The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: Why You Should Periodize Your Life

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

We live in a culture that glorifies the hustle. But the 24/7 grind mentality is actually anathema to long-term success. How do we break this paradigm and avoid the inevitability of burnout? You periodize your life as you would your training. Ditch the guilt and take time to rest. Choose your fallow chapters. And embrace your life in seasons. In the race of life, the tortoise always beats the hare. Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein myself and Sir Adam Skolnick corrupt your neurochemistry with ideas big and small. Beyond sundry matters of varying interest, we play show and tell, share a few wins of the week, round it out by answering listener questions deposited on our voicemail at [phone]. Beyond RRP hypeman duties, Adam Skolnick is an activist and journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. He writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently awash in his umpteenth draft of an untitled novel—slowly losing his mind in the process. Topics explored in today’s conversation include: the benefits of periodizing both your fitness and all aspects of your life; why fallow periods are essential to optimal creativity; an Iron Cowboy’s ‘Conquer 100‘ challenge update (and WTC’s tone-deaf response); the recent Laird Superfoods and Picky Bar acquisition; the HBO docuseries ‘Q: Into The Storm’; Rachel Kushner’s collection of essays, The Hard Crowd; Michelin star restaurant Eleven Madison Park‘s shift to a plant-based menu; and plant-based bodega start-up Plantega’s plan to eradicate food deserts In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you manage the financial risks that come with following your passion? How do you properly train for a Swimrun event without access to safe open water? How do you maintain relationships with people who have unhealthy drinking habits? Thank you to Greg from Virginia, John from Northern England, and Nancy from Santa Clarita, California for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone]. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll601 YouTube: bit.ly/rollon601 Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. What's up humanoids? It is I, Rich Roll in cahoots with one Mr. Skolnick, content creator, Sir Adam Skolnick, here to corrupt your neurochemistry with ideas big and small. Good to be here with all of you. In addition to breaking down sundry matters of interest

and perhaps disinterest. Yes. We also do a wee bit of show and tell here, couple wins of the week, and we round it all out by answering some of the questions dropped on our voicemail, which you can ring up at 424-235-4626. Before we dive in, if you're watching at www.youtube.com,

have you heard of this thing, YouTube, Adam? I've heard it's the new thing. It's a thing, right? If you add the backslash Rich Roll, you will arrive at a channel wherein we upload videos directly from this podcast. Take a second to hit subscribe. That would mean a lot. Click that notification bell.

It will alert you when a new podcast goes live, click the like button. And of course, leave a comment with your thoughts because that's what we do here. Yes. How are you doing, man? You well. Careful, careful how you answer this question. A lot of consternation in the comments.

Well, yes, the comments have said, I always respond the same way with, I'm good, man. You do, right? I'm good, man, I'm good. Which makes people think that I'm either doing well or like- Disingenuous. Or just hanging on, barely hanging on, man.

I don't know that, I'm good, man. It just feels it's a false flag. First of all, it's grammatically incorrect. I mean, if I can just- I'm well, man. Yeah, I'm very well, man. That doesn't sound as- Who's the man in this sentence?

You're the man, Rick. Okay. It's the Rich Roll podcast. So how are you actually doing? I'm actually been living with doubt. How have you been? Don't throw it right back at me without elaborating on that.

I've been living with doubt. So I'm in the third draft of this novel that I've been wanting to write for a long time. And the entire time of writing it has felt like I'm out of my depth, which is normal, right? Cause I'm not, I wrote a novel once previously. This is the third crack. I attempted to write a novel way, way back in the 90s

and convinced myself I sucked and shouldn't be writing a novel. And so I stopped when in reality, I went back later, several years later and read the pages and it was pretty good and I should have kept going. But by then I wanted to do this other book, finish that. That book is actually how I got Bird to represent. Right.

Our agent and then- For one breath. For one breath, Bird level, shout out. And then, and so then one breath ended up happening, but the novel itself never found a home. It was like one of those almost, but not quite. And so then one breath ended up happening, but the novel itself never found a home. It was like one of those almost, but not quite. And so then this other novel, I've been thinking about since then

and just never made the time to do it. And so the quarantine happened and I started to do it. And now I'm in a third pass. I think it's gonna be like 10 passes before I give it to anyone to look at. And it just feels like, we've talked about this stuff. It just feels like the imposter syndrome is strong because I'm wading into territory

that hasn't been my territory. And even though I've, you know, comfortable writing books now and I'm comfortable with my work, there's things about this that make it a little bit harder for me to really see it. And so I'm just sticking with the process, trusting the process, but I can't say that I'm not living with doubt. Like so I'm just sticking with the process, trusting the process,

but I can't say that I'm not living with doubt. Like every day I sit down to do it, it's like, I'm wondering if it's any good, which is not abnormal. When I write a story for the New York Times, I feel the same way the first draft. Yeah, and doubt is a kindred cousin of humility on some level.

Like if you weren't experiencing doubt, then I would be prone to believe that you were in your ego. Like how could you not have doubt? Of course you have doubt. It's not a function of doubt. It's allowing the doubt to stop the progress. Right.

It's like persevering in the face of doubt, having the courage to continue to show up for the page. Yeah, I think I read Stephen King interview in the New York Times Magazine some time ago. And he said, that's part of what we get paid to do is to not give into that. And so. Yeah, I think that's really helpful.

So, and in that same interview, he's like, he's only had one book where he didn't feel that way about the book the entire time. Right, because you just assume he sits down and bangs it out. And it's like a work of art, you know, in draft one. Most successful novelist in the history of,

I think in the history of American letters, I think so in terms of books sold and everything and movies made. So anyway, so there's that, but at the same time, I do enjoy the process at times, but it's still a process of getting comfortable with the doubt and living in this fantasy land in my head. So that's how I've been.

Good man. And at the same time raising a child, which is also, the doubt is strong. There's that. The doubt is strong. Yeah. And in between all of that, trying to find some time to slowly saunter down

into the sea, adorn your face mask. My full mask. Submerge yourself. Yes. And do a zone zero workout. I'm doing either zone two runs or zone zero swims. That's where I live. Did find out,

have you heard of the Malibu artist on Instagram? No. So he's been getting some mainstream media play. He was on the cover of the LA Times then he was on the Today Show. He's a drone photographer and he is, I've talked to him this week. Cause basically he's been posting great drone footage

of great white sharks in Malibu, everywhere from sunset point up. He hasn't specified where these places are, but many like in one video, there are 22 juvenile white sharks within 50 feet of surfers, swimmers. Wow. And they have no idea that they're there.

And so obviously being someone who swims, I mean, I knew Sunset Point was, I've seen a white shark breach there as I was just driving down the highway. And I've seen one breach by Little Doom as well. So I knew that they're there. We've talked about it. I know they're there.

But it actually makes me feel a little more comfortable because the sharks are not at all interested in these swimmers whatsoever. But- That's one way to look at it. That's how I look at it. So, and I talked to him. He basically, he has deals with certain landowners

who allow him to come on and he's able to fly the drone. He is not at Point Doom too much, although he said the biggest shark he's ever seen was at point doom. Right, probably right at that point on route to a little doom that you took me on that everybody said, stay away from there. Yeah, that's the one, like a 14 footer or something.

Oh my God. Great white? Yeah, they're always white sharks that he's finding that he's at least putting up. I think he has some work of footage he's gonna put up. It's at the Malibu artists on Instagram. It's cool footage. I mean, he's really, he does a good job.

So he got on the Today Show because people are freaking out that there's so many sharks right off the shoreline. Yeah, and because this is a big year for sharks. So I've talked to one of my, a contact, Laura Bodmer, who brought me the story about Travis Rice's snowboarding competition. So I've talked to one of my, a contact, Laura Bodmer, who brought me the story

about Travis Rice's snowboarding competition. She lives down in San Diego area, North County. And she said that right now, Solana Beach, it's like they know about the juvenile white sharks. They are actually seeing them a lot. No one's getting hurt. Is it unusually, like an unusually large spawn? Yeah.

Like what's happening? Yeah, it's just that the populations are healthy. You know, like the marine protected areas are working and the populations are healthy. I think that's part of it. I mean, they're studying it. So I'm not exactly sure if there's anything to why, but this is just what's happening.

And so, but so far, like we haven't had an uptick in attack. Like it isn't leading anywhere bad. So I don't think there's anything to be worried about. For me, it makes me feel actually more comfortable to be honest in some weird counterintuitive way. I don't know if I am processing it in the same way. Well, the Smithsonian just did a story, which we can link to how great white sharks

and all sharks might use magnetics to navigate. Whoa. There was this cool story about some scientists that put a certain breed of shark, bonnethead sharks, I think, in a tank that they wired with copper wires. And they basically took the magnetic coordinates or whatever it's called.

Basically the earth is got iron ore and all sorts of metals and heavy metals. And that's what the core of those metals, they think sharks are using to get from points A to point B as a navigation tool. And they proved it with this tank by wiring wires and putting readouts like that would be the magnetic draw from their home versus the magnetic draw from away.

And they managed to swim in the direction of the proper magnetic draw. And yes, because the great white sharks go out into the middle of the ocean for something, so a place called the great white cafe or something like that, that scientists call it. And they have this huge congregation. It's like Burning Man for white sharks in the middle of the ocean.

And everyone tried to figure out how do they get there, know to go there and then know where they're going to go home and they think it's magnetic. Right, there's some kind of beacon. Yeah. In the core of the earth. Yes. That's luring them to this one place.

That's wild. Isn't that cool? Yeah. So maybe there's right now this one place. That's wild. Isn't that cool? Yeah. So maybe there's right now it's being- Only white sharks? No, they think all sharks. They think hammerheads, they're thinking all sharks,

but this particular experiment only proves it with this one small subset near Key West. It makes you wonder whether that's applicable for other species as well, like bird migration patterns. Like how do these animals that travel vast distances and always find their way home figure that out? Even cats like- Sea turtles.

A buddy of mine took his cat camping in Mammoth and he was living in Santa Monica at the time, took his cat to Mammoth. The cat ran off in the middle of the night camping. They had to leave. They couldn't find the cat. They figured the middle of the night camping. They had to leave. They couldn't find the cat. They figured the cat was dead. Like got eaten by a coyote or something.

Two weeks later, the cat walks in his front door. No way. I swear to God. For people that don't know, mammoth is a couple hundred miles away. How is that possible? It didn't have a tag with an address on or anything? No, the cat was all fucked up. It was like it'd gone on a weird odyssey.

It's on its way home from man. Yeah, Pippin the cat, shout out. I feel like that should be a Pixar movie. That's unbelievable. The odyssey starring Pippin the cat. All right, well, we're off to a banger of a start here with the podcast. I like it so far.

Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more from Mr. Adam Skolnik and myself. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere

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

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

and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery.

To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. How are you, Rich? I'm good. I'm rocking my Taco Vega t-shirt. So I'm feeling awesome. Yeah, talk to me about Taco Vega. I've never even heard about it. You gotta go to Taco Vega, man. I know. It's the new spot

in Los Angeles. Taco Vega is a plant-based Mexican themed restaurant in Los Angeles. It's right on Fairfax, like a block or two south of Melrose. So kind of right in the heart of this, for people that don't know that strip of Fairfax is like where Cantor's Deli is.

And there's all these like hype-y stores, like Supreme and Rip and Dip. So a lot of kids in that neighborhood. And it's really high end, but affordable, like really creative Mexican food by my friend, chef owner, Jared Simons, who's a super cool guy. He's also coached by Chris Houth. Oh, really?

Yeah, he's an Ironman athlete. Now he's focusing on ultra running, really colorful, interesting, sweet guy that I've known over the years. So I've been a frequent visitor of Taco Vega over the last, I think I've been like five times in the last month. I love it. Fantastic. So if you're in Los Angeles, drop in, say hello to Jared,

tell him that we sent you. He's really a great chef. Interesting story about that, that he reminded me of that I forgot about when He's really a great chef. Interesting story about that, that he reminded me of that I forgot about when I saw him the other day. He actually, Jared actually catered a wedding at our house a couple of years ago. We sometimes rent our house out for weddings for friends.

And this wedding was our friend, Maddie Serpico, shout out to Maddie, who is a former, she's a Canadian former triathlete, vegan. And she got married to Griff Whalen, who's been on the podcast back in the early days, a former Stanford NFL, Indianapolis Colts, kind of journeyman wide receiver, who's also vegan, a friend of the podcast.

They got married at our house and Griff's groomsmen were all like gigantic humans who have played in the NFL or at Stanford, including Andrew Luck, who was like his best man. Like, so Andrew Luck is like Griff's best friend from college. And then they played together in the pros for a while. So Andrew Luck was like at my house,

playing with my boys and throwing a football around and like- Amazing. And I wasn't there, I was out of town. Shout out to Andrew Luck. I did not. I was unable to seize the opportunity to meet Andrew Luck, although he did visit my home.

One day he's going to be telling the time that he threw the football around with the rock stars. I don't think so. I don't think that's ever occurred to him, but he's welcome back at my home anytime. He's also welcome to drop in on the podcast if he ever wants to share his story. Yeah.

It would be cool. What a great athlete. Switching gears a little bit. I've been told, I've been chastised in the comments section to stop being mean to you. Really? Yeah. To me? I think because I was beating up on you a little bit

about the face mask, the smirkle mask thing. That was tongue in cheek. That's what I thought. Am I being mean? You could tell me. Right now? It's all in love. Wait, wait a second. Wait, am I having an intervention?

No, if I'm being too mean to you, I want you to tell me. You know what? I think everyone needs to stop being offended by almost everything. Thank you. Yeah, so no, I have not at all thought you've been mean to me. It's all, we're trying to entertain people.

The fact is- We're trying. I don't know if we're succeeding. We're trying. The fact is I wear a mask when I'm swimming. It is off-putting. When I showed up at Catalina to do the swim run, there was one guy wearing a mask. Most people had goggles.

I had the mask. And that was your moment to kind of learn a little bit about how the ecosystem works. Apparently that didn't, it was not effective though, in getting you to change your habit. No, but well. This affinity for the, it defies logic. I don't understand your illogical, irrational attachment

to your snorkel mask. It's not called a snorkel mask. I don't know what it's called, but it has no place. It has no place in a swim run lineup. Correct. So the reason is because the etymology of the mask is that I was wearing those bigger kind of open water goggles for a while.

And then we started to do more diving on our swims westward to Point Doom. And then I took a free, I took a, I got into this free diving, kind of looking into free diving as a journalist and started doing that story in the book. And pretty quickly I was told that, no, you can't free dive with goggles

because you can't equalize goggles. You can't fill the space. So if you go too deep, your eyeballs are gonna bulge and it's gonna be, you could break a blood vessel and you could have problems. And so you have to have something that you can let a little air out through your nose to equalize that small space.

And the lower profile you have, the better you can equalize that. Because if you have too much space, like a scuba diving mask, you can't fill that space. So, you know, with limited, unless you have a big tank on your back. And so they all used for training this particular kind of free dive mask.

I get it. That's the reason. Sure, but here's the thing. Are you a free diver or are you a swim run person? Pick your lane. It's a very good question. Or at least if you're going out for a swim run workout, wear goggles. Well, the real question is, are you a open water swimmer or are you a free diver?

And I submit that neither tribe will embrace me. Right, because you're waffling between these two worlds. You gotta plant your foot firmly in one, at least like, okay, I'm going out for a free dive, then you can wear that and say I'm free diving., okay, I'm going out for a free dive, then you can wear that, say I'm free diving. But if you're just going out for a swim, leave the mask at home.

Get goggles. I might do it because Julie Shakia, who swims with us, who you've swam with, she's one of the actual swimmers that swims with us. And she actually goes for her swims in the morning, then comes meets us for our swims and dives. She does think that it slows you. Like when she's doing a swim only, she wears goggles

and she does think the mask slows you down. Right. I love how she's your reference point after I've been beating you up over this forever. It's like, oh, but she said, okay. Do I have to start a change.org petition to get you to abandon this practice? Do you think it's slowing me down?

Of course. Oh, you do. But mainly it's making you look silly when you need not. I like looking silly. Yes, I know. Am I being too mean? No. I'm not being too mean.

This is entertaining. Well, we'll check in on this week to week. Can I say something to you? This is gonna be a new segment. Can I confront you with something? Congratulations on 600 episodes. Thank you. That's a big accomplishment.

It's crazy. I don't know how we got here. It's just a one day at a time thing, you know? And then you look up and you're like, whoa, 600 episodes, that's crazy. Unbelievable. I know. It seems like a past life when we started

and it seems like yesterday. Did you do any reflecting? Like when you have these numbers come around you, like is it every hundred that you kind of think about, wait a second, like, did you think about it at a hundred or 200 or 500? I thought about it more at a hundred and at 200 than I did with 600.

I'm like, oh, that's cool. Moving on, what's next? Always look forward. Right. It's great. I think it's important to pause and celebrate that a little bit, but I don't dwell on these things. I remember early on in the show

when we would hit certain benchmarks, like when we hit our first 1 million downloads or whatever it was, I would make a big deal out of it. And now it's just like, yeah, it's cool. Let's keep going. Nice. So I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on that because it's not like, yeah, it's cool. Let's keep going. Nice. So I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on that

because it's not really about that. It's just about being in the process of doing it. Just creating content. So that's right. You know this now as a content creator, Sir Adam Skolnick. That's what I've become now, a content creator. You are a content creator. That's good because then-

It's a weird thing though, because especially as an author and a writer and a journalist, it's like content seems like a step down. We are in a content creator economy now. Yeah, I mean, I think that less and less people are reading books, which is a true thing. But then again, and that was reflected in the fact that like what,

92% of all books released in the last year and a half or something sold less than 10,000 copies. And most of them, but books actually sold very well. Yeah, books are selling great. But it's known quantity books. It's like three-year-old, five-year-old books or big name authors. But I think Amazon and the Kindle

hearkened this idea that it was sounding the death knell for books and it's been quite the opposite. Opposite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And print. I'm a print guy. Audiobooks are off the chain. And audiobooks are great.

I do listen to audiobooks and I read print books. I had a Kindle that I used a lot when I was traveling so many months out of the year. It just became easier, but it's collected a lot of dust. Yeah, I like the hard copy and I like the audio books. Same. Yeah, but 600, it's great. We celebrated that by putting up the episode

with Matthew Walker, which people are enjoying. Yeah. Coming up last night, we're recording this on Monday. Three hours. Three hours on sleep. He's the dude. I gotta dive into that. Although I'll feel like shamed

because right now sleep is not coming in. Right, I mean, if you're a new parent and you've lost your grip on healthy sleep hygiene, it might just make you feel bad. It'll make you feel alarmed, I think. Yeah, I think so. I think so. But he's such a beautiful, gentle, wise person.

And the way that he communicates, it's a cool thing. He's very talented at explaining the science behind all of this stuff in a manner in which you can not only understand it, but actually become encouraged and enthusiastic about taking sleep a little bit more seriously. So that's really cool. Very cool.

That's a conversation I wanted to have for a very long time. So excited that we finally made that happen and just been banking some other cool episodes. I had Mary Kane here last week, who many might recall from a New York Times op doc. She was the title of that piece was something like, I was the fastest girl in America.

And then I joined Nike and it's her story of training under Alberto Salazar and everything that happened. And she was a wonderful guest. I'm excited about that. Trying to book Maggie Baird right now, who's Billie Eilish's mom. We've been going back and forth.

Hopefully we can lock in on a date. I think she would be epic. Did you watch the Billie Eilish documentary? I did not watch it yet. On HBO? No. It's fantastic. I mean, I am actually, I really enjoy Billie Eilish's point of view in her music.

So, I'm interested. She is a force. Yeah. It's a really instructive documentary that's incredibly well done. That gives you a glimpse into, you know, the birth of this amazing talent, but it's also in tandem, a parenting documentary because it documents the period of time

leading up to the release of her first album and her brother Phineas and her literally record the album in his bedroom while they're living in their parents' house as homeschooled young people. And you see the interaction of the parents and how the parents are trying to support, responsibly support their children through this, you know, incredibly unique period of time

in which they're introduced to the world in the largest way imaginable. Like everything just explodes and it's very well done documentary. Was she 17? And she's cool, Maggie's really cool. I don't know how old she is now. When she broke out, was she 17?

Yeah, I think she was about 17. Well, Ocean Eyes came out when she was like 13 or 14 or something like that and blew up. And that's what led to everything. It's like Lorde times 10. Yeah, it's amazing. And just a truly uniquely gifted person. And Phineas is the engine behind it.

Like he writes at a minimum co-writes, but I think he wrote a lot of the songs and he really engineers and produces the music. It's very collaborative, but you realize how instrumental he is to the whole thing as well. And their relationship as brother and sister, and also partners in creativity is super interesting.

Older brother? Older brother, yeah. Who also has all kinds of solo work that he does as well. And Maggie, they're big plant-based vegan advocates and activists as well. So I'm excited to sit down with her, hopefully. That's awesome. Soon to check that out.

Yeah. Let's check in on the iron cowboy. Don't you wish we could just call him? Like at some point we should just next time, let's call him while he's out riding the bike and like really check in on the iron cowboy. We could do that. I think maybe we could schedule that,

which would be cool. Yeah. Call him and then drop it in as a segment. I think he'd be down for that. One of the things that I did do the other day, and this is a credit, shout out to Brogan Graham, our third co-host here in absentia. He's the Elijah of this podcast.

He is. But one of the things, I can't remember whether I talked about this on the podcast before or not, our third co-host here in absentia. He's the Elijah of this podcast. He is, but one of the things, I can't remember whether I talked about this on the podcast before or not, or I might've talked about it on a podcast that hasn't gone up yet. But one of the amazing things about Brogan, that's kind of an outgrowth of his predisposition

towards extrovertism is in addition to being like just the most outgoing person you're ever gonna meet, he has a practice of connecting with friends by texting them what he calls short films. So video messages essentially, but he would berate me for that title. They're short films. They are short films.

And he will, every single day, send me a little short film of him checking in. And they're usually well staged with props and all kinds of stuff that have a story arc to them and kind of end with something prolific or poignant. And I've adopted this practice and started doing it. Like I started sending short films to other friends of mine and it's kind of a cool way in an age

in which we don't write letters anymore, which is another thing Brogan does. He sends the letters out on an old typewriter, which is another cool practice. But to connect with friends, like, you know, it's that thing where you haven't talked to somebody for a long time, you know, like, do I have 40 minutes to call them?

And then you don't, and then the phone gets really heavy. This way you can send a short film, check in with them. There's no expectation that they need to get back to you, but you're demonstrating that you're thinking about them or you have something you wanna impart. And it's kind of a cool, unique thing that I think more people should do. So I started doing it more.

You and I are on a group text with Brogan. So you've been doing that with him. So I sent one of these to the Iron Cowboy last week, just wishing him well, which, you know, he got back to me. It's cool. So I think he would be down for a call. I think that would be great. He's gotta be on his bike right now, right?

Still on his bike, or are we wrapping it up? Let's see, it's almost one o'clock here in LA. He's probably finishing his ride. Today is day 71 today. We're recording on Monday. This goes up on Thursday. So we're on day 71. He seems to be in very good spirits.

He's doing great. It's like his body is- I feel like he rounded a corner and he's smiling and laughing and joking with people and in a really good spot. It's unbelievable. Theologically, I wonder what's happening to him. Unbelievable. and joking with people and in a really good spot. It's unbelievable. I wonder what's happening to him. Unbelievable.

70 Ironmans into this thing. And he's just rocking. 70 in a row, one after another. No break. No break, no day off. No break for Mother's Day. There was one day last, I think it was last week, his daughters were going to prom.

So he stopped for a photo and like wished them well, like saw his daughters off to prom during T2 in between his bike and his marathon. That's hilarious. And it seems like more and more people are congregating to join him. And I love in the video that I sent him, I said, there's two things that I really love and appreciate

about how he's conducting himself through this whole thing. The first is just the participatory nature of this. And we've talked about this before. It's a very inclusive thing. Like he's really engendered a lot of community around what he's doing. All comers are welcome. He makes them feel welcome.

It's not like, hey, I'm over here, stay away from me. It's like, we're all in this together kind of vibe. And then at the conclusion of every marathon, every evening, everybody kind of surrounds him in a circle and he gives a little impromptu speech and he recognizes certain people who came out to join him. I think his son did the marathon, marathon 70 with him, he recognized him

or people that fly in from out of town. My friend, Chris Guillebeau, flew in from Portland to do a 70 with him, he recognized him or people that fly in from out of town. My friend, Chris Guillebeau flew in from Portland to do a day with him. Like people are coming from all over to get a taste of this. And the fact that he in his exhaustion still, takes that moment to recognize them, I think is really special. And it speaks to fundamentally his good character.

Unbelievable. Do you feel like, because he's doing like 15 to 16 minute mile marathons. Like, do you feel like he's doing like walk five minutes, run five minutes? I think he's pretty much walking the whole way. And I believe he said, look, I wish I could run. I don't think that,

I think that his ankles or whatever's going on with his hips or whatever, he's unable to run. So he's literally just walking. So that, you know, people should know. It's like, yeah, ideally he would be running all these marathons, but he's like, you know, I think he's a very good walker in that when you develop that skill,

you can walk quite a bit faster than people realize and probably faster than an easy jog and certainly faster than the Ironman shuffle. But I think it's pretty much a brisk walk at this point every day, which takes him like over six hours, I think. It's crazy. I mean, it's amazing.

And speaking of his, just his ethics and his charisma, you wanted to talk about this, the fact that the Ironman was a triathlon governing body was coming at him and how he responds to that. I mean, to be in the midst of this and have to deal with that and then to deal with it in a way that still is, he could have been so much more bent out of shape.

And he really wasn't. He was just like- He put his foot down though. He did. He made no bones about where he stands on this whole thing. So we should explain. Yeah. He got into a beef with Iron Man.

Iron Man sent him essentially a cease and desist letter indicating that because there's a lot of press now that's occurring around what he's doing, CNN and all these newspapers are covering what he's doing. And apparently in some of these pieces, they're saying that he's doing a hundred Ironmans. Ironman is a trademark of the WTC. They're very protective

and they police that trademark pretty rigorously. So he gets this email, basically says, look, all this press is covering you. They're calling what you're doing 100 Ironmans, just so we're clear. Ironman is a protected mark that we own and control. Please refrain from using that and please let them know that they can't use that.

Right, right, right. And he's like, he just, and he screen grabbed it. He shared it on Instagram and his caption was essentially like, I don't have time for this. Like, what are you talking about? Like, you got a problem with these, the press outlets, go contact them. I'm out here breaking world records every single day.

And by the way, like I'm doing more for your brand than anybody raising awareness around this thing. And you're coming at me, like I'm done with you. And by the way, you owe me like $4,000 for unrefunded race entry fees and things like that. Like he basically just slapped him across the face. He did, but in a way that was like, kind of, I think positive for what he's doing.

He's like, he's not gonna take shit, but he wasn't whiny. It was just straight up. Sometimes that could be, you could come off worse. And I thought that he did, I thought his statement was fantastic. And I think in a broader way, it speaks to the ills of the corporatization of multi-sport.

Come on Iron Man, like a bunch of lawyers had to like write this letter. It's causing a backlash in reverse of what they're trying to do, which is to engender support for their brand. And that was James's point is that, look, you say you're all about inclusion and you're about inspiration and I'm out here trying to do both of those things

and you're telling me to stop or to do it differently? Like, how dare you? Like, I'm done with you. Right. You have to wonder who is like in charge of writing that letter. Like who is- Well, there was some C-suite person

who just called up the general counsel's department at the organization and said, look, we gotta clear this up, and then that's how it lands, come on. It landed poorly. Very tone deaf from the Ironman, the WTC. Right. And imagine if you flip the switch or flip the lens on it,

an Ironman came to his support and said, we love what you're doing. It's fantastic. Keep going. Do you need any support? How can we help you? Exactly. And the goodwill that that would engender

for the larger organization as a whole. And if you have an issue with the fact like that what he's doing isn't exactly how it would go in an Ironman race, you can use that platform to say so. Sure. Yeah. But to say, hey, we don't like what you're doing. Stop talking about it in the way that you're talking about it.

And contact the media companies. Behind that is this idea that, oh no, if people start doing their own adventures, they're not gonna sign up for our races. All those races sell out anyway. Right, they can't. So what are you really talking about? I mean, right now, the fact is that like,

we're just coming out of it. It was hard to stage these races. You couldn't stage the races and people had to do virtual races, but as someone who has done a few of these virtual events. And they canceled all their races and didn't refund anybody their entry fees. So he goes, yeah, so that's what he's talking about.

That's a big thing that a lot of people are grousing about. And the issue of corporatization of multi-sport was also switching gears a little bit in the news this past week because Ironman partnered or took a minority stake in UTMB, the Ultra Trail Du Mont Blanc, which is really the sports trail running most prestigious week long series of ultra marathons.

And this has ruffled quite a few feathers. The UTMB is like this epic race and it's a big race. A lot of trail runs, there's not very many people in them. They're very kind of grassroots, but UTMB is a huge event. So a lot of people are kind of decrying the commodification of the trail ultra world. They're gonna create this UTMB World Series.

You're gonna have to qualify. The big fear of course, being that all these big corporate sponsors are gonna roll in, entry fees are gonna go through the roof. Not everybody though, there's certain, you know, well-known athletes who are supportive of this move. But I think there's a guy called John Kelly, who's done a lot of Ironmans

and has also done a lot of trail races. And he said, monopolization of events through exclusive qualifiers to the premier quote unquote premier race leading to sky high entry fees and closure of independent races, complete disregard for host sites, athlete experience and safety or anything in the way of money.

You know, there's different cultures and goals. So it really is basically what he's saying is, there's a clash of cultures here. And I think that's right. You know, when you think of Ironman, you think of people who show up, they look the part, they're wearing a certain kind of costume, they got the right tattoo.

It's a culture that's very different and at odds with the trail running culture, which is much more of a down to earth. It's a dirt bag, much more dirt bag. Yeah, I mean, those are the roots of it. At the same time, I suppose partnerships like this are inevitable as the exposure and the growth of sports like trail running continue to grow.

Like this is gonna happen, right? So if it is gonna happen, how do you do it correctly and properly and preserve what's great about the trail running culture and not let it become corrupted by the influx of cash. I don't know, we'll find out, I guess, right? I mean, that's one of the draws of Utila, right? Is that those guys are so not corporate.

Right, so imagine the response of iron, if suddenly you woke up and you got an email from Otello saying they partnered with Ironman. Like it wouldn't make sense to me. No, cause they seem like completely different. That's what you're saying. Mountain block thing is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, it wouldn't make sense. I don't foresee that happening, but. I don't either, but I think a lot of people would have said there's no way that UTMB would partner with Ironman. Well, then what's in it for them? Do you think just some stake money? I think stability, cash, the ability to plug into a really well-funded machine

that knows how to like blow these things up and create structure for them. And a big brand, right? The big brand is it's easy to raise money off a brand. Sure, but from what I understand, there will be no Ironman branding at UTMB. So it appears that UTMB wants to leverage like the back office capabilities

of an organization like Ironman to scale what they've created into this series, which allows them to expand the scope. And the good news is, you know, the silver lining in it is that with that, perhaps you expand the exposure of the sport and bring more people into it. Cause it's all about growth, right? So Ironman will allow them to grow in a way

that they couldn't otherwise. But if you're a traditionalist, you're thinking, we don't need to grow, we've grown enough. Like let's keep it, let's keep what's great about it and not allow it to be corrupted. It's the old story, man. We all liked, we all liked the bands

before they started playing the arenas back in the club days. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm still like an REM murmur guy. Back to murmur. Dude, I saw- In the Athens, Georgia days.

Bro, I saw fish in a gymnasium in Vermont. Right. I know, right? Yeah. Bro, I saw fish in a gymnasium in Vermont. Right. I know, right? Yeah. Bro, you should have seen that show in the gymnasium. It wasn't as good, but I like to think it was better. Of course. All right, let's take a quick break.

First, to kind of round out the Iron Cowboy thing, please make a point of following him at Iron Cowboy James on Instagram, Instagram stories, specifically to kind of follow the moment to moment unfolding of his epic journey. And we'll be right back. What can I, before we go away?

What? I have an idea to brand, since we're talking about branding, to brand. Should we partner with Ironman? I've never done a WTC race ever. I don't plan to either. We might get calls from Ironman just for with Ironman? I've never done a WTC race ever. I don't plan to either. We might get calls from Ironman just for saying Ironman. I'm afraid Mount Blanc,

you won't be able to say Mount Blanc. Does France know that Mount Blanc is owned by Ironman now? I don't know, alert the lawyers, right? But an interesting side note with that, you know how people do Ironmans and then they get the Ironman tattoo, like the M dot tattoo. That's technically a copyright violation. On their skin.

Exactly. It's like a double violation. But of course it's the ultimate branding for them as well. So can you pick and choose which parts or which occasions of that intellectual property transgression you're going to police. I think you should allow it. If I was Iron Man lawyers, I would allow the tattooing,

but I would also demand to be able to literally brand them with an iron eye as they cross the finish line. That's a solution. Wait, so the Brogan Graham Film Festival, I'm gonna call it the hashtag FF or the three Fs, Friends Graham Film Festival. I'm gonna call it the hashtag FF or the three Fs, Friendship Film Festival. Not the Fire Film Festival with a Y.

No, not fire. Friendship Film Festival. Every time you do it. It's not a pressure. Every time you send a film, a three F film brought to you by three Fs. Right, okay. Trips F. I don't follow. I don't know, I'm just trying to brand it.

Yeah. Just trying to brand things. But the whole thing is it's not, it's not for social media. It's just, it's an intimate exchange between two people. That's true, we shouldn't try to brand these things. Yeah, no. Who would brand intimacy? See, this is a microcosm example of the Ironman UTMB.

I'm part of the problem. I wanna, I'm coming from the dirt bag perspective. Let's protect the purity of this art form. Nothing is pure, Rich. All right, we'll be back in a few. Before we get into the main thing I wanna talk about today, that previous segment that we just recorded,

either that's art or we just lost the whole audience. Yes. Where do you fall on that? Well, if it is art, we definitely lost the whole audience. Yeah, either way, it's not good. It's just two guys talking to each other. Yeah, for the two people that have stuck with us now.

Yes, thank you for taking a risk, taking a chance on us. So for the big story this week, rather than dive into the news headlines, I wanted to seize an opportunity to do something a little bit different, which is riff off a tweet that I saw the other day from my friend, Steve Magnus.

Steve's a former friend of the pod, been on the podcast twice, co-author with Brad Stolberg of a couple of great books. He's an elite track and field coach, former Oregon project coach, a guy who's been outspoken against doping and Alberto Salazar specifically. And he's just a source of wisdom on Twitter.

And he tweeted something that stuck with me because it resonates with something I think about a lot. And his tweet goes like this. There's a reason athletes have off seasons. After intense stress, you need time to mentally and physically recover. Periodize your life. Know when it's time to grind

and when you need to back off and recover. I think it's a simple statement, but I think it's also profound, this idea of periodizing, not just your training, but also your life, like everything has a season. And when I look at you, Adam, I see somebody who's trained for hard things, who's done hard things, but I'm not sure you've ever engaged

in a proper training protocol that involved periodization. Maybe periodization has come up from time to time in former roll-ons, but are you familiar with the concept of periodized training? No. You're not at all. No. No?

No, but I haven't, you say I've done hard things. I mean, I haven't trained for like ultra distance events or even, you know, like, I mean. But periodization is a tried and true approach to training for any, it doesn't have to be an ultra distance thing. If you're doing Olympic triathlons, if you're training for a marathon, if you're training for any kind of physical feet

or endurance challenge, periodization is a way of structuring how you create your schedule going forward. So let's say you have a year to prepare for a race, a really big race, it's on the calendar. You look at the end date and you're like, okay, that day's coming, here I am 365 days beforehand. How am I going to best prepare so that on that race day,

I'm at my absolute peak to perform to my capabilities? And the way you do that is you break down your training into certain blocks. You have this build phase and then you back off and then you go a little bit harder and then you back off again and then you increase again. And then maybe you take two weeks of really easy training. Like you build in periods of time mindfully

that allow your body to recover. And this can happen quarterly, it can happen monthly, it happens weekly, it happens daily. So there's the macro and the micro that gets built into all of this. So that you are breaking your body down, but not blind to the fact that you've got to allow your body to build itself back up so that you can then

approach your training as a stronger fitter athlete to take it to the next level, to break through certain plateaus. And knowing when to back off and how to back off and for how long to back off is both an art and a science. And I've had my best years as an athlete, my best performances when I've really taken periodization to heart and followed the direction of my coach, Chris South.

When I was a swimmer, there was no periodization. We just went in and we hammered every single day. And then we hung all our hopes on a two week taper at the end of the season and just pray that it all worked out. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. But you were, that was early, earlier days. This is like 80s.

That's what they did then. Right, exactly, that was early, earlier days. This is like 80s. That's what they did then. Right, exactly. It was all about yardage. But now it's like understanding how hard you can push before you tip into overtraining and knowing when to back off the gas and allowing your body to recover, knowing how long you need for your body to bounce back

and what kind of training you're doing during those sort of easier intervals of time really becomes this incredible lever for growth and performance breakthroughs. So how would you like, if you're training for Catalina, I'm most likely not doing the full distance Catalina because I just don't, I can't commit to the time it's gonna take to train for it with a young one.

But I'm gonna do the sprint, which is 15K. So how would you periodize that? Like when would you start and how would you periodize that? Well, first I would break up the period of time into like three phases. The first phase would be a endurance building, like base building period, where you're just working on your foundation

and you're getting a lot of zone two work in and getting acclimated to spending a lot of time swimming and running so that your body kind of knows what that feels like. You're giving your tendons and your ligaments the opportunity to adapt, not just your lungs and your heart but all of your muscles in your body to figure out like how to sustain itself over long periods of time.

So that phase would be a slow progressive build of going longer and longer and longer, mostly in the zone two phase. But within that block, you're gonna do a little, maybe like a two week build, and then you're gonna have four days that are gonna be pretty easy, or maybe a week that's pretty easy

where you're still training, but the gas isn't all the way pressed down, right? You're backing off so that during that week of training, your body's getting, you're allowing your body to recover and get stronger. And then that would be followed by another sub block within the base building block of going a little bit longer than you did

in that initial block to push through to the next barrier. And you just repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, and pay attention to how your body is recovering during those off periods so that you can better calibrate what those rest weeks look like. And then within each week you have a rest day, right? So, and then within each day, you know, you have, when are you training and what are you doing

in between your training session? So periodization works at every level from yearly to monthly to, you know, weekly to daily. Then your second phase would be more of a strength and speed building phase where you're gonna be doing more tempo work interspersed with continuing to increase your volume over zone two, but you're gonna choose moments where you're gonna have really hard kind of zone three,

zone four, zone five efforts in there to get used to the idea that you experienced when you're doing a swim run, which is that you're always changing gears. You're ramping up your heart rate, it's coming back down, it's going back. You're like, it's not like an Ironman or a marathon where you get into, you rev up to a certain speed

and you hold it as long as you can. A swim run, you're constantly switching back and forth. So it would be more focused on getting your heart and your lungs and your muscles acclimated to heart rate spikes and getting fit enough so that your heart rate comes back down pretty expeditiously. The third phase would be race specific.

Then you're gonna start sort of training in the spirit of what the race is and trying to mimic what that experience is like. And you'll have- Six week blocks usually? Well, it depends on how much time you have. You know what I mean? Like you can, I mean, we could spend four hours

trying to figure out exactly what to do. And this is an ideal situation. This isn't necessarily, you know, the protocol for the time crunched dad of a baby who only has, you know, who's not gonna be able to train every single day. But basically I just wanted to lay that out in the most general terms to help people understand

what periodization looks like. Can we build in a period for me to hunch over my computer and type with two fingers? Yes, we can. There's room for all of it. That's what I do between training sessions. But I think the broader point here and why I wanted to talk about this,

given that I've learned a lot about the wisdom of periodizing endurance training is that it's so applicable in every other area of life. And it goes back to ancient wisdom. It's like eat with the seasons, live by the seasons. Why do I feel so sluggish and tired in the colder, darker months? Because you're hardwired for that, right?

Like so rather than- Well, it brings back to like Matt Walker, like how we are wired for when the sun went down, we all slept for like that whole period of time or like close to it. And we've come so far from that so that there's so many kind of overlays. Right, and now we're in this hustle porn culture

where if your output isn't like insane and you're not grinding 24 seven and staying up all night and pulling all nighters and on your hustle, there's something wrong with you. Such that when you have a fallow moment and you wanna rest or you're like, I just don't have it today, you feel guilty or you beat yourself up or you have this sense

that you're falling behind. And I think that sensibility, that mentality, that mindset is anathema to long-term success. I think we need to understand that we're all built for periods of great productivity. But if you wanna sustain that over the long period of time, you have to periodize that. You have to periodize your career.

You have to periodize your creative output. You have to periodize your career. You have to periodize your creative output. You have to periodize essentially everything that you do. And the more mindful you can be to make sure that you're incorporating fallow periods to coin Bonnie Choi's article, which we're gonna talk about. I think, and it's for a lot of type A personalities, it doesn't feel, it feels indulgent, right?

Or selfish or unproductive to do that. There's a guilt and there's a shame that gets built into that. That's driven by cultural pressures that we need to overcome. And as a 54 year old, who's been doing stuff for a long time, I can tell you, you can't just be cranking all the time.

Now you as a content creator, you see burnout amidst content creators because they can't sustain the level of output that they're doing and they either flame out or disappear, or they have to reinvent themselves and create a way of contributing their creativity in a manner that's more sustainable with lifestyle. It's interesting,

cause like two things came to my mind when you told me you wanted to talk about this. The first is when Lonely Planet travel guides were my primary job when I was doing that, and it was a period of from 2007 to 2013, where I was gone eight, nine months a year. And I would do like three of these guides. And that entailed long periods of travel,

usually in remote areas, not always, but usually. And then come back either home or I'd rent a place in the country and long periods of just 12 hour days, 10 hour days in the computer and living in situ so I could make calls if I didn't have all my research done, I knew where I was. And so that has a built in kind of not fallow cause you're still hustling,

but there is periodization in the research gathering and the writing and it felt natural. And there is that still anytime you're on a story, like when writing, when you're trying to come up with something written at the end of it versus what you're doing with the mics, it's kind of, it's all one thing, but you're reporting, but that's different than the writing

where you can analyze and be kind of create the distance in between and organize it. And you know what you wanna say versus the absorption, which, and the second thing that came to mind was Bonnie's story, which she published in 2019, which I sent to you this morning. And because that's what she's talking about is creating that space for absorption as a creative person.

So that's immediately where my mind went. It didn't go to athletics at all for me because like athletics are just kind of like something just to keep my mind right more than anything, my body right. But like, I don't think of it in terms of any sort of outcomes or optimization. And, but I immediately went to that point.

It was like, wow, I don't really have what I used to have. There's no longer that period of like three months where I'm just traveling and absorbing and three months of writing. Like I don't have that anymore. Two months of writing is what it used to be or a month. So it's interesting and I did like that rhythm. There's something real natural about it.

Yeah, it comes in phases, right? Just like if you're making a movie, you write the script by yourself or with a friend or whatever, partner, then you shoot the movie, then you edit the movie, then you market the movie. All of those are part and parcel of being a filmmaker, but they're all very different disciplines

that I suspect for, and every filmmaker's gonna excel in different areas of those and maybe doesn't like certain aspects of it, but the switching gears aspect of it probably keeps them fresh, right? In the same way that if you're a triathlete, you get to switch up the different disciplines of sport that you're pursuing.

For me, people are always like, which one do you like the best? And it's like, I like that I get to change all the time and it's not the same thing every single day. But I think on top of that is this idea of, to kind of harken to this idea of absorbing. Like that's where it gets tricky for people. Like, look, a lot of people,

they don't have the luxury of like, I'm gonna kick back and absorb my life. But if you're trying to express something, if you're a creative person, you have to live your life in order to have something to say. You can't just be writing all the time because you're gonna run out of things to write about

if you're not living, right? So you have to live your life. You have to have moments of absorption, no matter what your career path or how busy your circumstances may be, what that looks like to you is gonna depend on your circumstances and your particularities of your life, of course.

But I think just being mindful of that and trying to find ways even within your day in a given day to ruminate or do nothing and not feel guilty about it, right? There's that thing like standup comics are people that just don't like, like the people that don't like to wake up in the morning, like are lazy, like become standup comics.

And it's like, what does that guy do? He just does nothing. He wakes up at noon and he like goes and gets a sandwich and like wanders around and then does, it's like, what is that person's, you know, what's driving that person? But they're overlooking the fact that the brain is working all the time.

So there's observation, there's synthesis, there's absorption, all of those things are occurring. And we shouldn't be so quick to judge how a certain human operates. Also, it's funny. We say he's doing nothing or she's doing nothing, but they're being, you know, it's almost like- But we're not allowed to just be.

No. That's the broader point, right? I mean, there is a certain element of like, I think you get to a certain point where you have to be able to afford to be, but everyone has that. Like, I don't care what your job is, there's going to be pressures to,

and we often fill that space of doing nothing with absorbing other people's content. Like most people, I think absorb it through television or Netflix or YouTube or whatever, myself included. But what Bonnie is talking about here is kind of an active not doing. It's going to the park and people watching, it's reading. She's not really advocating vegging on the couch

and watching television. No, no, no. What she's saying is- She's separating out the fellow. Yeah, and acknowledging that in this age of distraction, that it's transgressive to do this, right? There's one quote that I noted that I wanted to read from the piece,

which is called, "'You're doing something important "'when you aren't doing anything.'" We'll link it up in the show notes. But she says, "'Protecting and practicing fallow time "'is an act of resistance. "'It can make us feel out of step

"'with what the prevailing culture tells us. "'The 24 seven hamster wheel of work, "'the constant accessibility accessibility and the impatient press of social media, all hasten the anxiety over someone else's judgment. If you aren't visibly producing, you aren't worthy. In this context, taking time to lie dormant feels greedy, even wasteful.

And of course there are often financial concerns. So yeah, this notion that it's transgressive, that it is an act of resistance that you have to push back against culture and your addictive instinct to grab the phone and ameliorate your boredom by filling it with scrolling or whatever it is that you look at on your phone. It's very difficult.

It's never been more difficult to carve out that time, that fallow time, that time for rumination and quietude. And feeling wasteful. I mean, that's exactly it. Like, am I wasting time by doing X or Y or whatever? And that's one thing that I think adventuring, which is what I consider swimming and running these days for me, it's like these mini adventures,

that allows me to clear my head in a way that's a fallow time within a day for me. But it's not though, because I'm still trying to get something done. So it really doesn't really qualify as fallow time. It's hard. I know. You know, it's hard.

It is pushing my son in his like new tricycle is kind of- But I also think it's the mindset that you bring to whatever it is that you're doing. Yeah. Right? Like you could go out and go for a walk with your son and bring your phone and stare at your phone the whole time

or you leave your phone at home and you comport yourself like Brogan and go up and talk to people and live in your brain and kind of allow yourself to mentally meander. Yeah, which we've been watching Mad Men because April never seen Mad Men. So I'm rewatching the whole series. We're in season six now.

And that's something for all of Don Draper's many faults, although he is gifted too. One thing that we love about Don is his willingness to nap at any time of day or night. He is a world-class napper. But when you're boozing that hard, I don't see any other way around it. Like when you're hammering like four Manhattans at lunch,

a nap is in your immediate future. And nobody loves a matinee more than Don Draper on a workday. That's true. And so those are, but that's exactly what he's doing though. He calls that absorption. He would be fully in on this.

Like the absorption state, he didn't care when people worked. Well, he doesn't, he never, you never see him in front of a whiteboard mapping out his strategy for, you know, brand X. He kind of comes up with his ideas, sui sponte, like very extemporaneously in the meeting. Yeah.

I am more like the Peggy Olson, sweating it out. Like trying to hammer at it, figure it out. I'm not the Tom Draper, nap, matinee, genius. That's funny. Does it hold up? I bet it holds up pretty good, right? There was one episode where they had to do a trigger warning though, because-

Really? Yeah. Even though it takes place in the 60s. Which one? It was when Roger sang in blackface. Oh. I did do a trigger warning though, because- Really? Yeah. Even though it takes place in the 60s. Which one? It was when Roger sang in blackface. Oh. And they did a trigger warning. Roger, not that politically correct, that guy.

Politically incorrect. Well, you know, they were early in like the first season, it was 1960 and they were all on Nixon's side. Like the whole- I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. Cause they were considering getting into campaign marketing. They rep Nixon, but Nixon wouldn't,

like the campaign wasn't listening to him. All right, I think we got off track here. Did we cover the periodization of your life? Tell me about your life, like periodizing, like where are you in your periodization journey and when's the, what's the most successful, what's the most successful you've ever been at it? Well, one thing I've done is to build in this month

every year where I take off, which is new. I've done it twice, but I intend to do that every year. I think travel for me is a big aspect of that in terms of rejuvenating me and exposing me to new people in new places, I find that to be very nourishing. Like your big island. Yeah, yeah, and when I went to Australia. But even when pre-COVID, there'd be speaking things

and I would get to go to all these cool places. And for me, that like really reboots my system. So COVID has been challenging just to be at home and sit with my thoughts. And I struggle with adopting the appropriate healthy mindset around leveraging that appropriately. But I think at the same time, we have to be gentle on ourselves.

Like, you know, not to kind of beat a dead horse, but it's been a really hard year for everybody. And I think a fallow year for everybody in a way that we wouldn't have chosen or didn't expect. That's true. So being gentle on ourselves, I think is part of that idea of periodizing your life. Like this was a fallow year rather than live in regret

or frustration or resentment over it, while we're still kind of in it, like how can we develop a better, healthier mindset around this experience? How can we learn from it? How can we use it for that kind of internal journey that will help improve our lives as we move forward in other areas.

I miss the travel a lot, especially lately. And we were even thinking about jumping on a plane here in May and trying to get like to Hawaii for 10 days or something, but are opting against it just to let this second wave, wherever it is, kind of chill out and then, or third wave, and then see where we're at. But we're definitely feeling that,

I mean, travel's how we all reset in certain ways, adventure, that kind of thing. You kind of pull yourself out of who you are and you can be in a totally different state of being and then come back. And it's the best way to go fallow, I think. It's the best way to observe. But you can do that in our daily life here.

And we should all do more of that. I think from the athletics perspective, one thing that I think about when you're talking about off seasons is, the great example of that is the current NBA season in that they had the shortest off season in the history of the league because they had to, if you remember, they had to move everything because, and put it in a bubble in Orlando, you know, to do the playoffs and everything else after they'd shut down in

March. I think they moved, I forget when it was, it was in the late summer. I don't think it wrapped until like September or October. I can't remember offhand, I think October. And then the thought was usually the season starts again, like the end of October. And so the thought was they were probably not gonna start again until after the new year, but they actually launched with something like less than three months off. And I remember LeBron James being very outspoken about it

because he spends a million dollars a year on his body. He's like, so he knows all about this. Like he periodized to get peak for the playoffs. And this NBA season has been one of the worst in terms of major athletes coming down with injuries. Yeah, injuries. Yeah, and so it's interesting that, that's what I think about.

Like it does make a big difference when you're in the elite level too, especially, right? Yeah, 100%. But I think in terms of the everyday individual, thinking about the pandemic and thinking about how to move forward, so much of it is about acceptance too. It's like when an athlete's injured

and they're frustrated that they can't train or they're falling behind, or what is this gonna mean in terms of the big race that I'm training for? There's nothing you can do about it, right? So in this moment of repose, what can be learned? How can you mine it to be better in other areas of your life and use the various periods for what they're intended to sort of avail you of.

Love it. I don't know. That's some good classic ritual brain food. All right, let's shift gears. Spoken like a true hype man. Your job's secure. Are you uncomfortable with my hype? Brogan is not moving to Los Angeles, you're okay.

Your job is very secure. My greatest ability is availability. That's true. Not to be underestimated. Not to be underestimated. You have yet to say, I can't, there was one time where you couldn't cause you were having a baby, right?

Am I overly available? No, you're appropriately available. I'm appropriately available. You don't wanna be inappropriately available. No. No, cause then you're reeking of need. Yeah. Like don't you have anything else going on?

All right, let's move on. Yes. We're gonna do a little, it's not really show and tell, just gonna note a few things. I did wanna say- It's tell. Yeah, it's tell, no show. To everybody who left a comment on the YouTube channel

and subscribed in response to the 10,000 distance kit giveaway, thank you. We reached out to five people, got addresses, and we'll be shipping those out shortly. So you have that to look forward to. We'll be doing more giveaways. Again, I'm developing some new stuff with 10,000 I'm pretty excited about.

So I'll be sharing more about that as the weeks and months unfold. I wanted to give a shout out to friends of the pod, Jesse Thomas, Lauren Fleshman, Gabby Reese, and Laird Hamilton. They formed this Super Twins Activate Alliance between Picky Bars and Laird Hamilton. They formed this super twins activate alliance between picky bars and Laird superfood, which I think is super food cool.

It's the first time two husband and wife teams, all four of them have been on the podcast and went off and merged their companies. So I feel emotionally attached to this in an illogical way. So the companies are merged. I don't know if it's a part or if it was an, I don't know if Laird Superfood acquired Picky Bars. It's some kind of alliance, some form of merger.

I don't know the specifics of the business points on how it all worked out, but happy for all involved. I'm a believer in the Laird, that coconut creamer for the powdered coffee. I used to bring that on the road on work trips. Yeah, I got some of that in the mail the other day. So thanks to all of them for saying, I'll bring it into the studio.

Products by Picky Bars and Laird Superfood. Beautiful. Should we talk about this QAnon into the storm documentary that we both watched? You know, we should talk about it just because you and I love to talk about it. We've been talking, we love talking about QAnon and we've been talking about it forever.

And this documentary kind of came and went, we both watched it. It never felt like the appropriate time to discuss it. I don't wanna belabor it too long, but I thought it was worth noting. If people haven't seen it, it's on HBO Max right now. How many episodes is it? Four or five, something like that?

No, six. Six? I think it's six. Yeah. Let me check. It's a pretty interesting docu-series written and directed by this guy, Colin Hoback. Yep. That goes into not so much the implications

of the QAnon movement, but really the people behind it. For those that have been living under a rock and don't know what QAnon is, QAnon is the far right conspiracy theory alleging that a secret cabal of Satan worshiping cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex trafficking ring

and plotted against former US president Donald Trump while he was in office. Q drops cryptic, what would you call them? Missives? Yes. On 8chan, which is this horrible website. Started on 4chan, moved to 8chan. Moved to 8chan, 8chan notable for not just QAnon,

but kind of being the message board for Gamergate and Pizzagate. And this docu-series, Cullen goes to visit the people behind 8chan, which was this website started by this guy,-series, Cullen goes to visit the people behind 8chan, which was this website started by this guy, Fred Brennan, created 8chan, who, what is the nature of his disorder? He's in a wheelchair.

He was born with like some sort of brittle bone syndrome. Right, it's a congenital. A congenital, so he couldn't develop a ride and he couldn't like go out and play. And he was confined to kind of like a Mr. Glass, like in that movie, but it also involves some sort of malformations of his limbs. And so he basically,

the way for him to become a full blooded person, which he talked about on rabbit hole and he talks about even more so in this and is to have this online presence. He was able to be like a top dog online. Right, right, right. It became his real life essentially was being lived online. And he really understands the internet

in a very profound way. He creates 8chan, grows 8chan to a certain point. And then basically is, I guess, verging on bankruptcy or just trying to figure out how to keep it going. There was a moment where the traffic was too much and he didn't have the resources to be able to, like to keep it up. Right.

And that's how he, I think, partnered with these guys. Yeah, so he ends up hooking up with this guy, Ron Watkins and his son, Jim Watkins, who are- No, Jim's the father. Or Jim's the father, yeah, Jim Watkins, who Jim ends up actually acquiring 8chan from Fred. Fred relocates to Manila where Ron and Jim are operating. And through the docuseries,

you get a glimpse into kind of the back office of 8chan. And it's rather illuminating and disturbing to actually see how the sausage is made with this whole thing. Which you kind of hint like going into the series, I didn't know if I had to watch it because I listened to rabbit hole and rabbit hole was so good at kind of like implying that the Watkins most likely

had something to be like, if they weren't Q, they knew who it was, but you kind of thought it was one of them, not originally, but they co-opted like we'll get into that. But I always kind of was suspicious of those two people, the father and son in Manila, they're American by the way, but going into seeing the way Cullen put it together

and how he won the trust of these people who probably didn't wanna be on camera, like going into this, he wins their trust. He's there for all these seminal moments and he pieces it together. It's really brilliant. And I think completely revealing about this father and son, megalomania kind of like internet company that just,

I mean, I still can't wrap my head around the motive. Well, Hoback is a fly on the wall. Like he never passes judgment on these subjects throughout the movie. So on some level he's engendered their trust and who knows what he told them about the purpose of this film that he was making. I mean, we don't know, but on some level

they're all very comfortable having him around to document this. And essentially- For months and months. It's like a true crime story. Like he's trying to solve the riddle of who is QAnon. And along the way he interviews a lot of these QAnon YouTube people and pundits, et cetera. And ultimately, lands on,

it culminates with what I guess you could characterize as almost an admission by Ron Watkins that he is perhaps Q. Yes, but we should set this up because Jim Watkins, who runs the internet business out of Manila, his son, Ron, who lives- This is shitty office and it's just gross. It's one of those high rises.

All of this is coming from here. Right, and he owns a pig, he's a yogi, a self-proclaimed yogi. He owns a pig farm. That owns a pig farm and a health food store with their own bacon line. Yeah. This is legit.

And he's a big fan of fancy watches and fancy pens and changing his facial hair. Yes, and then obviously it's implied, but he doesn't get into it, but father and son do like to like frequent, well, the son frequents like some sort of massage parlor in Sapporo, Japan. Well, it's unclear why Ron, the son,

finds himself in all different parts of the world throughout this, they never really explained that. Like, is he fleeing from the law? Like what's exactly going on? And Jim, meanwhile, the dad is constantly saying that he doesn't care about politics, that he's not interested in politics, that he doesn't really follow QAnon.

But fully right wing. Yeah, because his actions belie his words. And at some point, Jim comes back to the United States, which why? And he has to sell the pig farm. They don't really explain why. And Ron, like, was he working in intelligence? There's the hint that maybe he worked in intelligence.

He was code monkey on Twitter, Ron Watkins. And at one point he became like, I think Donald Trump shared a couple of his tweets. Right, so there's at one point, Ron talks about how there's a Republican operative who's really figured out how to accelerate growth on Twitter like some kind of algorithmic solution that allows extreme stickiness

and virality on that platform. And at some point Ron hires this guy or enlists him to get his code monkey account on Twitter to blow up, which it does. And he ends up with like, I don't know, 700,000 or 500,000 followers or something like that. And then Trump is retweeting him. And this is in the latter stages of QAnon and 8chan.

I think it was the vice versa. The Republican operative wanted to hype up CodeMonkey because he was pro Q. He wanted the Q stuff out there, right? Cause it was beneficial to the Republican candidates or something like that. Well, I don't know. But there was CodeMonkey's personal account

that came a little bit later when he became outspoken. And the way that he used language on Twitter as CodeMonkey, they track that against the vernacular used by QAnon. And they kind of graph it to demonstrate that there's a good chance that these are the same people. And I think that the short version is someone else was originally QAnon. We don't really know who that was.

They were on 4chan. It got moved to 8chan. And at some point QAnon started to write differently. And that's when they think he had just disappeared and Ron and Jim, or maybe just Ron took it over to keep it going. Cause it was the primary driver of traffic to their web business.

But there was no real, they never really implied like what the motive was because they claim 8chan is a money loser. And then like, what would be, was it a game? Was he like, was it like just like this real life role-playing game for Ron? I think there is revelry and chaos with these guys. Like they were getting off on just wreaking havoc

and whatever, you know, Jim would say about his disinterest in politics, he keeps popping up. He at some point has to go hire this first amendment lawyer in Washington, and he's elated to be able to be, you know, a rabble rouser in a congressional hearing at one point. And then Hoback is present with Jim at the Capitol insurrection.

And there's all this crazy footage. There's also footage of the QAnon shaman. Early footage of the Q shaman. Yeah, like early footage of him at these other get togethers, these like conferences where you see this guy. I think it was like an Arizona like council meeting or something.

And he comes in with his horns. So it's fascinating for that alone. Yeah. And meanwhile, Fred Brennan who created 8chan starts to distance himself from the whole thing and becomes kind of a voice, a contrarian voice calling Ron and Jim to the mat on their behavior and sets about trying to get 8chan,

which later becomes 8kun dismantled. Yeah, and we don't wanna get into all the spoilers, but because watching Fred's journey is actually riveting. And to me, like there was so much great footage that kind of like he connects this up to like all the way back, early internet kind of stories, like every episode. I'd say critically the first episode,

if you watch the first episode and feel disjointed and kind of your head spinning, I felt like the first episode was weak in that it tried to cover too much and it was like way disjointed. But the subsequent episodes I think are really well crafted. He has this, when it talks about free speech, he pulls up the KKK march in Illinois in the 70s

that the ACLU sued to allow to happen because it was, the idea was get speech out there in public. I thought that was an interesting story. The Skokie Nazis. Yeah, Skokie Nazis. And then the heaviest footage to me was not, they use the New Yorker footage with the Capitol riot. But to me, the heaviest footage was the Christchurch killer.

The guy that went and shot people in a mosque, I think 30 or something. I forget how many died completely, it was like 30 or 40. And you see him, remember he live streamed this. This was something that was live streamed and it was on 8chan. People were watching Facebook. Yeah, no, the Christchurch Killer.

Oh, the killer was live streamed. But then it was hosted on 8chan. It was on Facebook where he was live streaming and 8chan was the comments were on 8chan where people were watching it and commenting. And you don't see, there's a little bit of blood. You see all the way up when he's driving as if he's just whistling, driving to work.

It's the sketchiest, it's the scariest moment I think. And I've seen some crazy stuff that is out there like of these crimes that we've all heard of. I've never seen anything that was as chilling as that to me. Yeah, it's horrific. It's horrific. And then to hear Ron and Jim,

refuse to accept any responsibility for proliferating this kind of content. But that's what happened. That was the Nadir of 8chan. That's why it has to be called 8kun now. Because at that point, that was it. Like once that happened and then right after that was the synagogue shooting in San Diego.

And that was the end of 8chan. Right. Yeah. So it would have been nice if the series delved a little bit more deeply into the implications of all of this. It really is just a story of following these guys around and trying to understand why they were doing what they were doing. being these chaos agents.

And we don't really get answers to that. No, it's just an offbeat tech story, but with real world implications. And unfortunately, I think why, what you're getting at, the unsatisfying conclusion is really just that they wanted to fuck with everybody. And like we all had to fuck with everybody.

And like we all had to live through it. And that's really a difficult nihilistic pill to swallow. It's a tough one. At the end of the day, after everything that's happened, it was like, there's no, it's not, it wasn't motivated by ideology. Or money, they didn't get paid out of this. Yeah, none of them are making any,

they're losing money on this whole thing. Right, so what was the purpose? Like it was purposeless entertainment for a few people and torture for everybody else. Yeah, all right, enough said on that. But you should watch it. Yeah, you should check it out. It's on HBO Max, QAnon, Into the Storm.

What else you got for me? I have something to show. This is the new Rachel Kushner collection, The Hard Crowd. It's essays from 2000 to 2020. Rachel Kushner is one of my three favorite writers currently working along with Michael Chabon and Colson Whitehead,

who are obviously both Pulitzer Prize winners. Kushner has previous novels, Flamethrowers, which is a spectacular book about 1970s motorcycles and the art scene in New York and the socialist uprising in Italy in the 70s. Telex from Cuba is about kind of this mining town, company town in Cuba, American owned right before the Cuban revolution, which is a spectacular read.

And Mars Room is about a women's prison. But this book kind of includes essays that inform all those novels. So if you'd seen, well, not telex from Cuba so much, but Flamethrowers and Mars Room. And it includes like a look back at like what San Francisco used to be pre-tech and some really great stories

about the old haunts where the bands played and where she used to bartend. And she herself is great with cars and is a motorcycle rider. And at the time she actually participated in an illegal race down Baja from Tijuana all the way to Cabo, illegal on Highway 1. And she wiped out going over a hundred miles an hour at one point, which is a scene that is kind of used

in flamethrowers also in a different way. But like, she's an incredible motorcycle rider too, or she was in her early days. And just a remarkable read. There's, you know, given the news of today, which is, you know, Israel police, Israeli police, you know, invading East Jerusalem and fighting with Palestinians there.

There's a story in here about Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and that's riveting and very sad. And there's essays on, you essays on Marguerite de Ross and motorcycles and San Francisco. And so I just thought if you haven't heard of her and you are interested in the nonfiction stuff, this is the one otherwise pick up flamethrowers or telex from Cuba.

You should get to know Rachel Kushner. That's cool. The hard crowd, did that just come out? Just came out, got a great review in the New York times from Dwight Garner. But to me, when she's at her best, she's electric. Like just electric. It's very highbrow.

It is a little highbrow. She does, she writes about art. She writes about literature and she writes about hardcore motorcycles. Yeah. All right, man. I'll check it out. I've never read her work. So I'm in for an adventure with that.

Let's introduce her to the RRP crowd. I think we just did. Which is a different kind of hard crowd. We're more of a soft crowd. A little bit. We're in a soft crowd. For the three people that are still with us. My little share of the week of finds that I've been enjoying is perhaps a little bit more lowbrow,

but also kind of highbrow. I've been enjoying this television series called Le Bureau. It's quite possibly one of the best things I've ever seen on television. It's extraordinary. It's the third version of the best things I've ever seen on television. It's extraordinary. It's the third version of The Office, right? Well, Le Bureau means The Office. I think the full title is like Le Bureau de Légendes,

of legends, The Bureau of, The Office of Legends. But it's essentially, it's five seasons long. It's a French series that chronicles life in the Dege essay, which is basically their CIA. But it's as if you were watching, it's like if you were watching a Bourne movie, but everything transpires in the office

and you never like, there's no action, there's no fights. There's no, almost all of it is about trade craft, but trade craft in terms of how people kind of navigate and communicate in the bartering world of intelligence. So the legends are the agents who adopt these alternative identities and then go out into the world sourcing information, like infiltrating primarily Middle Eastern countries

and the experiences that they have. And it all centers around a love story because in season one, the main character who's played by Matthew Kasavitz, who you might know from Amelie, he plays this undercover agent who's dispatched to Syria for six years. He falls in love with a Syrian professor

and he has to return to France. Like his tenure is up. And in the first scene, he basically lies to her and he loses her. And for the next five seasons, it's this journey of trying to get back to her and all this crazy stuff happens. But what's beautiful about it, it's very French.

There's a lot of sort of existential voiceover. Is it drama or comedy? It's drama. No, it's not comedy at all. It's very serious. There's a lot of sort of existential voiceover. Is it drama or comedy? It's drama. No, it's not comedy at all. It's very serious. But it's also, it has lighthearted moments. And I think what's really unique about it is the manner in which,

it's something you don't see in American television where it really takes its time. It's on a very slow boil. And it's really not about the action. It's about the relationship between all of these people that work together in the Deja essay and these characters that you really just fall in love with. So it's a beautifully wrought story.

It's extraordinarily rendered with extreme precision. And I can't recommend it enough. Like I did not want it to end. And it's one of those experiences where I'm a season and a half in, and I'm just delighted that there's five seasons and I get to just immerse myself in the world of these characters.

It's subtitled, so it's a little bit of work to have to deal with that. Sounds highbrow. But honestly, like it was absolutely delightful and wonderful. So I can't recommend it enough. I think it's on AMC, which you can access through Amazon or Apple TV.

Can I ask you something about TV series? Sure. Do you feel like when a series is starting to lose itself, like after like the first, I'm not talking about this one, but like, you know how series, like they get a little long and then they're not as good as they used to be. Do you stick with it till the end or do you get out early? It depends.

I've gotten better at getting out early because there's so much. You gotta get out, right? There's so much good stuff. I don't have time for something that isn't really completely engrossing. I'm not going down with your shit. So I don't have tolerance. Like that isn't really completely engrossing. I'm not going down with your shit. So I don't have tolerance.

Like if I start to lose it, like I'll give it a chance because sometimes it takes a while, right? So I'm not gonna bail prematurely. I'll give it enough time so that I can make an informed decision about how much investment I'm gonna make in this. But if it's not doing it for me, I'm out. And the other thing I have no tolerance for anymore

is the idea that you're gonna drip episodes out of a show week by week. Like, come on guys, we're past that. Drop the whole season or get out of town. Like, I don't understand this hanging onto this model of we're gonna hold back. Drop the whole season or get out of the business. If it's something that I think is gonna be great,

I will wait until the whole season is out before I even begin, because I don't wanna get a couple episodes in and then have to wait. HBO is one of the worst offenders. They're terrible. Yeah. Netflix understands this.

Netflix does understand it. But interesting, I always, if you've entertained me, I'll give you some rope, but I will get out early. I am not afraid to cut ties on a, and you know what, with books too, I'm not afraid to cut the ties if I have to. Yeah, I think it's harder with books cause you're like, I bought this book and it's here

and I have to finish it, you know? And it's like, no, you don't. No, you don't. But this book I've read cover to cover. Good. Yes. You're a strong man. I'm Sir Adam Skolnick, content creator. All right. Rachel Kushner.

What are we doing with this podcast episode? We're all over the place talking about all kinds of, I don't know. Is this working for you guys? For the people out there in the world? Let us know. Yeah. All right. We got a couple cool wins of the week though.

Let's go. Let's bring it back. All right. This win of the week, I'm gonna set up for you. This is right in your wheelhouse. This is shock waves in the food world great. This is Jeff Gordner and you had to talk about it. Gordoneer. Gordoneer. Well, this is a massive story in the food world.

Basically Daniel Hum, who's the proprietor chef of 11 Madison Park, which is arguably the premier restaurant in New York City. I think it has four Michelin stars, which is extraordinary. Had to close down during the pandemic, like all restaurants and just announced the other week that it was going to reopen as a 100% plant-based restaurant,

which is truly a landmark, extraordinary decision. Of the 132 restaurants worldwide with three Michelin stars, not one is vegan. So he's making a very bold statement. I mean, this is the culinary world at its most elite. Like to eat at this restaurant is unbelievably expensive. $335 tasting menu. Exactly.

And I think if you're going as a couple to eat, you're not getting out of there for like less than a thousand dollars. It's like crazy expensive. But this is the very apex pinnacle of fine dining. And for him to say, we're gonna toss out that menu and we're gonna do it 100% plant-based. I mean, it was trending on Twitter.

There was a million articles, New York Times, Eater. Everybody was covering this, lots of opinions, plenty of poo-pooers and naysayers, saying it's not gonna work, but I couldn't be more excited about this. I think it's really cool. Jeff Gordoneer immediately texted me and says, he's like, he's covered Daniel for Esquire.

So he knows him and he- You're looking to that story, right? It's an incredible profile, the Esquire profile that he wrote. Yeah, so Jeff's profile is called Daniel Hum is the greatest chef in America and possibly the world. Like that's what we're talking about here. Yeah, an amazing profile by Jeff,

who's obviously a wonderful, beautiful writer. But Jeff gave me his email address and he's like, you gotta get in touch with him right away. Like this is hot. So I emailed, I cold emailed Daniel Humm, expecting like there's a 10% chance this guy's gonna get back to me in the middle of this media firestorm.

But he got right back to me and he's like, yeah, I wanna do the podcast, but I want you to eat at the restaurant first. So I'm like, adventure, here we come. Yeah, that's right. I wanna go to New York, I wanna eat at this restaurant, I wanna get him on the podcast, I wanna hear the whole story.

So we're looking at when we can schedule that, but hopefully that will happen in the not too distant future. Probably, I probably won't be able to go there until like July, but- I'm available. You wanna come? Yeah, I'm available.

All right, I'll let you know. I thought you said you shouldn't be overly- Wait, was that overly available? What's the appropriate amount of availability? You can't complain about not getting sleep and having a baby and can't train and then suddenly be available to go to New York City at the drop of a hat. But we'll talk about it.

We'll see. We'll see how this episode goes. I'm not sure I'm invited. I'll just dangle it. We'll see. What's also cool about Daniel is that this guy was almost a pro cyclist, like a very accomplished cyclist. He was pro.

He was looking at a pro career. He could have gone pro. That was available to him, Iist. He was pro. He was looking at a pro career. He could have gone pro, that was available to him, I believe. Okay. But he made a decision. He recognized like, listen, I'm never gonna be at the highest level of this. And he started pursuing an alternative career path.

He's like one of those people great at a lot of things. Isn't he a three hour marathoner? He's a very good marathon runner. In, I believe in 2008, he ran 251 in the New York marathon. I don't know if he runs it every year. He's run it a bunch of times, 312, I think he ran 310 in 2018. So marathon runner, almost pro cyclist,

obviously very fit athletic guy who has been eating predominantly vegetarian for many years, I believe at this point, and has been thinking about making this transition in the food world with his restaurant in cognizance of not just the way the world is moving, but his responsibility as somebody who is, you know, very prominent in this world.

And I think it's ballsy to do that. Very exciting. And I wish him only the best, and I can't wait to enjoy his food and meet him and get him on the podcast. In researching this little story, I came across this gem like that. And I think New York Times, one of their stories

talked about Ann Kim, the chef in Minneapolis has Suki and Mimi of like a highly rated vegan menu or vegan restaurant. Did you hear about that? I didn't. And since I was just in Minneapolis, now I'm bummed. Brogan? I didn't know about that.

Get over there Brogan. Brogan, maybe he can go do a little recon. Brogan if- Jeff is probably, Jeff Gordnier might've covered this restaurant. Maybe it was in that story. I pulled that from somewhere. But you know what Hum is doing isn't totally unprecedented.

A couple restaurants have tried this, perhaps most notably L'Arpège in Paris, which I had the great opportunity of experiencing. Julie took me there for my birthday several years ago. The chef there, Alain Passard, he's called the vegetable whisperer. He stopped serving meat in his restaurant in 2001. And from what I understand,

L'Arpège has only become more prominent. It's quite the place. And it's one of those places where it's just like serving after, it's like a million dishes and you're there for like five hours. And every plate is like a little thing, but extraordinary. This is like, I think the context of this Epicurious

is not having any more meat or like there's no beef anymore on any of their recipes. They're not putting it publishing any more beef recipes because of climate change. Like there is a, this does seem to be a movement that's kind of creeping towards something significant. I mean, already it's significant when you have Daniel's restaurant going,

you know, 11 Madison going completely vegan or vegetable, not completely vegan, they're doing honey and milk for coffee. But other than that, completely plant-based. I think that's the only non-plant-based menu items. But he hasn't revealed the actual menu yet. Yeah, but like it is a major thing when you're talking about it.

Huge. There's a context here. Symbolically it's massive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very exciting. So that's the kind of high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very exciting. So that's the kind of highbrow, like food at the highest level of the culinary universe. But I wanna take it back down to boots on the ground

and remind people that this quest that we're on to introduce the plant-based lifestyle to as many people as possible is only gonna get so far unless we redress the problem of food deserts and access in urban communities to healthy plant-based foods, right? Like it's one thing to, you know, I'm gonna go to 11 Madison Park

and drop major coin on this crazy meal. But what about the average everyday person who's living in- East New York. Yeah, exactly. And there aren't even grocery stores, let alone, you know, any kind of healthy plant-based options, which brings me to the next thing I wanted to share, which is my friend, Neil Zacharias, has founded this new company.

He's the CEO of a new venture called Plantega. You can check it out online at eatplantega. And essentially the idea, I love this, it's brilliant, is creating these basically kiosks, like refrigerated kiosks that are stocked with healthy plant-based foods that they're placing in bodegas. They've started in New York.

I don't know how many locations they have right now, but in bodegas across New York City, they're adding these refrigerated kiosks that are just stocked with all kinds of healthy stuff so that they're expanding the availability of healthy affordable options into these food desert neighborhoods. And some bodegas have like a grill oriented and they also have like a grill option

or something like that for some takeaway, takeaway stuff. Oh, is there a grill? Maybe it's kind of like Starbucks where you pull it out of the fridge and they'll grill it up there in the bodega. But my understanding is that it's pre-prepared like sandwiches and salads and things like that.

Fantastic. And this is just out of the gate, it's brand new, but certainly an idea we're celebrating. And I think it could go a long way towards really addressing this problem of healthy food access in underprivileged communities. So good on you, Nill, and let me know how I can support this mission

and what you guys are trying to achieve. And I just made a brunch, a Mother's Day brunch with Beyond Meat, breakfast sausage, Miyoko's butter and Just Eggs. What do you want a medal? No, I'm just saying. You're like asking- Those are the three on here.

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, they partnered with Miyoko's Beyond and Just. Miyoko's is fabulous, yeah. So cool. Cool. Awesome, should we go to some listener questions? I would love that. Do it.

Is it time to do it? It is time. Okay. What do you think would happen if we went to a daily show? You and me daily? Daily. I'm available. Yeah, you are.

All right. Are we ready? Okay. Here we go. Greg from Virginia. Hey, Rich. It's Greg from Virginia. My question is about the topic

of money. As a child, I was taught that money is a variable that has a significant influence on our choices. How are you going to pay for it was my parents' first question when I would talk about my dreams. In finding Ultra Rich, you share a moment when you had left your law practice, was waiting to get traction as an author, and was on the brink of financial ruin. How were you able to maintain the pursuit of your dream and resist the urge to return to your law practice exclusively just to provide for your family?

How would you advise others to think about money, especially if it creates an obstacle to making change? I want to thank you guys very much for your valuable insight and your podcast, and especially this particular format. This interactive format makes it much easier and much better to be able to interact. Have you guys having a great day. Bye.

Thanks, Greg. That's a great question. I think it's an important question. No doubt. I want to preface what I'm gonna say by saying that I am not telling anyone what to do or not to do, nor am I giving any financial advice, but I will share a little bit of my experience.

And I think, first of all, I'm with you. I grew up in the same way, being told when I would give voice to anything aspirational or sort of aspirational for my life, being brought back down to earth with a heavy dose of kind of prudent reality. So I'm on your wavelength, Greg. But the way I've come to think about this

when I think about money as this balance or this dance between responsibility or prudence on the one hand, and on the other hand, understanding that money is just energy. Money is, of course, a variable that is going to influence choice. But the key, I think first and foremost, is understanding that we don't live in a zero-sum game and that by adopting a mindset of universal abundance will help you really get that money just like everything else is this waveform, this energy,

something that in my experience tends to be less important and flow a little bit more freely when your life is oriented not around the pursuit of it, but rather the pursuit of purpose. It is true that I grew up with parents who were hammering a similar message into me and I oriented my life around that perspective. And I found that in so doing,

it didn't matter how much money I made, I never had any of it because I was so out of alignment with a greater sense of purpose that I would compensate for that lack of fulfillment by spending whatever I had to kind of fill that hole. So I was chasing the dragon in a way that I was never gonna get on top of it. And it was only by kind of crashing into a wall

with all of that and flaming out that I was able to reconfigure my relationship to money. And I had to do it through an extended period of hardship where we didn't have any. And that forced me to get really clear on what my needs were and what was most important to me and what my values were. And I made a commitment to pursue those values

irrespective of any kind of financial reward. And I will say there were plenty of moments where my faith was tested. And if Julie had not had my back, I very well would have scampered back and tried to get a job that would pay the bills because it was very difficult. It was emasculating at times, very humiliating.

Didn't you even have to take some like small kind of law gigs at one point when things weren't going well? Well, I did, I was sort of practicing laws. I was writing, finding ultra, but when that book came out, I was like, I'm not doing, I drew a line in the sand. I was like, I'm not doing it anymore. a line in the sand. I was like, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm trusting that this is gonna open up the door to a new path.

And it took a long time. You know, the phone just didn't ring for a long time. There were months where we were scrambling like nobody's business and having cars repossessed and having our trash bins taken away and being unable to, you know, figure out how we were gonna feed the kids that night. It was really, really difficult.

My faith was tremendously tested. Julie, you know, I look back on it and I don't know how she had the fortitude to like have my back in that period of time, but she did. And she would constantly hammer home this idea of like, the only way out is forward. Like you can't go backwards. Like you've come too far.

The answers you seek are ahead of you and I'm with you and we're together and we'll figure it out and money comes and money goes. But what's important here is you finding your voice and figuring out, you know, how you're gonna move forward in the world. And that's like a precious gift. And, you. And I'm here to help you honor that. And that takes an extraordinary human being to do that.

It really does. It's not the average person. It's not like, oh, behind every great man, there's a great woman. Like, no, she was like the Jedi while I was like panicking in the corner. And so without her, none of this happens. But I think because we went without for such a long period of time And so without her, none of this happens.

But I think because we went without for such a long period of time and we were compelled to like live in the moment and it really did reframe my relationship with money. And these decisions that I made about how I wanted to live my life were decoupled from any pursuit of financial gain. Like I made that barter. I was like, I don't care.

This is the way I wanna go. This is what makes me happy. This is what's fulfilling. This is where I see promise and opportunity, even if I don't see it right now. And it didn't have anything to do with financial remuneration. So you removed that completely from the equation.

By like removing that in some weird spiritual equation, I created space for it to come in in a different way. And by continuing to trust my instincts and follow my curiosity and double down on these values as kind of the foundation or the architecture for what I do professionally, I'm suddenly, it's ridiculous, but like I make way more money now than I ever, I never thought I would ever have money.

Like I just made peace with that. I will never have money, that's fine. And now I've got all this money. Like technically I'm like rich, which is fucking crazy. Cause like, you know, it's like, but it doesn't, I don't think about it. I don't think about how much money is fucking crazy. You're rich times two. Like, you know, it's like, but it doesn't, I don't think about it. I don't think about how much money is coming in. My spending habits haven't really changed.

I don't really do anything differently. Like my whole relationship with money is different. Like I just hold it loosely. And so I don't know how that's instructive to somebody else other than to say that if I've discovered anything through this journey, it's that the key is figuring out what gets you excited in the morning.

And with that, you have this opportunity and this responsibility to get clear on how to orient like purpose premised on those values. And whatever it is that is lighting you up, on how to orient like purpose premised on those values. And whatever it is that is lighting you up, the more that you continue to do it, the universe starts to orient around you. Like it congeals around you to provide opportunities. And I think over time,

those opportunities lead to some kind of vocational situation that will allow you to meet your needs. I'm not saying you're gonna get rich or anything like that, but you will find yourself in a situation where work doesn't feel like work because it's something that you would be doing anyway. Does that make sense? It does, I think it's great.

And I think Jedi Julie deserves to be an action figure. She does. We know people who make action figures. She'd be good. Yeah, I think the other thing too is, on that note of here's my dream, well, how are you gonna pay for it? All I can tell you is that every dream that I've realized,

I couldn't pay for. If I'd set out at the beginning to say, well, I have this thing, how am I gonna pay for it? I never would have gotten out of the gate. The thing is you have to just start pursuing it. And like I said, the universe arranges itself around you to provide the support that you need. It might not look like what you would like it to look like,

and it might not be as much as you would like it to be, but generally it allows you to take one more forward step. Like that's it. You don't get the blueprint. You don't get to see where this is leading or how it's all gonna play out. You just don't get to see the whole picture. All you get on the daily is a test.

Can you take that next step? Your faith is tested. And I think every time you show up to pass that test, there's something that happens in the universe where it says, okay, he passed that test. We'll give him a little, we'll throw him a little loose change. See if he can pass the next test.

And also the conversations around you, including from if your parents are around and still not just in your head, but in your life, those conversations start to change too, but it could take many years. It could take five years, could take 10 years, but the conversations all of a sudden you'll notice one day and it won't be about, can he do it?

Or you should get a job or blah, blah, blah. It'll be conversations about pride. Like, you know. Right, because when you're in it, you cannot expect the support of people like that. They're be on your side. When you're in it, you cannot expect the support of people like that. They're just not going to. Like everybody thought I was insane.

And people were telling Julie, like, what's the matter with you? You gotta divorce this guy. Like he's lost his, he's completely lost it. So that's the way that it is when you're in the midst of it. And that makes it even harder to find your footing because you start to question yourself. Like maybe I am insane.

Everybody else thinks I'm insane. Of course, when it all works out, then it's like, oh, we're so proud of you. And we saw it all the time. We supported you. They forget that they were the ones saying, how are you gonna pay for that thing in the beginning? And that's just the way that it's wired.

That's the way it goes. And it's not for everybody. Like it was really hard. I'm not wishing this journey on people. Not everybody is cut out for it. If you're happy in your job and you have a profession and your goal is to provide for your family and have barbecues on the weekends, that's great.

I'm not telling people to quit their job. I'm speaking to the person who's got that yearning in their soul where they feel like they just can't do it one more day. And they have this sense or this calling that there's something out there. And they have this sense or this calling that there's something out there. And all I'm saying is, listen to that, pay attention to it,

try to put a little wind in that sail, put a little fertilizer in that soil and be open to where it might lead you and pay attention. You're talking to Greg from Virginia. That's right. Thanks for the question, Greg. Thanks, Greg. Now we're gonna go to the Great North. That's right. Thanks for the question, Greg. Thanks, Greg. Now we're going to go to the Great North.

Hi, Adam and Rich. This is John calling from the North of England. So just first off, I just want to say thank you for all of the work on the podcast. I went vegan a good few years ago after my dad died and I had a general reorientation in my life. And I did it out of kind of ethical reasons and then I remember kind of suddenly freaking out a little bit like oh my god am I gonna wither away like how do I do this um as someone who's quite athletic and you know one likes to lift weights and run and ride my bike and stuff and it was finding the ritual podcast and the information on that that really kind of settled me into um a plant-based lifestyle so yeah thanks for that um but my question is really so

i learned to swim three years ago um and this summer i'm doing a swim run that has lakes and trail running and it has a lake crossing in it um i don't have any access to lakes to train in because they become too polluted in my neck of the woods. But I do have access to the sea. And obviously, it can be really rough, or it can be cold. So it's kind of warmed up to about 44, 45 Fahrenheit now. But I can't do huge distances because I just get really, really cold. And if it's too rough, then I just get beaten up and I, again, can't do huge distances. So I also have access to a swimming pool and I'm just wondering how would you kind of navigate

those two options? Because neither of them is specific to the swim run I'm doing, but would you emphasize the pool? Would you emphasize the sea? And which would you use for what? Thanks very much. Bye.

John coming in hot with the vegan swim run question. My favorite kind of question. Yes. And with the great accent right out of the North, the North in Game of Thrones. How far North in England? It's the North. It's John, the North.

Wait, it's John from the North? Yeah. Like John Snow? Is this John Snow? John from the North? Yeah. Like Jon Snow. Is this Jon Snow? Jon Snow is not in England. First of all, Jon Snow just learned to swim. That's to me that the best part of this question is he just learned to swim three years ago.

Right. And he's in a swim run. I love it. That's amazing. I love that. Do you wanna take a stab at this answer first? Well, I'll let you talk about the best way to train since I just kind of wing it. But I mean, with apologies to Nicholas who I don't wing it.

I do as I'm told, but I do also wing it to some degree. The one thing I would recommend because of your ocean, like for me personally, I like to swim in the ocean. I don't swim in pools. But since you're new to swimming, I would guess like a lot of even triathletes that are very good in pools, they'd often the transition to getting into open water

is a little bit rougher. They're not that great or comfortable. Let's just say they're not as comfortable in open water. And there is a comfort level of swimming in open water that you won't have in the, although there will be wind in a lake and there might be waves, it won't be the same thing as a rough sea.

And so if you're going to go into the sea and there's not a lifeguard on duty and you're swimming alone, I'd be very cautious at first if you're not comfortable with it. I would try to swim in tandem at least in the open water, especially at those temperatures that's dangerous. And it can be dangerous if you're not in the right wetsuit.

And so I think that those things, in Hawaii, there's a phrase they have on almost every beach, when in doubt, don't go out. And I think it's okay to feel some butterflies, but I don't think it's okay to put yourself in a dangerous situation. So I do think you need to be mindful of conditions and temperature if you're gonna be alone.

And so that's the only thing I would say about the ocean. Adam dropping open water safety knowledge. Yes. Like a true lifeguard. Yes. A true waterman. No. Yeah.

So here's what I think. I think you're gonna be fine. John, kudos for tackling a swim run three years into learning how to swim. I think that's ballsy and amazing. If it makes you feel any better, I trained almost entirely for the Otillo Swim Run World Championships in a swimming pool.

I almost never went in open water. Now, that being said, I have a lot of open water experience. So I didn't feel like the need to get comfortable in open water. So what I would say to you is double down on the swimming pool, use that as much as possible to develop your fitness and your endurance and your strength. And you can also use the pool for in and out,

you know, swim, run transitions, right? So in and out swim, run, swim, run, swim, run, get used to swimming and running. And if you can, if they'll let you at your pool, swim in the pool with your wetsuit on and your shoes on, because swimming with tennis shoes is a very strange sensation that you're gonna have to acclimate to. And if the pool allow you to do it,

I would suggest doing that as much as possible. And of course, using the hand paddles and getting used to all the gear and all of that is really important. But I would say that the pool is suboptimal. You always wanna be kind of out in the natural environment in terrain that's gonna mimic the actual race course. And that isn't quite available to you.

So what I would suggest is you avail yourself of the sea, but just pick your moments like once a week or when the conditions are fine. Like it's not, I wouldn't go out when it's crazy choppy or anything like that. And also 44, 45 degrees is no joke. So make sure you're wearing an appropriate wetsuit for that kind of weather.

Five mil at least. Yeah, get out in the sea. And you could do short swim run workouts where you swim 200 meters and then run up the shore and run for a half mile and then run back into the sea. So you're not really in the ocean that long, but you're getting used to, you're acclimating, not only to what it feels like to be in open water,

but also the weirdness and discomfort of running up the shore and running back in, like developing a comfort level with all of that from a mental and emotional perspective, I think is huge. Because if you can handle that, these lakes are gonna be so easy, right? There'll be no intimidation because you've been out battling freezing water in the sea.

The lakes of course are not gonna have salt water. So there's a different kind of buoyancy thing. Not as buoyant. Yeah, you're not gonna be as buoyant. Like there's something, when you swim in the ocean, you ride very high in the water and it actually makes it easier to swim if it's calm. So the lake, you're gonna ride a little bit lower

and you'll feel a little bit more like you're fighting the water than you would in the ocean. But I think you're actually in a great situation to be mentally prepared because of the conditions in which you live. So pick your moments. The lakes will be easy after those North Sea excursions. And I don't know what the land terrain is around you. And I

don't know what the terrain of this specific swim run course looks like, but I would, if I made one mistake, and I've said this before on the podcast in training for Sweden, I was just running trails and kind of gradual climbs and things like that. And the course in Sweden was very technical. It was very rocky. Actually, it wasn't that much running. It was a lot of trudging and climbing up rocks and things like that. So get really familiar with the terrain of the race and try to find terrain in your natural environment

near your home where you can mimic what it's gonna be like during the race. Yeah, I mean, for me saying, don't go out alone. I mean, I do go out and swimming alone, but the temperatures are different, but I will say, I was gonna ask you Rich, what do you think about, like since it's a lake that he hasn't been in, like how you went to the Sierra to train at altitude

and swam in Tahoe. Would you recommend maybe if you have time and you have the time inclination, maybe a week excursion or even just a weekend to a lake that you do feel comfortable swimming in, that wouldn't be a bad idea. Yeah, if he has the ability and the time, you could drive to some lake that maybe is not that far away

just for the day or for the weekend or something like that and get used to experiencing what it's like to swim in a lake. I think that'd be- If he hasn't done that before. That'd be good, don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. But I promise you,

if you get comfortable swimming- In the North Sea. In the North Sea, you're gonna be fine in the lake. Yeah, you might wanna get a seven mil wetsuit for swimming and it'd be, unless you're doing swim run in that case, just get the thickest swim run wetsuit for swimming. And it'd be, you know, unless you're doing swim run and in that case, just get a thick, the thickest swim run wetsuit you can get for that.

Yeah. All right. Cool. All right, let's go to our man in Vegas, our German in Vegas. Hey guys, this is Philip. I'm originally from Germany. I live in Las Vegas now for a year.

I was in a relationship when the pandemic started and broke things up a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things that bothered me in the relationship really was alcohol involved. And for you, Rich, with the experience that you have made, I have a question. experiences you have made um i i have a question how are you actually dealing with people in your surroundings and people in your environment that have not a real addiction where they get hooked up on alcohol or things like every single day but more even you know oh let's have a glass of wine and then one glass turns into two or three and and it happens like once a week. How do you handle people like that? Because I always had issues with that. So yeah, thanks for everything you guys do. You're very inspirational, and you helped me through the hard times. And yeah, keep up the good work and talk to you soon.

Thanks for your question, Philip. I suspect that this is probably a more prevalent issue living in a place like Las Vegas than it would be maybe in other locations. I'm empathetic to the predicament, but I would say for me, it's kind of a double-edged situation because on the one hand, I've been sober for a long time

and I'm really just never around people like that anymore. It's just not part of my inner social circle like it once was. But if and when I am around that kind of scenario, it doesn't really bother me that much because my sobriety is strong. It's not like I'm triggered by it. I can be around people that are drinking

a couple of glasses of wine and it doesn't really affect me in any meaningful way. Like if it starts getting crazy and people are getting hammered and stuff like that, I'll just leave because it's boring for me. But it's not like I feel threatened or anything like that. And the reason I'm not around people like that very much is that I just don't seek out those people or those experiences anymore like I used to.

But when I do encounter them, I'm pretty capable of managing it without incidents. It doesn't affect your energy. No, it doesn't affect my energy. So one question I guess I would have upfront that I'm curious about is why, Philip, it's so bothersome for you because you're talking about people

who have maybe two or three glasses of wine once a week, which is a pretty, for a lot of people, like that's a pretty normal thing. It's not that out of control. So what is it inside of you that's getting activated by that? And if it's just that you don't wanna have that in your environment, then that's cool.

But that just means you're gonna have to expand your social circle and find other types of people to hang out with or involve yourself in, get out to the Red Rocks or just get, go to places where it's a different type of cultural cohesion where drinking really isn't so front and center in terms of how you're interacting socially. Personally, I'm just not in the business

of taking anyone else's inventory. So I don't sit in judgment of somebody who wants to have two or three glasses of wine, but, and I would say this to you, like we do have choices as to who we spend our time with. And I think in my experience, the best way of managing this kind of situation, if you're just not enthusiastic about being with people

who are into that right now, you don't have to make a big statement about it or a manifesto about how you're not gonna stand for this anymore. You could just back away slowly from that environment. And I think of it in terms of concentric rings of intimacy. So if you think of yourself in the middle, and then there's a bunch of circles outside of you

that expand, who is in that inner ring? And those would be the people that you trust the most, you trust implicitly. Then the next ring of people would be people who maybe are just more casual friends. And it kind of goes out from there. So I'm constantly thinking about the people that I keep in that inner circle.

And then the people who get moved to outer rings because something else happens. And you have the ability to slowly transition your social time to more like-minded people who are aligned with your social habits. And you can move those, you know, you can move away from those people or those people just get kind of slowly pushed out

to a different range. It doesn't mean that you can't be friends with them anymore. It's just that the dynamic of your friendship might get tweaked a little bit. And it doesn't have to be that big a deal. And I would also say that it's important, on the subject of not taking anyone's inventory or making a big deal in terms of how you proclaim,

you don't have to proclaim this to anybody. I think it's important to have compassion for the fact that it's been a fucking hard year for a lot of people. And certain people are gonna be like, I wanna have two or three glasses of wine. And if they can do that and they're happy with their life, that's their business.

It's not mine to judge. So I tend to err on giving people a break and giving people some latitude and understanding that we all have different ways of coping with the various anxieties and stressors that we face. But ultimately, this is about your relationship with you. And I think it's incumbent upon you to stop focusing

on what others are doing or being upset because people aren't behaving in a manner that you would prefer them to behave. Stop grinding on why they aren't doing things your way and just focus more on your path and your choices and the people that you choose to spend time with. Well said. Is there anything else to say on that?

I don't think so. I think you covered it. Yeah. You know, there you go. Are we done? Do you think anyone's still listening? I think there's a couple of guys behind that curtain. Yeah, those guys.

They're being paid to listen. They're being paid to listen. They have to, they can't leave yet. You know what? Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming here. Thank you for being appropriately available. Well, I might've,

is it appropriate to camp out here the night before? Probably not. Okay, well, I'm glad I chose not to this time. You can't. Did you bring your mask? You know what, here's the thing. I'm gonna be nice to you. I'm supposed to be nice to you.

I'm not gonna be mean to you. Here's the thing. This area, I'm sure has a lot of this going on. I should have led with this. The coyotes have been making love outside my apartment area on a regular basis. And it's on the next door app and everything. And they're all talking about it.

And it's a very strange howling. I would imagine there's some coyote lovemaking happening around here at night. Yeah, quite a bit. Quite a bit at night. You hear it at night. Did you know they were in heat right now? Is that a thing?

No, I didn't know that. That's what's happening. They tend to run down the middle of the road in front of our house in packs. And if people who haven't experienced this, it's like a loud screeching noise. Yes. It's rather alarming.

It's different than the normal yipping. No, it's not like, it doesn't sound like a wolf or a dog or something like that. It sounds like there's some periodization happening in the coyote community. And right now is the period to have fun. They are living in alignment with their circadian rhythms in close proximity to nature.

The rights of spring, my friends. Although I did wake up in the tent the other morning and there was a bird on top of the tent that was pecking at the roof and tearing a hole in the roof of my tent. Oh my goodness. I was like. Maybe it was trying to collect some hair for its nest.

I don't know what kind of bird it was, but I darted up and it scurried away and there's like a hole in my tent. But you're not in the roof still, right? You've moved. No, no, no. I'm on the ground, yeah. So now I have to be a little bit more cautious about making sure it's zipped up

and there's no snakes or anything like that. Interesting. No snacks in the or anything like that. Interesting. No snacks in the tent. The tent. Yeah. Did you fix the tent yet? Is it a double wide? I got a new tent, but here's my thing.

I wanna get like a glamping tent, like a cool- Right, a cabana. Yeah, I need to explore that a little bit more. I want a tent that rivals the house. I do want that. Like a big flowing white number. Yeah, that's what I want. Like multi chambers. And you're gonna come out and build the deck for me. A Mongolian y. Like a big flowing white number. Yeah, that's what I want. Like multi-chambers.

And you're gonna come out and build the deck for me. A Mongolian yurt. Cause you're so available. A Mongolian yurt worthy of Genghis Khan. That's what I want for you. I don't want a yurt, but they do have these really cool glamping tents. There's a company in Topanga actually

that makes some pretty cool ones. I'm gonna go check out. Yeah, so more will be revealed. Well, thank you for having me. All right, thank you for being here, my friend. Hope you guys enjoyed. I don't know what this was about. I guess we, what are we calling this?

We're calling this Periodize Your Life. I think that's the title of this podcast. Be the Coyote. Be the Coyote. You feel good, I feel good. Yeah, man. Cool, man. All right, well, we'll be back in two weeks.

In the meantime, follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. You can follow me at Rich Roll. Leave us a message with your question and we just might answer it at 424-235-4626. You can check out the show notes and links to everything we discussed today on the episode page at richroll.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on YouTube,

Apple, Spotify, all the places. Also, we recently, not that recently, we created a clips channel on YouTube. It kind of went fallow, bringing that fallow word back. That's sort of the recurring word of the day, I think, fallow. It went fallow for a period of time because we just didn't have the manpower,

the editing manpower to service it. But I'm happy to announce that we've got AJ on board. All right. Shout out to AJ who's come on board to focus on creating clips for the clips channel. We're gonna be uploading two videos a day. All right. Clips channel going forward,

including clips from the roll on, of course, the questions, all that kind of stuff. So it would mean a lot, especially if you dig short chunks from the show or just want to sample a guest before committing. If you would check out our Clips channel and subscribe to it, you can find it on YouTube. If you just search Rich Roll Podcast Clips,

of course we'll have a link in the show notes to that as well. But I really wanna build out this Clips channel. Love it. I'm excited about AJ manning that dashboard Of course, we'll have a link in the show notes to that as well. But I really wanna build out this clips channel. Love it. I'm excited about AJ manning that dashboard and getting some activity there and bringing it out of its fallow state into full bloom.

Welcome AJ. Cool. Thanks everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering production, show notes and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin, who handle video and editing for the show. And of course, AJ now on the Clips channel.

Jessica Miranda for graphics. We don't have anybody shooting portraits today. We're going photo free today. I feel naked. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music, as always by my boys, Tyler Trapper and Harry. Appreciate all you guys.

See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome episode. Episode 602 coming in hot. 602, unbelievable. All right, man. Thanks brother. Thank you. Peace.

Namaste. Namaste. Planteca. Planteca. Namaste. Coyote. Thank you.