The Rich Roll Podcast - ROLL ON: The State of Podcasting In 2025

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Roll On resurfaces from the chrysalis! Adam Skolnick and I unpack 90 days post-surgery, why the caterpillar needs a tortoise mind to become a butterfly, and the death of authentic podcasting. On tap: The state of Podcastistan, why I'm breaking up with viral culture, and the unexpected joy of moving at glacier pace. We explore Phil Stutz's three truths, Alaska's last frontier vibes, and why Deadwood still hits different. Plus: Movies are officially back, friends of the pod crushing impossible distances—because regular suffering is passé—and why community beats audience every damn time. Enjoy! Show notes + MOREWatch on YouTubeNewsletter Sign-Up   Today’s Sponsors: LMNT: Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase 👉 https://www.drinklmnt.com/richroll                                                                                  Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order 👉https://www.seed.com/RichRoll25 Pique: Get up to 20% OFF plus a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first subscription 👉https://www.piquelife.com/richroll Momentous: Save 35% OFF your first subscription order 👉https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll   Calm: Get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription 👉 https://www.calm.com/richroll Prolon: Get 15% OFF plus a FREE bonus gift 👉 https://www.prolonlife.com/richroll Mint Mobile: Get your 3-month Unlimited plan for just $15/month 👉 https://www.mintmobile.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 https://www.richroll.com/sponsors   Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media  and follow us@voicingchange

Hey, everybody. Roll on his back, and it's coming right up, but first. After hosting more than 900 episodes of this podcast, I have noticed a pattern. And that pattern is that the highest performers don't buy into the latest trendy hacks. Instead, they obsess on what actually works, which is always the unassuming basics. And there is nothing more basic than hydration. But here's the kicker. Your body can't hold on to work. water without the right minerals. Without them, water is just like this temporary visitor. But Element has cracked the code on this, which is why I've been using it religiously for years, zero sugar, no artificial junk, just sodium, potassium, and magnesium in the ratios that actually work. And look, I'm not exactly crushing ultras right now, healing from this surgery, but in some ways I need it even more. In order to properly recover, I need to treat my body even better than ever so it can heal properly and expeditiously while also maintaining my focus and my energy levels

to rock out all of these podcasts, write a book, be a husband and a dad. And I got to say, Element keeps my brain firing in a way that water alone can't. Their new sample pack features their most popular flavor. Citrus salt, raspberry salt, watermelon salt. That's my favorite and orange salt eight stick packs total perfect for finding your favorite or sharing with a friend get a free eight count sample pack of elements most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drink l mn t dot com slash rich roll find your favorite element flavor or share it with a friend we interrupt your programming with an important PSA happy gut happy body happy life it's important but to get there, you need a ritual.

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If you care about your health, you care about your longevity, you got to start with your gut. So visit cd.com slash rich roll and use the code rich roll. 12. Bro. I'm just happy to have you here. I'm happy to be here. Are you doing okay? I'm doing great.

What's happening? Oh, we've started. We are rolling. You know what? A big moment happened a couple of weeks ago I wanted to tell you about. I was out with Zuma. You know, we do our breakfast bros. It's usually a Saturday or a Sunday.

It's going to be tomorrow for this week. And he is how old now? He's going to be five on the 29th of August. And so we went and, you know, he had to pee. And so we went to a public restroom. And this one had urinals, one little guy urinal and one big guy urinal right next to each other. And so our first time ever peeing in the urinals

next to each other. And it felt like a moment. It felt like a bit of a moment. This concludes Skolnick's Corner on Dadding. rights of passage for healthy masculinity. Locked. Yeah. This is a portal into the manosphere for you.

I can see it all unfolding. This is going to be where it goes. Yeah. Yeah. This is going to be your new thing. There I was looking over. And we were having a conversation. We were breaking the rules, you know, talking.

He was laughing. He thought it was so funny. I mean, come on. I'm still in like the very fun. moments of parenthood is it's cool man awesome dude well it's good to be back with you yeah uh it's been a minute since we've done a roll-on and uh we are appropriately showing up to serve the passionate roll-on audience out there the small but very loyal roll-on audience size doesn't matter rich no it doesn't it's potency yeah did you did you notice the t-shirt that I'm wearing do you see what that says

Stutz. Says Stutz. Yes. Yes. Shout out to my friend Jamie Rose, who gave me this as a gift recently. She was wearing it at this book release party that I went to for Phil Stutz for his latest book.

And it sort of like has this Marvel overtones to it. Like you know what I mean? It does. It's sort of like a Batman kind of logo for this guy. So I wanted to rock it today. It's almost a superman. in honor of the great Phil Stutz. I'm still wearing the band that he gave me around my wrist

that reminds me of the three truths. Oh. Do you remember what the three truths are? Yes, three truths. I do. You're on the spot. I'm on the spot. Can you read this far?

Because you could probably see it from here. Yeah, hard work. You can never get away from hard work. There are three unavoidable truths of life. Yes. Suffering? It starts with pain. A pain.

Yeah. Pain is unavoidable. Yeah. There will always be a need for constant work. Yeah, constant work. And what's the third? Life is uncertain. Uncertainty.

Uncertainty. But there's one thing for sure, which is that Roll-on must continue. And here we are. Here we are. I can't believe this is the problem with, this is another problem of parenthood, is that you can't remember these kinds of things. They don't come to the front, they don't come to the front of mind as quickly. But yes, I know Phil Stutz three truths.

Yes. You just got back from Alaska. I did. We can talk a little bit about that. I'm now past the initial 90 days since my spinal fusion surgery. So we can bring you up to speed on what that's been like. Celebrated 22 years of being married

as well as my wife's birthday the other week. So yeah, three anniversaries. My wife's birthday, our wedding, and the anniversary, the three month anniversary of my surgery. Holy shit. Yeah, so. Do you celebrate anniversary, is surgery anniversary a thing? I don't know, I'm making it a thing.

You're making it a thing. You gotta ritualize these like, you know, goalposts. But you're 90 days, so you're in 90 days, let's go there first, then the 90 days, is that like a sign post on the road to recover usually with this kind of surgery? It's the first kind of major signpost in that you're emerging out of the very acute phase,

of the healing and into a more rehabilitative phase. So to date, I haven't even started PT. That 90 day mark was my permission to no longer have to wear a back brace every single day. So I've liberated myself from that. I had an appointment the other week where they took x-rays and the surgeon looked at it and he said everything is looking good

and it's moving along and healing nicely. But still, I'm in the very early stages of the fusion aspect of it, like these bones are only starting to, you know, kind of grow together. And there's a long way to go before that is completely locked in. So at least I have the green light to begin PT. He told me he was gonna refer me,

but I haven't gotten that referral yet. So I haven't really been doing anything except what I have been doing, which is walking and taking things very gently and lightly. And still like feeling a little bit better, not as tired in the afternoons. Like I can handle a little bit more on the work front, but still fragile,

still feeling weirdly uncomfortable, still not supposed to bend or twist or lean or all those sorts of things. So yeah, it's been a massive test of patience. I know there was a lot of people out there who were enjoying the walks that I was doing. Yes, I'm one of them. It's like, weirdly, that was like a very popular thing, much to my surprise.

And then I just completely stopped doing it. Did you stop doing the walks? I wasn't doing the, I haven't been doing the walks as rigorously and as regularly as I was, at least in the morning in that way, because I've been using this time to advance the book project that I'm pretty immersed in right now. And my special creative time is in the morning, so I want to capture that. And so those walks and the other kind of nominal, the nominal amount of exercise that I'm doing is a little bit later.

But also, the whole point of those is to be present. To, you know, I keep talking about like, okay, well, this is the opportunity where you're forced to like be still with yourself and to pay attention and to be present and to, you know, lean into the lessons and the opportunity that this unique moment that I find myself in is making available to me.

And when I'm thinking about like, how am I capturing this to share it? I'm completely out of that experience altogether. I'm thinking about like, okay, should I film this and where's a good photo? And that's all that's occupying my mind, which is fun in terms of like sharing the experience with other people, but it comes at the cost

of what the whole endeavor is supposed to be about. So I kind of stopped doing that, although maybe I'll start doing it once in a while because people seem to enjoy it. But I am still making sure that I'm getting my steps in and doing my meditation and really honoring the union, of this experience that has forced me to basically stop everything

and it's very uncomfortable, you know. And it requires a tremendous amount of patience that I don't always have, but it's forcing me to practice all of these principles that I talk about all the time. Like, you know, you can't train where you think you should be or you feel like you used to be, you have to train where you're at.

And where I'm at right now is basically like ground zero. And as much as I talk, about the present moment being the place where all answers seem to reside. I nonetheless am, you know, always looking for the escape hatch to distract myself and just noticing that in and of itself has been interesting and trying to bring my back, myself back into the present moment to sit with the discomfort

of not being able to do the things that make me feel like who I am and knowing that, you know, it's our resistance, to being present, to declining distractions, that always reveals the teachable moments that are lying in wait, if we're courageous enough to sit with that discomfort and lean into what those lessons might be.

You gotta just do what you can with what you have. And when I don't have much in terms of my physical capacity, you know, it's definitely a sense of being limited, but also this understanding that I'm being prepared for something better. Like you can't, I can't get back to doing what I love doing unless I really am patient with the moment that I'm in right now.

And I've sort of been thinking about this in the context of the caterpillar becoming the butterfly and how Alexi Pappas says you have to, it's not like a transition from one to the other. You have to, the caterpillar has to be completely dissolved, into a goo, she calls it the glop, right? Like you have to go into your glop state before you can emerge into something else

and be transformed by the experience. Or Chip Conley calls it the chrysalis, right? I mean, that's what it is. It's this chrysalis and really paying attention and honoring like these transitions in life. But also my spin on it, this is my big insight, which is that the caterpillar cannot become

the butterfly unless it inhabits the mind of the tortoise first. Okay, that's a mixed metaphor, but I like it. I'm using many animals here. But the caterpillar can't inherit its way to the butterfly. It has to adopt the mindset of the tortoise and take these things slow, I guess is what I'm saying. Like slow and steady, patience, things I've always promoted. I try to live by, but now I'm kind of being forced to live

at a whole entirely like new level. And that conjures all these questions around identity. Like, who am I? Like, am I an athlete? Like, not right now, I'm not, you know. A different kind of athlete, I suppose. Am I a podcaster, am I writer? Are you a father?

Are you a husband, Adam? Like, yeah, we're all of these things, but we're also none of these things and so much more. And what happens when you kind of release your grip on this idea you have of yourself and who you think you are and how you hold yourself out to the world

and how you would prefer to be, perceived and relinquish like all of your energy around that, you know, what happens then? Like you're in this state of deeper surrender that makes space for something new, something more capacious, I suppose. So that's a little bit about this exploration that I've been on, which is cool, you know, and it's like you were talking to me earlier about this clip that I posted or that my team posted from a podcast that I did with Mike Jerva a while back where I was talking about these phases of life in which we find ourselves dismantled

and how it's like, congratulations, like this is your opportunity, right? Like this is where all the juice is to take the experience, learn from it and build upon it to emerge, transformed as a consequence of that. And taking that idea and layering it on top of like, where I'm at right now, instead of like resenting this situation

or trying to emerge from it as quickly as possible, instead to just like allow myself to completely be in it, you know, without resisting it. And it's different, you know, it's been a different experience. And I've got the expanded waistline to prove it. You know, it's like my pants aren't fitting so well these days, you know, it's like, oh, that's interesting. Right.

you know, how long is it going to take me at 58 to get rid of that, you know, probably a little bit longer than it did 15 years ago. But this is the reality that I'm in right now. But I'm excited to start the PT and have something to, you know, sink my teeth into that will distract me. Well, yeah. From the experience that I'm in right now.

Two questions. One is just, I know some of the walks you've been doing pool walks too. Is that easier? Is that, do you find that you can go longer in the pool? I can go as long as, I can go long. Like, I, you know, like, that's not the limiter. The limiter is, is, is like, what's hard is doing less than what you feel like you're capable of doing.

You know, it's like, okay, you've done enough. The idea isn't to walk a mile longer than you did the day before every single day until you're walking 30 miles. It's like, this is not what we're doing right now. I could do that, I wanna do that, but that's missing the point. So yeah, I can walk,

do the pool walking and it's cool because you get a little bit more resistance without any kind of strain on the lower back or any of that and I would admit to doing a little bit of swimming and kicking in the pool just to see how it feels. All right. Which is nice.

So anyway, enough on that. Enough on that. What's your, when you feel the urge to escape from your, and try to distract yourself, where do you go? I go immediately to Netflix. No, no. I mean, it's kind of true. Yeah, I've watched a lot of stuff.

Yeah. Just to get your mind. I mean, I've plenty of work to do, you know, so I can be a workaholic in the midst of all of this, and I would plead guilty to indulging that, you know, when you have a book deadline looming. It's interesting what you said about the relinquishing because I was listening to, you know,

my favorite mindfulness guy, Jack Cornfield, from like some 1992 talk. And he was referencing one of his teachers, and the subject was nirvana i'm wearing you wearing the kirt shirt um and the description of nirvana you know we think of nirvana as the goal like this this enlightenment you boom you're a realized you're a fully realized being you have ultimate equanimity you have reached you have reached the you know the the spiritual you know j Jedi phase but in reality there's moments in nirvana every day and it's in the relinquishing of the grip.

It's in the letting go and that feeling you have. It's after running hard and then you stop running and the running high hits you, it's in that moment. It's like we all have these moments of nirvana. We just don't label it that way. And this is what these guys were saying, you know, Buddhist scholars and people who've been pursuing this for years by that point. And I just thought that's an interesting way of putting it

in like the little moments. of nirvana we have in our day because there's like there's multiple things happening all the time there's the big tragic comedy that we're all immersed in and it feels very tragic a lot of times there's the stuff we're dealing with on our own plate which can be at turn stressful or fun or whatever and then there's these there's the the real subtext which is which is what you were saying we're all of these things and to let go um in the course of your day maybe 10, 12 times you have these moments in nirvana and just to kind of focus on those

and give them a little attention, I found that that's a pretty cool experience. So it just made me think what you were saying. Yeah, I mean, those experiences happen before we have the mental acuity to label them, you know, as good or bad. You know, we do that in retrospect. And I think to the extent that we can recede into the background and inhabit,

a more present state of awareness, we make ourselves available for those experiences. Because it's our compulsion to rush in and slap a sticker on it and say it's this or that that takes us out of the experience itself and robs us of the opportunity that's available to inhabit our lives from a more, I'm not saying like,

a perpetual state of nirvana, but to make ourselves available for those experiences when they arise. Absolutely. The analysis, the analysis paralysis. Did you have these experiences or an experience like that while inhabiting the vastness of Alaska? Watching grizzly bears chomp down on salmon swimming upstream?

Alaska, man. Well, you know, Julie's, Julie's homeland, where she emerged, the legend that she is. Um, my, our first time in Alaska, it was, um, I know I'll be back. I knew I was going to love it. I knew we were all going to love it. Um, it's, it just felt, you know, it recalls the same feelings you have in, in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. There's something about it. There's a frontier aspect. There's a cultural kind of kinship with those places and there's actually a lot of travel between those places. Um, you know, it's just, it's, it's the last frontier. And we were

only there for like a week. We have our, um, a good friend. of mine, Leah Barrett, who's the underwater photographer that got me into covering free diving, lives there now with her husband Rob and their kids, Maco and Tiger. And so we had never, I'd never met her kids. She'd never met Zuma. And so we've been talking about how to get the families together. And finally, they just moved back there and for a job Rob got. And so we just said, hey, we're coming. And so we stayed with them in Anchorage for a few days. We did the float float plane trip to Catmine National Park or the grizzlies at that waterfall, Brooks Falls

where that famous picture of the grizzly just about to shop. I know you sent me that video and I was like, oh, that's exactly like that image that I've seen. Like that actually is happening in real time and real life. Dude, it was amazing. It was like, but it's funny. When you do the day trip from Anchorage,

you're like, wow, you can just do a day trip and go see these animals because it was too late. By the time we decided to do this trip, it was only a couple months ago, so it was too late to like stay the night. night there or get any sort of lodging in the national park. That stuff's like lottery two years in advance. And so we just did the day trip. But then you get there, like there was fog in the morning, so we got a little bit delayed. Then we got there and you have to go to something called

bear school. So like a 30 minute primer from the national park to teach you what to do. And then you have to immediately eat because otherwise you won't eat. And then you finally get on the trails. And we had about five hours while in the park itself. And immediately, you walk out, your whole concern is, are we going to go there, do this money, spend all this money, take all this time, and then see no bears? Like, that's what you're worried about. Immediately you hit the trails, there's bears, you know? There's bears everywhere. Grizzly bears. And so, from the first lookout, we watched some grizzly bears play. And I let, you know, April's the photographer. I mean, she's got the gear. She's got the eye. She's got it all. She's very skilled.

And so the whole thing was, you go. And Zoom and I had our own little experience. And so it was fun. I'm just cruising the trails with Zuma and then finally caught up to her because she's shooting a lot of photos. And then we hit the falls and we saw everything. We saw about eight bears. One crossed the path like 60 feet from us or 50 feet from us, just like the trail in front of us. And so that was pretty fun. Our bear school kind of kicked in and I picked up Zuma and we just kind of stayed quiet and let it pass. Are they just unperturbed by human observation? they seem it, they seem it, you know, if you probably ask them, they'd be like, man, get these,

they're like mosquitoes, get these people out of here, you know? But, but they seem fine. Like there didn't seem to be anything and like nobody's got weapons around. They've got, the Rangers have bear spray. Yeah, and maybe some of them have sidearms, but for the most part, it's a very low stress, low concern thing. The big concern is if you don't do what they advise

and you just stay in the trail and the bear is right there. The bear will just lay down and won't move for two hours and then nobody gets their plane and nobody leaves the park. It's a big problem. To stand off.

That's the big concern. It wasn't like attack. Attack was never a concern. And also make sure the food's out of the cabins and things like the normal stuff so that they don't just break in and associate food with people. And so that's the main thing.

But with this much salmon, I mean, the river was red. I mean, with this much salmon, right now, there's no, there's no concern there's food everywhere and so that was fun um and then we did we went down to a place called between beaches which is on a spit about four hours south of anchorage then you catch a boat to some place called macdonald spit in the seldovia region and it's like this little spit of sand

and rock and both sides there's a beach on the lagoon side and there's a beach there's a beach on the ocean side and it's just magnificent like you know snowy peaks and and uh bald eagles everywhere and It just was like magnificent. Did you get your cold water immersion? I did. There is free diving in Alaska and I brought my fin and mask and my fin bag with me the whole time. Like I'm carrying.

Like we do not travel light. Uh-huh. We don't travel light. We had a guitar. We had my fin bag. We had everything. And so we got in, I got in. The viz was terrible, but I'm used to bad viz.

It was warmer than I thought. It was warmer than like the Oregon coast that summer I dove there. Um, so it was like, 49 degrees at depth, uh, Fahrenheit. But it was a blast hung out with Alaska free diver. They, there's a new, uh, shop in Saldovia. Shout out Chris and Amelia. Chris took me out and, um, had a great time. And so, you know, it was just, it was epic. We're going to be back. And between beaches is a great spot. Highly recommend, uh, for people who are looking like for a remote kind of cabin in, in, on a beach in Alaska. Um, yeah. I'm looking for this new,

that Speedo recently came out with. I saw an image of it on the internet and I'm trying to find it right now. I was gonna send it to you and I forgot and I can't find it now, but maybe we can insert it into this video later. I need to see it. But the reason is that it's sort of a hybrid in between

a scuba diving mask and actual goggles. It's like goggles, but it has these flanges that kind of go over your thing. And I was like, oh, this is, This is the compromise that Skolnik and I have been looking for. Well, you need the nose, though, or you can't dive. Yeah, it doesn't have the nose thing. Right, so then you can't dive.

So you won't even consider this, even for swimming. Even though you don't need your nose to be covered. No, for swimming, you're not dying. I have goggles. I have goggles. Okay. I thought the whole thing was you insist on these masks when, you know, you should be wearing goggles because this is the etiquette of Adam.

These are the rules. My problem is I can't swim without trying to dive. That's my problem. But, yeah, no, it was, it was a blast. It was a good time. And Leah, like, fished a halibut off a paddleboard, which was pretty incredible. Wow. So, yeah, she's become a full-on Alaskan.

You know, you're picking berries, salmon berries and blueberries fresh off the bush. So, you know, I'm boring people who've been to Alaska who know how great it is, but love it there. And we'll be back for sure. a while since I've been there. Yes, Julie grew up there. She's got crazy stories of living there. Being a kid. In the 70s.

Yeah, latchkey situation, you know, and her and her friends are, you know, on a glacier with like no phone and, you know, like, and just, you know, a can with a rattle in it. And, you know, that's basically it. And there's crevasses everywhere. And it's just like amazing, you know, that like, they survived.

And people would die all the time. Yeah, people did die. Oh, die, you know, like, is just like a happen, you know, the thing that happened like all the time because nature is so uncompromising and so, you know, gigantic. And apparently, like the beaches off Anchorage, it's like they look like sand, but it's mudflats. And so if you go down to the mudflats and try to, like, get in,

you could get stuck there and the tide could come in and just suck, like, it'd be like the slow death of your nightmares. And so, like, you see this water, it's flat and it looks amazing, and inviting, and it's like, do not go there. And there's no signs or anything. Like any tourists could end up getting stuck. But apparently there are stories in the newspaper,

so-and-so stuck in the mudflats. Are you old enough to remember when we were kids and it was just all about quicksand? We would talk about quicksand all the time. There was an obsession with quicksand and people dying in quicksand. And then that just went away at some point and people don't talk about that anymore.

But when I was 12, I can tell you. That was your phobia? Nationwide, there was a conversation happening amongst my peers, my age group, around Quicksand. Yes. The different ways to die. As you grow older, you learn more and more ways it could happen, you know. So I constantly find myself in this situation, a situation I suspect many of you can relate to, where almost every day it seems I'm being pulled in a thousand directions.

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giving you the power to calm your mind and change your life. And right now, Calm has an exclusive offer just for all of you, listeners of the show. get 40% off a calm premium subscription at calm.com slash rich roll this is an amazing value go to c a lm.com slash rich roll for 40% off unlimited access to calm's entire library comcom slash rich roll and tell com you heard about them from me um all right what do we want to talk about All right. Let's talk about, well, first of all, this week, we put up a podcast with Dr. Jessica Nurek.

I mean, it's Monday morning when we're recording this, this podcast that you're listening to or watching will go up on Thursday. But it's been cool to see this guest be embraced by the audience, somewhat of a controversial conversation that we have around the state of this, the Make America Healthy Again movement, which I felt compelled to have with her

and I'm glad that I did. And it's been nice to see her message embraced right now. I wrote a substack article that I published right before we started recording with some thoughts on that conversation and kind of what's going on generally with the Make America Healthy Again movement and what is actually going on behind the scenes with those who hold power

and the impact and implications of how that power is being used and leveraged, mostly in the context of deregulation in ways that are actually undermining any good faith attempt to actually make America healthy, setting aside the again part, which is debatable. But anyway, I think it feels, good to kind of take a stand on that, understanding that it might be divisive or controversial.

And it also feels good to begin to share thoughts on substack because we're in the process of really looking at how we can use and leverage substack for the benefit of the community. I think it's a really powerful and super cool and also very intuitive platform that we really haven't been taking a of. And I recently participated in this thing that Elizabeth Gilbert has on Substack. She was a guest a while back on the podcast. We still haven't published that episode, but she has a thing called Letters from Love.

Yes. And she's developed this community of over 200,000 people. And what she's doing is encouraging her community to practice this thing that she's been practicing for a long time, which is to write a daily letter to her. herself from this perspective of love, like, you know, dear love, what would you have me learn today as a prompt, right?

Yes. And it's an exercise in self-love and in kind of honoring yourself and showing yourself gratitude. And she every week invites somebody to perform this exercise, write a letter, share that letter with her community and kind of make a video where they read it.

And she asked me to do it and I did it the other week. And it's a confronting exercise for somebody who is challenged with the idea of self-love, which was kind of the subject of the letter that I wrote to myself and shared. But it was cool, but I think even more cool than that was to see the engagement of her community around this one idea.

And it led us to thinking about what our version of that might look like, because I think the real benefit of Substack is the way in which you can cultivate community, which is something I've been thinking a lot about in the broader kind of context of podcasting itself and what I want to do with it as somebody who's been doing it for a long time because it's changed quite a bit since I began the humble beginnings where it was the kind of purview of the hobbyist where there was no business plan and it wasn't a income generating adventure, let alone like a vocation. But now things are very different.

And so I thought it would be cool to kind of talk about that a little bit, like the state of the union of podcasting. Like I said, you know, it had a humble history. I had a sense when I started it that it would grow into something bigger and more meaningful than it was at the inception, like back in 2012 when I began, which was early,

not the, I wasn't one of the first, but I was pretty early. And what it's like now, which is it's essentially become, to eventually become almost mainstream media. Like all these people who are going that way. Basically all running their own public access television show and working very diligently to garner people's attention. From my own experience, what's happened is that in many ways,

podcasting has become almost an adjunct of the publishing industry. Publishers realized pretty early that the way to sell books to book their authors on prominent podcasts. And I've participated in that economy for our mutual benefit, I would say. And it's been great because it gives me access to interesting people because they're making themselves available to promote their, their wares, their goods, their latest book, their latest offering.

But it's kind of gotten to the point now where it's harder and harder to create something that stands out and that's unique. and individuals who are good guests learn quickly that they are good guests and start making themselves available for lots of podcasts. You know what I mean? So when the prominent individual, be it an author or whoever, is like, okay,

I need to get out in the world and promote something, they are going to book themselves on all of the podcasts that are similar to mine. So you enter into this equation or this agreement where you know that, that you're gonna get access to this person, but you also know they're gonna go across the street and do the other guys and the other guys and the other guys.

And by the time you publish this, this person is going to appear essentially simultaneously on all these shows. And what happens over time is that all of these shows start to look similar and bleed together. And when you layer on top of that, the incentives that are now in place in podcasting, it creates a very interesting situation

where, In order to stand out in what is now a very crowded marketplace, you need to learn about things like algorithms and analytics and what gets people to not only pay attention, but to sustain that attention. And that has costs and benefits. Like if you do it right, you can benefit by growing an audience and maintaining a large audience.

The cost, of course, comes at kind of the whole raison d'etre of the entire affair. Like when you start to book guests based upon what you think is going to grow your audience or what's going to constitute rage bait or, you know, incite people or is going to lend itself to creating a bunch of clips that have the potential to go viral, to me, on some level, you're sort of losing the plot of the whole affair. I've been thinking a lot about this and the ways in which it's impacted me and this show and how I want to kind of move forward

in the context of this environment that's now very different from the one in which I started. And I think while everyone's out kind of chasing trends, oh, this works or we need this kind of intro and that hooks people and here's your title and your thumbnail and all that kind of stuff in this world that is increasingly video first as opposed to audio first,

which is the way that we started, rather than chasing trends, where is the white space? What are people not doing or under-appreciating in this whole thing? And for me, much of it goes back to the very beginning, which is the whole appeal of this is that you're crafting, curating, and cultivating something real, something honest, and something authentic that is appealing because it's not,

not in a rush and it's not trying to manipulate you or game your attention. And so that is why I've been doing these longer intros in the audio version of the podcast where I can share my thoughts and take my time. I'm not interested in whether you're gonna click away five seconds later, like that's up to you because I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.

And I also think in the context of this, when everybody is so focused on growth and audience capture and attention, that the real differentiator isn't the size of your audience, but more the depth of your audience. Like, how real is that audience? How loyal are they? And how well do they feel like you're nourishing them?

And the differentiator, in my opinion, is going to be that community piece. Do they feel like they're being nourished? And how can you, rather than being focused on growth, like how can you really serve the people that are already there? are already there, who are taking time out of their day to pay attention to what you're doing. And I think the answer to that is by emphasizing

and investing in ways to bring them in even more, which is why we have this new studio and we have this theater, we're gonna be doing live events and live podcasts and creating more immersive experiences. And it's why this substack idea leveraging it to bring the community in and try to create some kind of community-based enterprise around it, I think is so vital and important and exciting.

Cool, man. There's a lot there to kind of unpack and tease out. I love the letter from love that you did. And I'm, you know, Liz, an old friend and she's asked me to do one. And at first, I thought when I first got the instructions, I was kind of hastily read them. And I thought it was like a letter to your younger self. And then so I thought, okay, I have an angle on that. And then when I realize what it was and I read yours and I'm like oh this is much more challenging actually than I thought and when she first approached me with it she goes she thinks it's such an important practice for men to do because we are less likely to be so sweet with ourselves or to even tap into that angle not to that we're less likely to be sweet with ourselves but we're just less

likely to even consider that lens to which to kind of filter our perspective and so um I thought I was going to do it in Alaska, like five, my five or ten minutes to go sit there and do it, but I haven't done it yet because I'm afraid of it. Well, the whole thing is like, don't spend more than five minutes on it. Right. Nobody only spends five minutes on this. I probably spent like two hours on it. Right.

You know. But you might have done the original thing and then played with it. But in terms of the Maha stuff, I thought in your post, you mentioned Trojan horse. And I think that's like a perfect analogy because, Maha was kind of brought into the fold during the campaign as a way to lock down the election, right? So it was kind of a strategic, it was never about we believed in these things. It was about we believe that this thing could help us get what we want. And so, and it worked, right?

It totally worked. And then as to your point, I don't want to belabor it, but like in your essay, which I thought was brilliant, you lay out how, yes, red died. number 50 is being cast. 40 getting cast aside, seed oils. And you mentioned all the things. But then you're like, yeah, but the clean water acts being repealed, the drinking water acts being repealed in certain ways.

And that is going to impact us in a much greater way. And so I thought that was really well set us. I just want to reinforce that. Yeah. I mean, I think that what Jessica did such a brilliant job at elucidating was providing a sympathetic understanding around this groundswell of support because it is good that we get these dyes out of our food.

And it is important to say out loud that big pharma and big food and all these companies have incentives that are at cross purposes with our individual health and our collective well-being. It's just that the solutions to those problems are not actually what's happening, you know, Right. What's happening is massive deregulation

that's giving all of these, you know, kind of quote unquote like corrupt behemists more and more bandwidth to do as they please. And it's easier to continue for them to do as they please. If every once in a while they voluntarily say, we're gonna swap this for this in our ingredients, not because the government is making us, like they're volunteering it.

It's not like, you know, anybody's telling them they have to. And they get like a little more latitude to play behind the scenes in ways that people are not paying attention to as much as perhaps they should. Right. That's all. All the information we're getting on how things are unhealthy is because there's a regulatory framework and because universities and institutions have had federal money to do certain kind of research. Now the federal money is going away from universities. So the research is going to be much more private. And so that means it's going to be in the hands of industry more and more.

It is already in some respects, but it's going to be more so. And so the science, you're going to have less science to kind of be able to gauge what's healthy and what's not. So there's so many, at least that's my limited understanding of it, but that seems to be at risk, right? The ability to research what is unhealthy and what is healthy is getting, is being compromised. And then, of course, the EPA is no longer going to be able to regulate pollution. wonder when power switches back because it always does cycles and cycles kind of fold in on

each other how much of this becomes the new norm because it's so hard to get things past now like does this is it become the new norm you know does it you know it's a good question um so it's uh one thing one thing that history teaches us is that the more that uh you you uh you uh you uh you uh grant in our case the executive branch power. Like it's hard to then take that power back from them. So this, you know, tripartite system where we have the three branches of government that are supposed to operate in parity with each other

is very much out of balance. Like more and more of that power has obviously been transferred over to the executive branch. And once it's there, it stays there, regardless of who's in office. So that's the, right so there you go um but anyway that's one piece of it like the maha piece of it and i i've been following jessica before i didn't you know when when i found out she was on the pot i was like

wow because because i've been following her on the same kind of track over the last few months and um you know she's explaining it very well like you can get you can understand why people are attracted to that movement but then like you say very well but that's not the whole story And sometimes these days where it's almost impossible to tell what's real and what's not, you can easily get, you know, roped into supporting something you're not supporting. The great example of that is the hunters that had to rise up and scream and yell about the big, beautiful bill because the public lands that they rely on for recreation were getting sold if it went through. And to their credit, credit Cameron Haynes.

Yeah, Cam Haynes made a big, made a big push. and raising awareness around that. And they were successful. They got that dealt with, but it took quite a bit. It did. And, you know, short of the sort of Teddy Roosevelt Republicans standing up and letting their voices be heard around this, it would have sort of surreptitiously just like passed through.

Yeah, but part of it was the podcast realm came in as well. So Cam Haines kind of tapped into that. And it just rippled like the Teddy Roosevelt aspect, like you said. But the thing that I thought was amazing, the reason I wanted to bring that up, I know it's a little bit older news, and shout out Kyle Tierman,

who also was public on this, is that Kyle, the environmentalists, also likes to hunt occasionally. And Cam, who voted Republican, you know, Kyle did not, Kyle's Democrat. It's one of the few times you actually see hunters

and environmentalists coming together. You don't see it too much. When it comes to marine protected areas in the ocean, the commercial fishermen kind of have their take, and those political takes usually get absorbed by the recreational fishermen. No regulation, please no more regulation. We have two, our waters are too overregulated. And the same thing happens often in ranching and hunting communities regards to open space and public lands. This was the first time I can remember, and I've been involved in some ways in the environmental movement since the 90s, that these two groups

came together to actually get something done like this. It's almost always there at odds. And so I feel like that matters. I don't know if it's something we can build on or not, but I think it matters. And part of it is the intentionality behind a guy like Cameron Haynes, who cares deeply.

He's deeply passionate for the earth. Now, how can we communicate with that side of the aisle and come together on other issues? Yeah, to build from that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it is such an interesting thing because, you know, truly, at least in America, you know, environmentalism was born out of, you know,

the Republican perspective, courtesy of Teddy Roosevelt. Yes. Who said, we need to protect these lands and we need to kind of, you know, exercise our federal power to make sure that they stay the way that they are and that they are preserved. Like, he's the original American environmentalist. Right.

And so then, but then, you know, but then, you know, these parties shift and morph in the tectonic plates of policy, you know, move them in different directions, such that, you know, environmentalism became the purview of the Democratic Party and deregulation of the environment, that of the Republican Party. Right. But as in all cases, when there's overreach in either of these, be it with the Republicans, you know, allowing corporations to pollute these lands or, or. or trying to pass a bill that's gonna allow, you know, the privatization, like, you know, the sort of, you know, building of developments, et cetera, you know, on these lands, there's gonna be a backlash.

Similarly on the left, when they get, you know, they get too crazy about the regulation, then there's gonna be pushback. So in the middle, you have, you know, Kyle and Cam, who are kind of like avatars. Right. At the center who are coming together to resolve initiative.

that I think we all, you know, it was pretty, pretty much, you know, at least, you know, amongst the citizenry, you know, unanimous that like, we can't do that. Right, exactly. And you look at a, so not to, I don't wanna bring up names and have people get all scream and yell, but like, it's not that, it's not like our health secretary doesn't understand the link between the environment

and all this stuff. He helped, he founded Waterkeeper. Waterkeeper is one of the great, environmental organizations out there. And he did a lot to clean up the Hudson and other rivers. And that organization still exists. Right, and they're amazing. And it's done a lot of good.

Yes. Which makes it all the more curious and bizarre. Like the whole thing. The whole thing. Which brings us back to the podcast realm. You're talking about it's so interesting because while this deregulation is happening on the national level and in relation to the environment

and food systems where there's increased regulation on one hand, on one hand in a narrow way, but more broad deregulation. The broadcast universe is like, that's the tectonic plates that are shifting the most. And we feel it here in Los Angeles where there's less work for longtime crew and up-and-comers who want to start as PAs and get into production. There's just so much less work in Los Angeles, partly because of that production work. But then also it's just that the nature of the economy that is broadcasting and filmmaking in general, is shifting and you know you we come out here to this amazing studio that you guys built and you're one of

you know i didn't realize it at the time like when you were putting this together i've only learned it over the last year or so but there are you know you are one of several now that have popped up kind of indie podcasters that have grown and grown and you have a footprint here that is a real part of the broadcast future. And, you know, we think of you, I think of Mel Robbins, Steve Renella, that you can, you know, obviously Joe Rogan was the first with his studio on Woodland Hills and now in Austin. But you have kind of a small footprint in relation to the others, but actually a growing one. It's really interesting to see how the, how that system is, is changing. Yeah. We're definitely in this flux state of transition in terms of

of the media landscape, you know, writ large and small. We have the Colbert show getting canceled, you know, and that's a whole, you know, sticky wicket. Like, you know, why that's happening. At the same time that YouTube creators, like Rhett and Link from Mythical Mornings, those guys are coming in later this week to do the show. I'm excited about that.

And a handful of others are being submitted on behalf of YouTube for Emmy consideration. So the lines are getting blurred between what is traditional or mainstream media and what is alternative or online digital media. Essentially, everything's on a screen and we're in this position now where it doesn't really matter if you call it television or you call it YouTube.

Like these things are all just buttons on a screen that we choose and whether it's being broadcast by one of the big four three-lettered networks through an antenna and satellites or it's coming through an ethernet or your Wi-Fi into your office on a smaller screen really doesn't matter anymore. All of these things are being put in the Vitamix

and they're being blended together. And we haven't really emerged yet from that with any clarity. Like right now it's, all confusing. But it is true. Like, here we are in Los Angeles, the global capital of, of, you know, content creation for as long as any of us have been alive. And people who have had long careers in this industry can't find work, or at least can't find work that pays a, you know, a habitable living wage. Oscar nominees are driving Uber. And we're seeing these people

move from working on television shows or movies into the digital. right, looking for jobs at places like this, which I think is incredibly fascinating. It's so fascinating. And I feel so lucky to even have a foothold in all of this. I mean, we're a small operation in comparison to what many others are doing out there right now. And it's really special and I'm so grateful

to be able to do this thing and to kind of grow it and now to start to work with other creators and kind of expand what we're, capable of doing, which I think is really exciting. But I think it's important to hold on to like why it is that you're doing it in the first place. Because with all of the incentives, like I was mentioning earlier, that are out there, it's very easy to lose sight of the why.

And I've boarded witness to people who are doing that. And when you get to a certain size and scale, and you're staffed up with all kinds of people who know how the internet works, I've seen, I've seen people kind of, you know, move into this place where their perspective on what they're creating and sharing is really entirely through the lens of like, what's going to go viral, what's going to be, you know, the thing that is that is going to travel across the internet the most fluidly. And as a consequence of that, the programming starts to get reverse engineered rather than it being

what perhaps it was at the outset, like this more authentic, original, kind of organic exchange between people has now become kind of completely predetermined in advance. And I think that comes at a certain cost. It certainly works. People are, there are people out there who have become very successful doing this.

And I don't begrudge them. They're doing what they're doing they're doing. But I just think for me, and also as somebody's been doing it for a very long time and wants to continue to be able to keep doing it and be in love with it in the same way that I always have been, like I always wanna come back to the why.

Like, and the why is like, I wanna serve the audience in a meaningful way. I wanna create something that will have the potential to be impactful, not on a surface level, but really, on as profound a level as I'm capable of doing. And in order to do that, I have to step outside all of the gamesmanship

that I think is going on right now and just lean into my strengths and try to double down on them and allow it to be what it wants to be rather than trying to force it to be something else because this is what other people are doing that's working really well. It's interesting.

It's like what we were talking about before you went into that was this the shift and the in the flux. And like you said, people from professional broadcasting careers coming over to YouTube, well, what you just described as gamesmanship or as like planning on the questions and having, you know what you're going to get back from the, from the guest. I mean, that's late night talk show. That's talk show stuff. Right. It's all, it's basically going back to, yeah, it's like, you know, all of these things are moving in bi-directional. Right. You know what I mean? Like, like the talk shows, have to become more like podcasts

and the podcasts are becoming more and more like the late night talk shows and the morning shows where it's like here's my card with the question on it and this question has been vetted based upon AB testing to solicit the answer that is going to be the most

popular with our audience you know and it's like okay well right now we're doing television now you're doing television and what you're talking about is I got to stay true to my rudder and just keep going and stay indie in and stay indie but also stay indie in your own mind and and how it's probably like a gen x thing you know it's like the gen x like don't sell out while you're selling out or like you know like

you have you're guilty about it or something like that you know yeah i mean it's you're wearing a kirkobain t-shirt right this is like you know this is like very gen x i am wearing the shirt but i did find out i read somewhere that like when the money started rolling in kurt somehow negotiated and 75% of the royalties for himself. Oh, of course. Yeah. And he probably deserved him. He probably deserved him.

But it doesn't mean there wasn't a part of him that was like, you know, yeah, you know, like the guilt of selling it. You know, it's like there's this sensibility for people of our age, like the way that we were raised in this sort of, you know, fuck you, punk rock. Like, it's not cool to care. Right. And, you know, everything is sort of, you know, it's sort of like this veneer of nihilism over everything.

Right. where the worst thing you could do was sell out. And now we're in a culture where like selling out is the point. You know, like this is the thing that everyone is celebrating. And like, look, this is a commercial enterprise. Like I wanted to be successful and I'm glad that it is and I'm very proud of it. And I get to employ all these people and do all this cool stuff. So I'm not necessarily hung up on that only when it comes at the erosion of the value system that gave birth to it.

Well, I think your intentionality comes through also. And like I was telling you before we got on here that like I called you a tastemaker. You called yourself a, was a curator, more of a mindful curator and like someone people depend on for not just like we call tastemaker. Usually it means what you eat or what you consume media wise. But you're bringing, you're introducing concepts and experts as well as when we talk about like things to why. and books to read and things like that. So you're bringing that and that intentionality kind of comes through, I think, because you're the way you started, which was your kind of three niche,

your three niches, the plant base, the sober living and the endurance sports. So those three niches crossed over and you're able to kind of introduce them to each other. And now you continue to do that. That's growing. So that intentionality comes through. And the other thing I think of in that regard is, you know even though guests rotate between shows and from a host perspective it's got to like make you a little nuts but from a user perspective like how many websites do we actually visit on a daily

like if you really monitor some people really range across the web I would venture to guess most people don't most people have their favorite sites and they have their favorite shows and yes, though, you've had this person on and so-and-so's had the same guest on and you can name 10 people that have had that guests on, probably a good chunk of your audience has only consumed that guest on your show. So there's something about that, too,

because in the siloization of media, which is what we're talking about, and this is one silo, you've become instead of, you've actually become a silo. So you're kind of the filter through which some of this stuff gets in one channel.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's some truth in that. I think what I was getting at was more that, and this is a little inside baseball or like, you know, how the sausage is made. But essentially when you get to the point that, you know, where we're at, it becomes very easy to program the show reactively because you get so many pitches.

Like every day, like 20 to 30 incoming emails with so-and-so in their book or whatever. I'm on publicist lists and I get the galleys for all the self-improvement books and all of that. So it's really like, you know, I can just pick and choose what appeals to me and just say yes to this and no to this

and booking the show because I'm the only one of books. I know other people have like bookers. People might not realize that, but they hire bookers to like get people to come on the show. Like I'm the only one of books. I'm the only one who is, you know, reaching out to guests and making lists of people that I wanna have, et cetera.

But I will admit to of having gone through periods where it's just like, it just becomes easy to do that and you don't really think about it. And I've sort of woken up from that phase to realize in this space where, yes, there are these respective silos and maybe there's some kind of cross-pollinization there, but maybe not also because people have their favorite

hosts and they want to hear their host, talk to this person, et cetera. At the same time, I think there's a lot to be said for really being proactive rather than reactive and thinking hard and long about the people you really want to have and going after them intentionally. And so I'm trying to do more and more of that to step outside the ecosystem where you're just picking

and choosing among the people that are doing the rounds to find the hidden gems. and the amazing people who maybe have never done a podcast or maybe only did that tiny one, but it was amazing and you saw it or heard it and thought like, oh, wouldn't it be cool to broaden their reach and amplify their voice by having them on?

And so that's kind of like where my head is at in terms of that. And I think the only way to distinguish yourself if your audience is cross-pollinated with a bunch of other people is to venture outside the lines a little bit. And, you know, make your stamp by doing something a little bit different

rather than going along to get along and just following, you know, whatever happens to be the trend at the moment. I like it, man. I'm not in demand by the other podcasts, so that's why I'm a good guest for you right now. I'm very much not in demand. I've tried my best, Adam,

to like position you as an in-demand guest for other podcasts, but there's only so much I can do. There's only one podcast that needs me. It's up to you at some point. You know, you gotta, like, let's, maybe I should have A-B tested a bunch of questions for you and then thrown them at you and we could rehearse before the podcast so that by the time you're behind the mic, you could just lay down some truth or some monologue and we'll clip that, we'll put it up there, it'll go crazy.

Get a minute. And then all those podcasters are going to be calling you. I get, I get invited. I say no, it's like I'm, I say no a lot. I get invited to a smaller podcast sometimes. There's a time in place, there's a time in place. Maybe that day's coming. I am encouraged, though, by the fact that I think the most popular podcast that we've done

in the last handful of months was with Craig Maud. Yes, I love that one. And that's also like the longest and the kind of conversation that lends itself the least to the viral clip, you know what I mean? It's like, you gotta be in for the entire experience with this guy. And if you go all in, you will be nourished and rewarded and you will emerge like better than you were before.

Yeah. And feeling better, like it's, you know, it's, it was, that was an incredible one. And I love the fact that it was also popular because sometimes, you know, those really deep and heartfelt explorations don't necessarily translate into, you know, views and listens on the internet because people are busy or whatever for a million different

reasons but to see that is like oh yeah that's right this is what we do here you know what i mean more of that please yeah yeah i love that one go for a long walk with craig mod yeah yeah he's he's yeah i love i mean it's so funny because when you when when that one starts it's like it's like here's this really cool nice guy who has these great insights but then as the as the podcast goes on you realize he's like this incredible polymath that's great at a million things. Like great musician. Oh, I can create my own social media platform that is exactly like Twitter because I can code, but I can also write better than everyone else and create these art books and I can

walk for days and do, yeah, like, exactly. Like by the end, I was like, man, this guy's not an underdog. This guy's one of the greats. I never said he was an underdog. No, no, no, no. I think he's sort of like quietly under the radar, you know, like superhero. I was trying to figure. Yeah, big fan.

Cool. Is there anything else I wanna say about that? I think we said what we needed to say. Yeah. I feel good about the place that we're in right now. I'm excited for the future. I'm excited to be able to expand our offerings and reach our tentacles deeper into you guys,

the community to reward you for your attention and to hopefully strengthen and our ability to not only feel connected to you and you to us, but to serve you better in a more immersive way. So there's a lot in development right now as far as that goes. And I'm psyched to be a part of it,

partly because in this new, like in a way, you didn't even mean to be doing this when you asked me to come on and start doing roll on kind of in the, and as the pandemic hit. But like, you know, when the New York Times shut down their sports section. Like a lot of stuff's been shutting down outside fired. I mean, they're coming back and they're doing well,

but they did fire everybody I worked for over there. Yeah, everybody got fired. Everyone at outside magazine got fired. Like this is happening, you know, all across the board in publishing, in television, you know, only movies that are getting made are these gigantic movies. Right. You know, the exception of a few

we're gonna talk about in a sec, but yeah, like we're in a weird, state right now in terms of the business model for media. Right, but then... But what we're doing, I really believe, is the future and it holds promise, whereas legacy media is dying right now. No doubt.

Sort of network, television, programming, like all of that. Like the business model is just eroding underfoot, you know, as we speak there. And what is that going to look like in a couple years? you know, CBS is gonna cut its slate. Like all these networks, like they can't afford to continue to underwrite the programming that they always have been underwriting

because the advertiser dollars are not there because the eyeballs aren't there. And the eyeballs that are there are basically geriatric. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And that's why I was getting at it is that it's for me, someone of a professional in this space that has like always, you know, when looking back, it's easier to see.

but every story I've, almost every story I've done has been about expanding our awareness of what this world really is and what our life is really about. Like if you look at it, like everything from the Goggins books to some of my sports reporting to my own projects,

it's like, it's all about like expanding, expanding that sphere of awareness, piercing the bubble and see that there's so much more. And so for me to land here, it's like, I think that's where we kind of link up in that same idea. And so to be a part of this and to have, you know, my small, my small foothold here as part of what I'm doing, it just means a lot to me. And especially because of this audience, you know, this audience has been incredibly affirming for me and just a great place to kind of to share what. what I'm doing and receptive in that way. And so it's like, it's been such a pleasure.

And I've said it before on social media, but to be able to say it now on the podcast, how grateful I am for the audience, for the listeners here and to be part of what you're doing, it's awesome. Yeah, well, it's been great doing this with you, man. I love doing it. Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks. But you know what, you know what the most fun is? What's that? What I really wanna do?

Watch Netflix? Yeah, I wanna have like a, I wanna have like a movies podcast. This is like, that's all I really want to talk about, Adam. Let's do it. All this stuff about change and transformation, it's great, you know. Yes, but let's talk about movies. Yeah, like, like, let's dismiss audience receptivity and just, you know, talk about, talk about, like, you know, stuff that I think is fun to talk about.

Let's do it, man. We should. But I think the role on audience now is relatively attuned to the fact that media diet has become a cornerstone this edition of the show. I want to talk about fasting, something I used to think about in binary terms, like you're either eating or you're not, right? Well, if you're a longtime listener of this show, then you'll probably recall my conversations with Dr. Volter Longo, who, if you don't know, is one of the world's preeminent research

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All right, so are we getting into? What have you seen? I've been watching the first season of Deadwood. Have you heard of that show? I have heard of it. One of the greatest of all time. I'm a rewatchable. By the great David Milch.

Oh, my God. Who ask anybody who is a screenwriter, and they'll all pretty much agree that he's like the goat in terms of television, Well, he was Hill Street Blues, right? Hill Street Blues, and then what did you do after that? He did Deadwood.

He had that show, didn't he do the show about horse racing for HBO? He did, I don't know how that did. He had Dustin Hoffman in that got canceled. I'm sure he's done a lot of other stuff. But Deadwood is, especially the first two seasons. I'm only watching the first because that's, to me, the pinnacle of it, and then I'll go back to trying to be a current person and not an old bastard. but like that show that came on HBO right when entourage was hitting and so like their big it was a big Sunday night one too was entourage then Deadwood and maybe six feet under was in that lineup I forget but it was like this great murderers row lineup and NYPD Blue deadwood Hill Street Blues that's it yeah NYPD Blue which by the way NYPD Blue also oh really the first season

I'm looking on IMDP right now. Sorry, go ahead, though. But NYPD Blue is considered very much groundbreaking television, and Deadwood is so Shakespearean, and it's not just the writing, but the acting is just incredible, and to watch it, it's like artistry, so, so, and

I, you know, I do like a Western, I do like a Wilde, and Wilde, Bill Hickcock and Calamity Jane and all that, and so if you haven't seen it, you probably have seen it, But if you haven't seen it, that's what I've been watching. And if you love Deadwood, then maybe check out the podcast I did with Titus Welliver.

Oh, yeah. In that show, who talks about Milch in that conversation. Oh, does he? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, he's, isn't he, he comes in at the end of the first season.

I think so. It's been a while since I watched it. My boys love it. I think they recently rewatch the whole thing themselves and they talk about it all the time. Yeah, yeah. Well, Sweringen is one of the great, one of the great. All right, so you're staking your, you're planting your flag. at Deadwood in the yeah in I watched I've been watching Deadwood the Dodgers and then I read a book I mean it's

media diet so books do books count yeah I read uh for now James rebank exactly James rebank's new book who shares an agent with um with you and I a bird is his agent um called the place of tides he is uh I think the best naturalist writing today and I it's it's one of the best best non-fiction books I've read since Zaytune. I've put it on a list of, you know, five or six top books. It's very quiet, beautiful kind of earth-based and earth and water-based a book. And it's about he spends, he wrote Shepard's Life and Pastoral Song,

which is, you know, his day job is running a farm in the north of England where he was born. His family has been farming there, ranching there, for 600 years and he basically did regenerative agriculture brought that to bring his family farm back and so the first two books are kind of about that. And this one, he embeds himself with the eider down duck ladies of the Norwegian islands. And so he spends a season with a 70-year-old woman who has brought back an age-old custom, which goes all the way back to the Vikings, which is to protect and provide shelter for eider down ducks, eider ducks to come on land,

protect them from predators, and then let them hatch their eggs. And then when they go back with their young to the ocean, they leave the down behind. And so all this idea of like down is kind of cruel. This is not that. Ider down is not that. Ider down is like they just leave it behind in their nests. And so he spends, it's this way of life that has gone out.

obviously vastly out of fashion. Everyone's leaving the islands. The kids go to Oslo. And she has brought back. She went to islands that were all built around this economy. Since the Vikings and since she was a kid, the islands were still functioning this way in a vast way. And thousands of ducks were coming to the point when she was having kind of her own

midlife crisis, the ducks weren't there. No one was doing it. And she brought the custom back to several islands. She and some others. And so he met her and he spent a season doing that. And so that's the book. And it's remarkable.

Well, I'm sure the writing is beautiful. Yeah, it's poetic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And easy to read and just like you go on and he has these incredible insights about kind of our humanity and what it means and the nature of the modern world. Because, you know, we're all kind of stuck, you know, what it is is we're all like kind of cogs in this modern world. And we have to detach and look around every once in a while to kind of realize, you know, that we're not that because it's become all consuming and I think that's really the heart of the book is like that he is this high functioning guy doing running this he's written bestselling books he's

in demand and he wants to be in demand because it because you know it gives him yeah yeah some somehow makes him feel validated and being with her um he realizes actually being part of the land and sea and the wind and she's part of everything when she's doing her thing it makes him realize that that is actually the point. Right, that's the whole thing. Yeah. I love it. That's beautiful, man. You've gone very highbrow.

Go on highbrow this week. Yeah, and one last thing, Eddie Palmieri, the great Salcero, the great musician, Latin jazz, and salsa innovator, Latin music innovator. He died at 88. He's one of the great, if you haven't, this is a media diet thing. If you haven't ever listened to Eddie Palmieri, he is an absolute maestro.

He kind of was one of the first to put out like six, eight-minute songs on record. Like the record companies weren't doing it, and he did it because of the band he put together. He started playing piano at eight years old in Washington Heights. He's a Washington Heights kid. He's a New Yorker from Puerto Rican descent and just a master musician. and I'm not going to drone on too much, but there's an incredible obituary in the New York Times that I can give you the link if you want to add to the show notes

and just Spotify him. And I'll throw a few songs on there if you want for people who are interested in that kind of thing. I love all kinds of music. And if you're not a big salsa or person, give it a listen because it's funky and deep and really cool. Nice, man. That's a good one.

Hey, thanks. It made me think about a documentary that I'm excited to see that I haven't seen yet. This documentary on Jeff Buckley. It's coming out soon. I love Jeff Buckley and I'm fascinated by his life and his music and this life that was cut short far too early.

I'm not sure when that date of that is coming out. I'm starting to see previews around that. It's a biopic or a documentary? It's a documentary. Yeah, it's a documentary. But speaking of movies, I mean, I'm gonna pick the low-hanging fruit here. I mean, I saw have weapons this week,

and it's just, like, amazing. This movie is fantastic. The marketing's amazing, looking at the posters, and they freaked me out the minute I saw them. I'm not, like, a huge horror guy. Okay. So I'm not necessarily, like, the, you know,

the prime audience for this kind of thing. Like, I like horror-fying, but I'm not the guy who's, like, running out to see the latest, you know, scary movie or, you know, Friday, 13. or whatever, Blumhouse or whatever. Yeah, it's fine, but it's not like, that's not my sweet spot at all.

But I do admit to really enjoying this new, uh, trend of, of kind of, of, of tour driven horror as high art, like the midsumars, you know, those, those types of movies that are, yeah, get out, things like that, like these directors who are pushing the envelope and kind of redefining horror. And that's what obviously made me,

interested in weapons because it was it was clearly if you watch a trailer like this is in conversation with those filmmakers and those movies but I steered away from reading anything about it or wanting to know too much about it or even the director who created it and who has his own like really interesting story in and of itself like he comes from improv comedy and it's like a very interesting origin story. So I suppose I went into it with a projection or an assumption about what I thought it was going to be. And it just wasn't that at all. It's sort of a movie that keeps you on its toes because every time you feel like you have your footing and you feel like you understand the movie that you're in, it becomes a different movie. And it's almost as if he's playing with these

tropes or these things that he's dropping into the frame that you're used to seeing and you're like, oh, when I see this, it means this, or this is what's gonna happen, or, or I can foresee how this story is gonna play out. And he's constantly subverting those expectations. And it's really fun, like it's uproariously fun and it's funny also. It wasn't necessarily, I mean, it has a,

you know, the construct of it is like a scary idea, but I wouldn't say like it scared me, you know, it has disturbing moments for sure, but it's wild. really entertaining and super fun. And I think, I mean, I checked like a day ago, it was scoring like 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, like people loved this.

And when I went to the movie theater, it was packed. And I think movies are really back in no small reason due to sinners 28 years later, which is also amazing. I heard that's great. And now this movie, like these are really well done, very crowd-pleasing movies that have brought audiences back into the theater in a moment where it's like, oh, theaters are dead,

and the movie-going experience is defunct. But if you make great stuff, people will come. They're coming out for this. It's great. My kids went to go see Naked Gun, which is like not that interested in seeing it, but apparently that is, like, really well done, and they loved it, and it was super fun.

And it's been a long time since, like, a broad comedy was in theaters. Is it a really broad- Tucker's again? I don't even know who. No, no, are they still making it? I don't know. I should know.

If I'm gonna host a movie podcast, I should know things like this. Well, I'll watch these. But the point being like, when was the last time there was a really broad comedy that did really well at the box office in theaters? Like, like, really, you know, like on the broadest level, like a movie like this.

Step brothers probably? Yeah, that was a long time ago, right? Like they're not making these kind of. It's probably because these movies don't do well overseas. So they don't have the global return. Yeah, so they're not making them because these things cost money and more money than they used to.

Right. But anyway, weapons, that's my choice. I still wanna see Eddington, I haven't seen it yet. Okay. But I'm busy. Right, we're busy. Even though, I can't move my body. You can't move your body

and I can't get out at night. So it's kind of like we're a little bit mixed, but I think weapons is on Netflix, right? Weapons is in the theaters right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's in the theaters. Okay, so I need to see it. Yeah.

I need to see weapons. How about the F1? Did you see F1? Yeah, I saw F1. Okay. I loved F1. I mean, it's the cinematography is fantastic in that movie. It's, it's something you really should see on the big screen.

I don't think it's in theaters anymore, is it? No, maybe not. I didn't see it in IMAX, I wish I had. The story is incredibly basic, but I think it needs to be because there's so much else going on. Like the sport is so comfortable. and I think they did a really deft job of trying to explain it without too much exposition or leaning too much into the insane complexity of the whole thing

by focusing on like tire choice and some kind of basic strategy stuff that a broad audience can understand and it's wildly enjoyable. Okay. I was at the Formula One race in Austin a couple years ago. Right. With the boys. and had the opportunity to be in the paddock

and visit the Mercedes garage and like meet, I got to very briefly meet Louis Hamilton and Toto and like, you know, it was a wild experience. That was his last year being the best too, I think, right? Or was up there? That was the year that he was starting to struggle a little bit. Okay, okay. But while in the Mercedes garage,

where you get the, you have the headphones on and you kind of hear what everyone's saying. Like it was, this was like the day before the race when they were, I think, no, actually this was during testing, maybe, where the drivers are out and they're reporting back, like how the car feels and what they feel needs adjusting and all that kind of stuff, which is super interesting to hear.

But literally, like standing next to me was Brad Pitt. He was like, you know. who's already researching. And then we went into, like, each of the teams, you know, they have their own garage and then, like, across the little roadway paddock, you know, in this paddock area, they have these hospitality suites

where they have, like, it's a little cafe kind of situation. And, like, Brad and Joseph Kaczynski, you know, are sitting with Lewis Hamilton. And they're like, you know, this is like two years before the movie comes out. Like, they're figuring it out, which was wild. That is wild because Brad Pitt's character is basically Lewis Hamilton now, right?

Like he's like on the, he's at the end, towards the end of his career and like, yeah. Right Penn is 60 years old. Well, right, but that's the idea, right. No, he's not playing a 60 year old though. No, no, no. But he's playing in a much more, have you seen the movie?

No. Okay, so you're talking out your ass right now. I am too, even though I saw it, but anyway. I wouldn't, I wouldn't draw that much of a parallel. Okay. Yeah, I think they were really, really careful to not, over-identify the characters with any, you know, existing drivers in an unfair way. And they also did a really great job of, obviously it's immersive

because they're filming this like in the midst of these races going on. And so the real drivers and the real cars are part of the story, but not in a way that intrudes upon the narrative such that the real-life drivers become characters necessarily. which I think was a smart choice. But Joseph Kaczynski, who's an engineer by trade, like he was a mechanical engineer long before he was a filmmaker. Like he is engineering these movies

in really fantastic and unique and creative ways. Like they had to basically come up with all of these new cameras that separated the lenses from the bodies so that they could place them all over the cars and hide the bodies underneath the chassis. So the cars would still function properly in their weight balance. and aerodynamics.

Wow. I mean, like you can go down the rabbit hole on YouTube and like on sort of behind the scenes and how they actually did this. And it was, it's quite a master stroke. Interesting. It's like the way George Lucas had to create new cameras. He's creating the booms and new, like new ways

of holding cameras, I would imagine, right? And you know, I would buy stock in Joseph Kaczynski because he sort of emerged as, you know, one of the most prominent filmmakers when it comes to super high, budget action thrillers yeah because he's able to do things no one's ever done before and it's thrilling to watch them well i would agree that movies are back and tv is kind of like slumped you can't think that's one of the reasons i'm watching the first season of deadwood is that like uh we just

although we did watch the bear but like we did watch the bear recently we watch the you know what i started rewatching like in my in my convalescence uh because i just wanted i wanted something good that was earnest. And so I went back to the beginning and started watching Friday night lights from the beginning. Yes. And that show holds up.

It's pretty good. It's kind of awesome. Right, the show, not the movie, the show. It's so earnest in a way that you don't kind of see right now in culture. And I found that to be heartwarming. Okay. So that's it. I think that concludes media diet for this week.

It does. Any parting thoughts? Well, we should shout out some of the, uh, the, uh, the, shout out to Friends of the Pod. Yeah. Friends of the Pod update. Friends of the Pod update. Who's, who's out there doing stuff? Well, to, while we were all sleeping, uh, David Goggins and Harvey Lewis were finishing Bigfoot 200. Yeah. A 200 mile race that I think is like 47,000 elevation gain and loss or

something incredible. Where does it take place? It's in the Cascades in Washington State. Hmm. And, uh, David hasn't. competed in quite a while no he keeps it super under the radar um and um you know i didn't know he was competing until uh ben prior um shout out ben sent me a link to the tracking and i was tracking him and i haven't talked to him about the race or anything yet um but it was such a pleasure to watch him do it and i just and i like i knew he was towards the end he was like picking up pace and just like like he always does

and tracking people down and I think it was like a top 20 finish and Harvey was right there I think Harvey finished around the same time and so it was it was cool to watch to watch both those names

and go and go and go but it was a long one it was like it's like it must be harder than Leadville it's like a three well it's 200 miles but it's twice the distance but even Moab I feel like was it incredible too

and that's 240 miles this seemed to be the same amount of time for less miles. So I think it's the terrain. Wow. Yeah. Meanwhile, Kate Courtney won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race and record breaking time.

Incredible. So shout out to her, which is cool. Under seven hours. She's a machine, man. Do not get in her way. That woman is so capable. Whatever she chooses to focus on in her life, I have no doubt.

She will set whatever you would consider to be a course record in whatever pursuit it is that, you know, she decides to laser in on. One of those. She's an extraordinary person. And Tom Holland, back in the Spider-Man suit, back on set, people seem very excited about this.

For all the Marvel heads out there. I'm sure there's other people who have been on the show who are out doing interesting things right now. We haven't checked. Was there one other person that you had on mine? No, Tom. Oh, Christian Blumenfeld. Oh, Blumenfeld.

What's he? up to. He's out winning. He's out there winning. He's winning all the races he enters and he's just like crushing the comp because I think he had one down season where it was hard for him to get on the podium and people wondered is that at the end of the Norwegians? Yeah, I did a podcast with him in New York right after Kona. Right. So five years ago, Christian wins gold at the Olympics. He moves into half Iron Man and Iron Man becomes a dominant force in that world and then decides that He wants to return to the Olympics in Paris to win gold again, this unprecedented thing.

Well, all did not go as planned. He did not have a great performance in Paris. He went from Paris to Kona to step right back into Iron Man where he was just throwing up and blew up. So that didn't do very well. We did a podcast in New York City right after that. He kind of shared his experience and how he was going to pick up the pieces and move forward.

And it seems like he's done that because now he's back and he's crushing it once again. Yeah, yeah, he just won the Iron Man 70.3 championships, and then he won Iron Man Frankfurt, which was the European Championships. He's won his last three events, gold, gold, gold, and he's dominated. Awesome. Yeah.

All right, man. Well, I think we did it for today. I'm going to close this so I can get a review of you. How do you feel? I'll close mine, too. I feel good. I mean, look you right in the eye, Adam. Tell you I love you.

Oh, thanks, ma'am. So grateful for our time together. I love you, too. that we have. Me too, man. It's a great time. You know what? I appreciate your taking a stand and the health and well-being of our world and having me along for the ride. Awesome, man. Thank you. Let's do this again soon. Let's do it. All right, buddy. Peace. That's. the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire

podcast archive, My Books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way. 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. And share Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books 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 Camello.

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Plants. Namaste.