and Gary Goro and did a day up there where they had a community event and some breath work and I don't know, it was great, man. I just had a great time. And I was able to like ride my bike, meditate, hang out at the beach, do a little bit of surfing.

I had this goal that I was gonna like sort of go surfing every day and come home like half decent on a surfboard. That didn't really, really happen. So that goal still hangs out there, but I really love that place. I love the people. I wanna thank everyone, if any of you guys are listening for making me feel so at home.

And yeah, audition for Tourism Australia complete. But I think the subject of sabbaticals in general, I mean, look, first of all, this is an incredibly, luxurious thing to be able to indulge, and I recognize that. And it's something I never thought that I would be able to indulge, you know? And I recognize that. And it's something I never thought that I would be able to do and have. And it's just not something

that most people can afford to do. And I'm very cognizant of that. And so I try to be really mindful of how I'm using my time and my attention while I'm there. Like I'm there for a purpose. It's not really a vacation. Like five years ago, I was on the precipice of burnout and I begrudgingly took this time off

at the suggestion of my business partner. And it was challenging to detach from work, but it made me realize how much I was burning it at both ends and the extent to which I was kind of operating from a place of PTSD, because we had been so financially pressured for so many years.

And I was so intent on building something that could be, financially stable for my family. And I'd achieved that, but I was still operating from that place of like panic and fear. And I really had to rewire myself and reprogram myself to reframe my relationship with work. So it could be healthier and more sustainable

for the long run because I love what I do. And I wanna stay in love with it. And I wanna be able to keep doing it. But I think most people are aware right now, like being in the content space where you're always putting stuff out, you can be on this sort of hamster wheel and a lot of people burn out.

And we've been doing this now for 11 years. Yeah. But I still feel super excited every time I sit down to talk to somebody, which is the energy I wanna have. Like if I'm drained and kind of dreading having to do another podcast or preparing to speak to somebody,

that's not the energy that I want to bring to that experience. And it's not gonna translate into a good experience for the audience. So to protect it, you have to take breaks. There has to be seasonality built into what I'm doing for myself. I'm just speaking for myself.

And it's a gift that I've been able to do this. So now when I have this opportunity every year, like I'm just so grateful that I can do it. And I do it now like prophylactically, like I go, I work hard and I'm ready to take a break when I go, but I'm not like burned out or like completely fried when I get on that plane to take a break.

Yeah. All well said, man. I didn't realize that you were so burned out that five years ago thing is how this whole thing started. It's interesting. I felt like I was fried for this one because I haven't done anything like this in so long. And international travel used to be how I define myself.

I was on the road like eight months a year, nine months a year. And then now with the pandemic and family and everything changing work-wise, it's just not the case. So for us, it was that take this big time off. But at the same time, I'm thinking of it, Zoom was three, I'm of a certain age. I've got some years left where I need to earn.

So the idea of me taking nine, 10 weeks off, I already told April, I'm like, we're not doing that. I'm open to like detaching and going somewhere else to be andaching and going somewhere else to be and live and work. But like, I'm not taking nine weeks off, 10 weeks off work again until like I'm 60 at least. So, you know, that's not happening again.

So, but at the same time, even to be able to do it once, I've had that exact same feeling. It's like exactly what you're saying, the gratitude to be able to do it, the realization that we're very fortunate to be able to do it, the realization that we're very fortunate to be able to do it is something that I've really been connecting to. I don't know if it's related to the mindfulness,

if it's just me, like realizing I'm kind of drifting a little out of touch of what it's like to actually have to live in this economy in a way that I used to be kind of terrified of because I was broke all the time. The fact that that's not the case now, you do have to remember what real world's like. You have to consciously remember.

So that's another thing that reveals itself when you kind of detach. Anytime you detach from the norm and you detach, it usually takes for me one or two weeks to even come close to relax. And it's not until like three or four weeks that you're actually relaxed.

Right, right, right, right. I mean, that's the truth. The idea that you can take a week off and that's gonna reset you. The human isn't really wired for that. The period of time that I took, like by the time it was time to come home, I was ready to come home.

I was like, I got out of this, everything I needed to get out of it. But had it been a week earlier, I still would have been like, oh, can I just stay a little bit longer? You know, kind of thing. Anyway, let's take a quick break. We got lots more to come.

Yeah. Are we back? We're back. We got to talk about, this is a very exciting announcement, Voicing Change 3. Beautiful. We have a new edition of Voicing Change that is going to be released the week of March 11,

which is very exciting. This is the third edition or the third, would you say edition? Yeah, the third edition of this book. No, edition means like you're updating- A volume, third volume. A third volume, that's, thank you. Yes, I just read the word there, it says volume three.

It's a third and final volume of Voicing Change. It's a book that we started a handful of years ago where we took some of our favorite guests over the years on the podcast and created a book with beautiful photographs of that guest and excerpted the wisdom nuggets from that conversation with a little introductory statement about each guest written by me with thoughts by you, Adam,

and thoughts and essays contributed from some of the guests over the years. That book was a big success with the fan base, also makes for a great gift. So we did volume two, now we have volume three coming out. What do you do when you have three volumes of a book? Is that a box set? You create a box set.

So this is what we have. Look at this beautiful box that we've created. It has a nice texture on it and the Rich Roll podcast logo embossed on it. And inside you have all three volumes, which is really beautiful. We self-published this book. We created all of these books in-house with our own team,

which I'm really proud of. It was definitely a group effort. And each one of these books has about 200 pages each. I think about 50 guests are excerpted in each of the books. And they make for- O's the mentalist? The iron cowboy. Harvey Lewis, the Iron Cowboy.

We got Zach Braff here. Oh, cool. So I'm really excited about this. This again is the final installment in this series. Every copy hand-signed by yours truly, every single copy. 60 prior guests are featured in the latest edition. Ken Rideout, Mike Posner, Zach Braff, the Iron Cowboy, Terry Crews, Tommy Rives,

Courtney Dewalter, Chef Babette, Malcolm Gladwell, Simon Hill, Hella Sidibe, tons more. In the box set, the box set is a limited edition thing. It's very exclusive. It's a compilation of all three of these books packaged together, like I said, beautifully packaged. I think it makes for a really amazing gift. Just a beautiful personal collection

of the wisdom of the podcast over the years. We're doing just a limited run of this. We've done a new sort of new run of the earlier volumes. So they're back in stock. I know volume one was out of stock for quite some time. And this book is only available on our website at richroll.com. You can't find it on Amazon.

You're not gonna find it in bookstores. It's exclusively and only through our website. Again, it's a limited run. So there aren't that many of them. It's not intended to be some huge bestseller. It's really for the fans of the show and as a gift for friends and family and the like. We're really proud of it.

It came out fantastic. And it's just, it's top-notch all the way. So again, the week of March 11, it's coming out. There will be an email blast if you're a subscriber to our newsletter that will make the announcement and provide you with the link. So if you wanna be informed of that date, so you can pounce on it, go to richroll.com

and subscribe for our newsletter if you aren't already subscribed. Beautiful, congratulations, man. There's some good pictures of you in there to richroll.com and subscribe for our newsletter if you aren't already subscribed. Beautiful, congratulations, man. There's some good pictures of you in there and you did some writing in volume two. Volume two. And then Greg's essay for volume three is fabulous.

Yeah, it is, it's really beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful one. And that kind of explains the backstory a little bit that he hadn't really talked about publicly. I didn't realize he, cause I know he told me the story about like kind of you guys getting together and how that happened.

How we met and everything, yeah. He was there to do a profile on you. Yeah, he was gonna write an article and then we got to talking and then it became clear like we should work together. Let's do that instead. And we're here many, many, many years later and Greg likes to be in the background

and he doesn't like recognition, but it needs to be said that everything that we do here is in large part due to the incredible support that Greg has given to the podcast and his vision and the structure and the systems and all of his business acumen that he's so graciously lent to this whole adventure that's allowed us to grow and scale.

Like I'm not sure where I would be without his partnership and his support. So just to thank him publicly. That's awesome. Which he'll say, cut this out of the podcast. No, but like- He's the kind of guy who's like, he doesn't wanna be- Right. He doesn't wanna be acknowledged in that way, but like- He's the kind of guy who's like, he doesn't wanna be-

Right. He doesn't wanna be acknowledged in that way, but I think it's important to acknowledge him. Yeah, yeah. And we will leave it there. I don't wanna get into more detail about it because the essay kind of explains Greg's side of it and why.

And so his why is in there. And I think it's worthy, especially if you love this podcast. Absolutely. How's your fitness these days? My fitness? What's your fitness these days? My fitness? What's your fitness stack? Oh, you know what?

I'll tell you the truth about my fitness. The truth is I have a herniated disc in my back. Oh no. It'd be more old man talk. Let me back up a little bit. So a week before we went on our trip, I picked up an angry three-year-old wrong. And I felt the stabbing pain of regret in my L4, L5 area.

It's always L4, L5. Is that what it was for you? Yeah, I don't have a herniated disc. I have a spondylolisthesis is the diagnosis of what I have. But go ahead. Anyway, I've had back problems before. This one was really stubborn and we had to go and I'm lifting bags and everything.

It's not like we pack light when you're going on a trip like that. And so anyway, I sought help with an osteopath clinic in Australia, they're really good at that. Australia, by the way, just to- The audition continues for Tourism Australia. Just to put a cap on it. When I was at, one of the highlights for me

being in Australia was, I was texting you like quite frequently. I think we hadn't texted in a while and we were like going back and forth. And what I've decided and you agreed, we agreed just in terms of city, not place, Sydney is the greatest city in the world. I love Sydney.

Yeah, it is the great. I visited there before with April, but I think it really hit me this time that it is the greatest city in the world. Like, I mean, for what we like to do, we talked about that, the ocean culture, the sophistication. Like it's a real ocean beach culture,

but you also have this unbelievably dynamic, you know, urban experience that you can have. Yes. Right at your fingertips. Like you could live in Bondi and have this whole, it's not like Venice beach. Like it is a real beach place, but the city's right there too.

It's right there. And you can take advantage of all of that. It's just, it's really an amazing place. We were in the Northern beaches in Manly and we took a fair, we take a fair 20 minute. Home of the budgie smuggler. Right, I got budgie smugglers. I swam with the Bondi salties.

Oh, you did? Yeah, they reached out. It's a big crew. Did you do the sauna afterwards? No, I did the run beforehand. I didn't tell them my back was all fucked up. So I did the run on the beach and then we did the swim. The run to Coogee along the path?

No, on the beach, they do a soft sand run just to the end and back. And it's like, I think, what is it? It's like two miles or something. And then you do the swim, which is like a mile. And then in the swim, they all swim to the end and then they wait. You end at icebergs.

You start and end at icebergs, right? You know, you start and then the other side. Oh, the other side. Swim just to the, just near icebergs. They don't go all the way to the bluffs, but real close. And then we turn around and on that swim, they all went and then they wait for the slow ones. And then they turn around and if you're so slow,

you can't meet the meetup, then you just don't swim as far, you turn around. And so my whole goal was get to the meetup. And I got to the meetup, I got to the meetup. I got to the meetup and then we immediately turned around. I barely got there, but I got to the meetup. But it's great. We would take the ferry to downtown.

Downtown's amazing. It's a young city. It's a diverse city. It's really fabulous. So I loved that whole aspect of it. I don't wanna drone on and on, but it was fun to text with you about your favorite spots. Cause we were in a different part of town

and we would come go look at your spots too. I mean, I've been to Manly, but I didn't stay there. Like Bondi is what I know best. And just the experience of swimming at Icebergs, which is the world's greatest outdoor pool, this incredible pool. Like most people have seen images of it. It's got the white, you know, kind of concrete

and it's right, it's nestled into the cove, like into the rocks and then buttressing out over the ocean. But there's a really robust open water swimming crew there, mostly like older people. I thought they started from icebergs. I think there's two groups. Did you swim at icebergs? Not this time, I've done it before.

Because they also have, they have this sauna. So you can go, because the water's pretty cold. And then you go into this sauna and you have this view over the bay, looking towards North Bondi and like out to the sea. And to be in that kind of somewhat chilly water and then go up into the sauna afterwards, I was like, this is the greatest thing ever.

Yes. This is the best. I didn't do that one. I swam at Icebergs last time I was there. This time, most of the swimming I was doing was in Manly. We were swimming like in a marine protected area. There's sharks and like, you know, Port Jackson sharks, like kind of goofy Dr. Seuss sharks.

And occasionally gray sharks would drift in and they'd close all the beaches, but mostly it was just kind of a beautiful place that you could free dive, you could swim. And the people on kayaks, people on paddle boards, kite boards, everything you want, they have it there. And there's a regular crew in Manly too that would swim every morning

from Manly Beach to Shelly Beach and back. And that's like a little over a mile. And so I did that as well. But it was, you know, the point was that there there's a great health kind of infrastructure there. And there's a big thing in osteopathy, even though osteopathy was, it started in the United States. It's been embraced much more in Australia. And the goal is to get you skeletally unlined, it's kind of like different than chiropractic. It's just slightly different. And so going and seeing someone there really helped me a lot but then it kind of, as soon as I got back, it regressed.

Actually right before I got back, it regressed a little bit. And so I've been dealing, finally got an MRI and it turns out I have this herniated dish, but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything. I've been swimming, I've been in the gym a little bit. I have not been able to run. That's the main thing. And then at the end of December,

like the holidays got the better of me. I think I put on like five pounds in a week. And when I started this year, I was the heaviest I've been since I don't know when. I was 198 pounds. And for me, that's very, that's heavy. And so I actually got on Noom. Oh, wow.

You ever heard of Noom? I mean, I've heard like podcast ads for it, but I've never done it. April did it when she was losing the baby weight and I didn't do it then and I did it this time. And I dropped, I got down to 185 and had a, it was really helpful. It's the first time in my life I counted calories.

And the whole thing is like blown my mind, like to know how difficult it is and how much you have to think about and all that. New makes it easy, but you do go to bed hungry early on, especially. But I did that and got down. And my goal was take some more weight off the back and maybe I'll be able to run, but I'm not there yet.

So I'm still the rehab continues. I'm seeing an osteopath here. Hopefully get on the other side of this thing soon. Sorry, you're going through that. Hey man. But here's the real low hanging fruit question that has not been asked yet that I know the audience is waiting for.

When you were doing those open water swims in Australia, you know it's coming, right? Yes, yes. Were you aware, I mean, this is a beach culture. This is a swimming culture. Oh, I know. These people understand what swimming is. They're not fucking around.

No. It's for real, right? For them. So I'm just envisioning Adam Skolnick rolling up on this situation with his swim mask. So is this true? Did you wear goggles? No, let me tell you something.

I wore a swim mask unapologetically. And the thing about Australia though, that's a little bit misunderstood is even though there are people who are super intense about, they're actually so welcoming. So there's some, they don't do- It's not like surfing where they're gonna shame you and like-

Or even open water swimmer. Right, or even open water swimmers here where like you have to wear the speedo and that's it. There's a uniform. Like there, come as you are, come in your comfort zone because we want you to come. We want you to experience this and do it. And so, no, I mean, you know,

there was no shaming in the lineup. Did anyone kind of raise an eyebrow or they just, it was all good? You know, I don't think people were really looking at me. There's better physiques in the lineup. No one's looking at the guy with the mask. When you see a guy with a mask in a swim group, were you wearing a budget?

You stay away from that guy. You're like that guy doesn't know what he's doing. No, yeah, don't stay with him. Were you in a budgie smuggler? I think I was in jammers. I hadn't bought the budgies. I bought them right before we left. I got matching ones with Zuma and I got them right before we left.

So I wasn't in budgies. I was in jammers and my swim mask, which is, it is admittedly a little bit ridiculous. But at the end, I bought a pair of goggles. Remember, I sent you a picture. I actually bought some goggles. And the reason I bought them was that I was like, my times were getting better.

My per 100 meter time was getting better. Oh, so it's for purely for hydrodynamic reasons. Like it's gonna make me faster. But it didn't really work that well. And so then I got back here and I used them here and the water's just so much grosser at Will Rogers State Beach. It's like grittier and grosser.

And now I don't even know where they are. I've already lost them. Back to the mask. I'm back to the mask. Well, you know, creature comforts, right? And it never really got me fast. Please tell me at least one like roll-on fan actually saw you in Australia with your mask on.

So it's a great question. The reason I was at the Bondi Salties is a guy named Cam Mostyn, an Australian guy lives in Bondi. He reached out to me. He saw that I was there because I was posting and he wasn't the only one. There are a couple other fans as well,

but he invited me to swim at the Bondi and he's like, come on out. And he kept kind of inviting me. And it's a bit of a haul from Manly to get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you take the ferry? We took the ferry to downtown and then took the, well, I think on that morning, no,

that morning, because it was like, the call time's crazy. And so what I did was I took an Uber to get there and then April and Zuma met me there at the end and we had got a bite to eat and we just took public transport back. And so we took the tram to the, or the bus to the ferry. Right where, not far from where the ferry drops you off in downtown is another amazing pool

that I told you to go to called Andrew Boyd Charlton. Yep. Did you end up going there or no? It was closed for renovations. Was it? Or, cause you sent me a photo and I was like, no, that's the Olympic pool. That's the Olympic pool.

The one that's like right under the bridge. I missed the other one. Yeah, Andrew Boyd Charlton is very close to the opera house. And it's on this little peninsula where, you know, kind of that looks out over the bay where it's, it's where the kind of naval ships are around there. That pool is epic.

I mean, just the number of naval ships are around there. That pool is epic. I mean, just the number of like incredible outdoor swimming facilities that Australia has is just unparalleled. I agree. Tourism Australia, this is not us asking for your support. We are supporting you. We love you. Free of charge.

Free of charge. Happily. The other thing I texted you about was Ned Brockman doing a group run. With milk. He was posting, yeah, cause his Choco or whatever, like the chocolate milk thing that he's doing.

That guy's unbelievable. Did he go all the way across Australia in that truck, like doing group runs in every city to promote his chocolate milk? When I was there, he was in Sydney doing stuff, but I think it was like at the end, it's hard, you know. He was announcing, yeah, well the time change and all of that, but I ping it was like at the end, it's hard, you know. He was announcing, yeah, well, the time change and all of that, but I pinged you and I was like,

dude, you gotta go run with Ned. I know, I couldn't run. And then you didn't get it until like a day later or something like that. Yeah, I couldn't run anyway. Yeah, yeah, I did run a couple of times in Australia, trying to do it, and that's what set me back here on January 1st, I said, fuck it, I'm gonna Goggins it, I'm just gonna run, and like I'm running,

and all of a sudden my feet feel like they're falling asleep, like it's bad, fuck it, I'm gonna Goggins it. I'm just gonna run. And like I'm running and all of a sudden my feet feel like they're falling asleep. Like it's bad. Like it feels like, I felt like it wasn't even my body. This is a little, yeah, there needs to be a corollary to the fuck it Goggins rule. Like how many people are out getting injured? Yeah, it wasn't good.

So yeah, so I had to kind of back off it. But no, it's good. it's good to back off. It's good to be in the gym. I'm like you, I'm in the gym more lifting weights. Yeah, cool. Cool, nice man. Yeah, what about you? I feel great.

I feel really good. Right before I took the time off, I recorded this episode with Simon Hill, his living proof challenge, part of which entails like getting your blood work done and then going on this 12 week experience to move the levers on the most important kind of factors that contribute to healthspan extension.

He put together this really amazing program and like a lot of people signed up. I mean, even, I think even just a week or two after the podcast went live, there was something like 50,000 people. I'm sure there's a lot more now. That's crazy. Anyway, it's great.

And it officially started on February 1st, but anybody can start anytime. You can just go to the proof.com slash living proof. But anyway, part of it was getting your blood work done. So I got my blood work done through InsideTracker, shout out InsideTracker. And that blood work came back and I was a little concerned because I got it done like right after the holidays.

And I wasn't exactly eating perfectly great or exercising as much as I generally enjoy to, but my blood work actually, like almost all the markers were better than the last time I had had my blood worked on, which was two years prior. My HDL is great. You know, LDL is great.

ApoB, all good. Testosterone, good. Total cholesterol, good. Like all the HbA1c, all of that, like everything is in optimal range. So I was like really happy with that. So that was, that gave me like, you know, cause it's like the older you get,

like you're like, if you haven't done blood work in a while, you're like, what's this gonna be? You know what I mean? You don't know. You don't do an annual thing? I should, I'm going to now, but it had been two years, which is way too long. Right, right, right. Especially when you're in your 50s to,

you know, not be on top of that. And because I too have been contending with this chronic back issue and haven't been running, I made this commitment that I was gonna go back into the gym and get strong for like the first time in a really long time. Like I flirted with being in the gym on and off over the last handful of years, but hadn't really followed through with a real commitment.

And I'm not really a gym rat person in general. We did weights when I was a swimmer. I went through a phase when I was in law school where me and my buddies would go to the gym to blow off steam. But other than that, like I'm not the guy who's always going to the gym. And I was like, as an endurance athlete,

like it's all about power to weight. You're trying to get really lean. I was never concerned about putting muscle on. But as you get older, you begin to understand like, oh, you really need to make sure that you're strong functionally in all the important ways, just so that you can age well and be able to do things for as long as possible.

So anyway, I know the date, it was November 14th. That was like, I'm starting. And I went into the gym with real intentionality and having not lifted in such a long time, I started so slow. Like I didn't put any weight on any of the bars, like the lightest possible lifts I could possibly do just to, I don't wanna get injured.

I just wanna introduce my body to this. And I was so gradual in terms of intensity and volume. But here we are now at the end of February and I feel really good. I'm lifting more. I've never been, even when I was swimming at Stanford and we would do strength training as part of our routine, I was never really great.

Like I'm not a super strong person in the weight room, but I can say that now at 57, I'm actually lifting more than I was when I was in college, which is a cool thing. And I feel more in my body. Like when you do that, then you're like, oh, I have more control over how my body moves. And when your core is strong,

it helps with your running and your posture and your cycling and all of those things. So I'm actually feeling really great. And it has actually also helped me a lot with my back because I think I've strengthened a lot of the supportive muscles around the spine and the core, of course, that have stabilized the region a little bit better. And I'm flirting with the idea

of very slowly getting back into some jogging. I really wanna rectify this whole thing. And I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm doing a lot of other things with respect to the back, but I'm feeling optimistic about it in a way that I wasn't back in November when I began this. So that's great. And then on top of that, I've been doing a lot of cycling.

So in Byron, I rode a ton, but at home I have a Wahoo Kickr which is an indoor bike trainer that is connected to Zwift, which is the software platform for indoor cycling, sort of like a video game for cyclists. But it's not like a Peloton bike, it's your own bike. It's like a traditional trainer.

You can, I mean, Wahoo has different versions of this. You can connect your bike to like this sort of setup that allows you to rig it up indoors. The Kickr is actually like its own unit, but it is very much like a cycling road bike. And it's all configured to my measurements and all that kind of stuff. So it feels exactly like what it would feel like to ride your bike on the road.

And I've been super diligent about doing that every day. And that was also something that started with really light, low lifts. Like if I woke up and I do it right when I wake up in the morning. So even if I'm fatigued and I don't feel like working out, it's like, well, I can sit on a bike and pedal a little bit. Like I'll just read my email on my phone or whatever. Like that just gets me going. And then of course, after a little bit of warmup, you feel better. And then before you know it, you've done an hour.

So that's like been my zone two throughout the winter, which is great. So I feel really good. I'm excited about seeing what my body can do in 2024. I like the idea of maybe getting a little ripped as a 57 year old. Yeah, man. So as a long time plant-based person, so we'll see,

but mostly really relieved and happy about like my blood work all being kind of on point. You look very strong. And I will say that I'm getting, I like the ritual policy, which is start even with your book stuff, start slow, take a little bite. Make it an easy lift.

Don't put your, don't put like, yeah, like just scribble some notes on a page. You know, I'm just gonna write one sentence. I'm just gonna get on this bike for five minutes and look at my phone or whatever it is, just get moving. And then that creates a little momentum that then can carry you through.

And I think that's how you build by making those tasks or those things that we can tell ourselves are daunting. If you just make them super bite-sized, that's really the way to build the foundation for the house. Love it. So let's take a quick break. More on the way. Adam.

Yes, sir. Have you been thinking about AI lately? You know, you can't not think about it. It's like, even when you want to not think about it, something pops up. And more recently, a buddy of mine who's a gaffer in the business was like saying, he came up to me, he goes, have you seen the new text to video stuff?

And I'm like, well, I saw some stuff early on when we were doing our episode, but like the new stuff is. The Sora announcement is pretty groundbreaking. Yes. It really does auger a whole new world. It is a Rubicon moment. Those videos are pretty astonishingly good.

And to consider that it's only been a year since the Will Smith eating spaghetti video, which was like so bizarre and like strange, that in that short a period of time, it could go from what it was to what it is now. Marcus Brownlee, MKBHD did a great video on this where he kind of breaks it all down, the progress that's been made.

And the point that he makes that's worthy of kind of double clicking on is the fact that this is the worst it's ever gonna be. And you see these videos and they're like really good. And they're not perfect, they're hands and there's some weird stuff or whatever. But like the progress in a year and understanding that like this is, it's only gonna get crisper, better.

The fidelity is gonna increase. It's pretty scary. It's scary, it's scary. Well, first of all, it's pretty scary. It's scary. It's scary. Well, first of all, it's a scary time now for media in general. Cause like the breakdown of the advertiser model is impacting networks as much as it's impacting cable show,

cable channels is impacting the magazine world as we know it's been blowing up print media for a long time. And now it's kind of blowing up everything. And now you throw this into the mix. And writers have been thinking about AI. When we started doing our thing, writers have been worried about AI being replaced. We saw that in the WGA strike.

We saw actors in the Screen Actors Guild strike talking about being replaced. Now you understand why they were digging in so deep with their heels on this issue, because it's happening so much faster than one would imagine. Yeah, and then now you have my friend, a gaffer, who they're not like,

they were siding with the actors and the writers out of principle, because they're union guys, but they weren't necessarily thinking about the AI replacement, because it's not forefront of your mind. But look at this, you see that and you're like, you know, lighting is especially something in those guys, you know, electricians, lighting,

the infrastructure on a movie set is deep. And so like, when you start talking about destabilizing that there's so many dominoes that fall that like they, it terrifies me to think of that. Like, unfortunately in the United States, there's innovation, there's efficiency, and there's people who have to find new jobs. That has happened over the course of history

for a hundred something years, all since industrial revolution. And I've always thought like when you travel overseas, you go to places like Indonesia, you realize they don't have to hire as many people as they do some of these business owners, but they do it because it's part of the social contract. And so we don't have a social contract here really.

We don't, you know, we don't. That's the freedom that we get includes not really much of a social contract. You travel to a place like Australia, there's a social contract. That's why people were upset when Novak was led in the country. I personally didn't have an issue.

If he got in, he got in. But like, that was why people got upset there. It's because there's a social contract. You're supposed to follow the rules. People don't speed. They don't speed. They go the speed limit there. We don't really have that here.

So when you see this wrecking ball coming down the pipe and you don't really have a social contract, it's scary. Well, certainly in the short term, the stock footage industry, I would not be buying stock in stock footage companies right now. Like that seems to be imperiled. When you watch that video,

the Sora video of the woman walking down the Tokyo street at night, have you seen that video? I have not seen that video. And the lighting, there's like puddles in the street and the way the light is reflecting off of that, like to your point about gaffers, like it's pretty good. Yeah, it's very good. The video of the golden retriever shaking their head.

The woolly mammoth, I saw a woolly mammoth one. Did you see that? There's a new one that just came out the other day of an F1 race through San Francisco. Did you see that? No's a new one that just came out the other day of an F1 race through San Francisco. Did you see that? No, I didn't see that. Or like a drone shot of a vintage, like a Land Rover, like driving, you know,

through a mountainous landscape and things like that. Classic car commercial stuff. Yeah, like really unbelievable. And on the one hand I'm like, oh, we could use this stuff right away. Like it scares me and like, oh, we could use this stuff right away. Like it scares me and like, oh, this is good for us right now. Well, yeah, because what you're doing,

you're like independent media doing your own thing. So it's great for creators in some ways. You can see why creators are salivating at it. Like it opens up whole new worlds and there's certainly plenty of writers and even filmmakers. The DP of my octopus teacher is now he's on Instagram doing his thing, like talking about like using AI. So he's an evangelist

on AI. He's like an early adopter tech guy from before he was underwater photographer or cinematographer. And now he's doing that. he's promoting it. So not everybody agrees with my take on it. You know, there's people out there that are willing to embrace it. And maybe it does lead us into a place I can't see, cause I'm not a futurist, but like, I could see why content creators who have small shops or no shop just themselves, Malibu artist,

he's doing it all himself. You know, like maybe there's something there for them. There's trade offs with everything. Obviously, when you look at this, there's clear implications for the movie industry, for independent video creators and photographers, but what are the longer term implications of this technology as it continues to be refined

and matured and it's existential. I mean, the sort of misinformation landscape that we contend with now is gonna be child's play compared to what is gonna be possible in the not too distant future when you can make anybody say anything and make them look exactly like they look. And we've already gotten a taste of a few of these things.

Like over the last couple of weeks, there was the Joe Biden robocall deep fake. Did you read about that? Like mocking his voice and then having him call. There was the Taylor Swift thing where her voice was used in Facebook ads, something about Le Creuset cookware that made the internet go insane.

Kara Swisher just published her memoir called Burn Book the other week. And did you see all this stuff about AI creating like their own Kara Swisher Burn Book and then getting them uploaded to Amazon. I think it's to confuse consumers. So they go to Amazon to buy Kara's book and then there's 20 other, like what pops up,

people are just gonna click on what they see, not realizing, not having to think like, is this actually the real book or is this some fake AI thing? We've had that issue with Amazon, like, cause Amazon gets their money either way. So they don't care. They don't care.

They're not incentivized to really protect your copyright as much. And even if they say they are, they're really not. And so it doesn't surprise me. We've had that with David's books. Yeah. Crazy. We keep saying like, it's gonna get crazy and it's gonna get weird.

It is already. It is already, but I think it's gonna get crazier and weirder than we can possibly imagine. And what are the measures that can be put in place to protect against nefarious uses of this? I don't know, it's sort of like performance enhancing drugs and drug testing or any innovation. Like innovation always outpaces our ability

to control or police it. You can always out innovate whatever's trying to curtail the progress of that. And I feel like this is a cat out of bag situation. So we can talk about watermarks or metadata, but there's pretty easy workarounds for all of those sorts of things. So who knows what's gonna happen,

but a world in which you can make anybody say anything and throw it up on social media and influence people is a frightening prospect because it untethers us from any shared sense of what is real and what isn't. That's the main thing. And with that, no culture can cohere. No, you can't have culture. We're already having trouble deciding what's real already without that.

Like we already have it with which news is real, which news isn't. I don't wanna get into politics, but we already have a very polarized society. And so this only is going to fuel those. It never brings us together. What I've noticed is technology, which was social media was supposed to bring us together.

It makes connections, but it doesn't bring us together. It makes connections in this kind of space, social space. We're not being brought together in general, I don't think. I think it can be overstated how bad things are because there are things that are good, but like lately the news is not good. And so, and social media is a big part of kind of exacerbating polarization, exacerbating political conflict and conflict in general.

You don't know what's real anymore. And so now you add, you can add, can imagine with all this political misinformation that's out there, actual video evidence. Right, of anything you want it to be. Anything you want it to be. That's crazy. It is crazy. Remember we thought when we did the AI episode

that we were late? We're like, fuck, I wish it came out a week ago or a month ago. It's such a fast moving target. We're early. Every week there's something. Well. We're early, we were early. Well, early in the, we weren't early

in reporting on that specific aspect of it, but it just keeps progressing and getting more and more interesting. And who knows, man? I mean, I think the other thing here that I wanna do address or touch on quickly is, I can't help because I'm a lawyer, but like the intellectual property rights.

So when you look at these generative AI, large language learning models, whatever you call LLMs, the question becomes, like right now they sort of operate as something that gets deployed against the entire internet. Like we're gonna cast this powerful AI tool on everything that exists on the internet and we're gonna, this huge net,

we're gonna just pull it all in and train our model on what is publicly available. We're seeing pushback now from copyright holders. and train our model on what is publicly available. We're seeing pushback now from copyright holders. The New York Times has filed suit saying, hey, listen, this is our intellectual property. We don't want what we create to be available for those models to train on. If that's gonna happen, we should be contracted with,

like we should be compensated for that, right? Similarly, on a very small level, we produce this podcast, we've been doing it for a long time. We have 800, however many episodes that are freely available to the public and accessible on many different places across the internet. Just because that exists

and is publicly available on the internet, does that mean that it's free game, it's a, it's game, it's, it's wide open, free reign for a generative AI bot or tool to go out, access it and train itself on it, on that? Should they have the right to do that? Ask Sam Altman. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that

they do. Like I would, right now it seems like an opt-out situation. Like, hey, it's all good. And if you want out of that, then you're going to make a big fuss and file a lawsuit. Right. But it should be opt-in. Right. That's right. You should have to give them permission to do that. So, for example. And we should have known it was happening all along. For example, Andrew Huberman just did a deal with DEXA AI. So now there's this bot that I believe is accessible on his site where you can ask a question. What is the protocol for this?

And then it answers based upon Andrew's catalog of material that he has labored to create. Wow, wow. But they did a deal, he gave permission, there's a fair exchange that's happening there. But what's stopping somebody from going and creating that based on my podcast without my permission? I then have to sue that person?

That seems upside down to me. But right now that seems to be kind of the current, maybe I'm wrong. I'm not like an AI scientist, but it seems like that's what's happening right now. But it is interesting to see copyright holders or intellectual property holders like pushing back on this and saying, hold on a second here. Right. Authors have done it. So there's a group of authors that are suing OpenAI because a reporter found out all the books they fed, they fed ChatGPT in the first couple of iterations. One breath, ChatGPT read one breath. Thanks, ChatGPT.

It did. Yeah. It's interesting now that ChatGPT now allows you to create your own GPT. Like you can customize it. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna play with this. I'm gonna customize it as a podcast research tool, so that like when I'm preparing for a podcast guest and I had like a PDF of a book of a guest

that was coming up and I like fed it to the thing. And I was like, summarize this book, give me like one paragraph on each chapter. And it just utterly failed. Like it couldn't do it. Good. Yeah, it wasn't, it didn't, it didn't. And I went at it in a couple of different ways.

And then I was like, do this, do that. Or like a book that's existed for a long time, like summarize this or tell me the most important. It's not, I mean, I'm sure it'll get there at some point, but right now I found it to be very unuseful. Right, so the reason writers are afraid is that you're gonna be replaced, but you're not gonna be replaced

because it can't even give you a good book report. And so it's like- Now. Right, now. And so I think what they were using these books for and using New York Times stories for was to just be better writers in conversation with whatever human is kind of trying to talk to it. I don't think it's because they're trying to replace,

but then you say, Sam Altman is trying to raise trillions of dollars, five to seven. Well, hold on, I have one more point. I wanna get to that, but like I have one more point. It gets murky and gray pretty quick too, because what happens when you tell one of these tools, write a paragraph in the style of,

on a certain subject matter, in the style of David Goggins. Right. So David Goggins should have the right to say who gets to use his name, likeness and image for a commercial purpose. 100%. But right now I would suspect that you probably could give that prompt

and get a pretty decent response. So the question becomes, how far do those intellectual property rights extend? Right. And who's, and like, cause there's gonna be ChatGPT is just like, that's where, that's the source, but there's all these other companies

that are using some of that technology. So many. So how many of them have any money? You could sue a company with no money and get nothing. Meanwhile, Sam Altman to your point, announced the other day that he is attempting to raise five to $7 trillion for open AI. Have you ever seen a T in somebody's-

No, but I knew it was coming. Is that like, what is the GDP of Luxembourg? Like this is like nation state stuff. Oh yeah, this is bigger than that. I'm starting to think the people who won Sam Walton fired were right. That's what I'm starting to think. Well, they should certainly rename the company.

It's not open AI. It's something very different from the sentiment that led to its genesis. But anyway, I mean, just the audacity of putting a T on a number like this is never happened before, but I think it speaks to like whether or not he raises that much money, he will raise a lot of money. Like the fact that that is even part of the discourse

at all speaks to just how transformative this technology is and will be and how much he believes in this marketplace, like our culture believes that like, this is the thing. And what does that world look like? Well, it looks like- Is it the world of the terminator? Like, what are we doing? Well, can we,

cause I think I told you before we went on, I've been really enjoying the Brian Johnson pod that you did. Right. I just found it fascinating. And I'm not even the guy that, like I've been aware of him and I'm not the guy that like is Mr. Optimization or longevity guy.

That's never been, I mean, I wanna live as long as anybody wants to live. I don't wanna die either. We're all afraid of death in some way. You haven't dialed in your stack. Right, it's not, but he, you know, what I love about that podcast and what I love about what he's doing is he's so committed.

He is a philosopher. I know he's identifies with explorers and these great guys in history, Magellan he mentioned in the podcast, but really if anything, he is the modernist philosopher and he's using his body as kind of a research tool. I mean, he's brilliant, right? As a philosopher, he's brilliant.

And he is like all about using it. He's empowered the algorithm. But what I love about what he said, one of the things I took away, one of the main, I mean, there's a lot of takeaways, but one of the things I took away was using don't die as a foundation for AI. If you're gonna build AI, don't die.

No humans can die, right? And if you use that as your baseline, as what he'd call your zero, that's interesting. At least that's like, obviously I understand the machine could take it over and flip it. It's the paperclip thought experiment.

But at least you don't hear Sam Altman saying that. You don't hear any of these AI people saying that. They assume it's gonna be good, but he's at least acknowledging you have to make that the baseline. You see what I mean? And so adding that kind of, at least it's, when he talks about it,

you know he's coming from a place where he, I'm not saying everything he's saying is right. I'm just saying, I like his philosophy on, you need to have something governing this wildfire that is AI, something has to govern it. We should be able to come together and agree what we wanna use it for. But if you can't agree on that, then at least agree,

this thing ain't gonna kill us, right? Don't die, don't die is the goal. You would hope that the people that are the adults in the room, if there are any on this, have considered that. Of course. In the building of this. I think the other thing that Brian is pretty good on

is recognizing the limitations of human sense-making around what's in our best interest and what isn't. If you look at the planet, if you look at human health, like we're actually not very good at decision-making, at least with respect to our long-term wellbeing. And his point about turning over autonomy to the AI to make better decisions on behalf of human beings is very confronting.

Right, but also- We don't wanna acknowledge that we would need that help or that non-sentient entity would have our best interests at heart more than our own instincts. Right, but it's not that different from like the old matchmaker culturemaker culture that was existed before. And now it's all online dating. Right, but you think the algorithm's not involved in that?

You have a matchmaker already. Of course it is. And so, and- Well, that was his whole thing. Like the algorithms already operating in your life in so many ways that you're not even consciously aware of the extent to which it's already dictating how you're making decisions every single day.

Yeah, and you know, you were very, were very, you've said it many times, but on that particular podcast, the way you said it was really easy to understand. I don't trust, my mind's a drunken sailor. I can't trust my mind. And so when you think of it that way, then yes, you're turning it over. And then you look at Dan Buettner,

another friend of the pod, a friend of ours, you know, he was doing blue zones of happiness. He went to visit Singapore and Singapore is not a democracy. No, no, Singapore is not. People don't realize that, but it's not. And it's the hap, one of the happiest places on earth. And so this paradox of choice thing that comes up is real, right?

Like having more choice doesn't make you happier. And as you say, happiness can be over-indexed, but like in terms of the best situation for you, it's an interesting indicator, like happiness, peacefulness, it's a good indicator. And so if you're trying to be the best version of yourself, maybe taking the mind out of it isn't so bad, right? And like, that's what I, it's certainly a good,

as he says, thought exercise, and it's worth considering as the silver lining to whatever's coming, because it's coming or it's here already, really. I didn't see Skolnick being on board with the Brian Johnson subsume yourself to the AI. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not on board with it. I wouldn't want it myself

because I'm a rebel at heart, but I like the intentionality of the philosophy. I like that he's such a Western civil, all his reference points in philosophy are all the kind of building blocks of Western civilization. And so from that perspective, I totally respect it.

I see where he's going and what he's trying to do. I'm not necessarily on board with it all, but I find it really interesting because usually I'm resistant. And maybe it's my new, maybe it's this year, my mindfulness. I'm open to hearing it. You know what I mean? I'm like part of me wanted to shut down,

never tune into it, just like you say on that podcast. But you gotta be open to it because he's more clued in to whatever this is than we are. And it's better to understand the world you're in. He's also really good on the internet. He knows how to create stuff that produces conversation and travels. The whole thing about Generation Zero

that he talked about on the podcast. Did you notice that that got picked up by right wing media? Did it? They were all too unhappy about his comments about starting fresh and not relying upon historical pretense for any of our ideas to kind of have this tabula rasa approach to what the world could be. For some reason that struck a nerve

and there were all these videos that were made lambasting him for that. I think, who's the guy on the Daily Wire? Yeah, Matt Walsh made a video about it, ranting about it. Steven Crowder made a video about it. But the thing is that people don't get is like philosophers, they're not trying to create policy.

He's beyond the policy. And what he's saying is, is provocative. Right, what it is, but that's what philosophers supposed to be provocative. They're supposed to be thinking in ways you don't ever think. That's why I think that's what he is. One, his whole thing and like,

I don't care what anybody who's alive now care, you know, thinks about what I think, like that doesn't interest me. No. I mean, some of the shit he says is hilarious. I mean, my big concern for him is, has he not seen Green Mile? I don't remember what happens in Green Mile.

The guy doesn't die. Oh, just a guy I can remember. He stays alive in the nursing home. Tom Hanks never dies. He really, well, yeah, cause everybody you know will be gone and all that. But you know, maybe he'll just, but he's reversing his age.

So he's gonna be, he's gen zero, dude. I know. He's rewriting the rules. There's no green mile happening with this guy. Right. We'll see. We'll see. But. My money's on you, Rich. It's very interesting to see what he's doing and to watch the reaction to it as well.

That's interesting. But I really enjoyed having him on the podcast. I'm really proud of that conversation. That's great. And happy with it. And I thought he brought a laudable degree of openness and vulnerability to that. And I think the experience of listening to him in real time, like explain the why behind the why,

makes that like a pretty special one. Yeah, unique. I think you opened him up. Like I said, I was not interested in his whole trip until listening and I just tuned in. I'm like, cause the way you posted, it was like, if you have preconceived notions, listen to this anyway, cause there's something for you.

And the way you presented that, and it's exactly what that conversation is. It's like, there's something for you in that conversation because anytime someone's trying to push the edge, which we love to, we love, I write about those people. I love that. Like people who are pushing the edge, he's pushing an edge that's lighting everybody up.

For sure. And maybe he's afraid of death like everybody else. You know, that maybe the fear of death. Yeah, I think the interesting thing with him is, and I'm not sure he would disagree, this is a guy who, I think it's fair to say, suffered some degree of trauma as a young person in the Mormon church and the indoctrination

of this specific religion and a fraught relationship with his father, and then coming to terms with the religion, leaving the church, which suddenly creates this God-sized hole in your soul. Like it's all about the afterlife. Suddenly you're like, I'm not doing that anymore. I don't believe in that.

What are you gonna replace that with? He's replaced it with this quest that he's on. But the question you have to ask is he's gonna replace that with. He's replaced it with this quest that he's on. But the question you have to ask is how much of that is being motivated by this tremendous fear of death because there's no spirituality that's supplanting what used to be the Mormon religion.

Technology and AI is his solution. And perhaps that is his Godhead. But I think it's an interesting way to think about his motivations. It's interesting to ever compare yourself to Magellan and say, I wanna be Magellan. You know, like, can you imagine? That's pretty audacious.

It's pretty bad. I mean, you know, listen, like you could have a lot of idols. Mage know, like, can you imagine? That's pretty audacious. It's pretty bad. I mean, you know, listen, like you could have a lot of idols, Magellan, like when you're putting yourself up on a historical figure like that, at least it wasn't Christopher Columbus, cause we know he was lost. Canceled.

He was lost. He didn't mean to go there. Right. But yeah, to think of it that way. And you know what I thought when I was listening to the podcast a little bit, you remember the end of Sideways? Do you remember that film Sideways?

Where Giamatti's character is meeting his buddy's future father-in-law. And he said, or maybe it's the beginning of Sideways. It's been many years, but. And he said, I heard you're a writer. What do you write? Write novels. He goes, I only read nonfiction.

That's what the guy says. I feel like this guy only reads nonfiction. That's what the guy says. Yeah. I feel like this guy only reads nonfiction. Who knows? Yeah, yeah. But let's talk about movies. Let's do it. Fiction. So speaking of sideways, Alexander Payne.

Yes. Was Holdovers your favorite movie of the year? What's your favorite movie of the year? Favorite movie of the year. Well, I really liked Holdovers a lot. I haven't watched enough of the movies to really give people a good sense of what being my favorite movie of the year might mean.

But the Holdovers is, it really did touch me. I watched it because this week, because I thought we were gonna get into this and you sent a list of these Oscar nominated films and films you liked and mentioned that high school was like your high school. I didn't realize that you went to a boarding school. No, it wasn't a boarding school.

So everything about it except the boarding part was the most authentic rendition of what my high school experience was like to an astonishing degree. Years would have been 10 years later. So Alexander Payne is just a couple of years older than me, but that movie is set, I think in the late seventies, right? No, 1970, I think.

Oh, 1970. So the time period is off. So I was in high school, 80 to 85, but nonetheless, I mean, those schools are stuck in time anyway. There were a lot of similarities, like just the way people were dressed and the archetypes of the teachers and the staff at the school was exactly the way that it was at the school that I went to.

And just Paul Giamatti's character, I was like, I know that guy. I know I had teachers that are exactly like that. Paul Giamatti's character is like sideways. And I knew those kids, like those kids, they were all archetypes of kids that I knew in high school. And it was just a very similar environment. It was eerie, like, you know how you have a sense memory

of something like that? Like it just brought me right back to that period of my life. I thought it was amazing. I thought, first of all, Paul Giamatti is the best disgruntled teacher ever. He's been there a couple of times. Him being disgruntled in general,

and like, it's just, there's nobody better. No. Like he is the world champion. And Divine, I thought was amazing. I thought like just a natural performance that was like really captivating and her whole arc. And it was one of those movies that like, and I love it, you know what,

Alexander Payne is one of the greats. You know, he's really truly is. He has been already, but like this confirms it for me. Like I think this is up there with election for me. That's how much I liked it. And it's funny. Very different movies, very different tone.

I think I liked it better than, I loved Sideways, but I think I maybe even liked it better than Sideways. I think there's something about it that is, it sneaks up on you. Cause when you see the trailer, I loved Sideways, but I think I maybe even liked it better than Sideways. I think there's something about it that is, it sneaks up on you. Cause when you see the trailer, it almost feels like a little bit old. Like it feels like a little old style.

I was not sold on the trailer. I saw the trailer, I was like, really? This looks like a TV movie. I was like, what is Alexander Payne doing? I'm not sure about this. And then it came out. I didn't rush to see it for that reason. And then everyone started talking about it. And I was like, maybe I'm misreading this. And then it came out. I didn't rush to see it for that reason. And then everyone started talking about it.

And I was like, maybe I'm misreading this. And then I went in and it clobbered me. Yeah, but it's a slow clobber. Like the first part, you're still kind of like, okay, and you're kind of along for the ride right away, but it's not like you're immediately loving it. Like I remember Dead Poets Society immediately loving it or something.

I think this is a better movie actually. But like, but there is, it's a slow burn for me. And it really is at the end, it really gets you. And it's, yeah, I thought it was beautiful. He's so good at the intersection of comedy and like bittersweet sadness and longing. And you know, the dream that didn't happen and what that does to people.

You said like to define like what your favorite movie is, it seems like you have a different definition of what that might mean. I'm looking at the list. I have seen Barbie, I've seen Holdovers, I've seen Oppenheimer, I read. Maybe your favorite movie of the year is not on this list. I read Killers.

I mean, the Academy Awards list of 10 best movies doesn't mean that they are indeed the 10 best movies. No, you're right. You're right. I would say the most enjoyable movie experience I had this year was Barbie. That's what I would say. All right.

Good. But I would put Holdovers up there. I thought, I haven't seen Poor Things. I'm excited to see Poor Things. It's not streaming like on these, you can't rent it yet. But- Poor Things is my favorite movie of the year. I mean, Oppenheimer is extraordinary.

I thought that was your favorite movie. There's a recency bias, you know, because I saw Poor Things more recently. I mean, Oppenheimer is unbelievable. I'm a huge Nolan fan anyway. And I think that will win best picture. And I think it probably is technically like the best movie of the year

that will stand the test of time. But I was just delighted by Poor Things and enamored with the artistry and the creativity. It's unlike anything you've ever seen before. And the performances are just magical and wonderful. Mark Ruffalo has never been better. Willem Dafoe at his best. And Emma Stone is just a revelation in this movie.

And the colors and the story and the themes that it's exploring and the way that it's doing it in this just really interesting and specific way. It's just a marvel. Maybe it'll underdog and kind of steal the show. We saw NIAID, I saw NIAID. Shout out to Jimmy and Chai. We got to shout out like friends of the pod

who are being noticed for their work in cinema. So the creators, the directors of NIAID, I still haven't seen this movie. You haven't seen NIAID? No. Oh, it's really fun. It's a really good, I mean, like, you know, Bening is amazing. I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't seen this movie yet.

And Jodie Foster. I really need to watch it. It's really, if you like Nat Bening and Jodie Foster, you don't even have to like swimming. If you like them, you don't even have to like Diana Niaid because the thing is all the criticism they got about NIAID being X, Y, and Z, that's in the movie. Like they address it in the movie. She's not likable. You're not supposed to, you do like her,

but you're not supposed to. You're like, she's like, she's ostensibly not a likable person. That's her character, but like you, but you still root for and respect her. So I'm not saying she's not a likable character, but she's not a likable character, but she's not like the person she's portraying.

They don't try to make her seem like this awesome, like angelic person. She's just a bad motherfucker. And getting in her head and doing that, I mean, I just thought it's great. Some great photography, some really fun kind of, it's the talking about hallucination, hallucination when you're, you know,

24 hours doing something. I forget what it was like 90 hours or something. And how many times she failed. Say what you want about Diane and I, it's a fun film. And if you like open water swimming, I think it's a positive film for open water swimming. Yeah. What the hell is going on with American Symphony

not getting a best documentary nomination? That's shocking, dude. It is. It's shocking. I was really surprised by that. It's a beautiful movie. It's like- It got a best song nomination, but for some reason it didn't get a best doc.

I thought the documentary nominations were just weird. I hadn't seen most of those documents. So I don't know. Like why wouldn't you want it documents. So I don't know. Like why wouldn't you want it? Like, I don't know. I just didn't recognize any of those documentaries. I don't know what they were going for, but that's who got nominated.

I think it was a shock that wasn't, I thought that was a shoo-in. I say this every time, like who cares what we like to watch, what movies we like and what we found interesting in the sort of streaming content space. But people keep saying that they're interested in it. So my favorite movies of the year beyond the Academy Award list

or things that I've streamed that I've enjoyed. Yes. Poor things like I said, I really liked the Iron Claw. I think that movie is incredible. I think Zac Efron's performance in that movie demonstrates what an incredible actor he is, setting aside like just this ridiculous physique that he has.

It's a really great movie, I loved it. And his co-stars are the best. Jeremy Allen White is in it. He's great and Harris Dickinson, who I think is gonna be a really big star. He also co-stars in what might be one of my favorite series of the year, Murder at the End of the World,

which was created by Britt Marling and Zal Batmanglij. I don't know how you say his last name. Batmanglij, I think is how you say it. They are the creators, the brilliant mind trust behind the OA. Did you ever watch the OA? No. So, Murder at the End of the World,

it's pretty great. I've heard of it. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I've heard of it. It got a lot of attention. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's worth a watch. Shout out to Zach Braff for A Good Person. I really love that movie.

That's definitely one of my favorites. American Symphony. Did you see Godzilla Minus One? No. That movie is incredible. If it's a movie, I probably haven't seen it. Well, it's a Godzilla movie, but they made it on like a micro budget,

something like $7 million or something like that. But it looks like a $200 million movie and they did a fantastic job. So AI's involved. I love that. I loved Dream Scenario with Nicholas Cage, our greatest living movie star. That movie is, if you like eternal sunshine

of the spotless mind, if you like kind of weird Charlie Kaufman-esque narratives, like this is your jam, check that out. I'll check it out. I love Blackberry. Did you see Blackberry? That movie's fantastic. It's the story of Blackberry. It's hilarious. I'll check it out. I love Blackberry. Did you see Blackberry? That movie's fantastic. It's the story of Blackberry.

It's hilarious. I heard of it. This movie is, yeah, it's great. I really enjoyed it. On the streaming front or limited series front, Murder at the End of the World, like I said. I also love The Gold, which is about the Brinksmat robbery.

It's a limited series that's really about class in UK at a very specific time. Oh, I like that. The Brinksmat robbery is the largest gold heist in Britain's history. And it was a heist that was spearheaded by Mickey McAvoy, who is the uncle of John McAvoy. Really? On the podcast, yeah. And it is the uncle of John McAvoy. Really?

On the podcast, yeah. And it tells the story of this group of people who tried to pull this heist off. And it's not so much about the heist, but the aftermath of the heist and how they tried to continue to elude the law, who was trying to figure out who did this through all these arcane kind of money laundering tactics.

And it's super fascinating. And it pits class against class in a really interesting way in the context of this sort of heist slash detective story with brilliant performances. I just love that show. I think it's definitely one of the best things I've seen. I love a heist. I love a heist thriller.

I liked Beef. True Detective I liked. I wasn't crazy about the finale. I don't know. Beef is great. Beef was great. Beef was great. I liked, I'm into Slow Horses. I'm dipping into Slow Horses.

I love Slow Horses. Yeah, I forgot to mention that. I'm only in season one. Oh, you have so much goodness waiting for you. I mean, Gary Oldman's never been better. I mean, come on. He's just the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That show is just delicious from beginning to end. I just, I love it. It's definitely, that's an Apple show, right? Yeah, that's what I've been watching. Apple, that's the best Apple show I've seen. Yeah, I think you're right about that. Yeah. I love it.

Should we answer some listener questions? Let's do it. Hey guys, it's Jason Hackett calling. Glad to see we've got a roll-on back on the books. My question's around what I've seen you both doing on Instagram lately. You know, I've got a lot of ideas myself around taking personal travel without my partner, without my kids, and I see you guys both out there in the world doing your thing, whether you're going down to Australia or somewhere out

in the deep blue. I'm curious, knowing that both of you have partners and families that you love madly, how do you think about solo travel and how would you frame it in your life? Jason, thank you for the message. I've never met a dad who didn't have that dream. The dream of the solo. Some time away. Some time away. For a minute. I think that you, in my respect,

you've misperceived something. The only time I've been away from my family on a trip was to Utah to do the Iron Cowboy story and to do in Arizona to do that swim story. I did it for New York times. You were with me. Two days each or something like that. Yeah, Rich, you saw my-

Well, I was with you in Utah. You saw my palatial hotel room in Utah by the freeway. Did you like it? Yeah, it was right around the corner from the gun shop as I recall, I think. It's the next door to a defunct gun shop. No, but I mean, I understand that desire. I've actually, the point of our trip more recently

was to be the people we used to be kind of thing. So which is, which kind of speaks to this, right? Like I had traveled, I was a traveler, April was a traveler, we are travelers. We just haven't been traveling. And so we want Zuma, Zuma is a great traveler. And so we know it's time is coming where he's, preschool goes to kindergarten and then it's hard

to you have to make the decision then go away for big chunks of times harder. Now's the time. And so we wanted to seize it. We wanted to kind of be international again and shake off kind of all the noise around here. And so we packed everybody up and did it. So everything that I'm posting about that's related to,

like if you see me with whales or whatever, almost every time- You're with your family. Yeah, with your family. You're not in some solo expedition. Never, no, no, no. Yeah. Thank you, Jason, for your question.

I wanna quickly acknowledge you. Jason and I know each other. Jason was very kind to, when he saw that I was visiting New York City, where Jason lives, he invited me to get an early sneak peek at a project that he was involved with at Summit at One Vanderbilt,

which is the brand new observation experience at the top of that building that gives you this incredible view of New York City. Yes. You know, like there's the glass floor and you can see all the way down to the street and there's one room that has like these floating balloon balls and it's multi-tiered.

It's one of the most beautiful, extraordinary experiences that you can have in New York City. And Jason was working on that and he gave me kind of a behind the scenes tour before it was even open, which was super cool. So thank you, Jason, for that unique once in a lifetime experience. And I appreciate the question.

Like Adam said, it's the reading between the lines is sort of like, how can I figure out how to have a little bit of solo time for myself in an adventure context? And I get that. I mean, I think for myself, like I like solo travel. I am an introverted person and I know that I need some isolation

in order to be my best self. I have to kind of detach and disconnect from my life a little bit so that I can come back to it and be the best version of a dad and a professional person and a partner and the like. And I have an incredibly supportive partner who understands that about me as well.

But these experiences don't just crop up out of nowhere. Like they're the result of a lot of conversations over a long period of time. Like I start, you know, plan, I plant the seed and plan the thing like a year in advance. Start now Jason. It's not like there's no like, yeah. And again, like, listen,

it's an incredible luxury to be able to do this. And for what it's worth, like Julie joined me for the last 10 days of my trip in Australia. So I wasn't, you know, like I wasn't there by myself the entire time. I was last year. And your kids are older as well.

And my kids are older. I don't have young kids. That's significant. So my youngest is now in boarding school and I've got a 20 year old who's in college. And then the two boys are older and in the world. So it's like, I don't have, there's nobody at home to worry about except, you know,

my partner and my relationship with my partner. Right. And she's supportive of this. So. And you found your solo time. And I'm not trying to, I'm not like, I'm not trying to escape my family or get away.

I'm trying to, you know, kind of detach from everything and go inward a little bit. Right, right, right. And when your kids were young, you did that through these kind of endurance efforts, right? That was your way to grab some of that solo time, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really an ongoing exchange

with your partner and your family about like what everyone's needs are. Yeah. And finding a way to make sure that everyone's needs are being met and different needs are getting met at different periods of time. First, everybody has to understand what those needs are.

And there has to be an agreement that everybody's gonna strive to help everybody's needs get met to the best of their ability. Yeah. So, and not everybody's needs are the same and your needs, Jason, are not gonna be the same as mine, et cetera.

And your partner's needs, I think it's like figuring out where you can match up and where those needs intersect. So for a lot of people like you, it's like you, like your travel experience, there was a different intentionality behind that from what I was doing. Right, right, right, right.

It's different, yeah. But my sense being that Jason would like to have some version of this experience for himself. I mean, the only advice that I could give is that you open up the topic for conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, I'd love to do a live aboard to an archipelago

off the coast of La Paz for a week and just dive my brains out, but I'm aware that that won't happen for three years. Yeah, nor would it have for me, like when I was in my version of your situation, like it's not appropriate. It's not appropriate. It's not appropriate.

So that will come when it comes, that's why you're able to do what you're doing. The kids are older and that's that. But it's good to talk about, like you can do things, you know, like backpacking trips are one way of doing it. You can frame these kind of escapes and I don't mean escape from the family. I mean, escape from into another state of being.

You can do that. They don't have to be massive, like month long things. No, they could be a couple of days here or there. Like you can get out in the Sierra Nevadas. You can probably sell that. You might be able to sell that, you know, as long as your partner gets that too. Next question.

Kirsten Moore, please. Hi, this is Kirsten Moore. My question is in regards to aging and competing. I'm 42 and was a competitive runner in college. I've always maintained a relatively active lifestyle throughout the years, but hadn't really run much. I recently started back up again, joined a few run clubs and signed up for my first marathon, which is in two weeks, and I'm so excited. The college kid in me wants to go all out, but I'm finding pesky injuries and pain holding me back. My question is, what advice do you have on how to approach competing at this stage in life, in particular, how to manage injuries, mindset, and expectations? I know Rich didn't start his competitive ultra endurance career until later in life and seemed to thrive. Secondly, where does Rich stand with competing now? He's talked about struggling with an injury himself, but does he have any intentions on competing in the future or is he leaving those days behind to shift his focus towards work? Thanks to both of you guys. I really appreciate you. when I was 42, 43, those are my favorite years. Really? Yeah, 43 was like my best year, I think, as an athlete.

So it's a great time, I think, to test your competitiveness or to rekindle that passion with being competitive in sport, particularly because that's your background. And it seems like you're missing that or kind of aching for some version of that experience, which I think is really cool. But I think there are a couple of things that are important to bear in mind as an older athlete going back into the arena, so to speak. The first being that, and I'm not telling you anything you probably don't already know, but it's important to

train where you're at now rather than where you think you should be or where you're used to be. Like I was a competitive runner in college. So when I'm, you know, my splits should be like this or, oh my goodness, they used to be like this. And now they're so much slower because I think that creates a mindset of negativity around what you're doing.

Just like accept where you are and embrace it and not judge yourself against past standards because that just sets you up for disappointment or some unhealthy relationship with what you're trying to do now. There's a funny joke. I'm in a group text with a bunch of guys that I swam with in college.

And we all now jump in the pool from time to time or swim masters. And it's that thing where you're doing a set in the pool and you think in your mind, like it feels like I'm going as fast as I used to. Like it doesn't, my stroke doesn't necessarily feel any different. And I hit the wall and I'm going as fast as I used to. Like it doesn't, my stroke doesn't necessarily feel any different. And I hit the wall and I'm like, I think that's a,

I think that 100 was maybe like a 58 or like somewhere between a 58 and a minute. And then you look at the pace clock and it's like 112 or something like that. And you're like, what is happening? And you just think, well, the pace clock's wrong. All the pace clocks at all the pools are wrong. Or this pool isn't actually 25 yards.

It must be like 33 yards. And it's a joke that we all have because we're all having that experience. So it's like, I don't really look at the pace clock anymore. I go on feel. I don't try to judge myself against what I used to be able to do. And the truth is nobody cares except for you.

Like it doesn't really matter. So you should be doing it for the joy and for the experience of it, but not as some kind of metric to compare yourself against a past version of yourself as an athlete. And I think also it's important to recognize that you have to take injuries big and small a little bit more seriously than you used to.

Things that maybe you would train through in your 20s, like, oh, it'll go away, it'll be fine. Like those things don't tend to go away. And so you really need to have the discipline to ease off and to not train or to cross train if you're contending with something that's bothering you. Do not try to train through injuries, trust me, take it from me, somebody who's been now contending

with a lower back issue for much longer than I probably would have had I nipped this in the bud when it first cropped up. And I think the other thing is to approach it as a lifestyle with a longer term view, as opposed to I'm doing this race and I'm gonna set aside my whole life and go all in on this race. Like how can you create a sustainable lifestyle

around these activities that you enjoy so that you can enjoy them over a longer period of time? That way, when you do have an injury or a setback or something like that, it doesn't feel as heightened or as big of a deal because you're training for a race, because this is just part of who you are. And as somebody who has experienced being a competitive athlete, like injury is just part of the deal from time to time. I think it's important to have goals. Of course, it's cool that you're excited

about this marathon and this race. But I think as older people, we have other values and things in our life that are also important. So as you chase this goal, you also have to make sure that you're protecting the other values in your life that compete for your time and your attention. Otherwise, it will start to degrade the quality

of your life and the quality of your relationships, which is at odds with your goal, which is to leverage competitive sports or endurance sports or whatever activity it is to improve the quality of your life. I like that. Can I interject real quick? I think that this idea of,

cause you understand the competitive athlete mind, which is you kind of zero things out and focus so hard to get it done. And there's something beautiful about that, but it's not sustainable. But you know that that's there. And so you're saying, take the long view, the long view wins as an athlete, as an adult,

you know, like the long view is the only thing. Cause really the process and your life is what to focus on, not that small thing anymore. That bullseye, that bullseye could take your eye off the ball that you really need to be focusing on, right? Sure, and I don't know the details of Kirsten's life and what else is going on, but I think there's a season to things.

Like, I think it's okay to go all in on a goal like that. As long as you realize like it's temporary and that the other things that are important in your life are being taken care of adequately during that period of time, if not maximally, but that that pendulum will swing back when that race is over. And everybody who's important in your life

is on board with that. Again, there has to be communication around these things and there has to be buy-in from the people that are in your life so that it doesn't become a disruption unnecessarily. To the second point of the question about myself and competition, I mean, the truth is,

I don't really care about competition anymore. Like it just doesn't really speak to me in the way that it used to. I certainly don't care how I measure up to other people at this point. I wanna be fit, but I wanna be fit for life, not for performance reasons. I wanna be the guy who's kind of good to go

for any kind of adventure at a moment's notice to be fit enough when that call comes like, hey, we're gonna go do this thing in two weeks or whatever and just not worry like, oh my God, I'm out of shape and can't do it. But the idea of towing the line at a race for a high performance goal just really isn't that interesting to me anymore.

Like I've done that, I've learned what I needed to learn about that experience. And it's not that those experiences aren't nourishing or couldn't be nourishing to me, or that I couldn't learn things about myself by doing that, but the amount of time and energy required to go from like good or okay to like excellent is so extreme

that it would cut into all these other things that are equally important to me and require my time and attention. And so when you run like a cost benefit analysis, it doesn't make sense to justify that kind of commitment. And that doesn't mean that I won't jump into some races at some point, but it's just not a huge priority to me right now.

I don't really care how fast I go or how long or how far I can go. I'm really caring more these days about how I can impact people in a positive way. And sometimes doing a race or demonstrating some kind of prowess athletically can serve that end, but not in comparison to what we can do with the podcast and the books and all those other things,

which take a lot of time as well. So that's my big answer. That's a great answer. But I'll probably jump into a race at some point. You will? Trying to mix it up. As long as I, I mean, right now getting completely healed is the most important thing.

Listen, it's great news you're pushing it on a bike like this. Like when I was seeing some of the, like you're going uphill. I mean, that's a lot of climbing. At one point you were on a gravel bike, like on a road to a beach. Like did you have multiple bikes you were working on?

No, no, no, I was just taking a road bike on gravel. Yeah, but like, you know, it's fine. Well, Paris-Roubaix, what's that? What was that? Paris-Roubaix. Roubaix. I wouldn't go for that. That's cobblestones.

That's a whole different thing, Adam. Is it gravel? Hey, Frenchie, is that- You're talking about biking? Is that French gravel? Yes, well, listen, it's good that you're back at it. I love riding my bike and I can't wait to get running again.

And pool is the last thing because of the flip turn. Adam, here's the deal. You know what I'm training for, honestly? Yes. The Olympics. It's true though. All know what I'm training for, honestly? Yes. The Olympics. It's true though. All right, let me hear it.

I'm going to Paris this summer. Oh, you are? For the Olympics to do a bunch of stuff. Fantastic. And I would like to be very fit when I arrive there. Not because I'm gonna be competing, but just because I would like to be well-trained when I arrive.

Dude, that's gonna be awesome. So you heard it here first, I'm training for the Olympics. Are you going with on? I'm gonna be doing some stuff with on. Fantastic. Yeah. Oh, we should talk about that at some point.

We will. All right. Teased, teased here first. All right, roll on. Let's wrap it up. Let's get to this last question. Rich wants to leave. Rich wants to leave.

Okay, let's go. One last one. Here's Petra. Hi, Rich. I have two questions. The first question is, what would you say your top five podcasts are in terms of the most important content for people to hear?

And I know this is a really subjective question, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are. Like if everyone in the entire world could listen to only five podcasts, what would they be in order for everyone to hear them and the world would change because of them? And my second question is, can we be friends in real life? I love everything you are about in the podcast are just so amazing. Thank you for everything. Okay, bye.

I will be friends for life with anyone named Petra. I think that might be the first Petra that I've ever been introduced to. I knew a Petra once. Yeah, but this Petra, it's a whole different thing. It is. Don't you know? Yes. Like cobblestones and gravel, they're different.

Either way, Rich Roll can ride his bicycle over them. Thank you for your question. Actually, I get some version of this question a lot. It's so hard to be asked to choose among your babies. When you use superlatives, best, top, making lists about, these are human beings, Petra. I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings. No.

I don't know that I can give a sufficient answer, but I'm gonna try. And the way I'm gonna try to answer this question is with a very unsatisfying caveat, which is it depends, right? Like it depends. It's like, what is your dilemma? Like, what is the thing that is calling you? What is the problem you're trying to solve?

Like, are you somebody who needs help with addiction, who's trying to get sober? Are you somebody who's trying to change your life? Are you somebody who's trying to lose weight or somebody who struggles with sleep or has a mental health issue or a problem getting off their devices? Or are you somebody who feels creatively stymied,

who's looking for guidance and counsel about how to be more expressed? Are you looking to upgrade your mindset? Like all of these categories have domain experts that I think speak very well to solving these problems or providing tools. So to say, oh, here's five, these are the best ones. This is what everybody should listen to.

I mean, I think, listen, if there is an overarching theme to the whole show, it's about this idea that we all have more potential to improve our lives than we believe or we allow ourselves to believe. Like our capacity for change and growth is much more enormous than I think most people understand. And to the extent that the podcast allows people

to connect with that idea and put into action steps that lead them towards that sense of greater expression, I think that's really the thing that I'm always trying to get at. And we've had lots of people who are pretty good at speaking to that through their own personal experiences and stories of personal transformation. I mean, there's a couple that stand out. I mean, we talked about that movie

or that limited series, The Gold and John McAvoy. Like my first episode with him is still to me, one of the most astonishing stories I've ever heard about somebody who has changed their life completely and wholesale to go from quite despondent to somebody who is not only fulfilled, but of service. I think it's really a beautiful story.

And there are versions of that in all the different categories. Like if health and weight is an issue that you contend with, I would suggest Josh Lajani or the Dave Clark episodes that we've done. Dave has since passed away, but those are also stories of personal transformation and change. They're just in the context of health and weight loss. And Dave, on top of that, is this incredible

or was this incredible sobriety story as well? Like his story is quite stunning in that regard. Sleep, Matthew Walker, technology, Max Fisher. I think the episode with Johann Hari was pretty great on that. I mean, when it comes to mental health, there's just too many to name, but on the subject of creativity,

Steven Pressfield, Rick Rubin, Cal Newport, we just did a second episode with him the other day, Mark Manson, James Clear, all really great episodes on that topic. Mindset, there's nobody better than Michael Gervais. And then what about spirituality? Julie, of course. I thought the second conversation I did with Rainn Wilson

on that was pretty great. Raghunath Kappa, we have all these Guru Singh episodes. So it's really a choose your adventure thing. I mean, what do you think? You've listened to all of them, but like, are there ones that stick out for you? Yeah, well, I think in terms of impact, the David Goggins episode.

Oh yeah, of course. Is the one, that's the first one I heard that was David's story. Like, yeah, changing your life or you need a kick in the pants or you need some motivation or inspiration or some tools to more discipline yourself. Right, but not just that,

but that like, that's how I heard of him. And then the books kind of, for me started there. And so, and then Huberman, look what he's built. I mean, that came after your podcast. I think those two are very big impacts, like beyond just they're great to listen to. They've actually manifested to these amazing- Those are, or are among the most,

well, the Huberman one is by far the most watched. Most watched, yeah. And probably the most listened to of all the shows that I've done. But the David Goggins episodes are pretty close up there as well. Yeah, and then if I wasn't on your podcast my very first time, I wouldn't be married to April Wong.

Because she heard that podcast and that's how we kind of reconnected, even though we'd met before. And so- So that episode- I've been directly impacted. So that episode that she heard that led to this would be the one that you would say has been the most,

well, it's been the most impactful to your life. But is it the one that you would recommend other people? It won't work for you. It won't work for you. It's not gonna change their life in the way that it did for you. No, no, no. But like, if you're looking at me, no.

And then, but yes, there's so many, like some of them are like just amazing, amazing stories. I mean, I loved, I always liked Alex Honnold on the podcast. I love the Kevin Ruse one a lot. I thought that one was good for devices as well. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, cool. Is that your favorite roll-on? The AI one that we did? The AI one is my favorite roll-on? No, no, no. I don't have a favorite because- It was pretty great to have Chris Evans on. That was great.

That might be, and that was the last one we did, right? That was the last one. That was a fun one. I mean, they're always fun. You know, for me, the roll on part, just to be part of this community is pretty, it's a treat because I never expected it. And so, and especially now you have everyone and their brother starting a podcast, but you feel like you're in this kind of, like who's listening to all these podcasts?

Like it's crazy. So to be able to kind of hitch my wagon to you every once in a while, and to be on a podcast that actually does make an impact and has people listening is, it's a treat. And any journalist would tell you that. So that's why you get so many people who wanna be on your podcast.

So to be able to be on here multiple times and as many times I've been on, listen, it's great. And I'm excited that the audience has connected to me, at least a portion of them. Yeah. Yeah. They have of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have, man. I love you. They love you.

I love doing Roll On. And this was great, man. This was super fun. Always fun. Any parting words? That was a parting, that was sort of a beautiful parting message. Yeah, man. Yeah.

Thank you. I love it. Thanks for having me back. Thanks to you and the audience. We'll do it again soon. Cool. Yeah. And we'll just... When? I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, it'll be, it won't be, we're not, it won't be six months. No do it again soon. Cool. Yeah, and we'll just... When? I don't know, we'll see.

Yeah, it won't be six months. No, no, no. Yeah, it won't be six months. This was great. We're definitely gonna do it again soon. In the meantime, again, "'Voicing Change' Volume Three' is out week of March 11th, as well as this beautiful box set.

All the additions and the volumes are signed. It's quite stunning as a coffee table adornment or as a gift. We're really proud of the latest volume, as well as this beautiful box set. I just, you know, I haven't ever seen anything else like it in the world. Yeah.

And really excited for people to enjoy it. So you can find that at richroll.com, sign up for our newsletter if you wanna be notified the day that they come out, but it will be that week. Very cool, man. And that's it, man. Cheers. Back again soon.

Love you, buddy. Love you too, brother. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Love you too, brother. Peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources

related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voice of Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio

engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon.

Peace. Plants. Thank you.