The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: Work Is a False Idol

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

We live in a culture where identity is inextricably linked to our careers—but who we are is not what we do. And work is not a substrate for identity. In addition to philosophizing on capitalism, hedonistic altruism, and rest as resistance, in today’s edition of ‘Roll On’ Adam Skolnick and I trade fitness updates, perform a virtual reality show & tell, answer listener questions, and more. Aside from being my bi-weekly sidekick hype beast, Adam is a waterman, writer, activist, and veteran journalist best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me, co-author. He writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently using the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Specific topics covered in this episode include: an update on endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh’s ‘Code Red’ arctic swim; a recap of the Leadville 100, the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, and Robbie Balenger’s Colorado Crush; Sania Sorokin record-breaking 24-hour race & Carl Meltzer’s completion of the ‘Most 100 milers in a calendar year’; the importance of Michael Muller’s virtual reality experience ‘Into the Now’; thoughts on life, careers, and the NYT piece, Work Is a False Idol; and Rich & Adam’s podcast, video, and other media streams of the week. In addition, we answer the following questions: How do you end self-sabotaging behaviors? What are the best ways to prepare for a 100K ultra race?  When exercising, what is the most efficient way to breathe? Thank you to Annie from Colorado, Brian from London, and Scott from Vermont for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page or better yet leave a voicemail at [phone]. To read more and listen click here. You can also watch on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Roll On. We've got a great show on tap. Adam is warming up right now in the green room. So while the diva prepares, I say in jest, of course, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. 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 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. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more.

Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. 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. All right, let's do the show. All right, greetings to the seekers among us, you, me, us, y'all, everyone. May this sonic pixelated vibration find you well amidst the chaos and confusion that is life.

My God given name is Rich Roll once again in Vulcan mind meld in conversational communion with the high-minded literary line himself, the child rearing Dodger fan, global citizen of the oceans, conscious advocate for all things ecological preservation. My co-pilot on all things roll on Duke of Santa Monica Bay, Mr. Adam Skolnick, how you doing, man?

Wow. How about that? Your intros, I did myself. You were already great, you topped you. I did, what am I gonna do next time? You know, you could go full absurdist. I think you can go full Charlie Kaufman. It's already, yeah, getting a little bit surreal.

Before you answer my question now, I should mention, roll on for those who are a little bit newer to the show, is our bi-monthly, that's correct, right? Bi-monthly, does bi-monthly mean every other month or twice a month? Yes, I think it's twice a month. Bi-monthly, does bi-monthly mean every other month or twice a month? Yes, I think it's twice a month. Bi-monthly is twice a month. It is bi-monthly then.

I would say it's mostly bi-monthly. What is every other month then? I think that's bi-monthly too. I think it can mean either one. I don't know, that's confusing. Anyway, either way, roll on as our opportunity to kind of shift focus away from our traditional fair here on the RRP, which is evergreen deep dives

with some of the world's most interesting minds. And instead hone in on matters of contemporaneous interest. We spent a little show and tell, got some interesting show and tell today. We share some wins of the week and we land our little twin prop seaplane with listener questions, dropped on our voicemail at 424-235-4626.

Write that phone number down. Now you can answer my question. Yeah, well, I was just gonna say after that first paragraph that you read, that was so glowing. I did read it for people that think that I just came up with that on the spot. I did read it. For people that think that I just came up with that on the spot, I did write that down.

He writes these. And then the second paragraph saying, my traditional fair evergreen deep dives with some of the world's most interesting minds, instead, Adam's here. I like how you just pivot immediately to the self deprecating interpretation of that. Yeah, we're not gonna do that this week.

We're gonna go towards the banal. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This week we'll just talk about Adam swimming in the Santa Monica Bay. Yeah, we'll talk about masks. We'll make fun of that. We'll do what we always do. I don't know.

I don't know how these things go. I'm doing pretty good, man. I have this month run over 80 miles, which is not, listen, for people who actually run, that's not that great. That's actually, that's quite a bit of running. Yeah, I mean, you have to run a lot to get to 80. Yeah.

And then over swam over 10. You have to run 80 to get to 80. This is starting off hot. I know. And over 10 miles of open water swimming in August. That's amazing. My goal was to kind of get to those benchmarks, whether that's a good goal or not.

And then I have an Alcatraz swim coming up on September 11th. Nice. The South End Rowing Club, you know about these clubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done the Alcatraz swim. Right, so the South End Rowing Club has like a, they do their own thing and they have the guys in boats or women in boats kind of on either side and you swim in the lane.

And it's, I did it before when World of Open Water Swimming was doing their summit up there. And Antonio Arguelles is coming to the bay, which is kind of one of his home training grounds as well, home away from home. He's either in Las Estacas in Mexico City, the river there, or he's swimming in the Santa, La Jolla or the San Francisco Bay.

Those are his three main training grounds. And he is a member of the rowing club and he's the guest of honor at this Alcatraz swim. So he invited me up there and whenever- Remind people who he is. Antonio Arguelles. We talked about him the other time. Yeah, he is a two-time Guinness world record holder

of an open water swimmer. So he has the, he is a two-time Guinness World Record holder of an open water swimmer. So he has the, he's the oldest ever and the seventh overall ever to complete the Ocean Seven, which is the seven major channels, part of an Ocean Sevens group. You've had Kim Chambers on the show. She was the sixth, fifth or sixth. And then Antonio was right after.

He did it at 58 years of age, making him the oldest. He's also the oldest to ever swim a double Catalina. He did that in 2019 at 60. Stanford alum. Stanford alum, Mexican entrepreneur and government official. So this Alcatraz swim, you're doing it without a wetsuit, right?

Right, so the first time I did it, I was in a wetsuit and much to Antonio's enduring shame. You cannot save face and do Alcatraz in a wetsuit and too much to Antonio's enduring shame. You cannot save face and do Alcatraz in a wetsuit. No, but speaking of face, I will be in swim mask. You will. So everybody in the Bay area turn up at, what's it called? Ocean park right there.

Yeah, right there. Where it finishes. I forget what it's called. Aquatic park. Aquatic park, right. To get your picks with Skolnick in the mask, a rare opportunity of you in the wild with the mask, in the public with your people.

Yeah, if you listen, if you're there, I'm going to slow motion rise up. So there won't be any footage of this, but I will slow motion rise up. And so that's it. So I am going to shift. I'm still gonna keep running a little bit, but I'll do more swims.

The problem is I've been swimming in 66 degree water. Yeah, it's a little bit different. I think I've told this story before, but I did the Alcatraz swim many years ago when I was living in San Francisco. My roommate at the time, Gavin Hollis, who swam at LSU. We did it with a bunch of friends. We did it without wetsuits.

And I think it was, it might've been New Year's. Like I think it was winter when we did it. 54. If memory recall, if my memory serves me, my memory's not great. And all I remember, well, I remember three things. First of all, it's really freaking cold. Like my hands and my feet went completely numb. So you feel like you're swimming with your fists. Like you can't feel your hands at all. The second thing, and I say this as somebody

who's done quite a bit of open water swimming in many different areas around the world, it's very, and you've done it before, right? Like it's, it's kind of scary when you're in the, you kind of rear your head up when you're in the middle of it. It's not that far. It's only like a kilometer and a half or something like that. It's a mile, 1.27 miles. Right, so it's not a great distance. No, it's not that far. But you're in a shipping lane.

You are, but they have- And you have that set, you can kind of smell the fuel and you kind of lift your head when you're halfway into it and you're like, holy shit, like this does not feel safe. Right, these guys, when you have the rowing club though,

you know, they bring out those old wooden boats and they are in kayaks and those boats and they are on either side of you. So, and they time it in between the tides, right? So right at the beginning of like the slack tide or whatever, so the faster you are, the less the tide affects you, the slower you are, the more it affects you, because the tide starts to pick up and push you out towards the bridge. Oh, the less the tide affects you. The slower you are, the more it affects you

because the tide starts to pick up and push you out towards the bridge. Oh, is that right? And so I just remember people who were struggling ended up down by the Safeway. Like it pushes you towards the marina, you know? And that becomes a problem. If you're fast, it doesn't really seem to affect you.

The final thing that I recall is that, you know, I don't know who's organizing these races these days, but back in the day, whoever was in charge of this thing had a dog, I think a Labrador, I'm pretty sure it was a Lab, who loved doing the swim. And I just remember in aquatic park, or actually on the boat and the ferry on the way over

the dog being super excited. And then afterwards, like the dog just running around, like this is the greatest thing in the world, swimming Alcatraz. And the dog beat like half the field. The dog would definitely beat me. Dog paddling from Alcatraz to aquatic park, like did just fine.

It was not a problem. That's my big fear. You would have obviously easily beaten the dog. I'm not sure I'd beat the dog. It was not a problem. That's my big fear. You would have obviously easily beaten the dog. I'm not sure I'd beat the dog. I'm not that fast. Maybe if you traded your mask for a proper pair of goggles, that would save you a little bit of time.

But now at this point, you can never wear goggles. No, I like it, especially in that industrial water. I think we need merch, a t-shirt with you in the mask saying Skull Neck. We'll get to my take on merch. I will say the last thing I'll say about it is that my time, so I've ditched the rash guard. I'm trying to get a little bit quicker.

I am using the pool buoy a lot in the open water because I'm practicing mostly for Catalina and that makes me a little quicker, but I'm not kicking at all. So I don't know how that'll affect, but I'm at like 205 per hundred. And that's if I take a break to pee or whatever, like I'm not kicking at all. So I don't know how that'll affect, but I'm at like 205 per hundred. And that's if I take a break to pee or whatever, like I'm not stopping my thing.

It's not that great, but it's not terrible. Like I've been slower before. In a wetsuit, I'd be under two minutes per hundred. I'm comfortable if I can get to two minutes per hundred. I don't know what you think of that time and what any of that. I mean, do you want me to sound like an asshole? You're not impressed, are you? I'm not gonna say anything.

I'm happy for you. It's exciting. It's all good, man. No, but I mean, how do I get faster? I mean, I need a whole rework. Well, I can take you down to the pool and we can do some working out. I've been getting into the pool.

I've swum now four or five days in a row. You told me that's exciting. Yeah, so I just put in 3,700 before coming here in an hour. Because you only, well, here's the thing. Like I haven't swum literally in like a year, but my back has been acting up. I'm working with this great PT right now. Who's got me on a path towards resolving this.

But one of the commitments that I've made is to really lay off the running, which I hate doing, cause I love running so much. So it takes everything in my power to not run. And I'm now decided, so I'm gonna put all that energy into the pool and it's required me to have to get organized

because most of the pools are shut down or have limited hours. There is a great facility. It's like a half an hour drive from my house and you gotta book lanes like well in advance. So I've just been really organized and proactive about making sure that I reserve time and you only get one an hour, right?

So you get an hour in one lane and you get the lane to yourself though, that's nice. Yeah, you get the lane to yourself. There's a couple days coming up where I booked double sessions. Oh, wow. I don't know if you're allowed to book two in a row, but I'm gonna see if I can get away with it.

So I'm really gonna put my energy into getting my swim back in shape. And I gotta say, it feels really good to be back in the water. I mean, I'm really out of swimming shape, but I'm excited to give it a try. And one of the kind of catalysts for this is, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this publicly.

I don't know why I couldn't, but the Malibu Triathlon is coming up soon, which is an annual event. And they do this thing every year. They have a celebrity division, which is traditionally like television stars and like Disney puts a celebrity division. Yes. Which is traditionally like television stars and like Disney puts a team together. I remember like Matthew McConaughey did it

several years ago, David Duchovny generally shows up. Anyway, Alexi Pappas, friend of the pod, put a team together, asked me to join in a relay. So I'm gonna do the swim, Alexi's gonna do the run and Mary Kane, also friend of the So I'm gonna do the swim. Alexi's gonna do the run and Mary Kane, also a friend of the pod is gonna do the cycling portion. You might win it. So we are the celebrities you've never heard of.

They're like, what should be the name of the team? And I was like, three celebrities you've never heard of. That should be the name of our team. Like nobody knows who we are, you know, but. People do. At least we're athletes. So we'll see what happens. So I thought, you know, I should probably get back in the pool

if I'm gonna do this. It's funny that you say that. I got contacted by the celebrity division. Did you? Speaking of people who aren't famous in the non-celebrities and the celebrity. And they asked me if I do it. And at first I committed to doing the whole thing. I don't even have a bike.

I mean, I have a single speed fixie type bike, but I don't have a bike that I train on or anything like that. So are you gonna do it? Originally I had said yes, but it's just gonna be too tough going up to Alcatraz and then coming back. It's just gonna,

cause we're doing a little road trip with the family on the way up. It's just gonna be too tough to do. And so I said, no, I'm gonna make a donation to children's hospital instead, instead of raising the money. Yeah, there's a fundraising piece to this. I don't really know that much about it yet, but I'll let everyone know when we figure that out.

But I was flattered. I love the fact that you got asked to be in the celebrity division of the Malibu Triathlon. Has to be a fan of yours running the VIP. I don't know, it's great, man. I'm bummed that you're not gonna do it now. Well, I wish I didn't know you were gonna do it. Well, I just figured this out over the weekend.

Okay. Yeah. Or over the last couple of days, but it should be fun. Yeah, I was gonna do the whole thing. Anyway, it's prompted me to get back in the pool, which feels good. Yeah, it's not a very long one. It's a half mile swim, 17 mile ride and four mile run. I think, right?

It's like, it's ridiculously short. Yeah. The next one is. It's like, it's ridiculously short. Yeah. The next one is- It's mask appropriate. The real one is like the Olympic distance, right? The international distance. What do you mean by real? The next day.

Yeah, they have, it's a couple of days. Like I think, yeah, they have the sprint distance. They have the Olympic distance, which is kind of the traditional, you know, triathlon distance for, you know, the races that are out there, distinct from like the Ironman world and all of that. But also Zuma turned one. He did.

We had a bit of a small gathering. It was weird because it's Delta time. So we had it in two waves. So we had a few families come in the first wave and a few come in the second wave. Heats, you had two heats? So we had a few families come in the first wave and a few come in the second wave. And- Heats, you had two heats? We had two heats.

For this birthday celebration. And at one point, Zuma just made a break for it and just started to like walk out the gate. And I've kind of followed him and I said, should we bro, should we? He's like, should we? Should we go? Should we leave this behind?

He's gonna ghost his own party. Yeah. But in the end he turned around. So I followed him. I follow him everywhere. Yeah, that's the way it goes. It's fun, man. As he's walking, he's talking a little bit,

you know, it's a good time. It's, you know, it gives you all the feels. Cool, man. Yeah. And you all the feels. Cool man. Yeah. And you were in Chicago. I was in Chicago, gave a couple of talks. It's been like over two years since I've given a keynote. It was with this company called Dealer Inspire that's in Naperville outside of Chicago.

So it was an opportunity to travel and meet a bunch of cool people. The organization was, it was organized by this travel and meet a bunch of cool people. The organization was, it was organized by this guy, Joe Chura, who's the CEO of Dealer Inspired. It was followed the following day by this kind of all day outdoor event called Go, where there was a 5K run

and there was like jujitsu instruction and all kinds of cool stuff. So it was fun. It was good to get out of LA and be in the Midwest and meet some new people and shake off the cobwebs and give a keynote. But it also produced quite a bit of anxiety in me cause it's been so long since I've kind of given a talk

and my life is very different from the last time I was on that circuit. So I had to kind of rewrite and rethink what I wanted to talk about. Was that, is it been that long because of COVID or has it been because of you've chosen not to do it? Yeah, COVID just eviscerated like the whole speaking thing.

So now it seems to be kicking up again. Although I was supposed to go to Park City in a couple of weeks for this Song Summit thing where I was gonna interview Jason Isbell and Sean White. And we just found out today that they're canceling that because of COVID. So everything is tentative at the moment. But that trip was bookended by multiple pods on each side.

So I was on this jag of just crazy workaholism that left me very depleted and reflecting on the fact that I'm basically an introvert by nature who can be temporarily extroverted like I am doing right now, or I have to do if I'm giving a talk with a bunch of people or just being around a lot of people. Like I can like gear up and embody that energy

and provide the experience that they're looking for. But then I have to kind of retreat back to my cave and like lick my wounds and recover. And I didn't really get an opportunity to do that. So it left me like really tired. And also reflecting a little bit more on what we talked about in the last roll on about workflow efficiencies and how to hold onto this stuff a little bit more on what we talked about in the last roll on

about workflow efficiencies and how to hold onto this stuff a little bit loosely and empower my team better and be a better manager so I can free up some of my time. So I took a couple of days off this past week to kind of recharge the batteries. I'm feeling good. I'm back in the pool.

I don't know what to tell you. Like, I think all is good. And you dodged the mountain lion? I did. In your batteries. I'm feeling good. I'm back in the pool. I don't know what to tell you. Like, I think all is good. And you dodged the mountain lion? I did. In your neighborhood? I did. Yeah, there was a mountain lion attack just the other day, literally in my neighborhood. Yes.

Like just down the street, a mountain lion attacked a small boy. The mom ended up fighting it off. It's this crazy story. She was like punching it with her bare fists, I guess. And they ended up destroying it off. It's this crazy story. She was like punching it with her bare fists, I guess. And they ended up destroying that animal. It was a cub, right? It was like a 60 pound.

It was a smaller one. 65 pound. And then they found a couple more that were tagged. This one wasn't tagged and they relocated them. It made me think like, couldn't they have relocated this one and tagged it? So it's a P54 was the mother from what I read and she was collared.

And so it's not even a tag, it's like a full collar. And she had just had cubs. And the thinking is both these were the cubs because that one kind of got the boy and the mother was able to fight him off. If it was a full grown mountain lion, the mother probably wouldn't have been able to do much. And then they found it kind of crouched

like the game warden found it crouched down and there was no collar and it was aggressive. And he assumed. Couldn't they have just tracked it? So I don't know. So after he shot that animal, the two others kind of came out, the collared one with another juvenile.

And so that's why they think all three are together. And then they did some DNA testing and they found out that the animal they shot did have the boy's skin and blood on his claws and all that. Anyway, the thinking usually is with cats and animals like this, if they get a taste for especially young, that it could become the type of nuisance animal that's not just turning over garbage, but it's actually hurting people. And so they err on the side of protecting people. That's what the game wardens always do. And they take their criticism for it. I think in this sense, you can't, I mean what the game wardens always do. And they take their criticism for it.

I think in this sense, you can't, I mean, the game warden was worried about the five-year-old boy and all that. Yeah, I understand that. It just feels like they could have relocated it somewhere where maybe, you know, to an area that doesn't encroach on ex-burbs or suburbs. I mean, one of the arguments here,

one of the conversations around this is this is a result of encroaching, you know, habitats, but this area where this happened is not that, like it's kind of been the way it's been for quite some time. I wonder if these are the same animals that were up, remember in Malibu, there was that scene, did you see like someone in their house, like up above big rock was inside,

it was a father and his like teenage daughter and they were videoing, I don't know if you saw this, it was like a viral video around the pool. I did see that. Yeah. But Big Rock is quite far from where this happened. They don't range that far. Do they have that? They don't go that far. Do they?

Oh yeah. It's interesting, I mean, I run trails all around where this mountain lion was seen and I've never once seen one. I know they're around. Let me Google mountain lion range. Yeah, how far did they wander? This is live Googling folks.

Yeah. Mountain lion range. The kid is gonna be fine, although he was wounded. I guess that it was a juvenile about 65 pounds. He had wounds. The kid had wounds to his head, neck and upper torso, but I think he's gonna be okay. The kid's gonna be okay?

Yeah. They're saying that it'll travel eight kilometers a day and up in eight kilometers a day. But they returned to some kind of hub or do they just meander? This one is saying 20 miles might be there there in total range. So that's 20 square miles.

So that's like, yeah. So that's a big rock would be kind of going over this peak and down the other side to get there. It's definitely in the range. I think you've probably e-biked up that exact territory. Are you making fun of me? No. Is my e-bike your mask? That e-biked up that exact territory. Are you making fun of me? No. Is my e-bike your mask?

That e-bike out there, is that yours? Rich, Adam is to, no, that's not mine. That's Dan's actually. Adam is to swim mask as Rich is to e-bike. Another good slogan for our Rich. I've been getting on my road bike a little bit, but I've got to back off the cycling also. I'm all about the swim.

The swim is gonna help your back, you know that. I know, I'm hoping that's the case. And I would love to get some pointers from a swim guru like yourself. Maybe we can do a swim workout. Let's do it. Prior to the next roll on. Oh, let's do that.

Put you through the paces. Let's do it. Shout out Al Roker, Did you see him out there? I did not. I see this link in the outline. What is this about? 67 years old. He was out there in Hurricane Ida on a street.

But when you're watching him at first, they have him really in tight and you just see waves thrashing him. There's this video, Al Roker pummeled by waves as hurricane Ida targets New Orleans. He stays on his feet and then when they pan out, you see he's actually on a sidewalk.

Like he's not, it looks like he's in the water at first, but he's actually on a sidewalk. Cause he's a pro. He's a stud. Shout out Al Roker. How about an Al Roker shout out? Who doesn't love Al? I don't know.

I don't know what he's like in his personal life. Well, that's one form of endurance, but we got a bunch of other endurance to discuss today because Enduro Corner is back with more high altitude trails and glacier dodging. The sports you didn't know about. I know. Hot on the heels of the three celebrities

you've never heard of that will be competing in Malibu. Ports you don't need to know about. We took your celebrity spot, Adam, when you bowed out of Malibu. They're like, Adam can't do it. Okay, let's get rich. We'll go to Alexi. You guys are real celebrities.

I mean, you belong in that division. No. The Leadville 100 was this past week. Heard of it. Heard of that? Heard of it. It might've come up on the show before. Yes.

We've been talking about it because of Robbie Ballinger. This is an epic legendary ultra race. This past year, there were 678 runners and Leadville for those who don't know is at very high altitude in Colorado. I think around 10,000 feet. This run has 16,000 feet of gain. It's highest point is at Hope Pass, which is 12,600 feet.

And you hit that twice. Yeah, it's an out and back. And Robbie Ballinger used it to complete his Colorado crush. So shout out to Robbie. Amazing Robbie. Yeah, I mean, over the course of the summer, he just never stopped running, did the Leadville Marathon, the Colorado Trail,

which is 500 miles, the Silver Rush 50. Then he summited all 58 of the Colorado peaks over 14,000 feet and culminated with the Leadville 100, which is quite something. I'm sure there's a documentary or at least some kind of film that's being made. Reese Robinson was following him around, chronicling all of this.

So shout out to my team 10,000 brother, from another mother. His post was great. He said his first 13 miles, he was surprisingly in good shape and he was like flying. And then from then on, it was like- Just brutal. Very hard to get to 87 miles.

Like hitting the wall at 13 is- I think he only had like a day or two in between his final Colorado peak and that 100. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah. How much is his total elevation gain? Did he ever say?

I don't know. That would be fun to see. I don't know if he's tabulated it. Yeah, it's gotta be just bananas. Oh yeah. I mean, it's gotta be hundreds of thousands, right? I know. Yeah.

First in the race was Adrian McDonald. He did this race in 16 hours and 18 minutes. It was just like insane. 100 miles with that kind of elevation gain in just over 16 hours and 18 minutes was just like insane. A hundred miles with that kind of elevation gain in just over 16 hours, it was a sub 10 minute per mile average pace for the entire thing. He won it by 40 minutes.

So dominated. Ian Sharman came in second. He's a four time Leadville champ at 1659. And third, and this is really the interesting story from my perspective, is Anton Krupika, who's 38 now, came back after six years off competing essentially in any ultra race.

I think he might've done one thing here or there, but nothing of any significance since 2015. He's a two-time champion of this race. He won it in 2006 and 2007, and then kind of disappeared. And he's somebody that was an initial inspiration for my journey. I mean, he's been around for a long time. I followed him forever.

He used to do this blog where he would share his runs and he'd have these topo maps and show you where he was training and kind of like this soul surfer of ultra running, kind of like Ricky, has a Ricky Gates vibe to him a little bit. And just somebody who I just think is cool, like super cool.

And to see him come back and reestablish himself by getting third in this race, I think is extraordinary. And it's really- And not that far behind. No, not that far behind. I mean, he's been hampered by all kinds of injuries. He's had all kinds of problems

and he rock climbs and rides his bike, but I just thought he was done. I had no idea that he would make this kind of comeback. And I think what's cool and interesting about it, not just, aside from the fact that he's just a cool dude and somebody that everybody wants to see do well, he's defied this sort of unwritten rule that ultra running champions have a pretty short shelf life

when it comes to maintaining their peak performance. Like there's a long history of ultra running champions who come on the scene, they're unbeatable, they win a ton of races in a compressed period of a couple of years, and then really struggle to maintain that or to stay on top. They never are able to really return to form.

And I don't know whether it's because it's just too brutal on the body or they over train, I'm not sure, but the fact that he kind of took this break and came back and just put his stamp on this race, I think is really cool. And it'll be interesting to see whether other ultra runners, it's like these ultra runners,

they can't compete at the high level in these races anymore. So then they go and they tackle these FKTs and do other types of adventures like Timothy Olson, Scott Jurek, et cetera. And being 38 for Anton, I mean, I think it's pretty cool. Who's the all time leader in victories in these? I'm not steeped enough in the history to know that.

I'm gonna get shellacked for not knowing that offhand. I mean, there's plenty of people out. I mean, Scott Jurek,, there's lots of, you know, runners who go on these Jags and they win tons of races. I don't know who's the most victorious of all time. Killian, maybe Scott Jurek, I'm not sure. Okay. But I should know that, but I don't.

And who won the women's side? You can Google that in real time. Annie Hughes won on the women's side. She's only 23 and she's a Leadville resident. That's pretty cool. And she won the race by over an hour, I think, in 21 hours and six minutes. So that's pretty cool.

So that's the Leadville 100 recap followed by UTMB, which just went down this past weekend. This is kind of like the ultra race of all ultra races. It's quite a big deal. It's 106 and a half miles, during which time you run around Mont Blanc and you go through France, Italy, and Switzerland. There's 2,347 runners. Just a race that gets a lot of attention.

There's a huge crowd that shows up at the finish line. It's very celebrated and quite something to behold, just like epic in its landscapes. But it started off with a dark note because this UTMB event is not just the one primary race. I guess over the course of several days, there's a bunch of other races that lead up to the big race. And there was a death.

This runner died in a fall at a race called TDS earlier in the week, and they had to partially halt the race. And somebody basically slipped and fell off a cliff as far as I can tell. And I think it's the second. Whoever was ahead of that point got to finish and anyone who was behind it had to turn around

and get a ride back. So such an awful thing. And the second in a year that after that thing in China. Right. Remember? So that was, I mean, that was a different level. I know. So that was horrible, but UTMB still, that was, I mean, that was a different level. I know, so that was horrible, but UTMB still, you know, basically went off nonetheless.

And Courtney DeWalter, friend of the pod, established herself as the true goat. Amazing. She set the women's record, breaking a record that was set on a course that I think was about three kilometers shorter than the one that she ran. Incredible. Which makes it all the more impressive.

She was seventh overall, including the men, which is unbelievable, and did it in 22 hours and 30 minutes. So it's just like amazing. Like she just dominated, dominated. Congrats Courtney. Yeah, and did it with a smile on her face. There was some concern because she had,

she DNF'd at Hard Rock 100 due to some stomach issues. So there was some concern that, you know, that might happen again. And I guess there was a point in the race when she did start throwing up and thought that perhaps she was having flashbacks of hard rock, but after she threw up and started running again, it all kind of settled out

and she was fine. Digestive issues are common on these, right? I mean, did you ever have nausea or vomiting on some of these? Yeah, I mean, it's part of it. You barf and then you keep going or whatever. Things are bad and then they're better. But sometimes when the digestion stuff gets out of control

and you see this in Ironman a lot, it's really hard to get it settled again. Crazy. Karl Meltzer is the winningest 100 miler of all time according to a website called Ultra Spire. And I don't know how, you know, how old this post is. Like, is it the most ultras that you've won? Cause you could go and win tons of ultras

that aren't the big ones. This is, he's gotten 40 hundred mile race victories at least. Wow. So when this was posted, he's garnered his 40th back in, it looks like 2008, I see 2018. No, it doesn't have it. This could be 2016, could be 2018. Someone could have passed him,

but he's over, he's got 40 at least according to this. That's impressive. He is a beast. And the most hundred mile wins in a calendar year as well. Shout out Carl Meltzler. The men's victory was nabbed by Francois Dehaine, French also, Solomon Runner. It's his fourth UTMB victory. Just weeks after winning the Hard Rock 100,

so he did the double that Courtney was attempting. He completed UTMB in 20 hours and 45 minutes. He's also got three kids. And I guess he has a vineyard or he's a wine grower. How cool. Yeah, I don't know that much about this guy, but that's pretty cool. I mean, fourth UTMB victory, that's unbelievable. So huge weekend for Solomon.

That's why I'm rocking the Solomon t-shirt today. Shout out to my Solomon. It's embarrassing for me. Oh, my Solomon teammates. Like, are you kidding? Hey. And Camille Bruyas, I think Bruyas. Yeah.

I think that's how you say her last name was the second woman who's also a Solomon athlete. Is she American? I don't know. I don't think so. Let me Google that. I don't think she is, no. But among the Americans.

French. Yeah, French, Camille's French. Among the Americans, Jim Walmsley and Tim Tollefson both dropped out. They're both beasts in their own right. Unbelievable runners, both of them. And Jim, I think was on track to do really, he was way up there.

It was on and seemed really relaxed and in contention, but didn't work out for him, which is the way it goes with these things. Final thing to discuss in our Enduro corner is this 24 hour world record that was set over the weekend. What? I missed that. So it was this 24 hour race in Poland called Ultra Park Weekend.

And this guy who had never heard of before, Sonia Sorokin, who's Lithuanian, broke the 24 hour record that was set by this guy, this Greek dude, Giannis Kouros, that was considered untouchable. That guy Kouros had run 188.5 miles in 1997. In 24 hours. Yeah, and Sonia ran 192.25 miles on a one mile loop.

And Sonia ran 192.25 miles on a one mile loop. So for context, that's averaging 729 per mile for 24 hours straight. Good Lord. Which is unbelievable. So he improved on Coros' record by six kilometers. When Coros ran 188, that was on a track actually. And he did 180 on road. So this I think was on a path.

Sorokin's loop was like a one mile, like a paved path. So it was kind of not a road, but not a track either. But unbelievable. Unbelievable. Did he have pacers like when Kipchoge got his record? I mean, I'm sure, right? I don't know, but I will say if you're interested in diving deep into this stuff, a great resource

is irunfar.com. I mean, basically if you wanna learn more about UTMB or Leadville or this 24 hour world record or all things ultra running, I run far.com, you know, basically is where you go to learn everything you wanna know. Nice.

How's the live Googling going for you? Do you enjoy it? I do, it's feeling very Rogan ask. We don't have a Jamie, you're the Jamie, right? I am. So pull that up, Adam. Can you pull that up for me? I think you're the Jamie, right? I am. So pull that up, Adam. Can you pull that up for me? I think you're on it.

Huh? Let's talk about Lewis Pugh. Do we have an update on him? We do. He's doing this code red Arctic swim, his speedo diplomacy. Right, it started, I believe on the 24th or 20, yeah, 24, 25th it started.

So today's technically the sixth day, but as of yesterday, I think it was the fifth day. He's only been able to swim two of those days because of ice, so I'll get into that. So the first day he swam just under a kilometer. He did about 500 meters in the morning, another 490 in the afternoon in zero degree water, like literally- Zero Celsius. zero degree water,

like literally- Zero Celsius. Zero degrees Celsius, so 32 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's just, it's like 0.1 degrees warmer than freezing. No wetsuit, no swim mask, goggles and Speedo and a swim cap, just the typical open water uniform. And so he can only be in there 10 minutes at a time. So they decided to do this. So he goes in there, he gets out,

it takes him two to two and a half hours to warm back up to his normal core temperature. After 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, he's got his lowest body temp so far at this, he sent me this two days ago, 95.7 degrees. And so he's got a rigid inflatable boat with like a reinforced hull that sticks right by his side. And that's what he's swimming with. But, you know, three of the days he's had problems

with ice. One of the days it was just really fast moving brash ice, brash ice and icebergs. Brash ice is like any piece of ice that's less than two meters across. It kind of looks from above like that crushed ice slush. And if you touch that with your bare skin, it's gonna have salt and all sorts, it's gonna cut you up. And so, you basically can't swim through that. So in the second swim on the first day, he's swimming around brash ice,

he's swimming around icebergs. He said, there's an iceberg a thousand feet tall that like is like cruising in his path. So that's the kind of stuff he's dealing with. It's weird. Like when he first was saying, oh, I can't swim. There's just, there's ice floating in here and it's too dangerous.

I thought like, we'll just swim around it. But then he shared a video and you see this ice flow and you're like, oh, now I get it. Like, it's just, it's just packed with like, you know big pieces of ice that are floating that are just, you know there's a current and they'll just go right into you and like hit you in the head and stuff. He said the second swim was like basically swimming

across a highway and he was able to get through it. It's like Frogger. Yeah, it's like Frogger except it's Lewis. And then today he posted that like literally he has the boat in the water, but it's surrounded by ice. Like there's just no open water. It looks like the ice completely moved in. So, you know, some of that is it's coming off

the main ice sheet and dumping into the water. So it's not necessarily good news just cause it looks colder than, you know, it looks like it should look maybe, but so we'll see. We'll stay tuned with him. I'm in touch with him. We've been messaging back and forth. The footage he has posted is just absolutely unreal.

Yeah, so you can find that on either his Twitter feed or his Instagram. Instagram is where you wanna go. It's Pugh, P-U-G-H. Yeah, he's posting the kind of like two minute videos on there and then ultimately we'll see how it goes, but that's what's happening on the Lewis Pugh front. So congrats to Lewis.

Thanks for doing it. He's really raising the code red on climate crisis. Yeah. Are you bummed that you're not there in Greenland doing this? Big time. Yeah. But you know, it was Zuma's birthday.

So by the time he was able to get his plane organized and the timing of it, like if Delta hadn't gotten into Greenland, if, and he started on August 14th, it would have been time. It would have happened weeks ago. I would have been there. Right. Yeah. All right, well, thus concludes Enduro Corner

for this roll on. Do you think that we did it today? I like Enduro Corner. It is, right? It's good. It's very on brand. It is. Do you think anybody else cares? I think so. I think so.

Maybe, who knows? Anyway, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with show and tell, the big story, listener questions and more. Adam, we need you back in actual reality, not virtual reality. Rich, you've never looked better, my friend. I mean that.

For those that are just listening, Adam is donning virtual reality goggles. He's got Oculus on top of his head right now. I'm deep in the Oculus. Are you gonna just remain there or are you gonna come back to us? I'll come back to you, but this is a friend of the pods new project,

which you've discussed with him. I think you've even tried it, right? Yes, our friend, Michael Muller, he's got this incredible new VR experience called Into the Now, which is available on Oculus, where you can experience what it's like to swim with sharks. Sharks, whales. Uncaged.

Uncaged, eels. I wish you could see what I'm seeing right now, Rich, because there's a beautiful view of a canyon. So we, during the break, we tried to get this thing sorted out. We had to unbox it and do all the sort of software updates. We're trying to get the whole thing configured. It was taking longer than expected.

Sorry about that. Which mimics the experience we had when Michael was here because we took a break during that podcast so that I could experience what you're trying to experience right now. And it took a while to get it up on its feet, but I was able to see it. So I already know what it's like

and it's quite extraordinary. And this is available now. Is it available now? I think it's still beta. They wanna send us something. It's almost available. It's about to come out and it's, but it will be out soon.

I think it's, the idea is Michael Muller is this great commercial photographer renowned, but has always been also an underwater photographer, published an amazing book on sharks, which I bought the- Sitting right over there. Yeah, yeah, the Tashin book. And his Tashin exhibit was, you know, equally great.

And this is basically, he always thought that was two dimensional. He wants to make a three dimensional experience to get people to see some of these animals if they can't get in the water. Cause you know, he's going all over the world. How many people are actually gonna go swim with sharks? Other than you, Adam, you've made this a habit, a practice.

You don't need the virtual reality experience. You're doing this. Well, Rich, thank you. Yes. No, no, I've been very fortunate to have been in the water with sharks many times, but not great whites other than being, I am with great whites kind of, but I haven't seen them in the water with sharks many times, but not great whites, other than being, I am with great whites kind of,

but I haven't seen them in the Santa Monica Bay. I'm among them, but I haven't seen them. But there's whale sharks in here, there's whales. I have been lucky enough to swim with whales too. So yes, I'm fortunate that I've had all that, but you know, once you've had it, you can't get enough of it. You just want more and more of it. So even me, I'm really excited about this.

I mean, if I had this at home and I could plug in and just check out whales and sharks all the time, I don't think I'd be in R too much. I would just stay in VR. That's concerning. I know. I'm with you. I think it's really cool.

And I've actually never really spent, I'm not a gamer. I haven't spent time with these goggles on, but just in the few minutes that I was experiencing it during the break, it's pretty impressive. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. It's cool. My problem is that one eye sees better than the other.

So even in this just now. Me too, but I think you can make those adjustments. I mean, we were trying to get this up on its feet quickly, but you can adjust the lenses on it and just the setup process with the minority report dashboard and the whole thing, like it's pretty crazy. I mean, I'm all about lucidity and tactile real world experience.

Right. And I have a lot of, you know, fears about where we're headed with all of this technology that I think are well-reasoned, but for experiences like this to tap into what it might be like to have an adventure that you're unlikely to have, I think there's a lot of benefit.

And I can see this exploding into all areas of adventure. And I think one of the things that could be potentially most positively impactful is the ability for experiences like this to breed empathy, essentially by allowing people to travel to places they wouldn't ordinarily be able to go to experience different cultures and to have a much more kind of profound experience with worlds unknown than they would otherwise be able to.

So again, it's technology presented as an opportunity to bring us together. We've tried this experiment before, we'll see how this goes, but I'm optimistic for this piece of where we could take this type of technology. And that's, we talked about this with Mueller. Like if you can go to visit, you know, basically spend time with a village in Africa

and see what that would be like, or be in, you know, Egypt or any number of places all over the world and get a sense of different cultures and different experiences. Or with Alex Honnold, we were talking about rock climbing. Like, what does it feel to like, you know, basically ascend, you know, a face. Yeah.

And do what he does. Wouldn't it be great to feel what that must feel like. Yeah, free solo version where you're like hanging on. I know, right? Looking down. I'm sure there will be all kinds of experiences like that. But. But when it comes down to it, R is much better than VR.

Yes, we all default to R. But not everybody is gonna be comfortable swimming underwater. Not everyone wants to be in a scuba rig. Not everyone wants to free dive or can. Or is able to. Yeah, right. So all of that means there is a place for this.

Is it the gamification of adventure? Is that problematic? Who knows? There's always three moves down the way, but for now let's celebrate this one. Sure, and we love Michael and everything that he's about. And this is quite an accomplishment and everything that this guy does,

he does with such attention to quality and integrity. So check it out. It's called Into the Now, but it's in beta right now. So you can't actually purchase. I had to email someone and tell them um you know that we need the a certain i guess i think there's another app that we have to download so i'll get it all sorted out cool and be back with you right on but uh but really excited about this i mean i i do believe that like he's doing this out of the love of being

underwater and wanting to share it with people it's super cool that he's thinking that way. A hundred percent. Yeah. Should we do the big story? The big story. I was interested when I sent you this article, I didn't know how you'd take it to be honest with you. So the big story is based on an article

that was in the New York times, an opinion piece by somebody called Cassidy Rosenblum. And it's called work is a false idol. And I think this is interesting. It's basically- It's lying flat, right? Explain it. Yeah, so the idea is there's this movement that started in China where someone basically didn't want to go to his

job anymore and decided to not show up and just lay flat and he called it the lying flat movement and he was referencing deogenes is it deogenes diogenes in his uh who was the original cynic back when a cynic meant uh to live self-sufficiently and in tune with nature and not be interested in money, power, and fame. So now we've twisted cynic as something who's always a naysayer or whatever, but in reality-

In the same way that we twisted the stoic to mean somebody who is like rigid and unemotional. Right. So cynic and stoic, we've gotten wrong. And this makes me really happy because what it means is, which I've always known is I am a cynic. Yes.

Luo Huazhong is the person who just decided to tweet from his bed basically. And then he's not going back to work and he wants to spend his time. Can you tweet and be a cynic though? He was reading and he wanted to read. It's not very Walden P a cynic though? He was reading and he wanted to read- It's not very Walden Pond. No, but this is, he just wanted to read and exercise

and enjoy his life. And he would do a job when he needed to. He was opting out of like the, they had called it like 996 lifestyle in China. And which I think it's six days a week or 966. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. That's it, 996. Which was promulgated by the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma.

Right, so he's a cynic of Jack Ma. And then she was an NPR producer. So she was a successful producer. The writer of this piece. The writer of the piece, Cassidy. And she was like, you know what? I'm going home to West Virginia. I'm gonna sit on the porch and watch hummingbirds.

I'm through this news cycle. And which is, you know, it's one thing for someone who's trying to break into media and is a young person to have that attitude, but to someone who has seen success, and I would say producing for NPR when you're young is great success in this business. And then to retreat from that is really interesting to me.

And she writes really beautifully about why. And, you know, she points to the fact that Aluo is only one person who is talking about lying flat. Casey Gerald is a writer for New York Magazine. He's written a book, a memoir. He's a black author who talks about lying flat as rebellion, who basically opted out of the protest to take care of himself and his soul. And she links to an incredible essay of his

that I just got into this morning. And it's incredible. She talks about the nap ministry, which is led by a woman, another black activist who's taking naps as kind of rebellion, open rebellion. And she leads like clinics on naps. And you should be able to take a nap without it being an act of rebellion.

But she is like, all of this is basically, if you're sleeping, you can't further like the capitalist enterprise. There's a political aspect to what Luo is doing. There's a political aspect to dropping out like Casey did in his essay. She's just pointing out that, and this is more widespread than we think.

We have 10 million job openings in the United States right now, highest in two decades. People do not want to work. Is that because wages are low? If so, then how come people at Goldman Sachs are also whispering about not wanting to work? It's very interesting because with the pandemic

and the closing of so many businesses, the logical extrapolation of that would be people clamoring for jobs, right? Like the sort of employers being in high demand and being able to dictate terms because people would be so desperate to find a way to make ends meet. And yet what we're seeing is something very different

altogether. And I think that's what interested me about all of this. Like, okay, here we are in the pandemic. There's, you know, with these predictions of massive unemployment, there's unemployment, but it's unemployment by choice on some level. And maybe that's because people are just, you know,

banking unemployment checks and reluctant to let go of that, to go take jobs that aren't gonna pay much more. on some level. And maybe that's because people are just, you know, banking on employment checks and reluctant to let go of that, to go take jobs that aren't gonna pay much more. But I think also the impact of the pandemic on how people are thinking about their relationship to their professions more broadly. Yeah, I mean, she was pointing that out too. Like she's like, maybe some of it is the

kind of turbo boosted employment benefits, but some of it is also definitely a deep dissatisfaction. What's that dissatisfaction? Is it that, um, that, you know, work, work has become too important to our lives that like having a career define us has become too important. You know, is there something wrong with the way we approach our work life and therefore our whole life? And I don't think you could look at all this discussion of mental health.

You can look at, you know, suicide rates and, you know, antidepressant rates and drug addiction. And you know all of this. You know, there are a lot of dissatisfied people out there and antidepressant rates and drug addiction. And you know all of this. There are a lot of dissatisfied people out there and maybe the work component is part of that. I think that's what this essay is getting into. Don't you think? Yeah, I think so.

I think there's a generational piece to this as well. Like me being Gen X and the progeny of boomers, I was raised to think about career in a certain way. And what I see amongst millennials and Gen Zers is a very different approach altogether. One that's founded on pursuing what it is that makes you feel excited and having a kind of independent contractor relationship

with what you do, where you go from gig to gig and you're not overly tied down to any particular avenue. And that of course allows people to take long breaks and go on adventures. And you see young people like live in the van life and having the four hour work week experience or living in Bali and being digital kind of- Digital nomad piece and part of this too.

Digital nomads and all of that. And I think that's all super cool. This is one step further to say, like, I don't wanna do anything essentially. Right, so she also referenced a Twitter user who posted, I don't want a career, I wanna sit on the porch and it got 400,000 likes. I know, and this is a woman who had like,

who has like 3,500 followers on Twitter. It's not like a Twitter celebrity. It's essentially like a fairly average person who tweeted this thing and it went crazy. So certainly there's something afoot here. How much of that is a reaction to this current moment versus something that's a little bit more generational or permanent?

I'm not sure we quite know right now, but. But it's been going on for a while. There's a book by Tom Hodgkinson called, "'How to be Idle' that had great reviews. I found it through Dwight Garner, who's my favorite literary critic. I think I've mentioned him before on this podcast. He's at the New York Times

and it's one of his all time faves, I think he wrote. This book came out in 2005. So this has been something some people have, now he was kind of alone. Kind of the book is structured throughout a whole day, like 8 a.m. The first chapter, I'll just read the first paragraph. The first chapter is called

"'8 a.m. Waking Up is Hard to Do." And this is how it starts. "'I wonder if that hardworking American rationalist "'and agent of industry, Benjamin Franklin, knew how much misery he would cause in the world. When back in 1757, high on puritanical zeal, he popularized and promoted the trite and patently untrue aphorism.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. I've lived my whole life on that aphorism. Is it aphorism? But I love, am I using that word wrong? No, I think I might've. Yeah, like, okay, we're gonna have a revisionist history

on Benjamin Franklin and his approach to life and work. Like how dare Benjamin Franklin, you know, basically pursue aspirational things. Listen, now's not the time to defend the founding fathers, Rich. The childhood book that I was given and read many times over as a young person was the early bird gets the worm.

And my whole life is all about the early bird gets the worm. I've got a new life for you. And this is an antidote to that. How to be idle. How to be idle. The Loafers Manifesto. Like every instinct in me is just balks at that.

You must read this then. I know, so here's the thing. I think the healthy thing here is holding our relationship to our work a little bit more lightly and understanding that who we are is not what we do. And that's something that I struggle with in an unhealthy way.

And I think probably most people of my generation, you know, contend with. I was recently, I'm not gonna spoil it, but I had a guest on the show on an upcoming podcast that hasn't gone live yet, who challenged me to take a year off. A year? At which I balked and they said,

okay, how about six months? And it really made me anxious in the moment, just being asked that question or being challenged to do that, because so much of who I am is tied up, my identity is wrapped up in what I do. And if I stopped doing that, what does that mean about who I am, right?

And that goes into workaholism and how I think about myself and my attachment to relevancy and all of it, right? And material things, right? Material things, all of it. Like, am I a provider? Am I a man?

Like, who am I? Am I meaningful if I'm not constantly putting content out? And all of it, right? It challenges you to really deconstruct that and evaluate that for yourself, which is scary for me. So I think within the context of the conversation of work as a false idol,

there's important lessons to be mined about, again, our relationship to work in general and how we are all in a culture in which identity is so inextricably linked to what it is that we do. I mean, it's a trope, like you go to a party, what do you do? And it's your career, right? What does it mean if we reframe that and ask a different question,

or we let go altogether of attaching meaning to work as a substrate for identity itself. And I think as a thought experiment, if nothing else, that's something important and healthy to do. I'm not ready to be a loafer and sit on the, I wanna do things in the world, I have ambition. And I'm not gonna feel guilty about that either, but I do think having a healthy relationship

with that is important. And I question how healthy my relationship with that is right now. It's healthier than it's been in the past, but I think that there's more work that I personally could do around this. And I think that's why this piece resonated with me because it made me angry.

Really? Yeah, a little bit. Nice. It's like, come on, really? But she's such a great writer. We're all gonna pat each other on the back because we just wanna lie down and we don't wanna go to work.

Well, I find it like it's an act of rebellion. So it's like basically saying, here's this, you know, like do with what you want. She doesn't care. She's on her parents' porch, but she is on her parents' porch. Yeah, it's her parents' porch. Get your own damn porch.

Yeah, it's fine. Her parents have to go to work and do that so that she can lie down. I'm sure, you know, look, what would Goggins say about all of this? He would not be on team lie down. Right. But I will say this.

So if you look at the gradations of like American life and work, right? From the farm to the factory, from the factory to growing, you know, like the thing was to get into college and to work your way to the point where you don't have to be doing working with your hands. This was kind of like, this is the mainstream culture.

I'm not saying I endorse any of this, but this is how it kind of went. And so then it became go to college so you don't have to do what I did son or daughter, and you can look after yourself and have more. It's all about have more, have more. Then our generation came along and we saw that our parents who did these jobs, if you're in kind of,

if your parents are in the professional world doing like, you know, teachers might find meaning, but often lawyers don't, you've had that personal experience. Right, giant swaths of the population who did that responsible thing so that they could have the stuff, but ultimately are unfulfilled.

And the kids know that their parents are unfulfilled. So the kids are like- So the next generation pursues meaning. Pursue what you love. So we pursue what we love, but then that becomes our entire being, right? So like, yes, I gotta do this. This is who I am.

Like it becomes, once you start your own business or get into media or do whatever, it becomes such an all encompassing. You've had to fight so hard to get whatever rung you're on that, that you don't want to give it up. And I understand that completely. And it does become a little bit of who you are. This is the next evolution of that asking, why is that?

So it's really, it's really just the same thing that we were reflecting on our parents. It's the same. This is the exact, this is another level of that. This is saying, why are you like that? Isn't it a function of a dearth of meaning in the workplace? Like if people found greater meaning and purpose in what they pursue career-wise,

then work would not be the intolerable thing that is motivating this movement of rest as resistance. I would put it this way. Why does anything really, that is motivating this movement of rest as resistance. I would put it this way. Why does anything really, I hate to say this. Are you gonna get like nihilistic on the cynics? Yes, I'm gonna go full cynic. The anti-cynic? No, this is full cynic.

I'm gonna go full cynic. What does it really matter if like, even Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in big magic. It's like, no one's asked you to write that book basically. So Casey is saying, no one asked you to do that. Like you don't need it. The world doesn't necessarily need it. Like, can you find meaning and purpose and fulfillment without attaching it to doing something? Maybe the do nothing. So I, my, the book that wrote before- There's a Buddhist piece to this. Yes.

The book I wrote before One Breath was called Middle to Somewhere. It was a novel, unpublished. It got me an agent, but we didn't get end up. It was like one of those almost not quite. Didn't get a publisher. Still like it.

But the main character basically inherits some money and decides to do nothing. It's the do nothing theory. And he travels the world just to like try to do as little as possible. And the idea is that you, by doing, the more you do, the more you're impacted. The sub question is, or the sub thesis is, beware of the unintended consequences of good intentions. The more you try to do to even fix something,

the more problems. There's this article in the New York Times about cotton totes and how an organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production. This is based on a 2018 study by the ministry. 20,000 times, what defines a use? Just taking it to the store one time? Using it 20,000 times. What defines a use? Just taking it to the store one time?

Using it 20,000 times, that means daily use for 54 years. And that's for one bag. And you think when you're wearing your cotton tote that says, you know, no more plastic bags, but you're helping. And yes, you're helping keep plastic out of the waste stream,

but you're not, but there is this other use. And the point is like even- The point is it's so hard to be good. It is like even being good has a ramification, right? It's the same thing we talked about with the sixth extinction. It's like the fact that we're even talking about this is- So if we opt out of even trying to be good

and just do nothing, we'd be better off. There is that argument. That is the argument of Mr. Hodgkinson. Okay, so with that, that person still needs to eat and they're either gonna get a plastic bag or they're gonna use their cotton tote. You still have to do things. You can't opt out completely.

Listen, I'm not opting out, I'm sitting here with you. But I will- You could sit under the Bodhi tree for only so long before you have to eat something or move your body or interact with other human beings. Even Luo saying, I want to lay flat, but he's also saying, I wanna exercise. Like to me, for us, like swims are the ultimate,

even runs are the ultimate of, it's part of the do nothing. It's not like you're doing nothing, but you aren't producing anything. You know, you really aren't, you're just swimming. And there's something about these- But you aren't doing something. You are, but you're not, the do nothing means- Everything is a choice,

whether you're choosing to sit on the porch, go for a swim, go to work, use a cotton tote or a plastic bag, you're making choices all the time. So the flaw in the premise is that you're opting out and not making choices. Right. And you're saying that is your choice.

You are making, that's an active choice nonetheless. And the cynic, I think self-sufficiency was a big part of that. And you can't be a self-sufficient if you're engaging in the food stream, then you're not really the full cynic. Well, nobody is completely self-sufficient. We're engaging in the food stream, then you're not really the full cynic. Well, nobody is completely self-sufficient.

We're all part of a greater ecosystem and we make choices about how we interact with that. But I do think it's interesting that there's this now resurgence of interest in cynicism in the traditional philosophical sense. And I wonder whether there's a movement afoot to modernize the kind of philosophy of cynicism to the mainstream in the way that Ryan Holiday

and others have champion stoicism into the mainstream by writing books about it. And there's a lot of overlap between cynicism and Henry David Thoreau and those great traditions of people opting out of the flow of society to do something different and find meaning outside of the constraints of the rules that govern polite society.

Exactly, I love it. I love this idea. And there's something cool about that. Yes. But I don't know, man. I mean, I'm too old to have valid commentary on this, but I think it is a thing when you see 10 million job openings

and people just saying, I'm not gonna take that job. Right. In a moment when you would think like everybody would be clamoring for jobs. And some of them are doing nothing. They're taking the unemployment and doing nothing. And that's fine. And some of them are doing nothing. They're taking the unemployment and doing nothing and that's fine. And some of them are trying to get their own thing going,

which whatever it is. It reminds me that like this idea of do nothing and the consequences of that and what you're talking about cynicism brings me to this article you sent me yesterday, an interview with the Beyond Meat CEO, Evan Celeste. No, his name is Ethan Brown. Ethan Brown.

Hedonistic altruism is brought up in that. He brings it up. Which is interesting. So this was a article on Ethan that was in the Sunday New York Times yesterday, right? So Ethan, friend, friend of the pod. He was on an early episode of the show, CEO, founder of Beyond Meat.

There was not much in this article that I didn't already know or that isn't kind of like widely known about him, but there is something interesting about the idea of hedonistic altruism, which is in the title of the piece that relates to this idea of cynicism. Right.

I guess tangentially. So Ethan's premise is, he grew up on a farm. He decided he didn't wanna have to kill anything to eat. Why should I? I'm not an animal. Just because animals do it doesn't mean we need to do it.

And he's an example of doing something that has actually had a net positive impact so far. And that's getting people off meat, getting them onto these meat alternatives. I personally like eating the meat alternatives once a week or twice a week at the most. And I like it, it tastes good. And I'm one of those people that does eat it.

And, but it's mostly for people who are meat eaters who are kind of gravitating towards, and it is making a big environmental impact according to some studies. But in this article, he's like, it used to be to be ecologically conscious, you had to go without a car or you had to buy some crappy hybrid

and now you can buy a Tesla and isn't that great. That's hedonistic altruism. But there is the unintended consequences of electric cars booming, which is good, that's positive, I love electric cars. I don't own one yet, but I do want one, is there's a battery thing and there's rare minerals that involve in those batteries.

And now there's interests that wanna go try to mine those minerals in the deep sea beds. And there's land mining that has all sorts of issues and complicated issues. So, what is 10 moves down the road? What does that look like? And that's what the do nothing people are kind of point to. But my retort to that is that everything is iterative.

Of course, when you pioneer a new technology, there are downstream implications of that, some of which are foreseeable and some of which are not. The tote bag is a perfect example of that. The lithium ion battery is another example of that, of course, but we have to move forward to solve these problems. And so these are all steps

and we have to address these things as they come. Like it's better that electric vehicles exist and that they've been created in a way that is aspirational for the consumer, right? It's creating demand. They're gonna get cheaper. There's gonna be more and more of them until one day we're gonna wake up

and there really are no traditional vehicles on the road anymore. Yes, we'll have to deal with the mining application, implications of that. really are no traditional vehicles on the road anymore. Yes, we'll have to deal with the mining application, you know, implications of that, but are we not better off for making these changes? Don't ask me, ask Greta. Yeah, so, well, I mean, Greta would like it all to be happening much more quickly.

By the way, like I got criticized in YouTube comments. You did? Well, people thought I was making fun of her. Like I'm on her side. I was like, I was sort of, you know, trying to channel her voice. Remember when I was saying, you know, like talking, people thought I was mocking her.

I'm not mocking her at all. Like she's the one who's holding the hard line and is frustrated that we're not doing this quickly enough. I just think Greta would not enjoy the phrase hedonistic altruism. Right, but you have to understand the psychology of the human animal, right? Like how are you gonna get people to make changes?

Well, you have to make that change attractive. Whether it's the food, whether it's the car that they're driving, whatever it is, like, because most people are not going to murder themselves or make the kind of choices that Greta is making in her life or that she would wish that more people would make. So how do you appeal to people's sensibility to do the right thing?

You have to make the right thing, the cool thing, the affordable thing, the attractive thing. And these things, unfortunately, take time. And we're in a race, like we're in a race to save the planet. My fear is that we can't iterate on these technologies fast enough to keep up with the rate at which we're denigrating the environment. And wouldn't we all be better off

if we just all laid flat and then consume less resources? Right. I'm not a lay flatter, but that's the idea. That's the argument, right? If we all just stopped. If we all just stopped. Right, like when the early pandemic happened and everything stopped for a minute.

Great example. And the skies cleared and the pollution. Yes. That's I think where the, if we just universal human wage kind of element. There was this mass adoption of cynicism, the philosophy and the life flap movement just intoxicated the global population to such an extent that we no longer found it interesting

or important to do anything. If cynicism became the next political movement. But then chaos would ensue. No, but the cynics would not vote for Trump as a voting block. Yeah, but you wouldn't vote. Nobody would vote. You might vote.

That would be an action. You would have to literally get up and do something. No one's saying you lie flat. That is anti-cynic. You don't lie flat all the time. This is not a functional operating system for society, Adam. Adam the cynic. It's a good thought experiment.

If you wanna be Henry David Thoreau and go to Walden Pond and write about it or sit on your parents porch. I think Henry David Thoreau was actually at Ralph Waldo Emerson's house when he was sitting in that guest house. That was Walden.

Weren't there like somebody was bringing, who is it who told me this? I think Walden Pond was literally Emerson's guest house. I think it was Amanda Palmer when she was on the podcast and we were talking about this and she, her point, we were having a conversation about how nobody, I hope my memory is correct on this. Maybe I have this wrong, but the conversation was around how nobody does anything alone.

Like everybody needs support. And any victory is a team victory. Even Thoreau, like had somebody bring him muffins. Like when he was out in the pond, like he wasn't out there by himself. Like he was- Thoreau was glamping, bro. He was glamping.

It was a serious glamping situation. Yeah. I think he was on Emerson's property. I'm not kidding. Like I think Ralph Waldo Emerson was supporting him. Is that true? Yeah, I think so. I think Ralph Waldo Emerson was already wealthy and renowned

and I think Thoreau, he admired Thoreau and I think he was like one of his patrons. Listen, it's easy to be a cynic on 450, $450,000 a year. Who's the point? Who's making that? I'm just saying like, it's sort of extravagant. It's sort of, is it not privileged to say, I'm gonna lie down?

I don't think these guys are making 450, but- I know, I'm exaggerating, but I'm just saying if you're on your parents' porch or like, how are you gonna, how is this functional? I think the point is it's kind of a monkey wrench. So it's not implied to be functional. It's implied as a mirror saying, why are we all doing what we're doing? And for that, I celebrate it.

Cause I think we all need to have that conversation with ourselves. And I think from based on this, I mean, she's, to me, it's an incredible essay. I'd love to read more of her work and maybe it took going home in West Virginia to have the space and time to write what she really wants instead of churning out kind of stuff, news cycle stuff.

It sounds like she was exhausted by the news cycle. Listen, man, this last week was a news cycle from hell. It's not only hard to be in it, it's hard to be hearing it. And imagine producing that all the time, if that's what she was doing. I don't know exactly what show, references in this what show she was on,

but off the top of my head, I don't remember. But just being a part of that, being in that building when all that's going on, it's tough. And so now she gets to write something kind of like trying to wake people up to the fact that you don't have to, it doesn't have, you know, work doesn't have to be a career. It reminds me of someone, you know, we're going to get into the streams of the week, but there's this YouTube YouTuber that I'm just starting to listen to watch, excuse me, and love. He's got a YouTube

channel called Crime Pays, But Botany Doesn't. And I'll, we'll get into it. But he's just like, he is a train engineer. He drives freight trains and then like cruises into the desert and checks out plants and just dives in. And it's an incredible deep dive into the flora of wherever you are and wherever he is. Like an engineer in the truest sense, like an engineer of trains.

Engineer of trains. So like the idea is what if work didn't have to be careers and what if work just had to be, you make enough to get by and then you could do other things to really enrich your life. I think that's what she's saying. Yeah.

She's not saying don't get a job. I'm down with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm down with that. You know, we should be working to live, not living to work. Exactly. Anyway. we should be working to live, not living to work. Exactly. Anyway, deep thoughts. Deep thoughts.

Transition into news cycle. Should we tread into shallower waters to talk about the streams of the week? Let's do it. When we last spoke, I was sharing how much I was enjoying the White Lotus. You had a chance to watch this whole thing. I gotta say of everything that I've watched

in the last year, this has stayed with me the most. I think I think about this show every single day. I think it's a masterwork. I think it's the best TV writing I've seen since Mad Men, Breaking Bad, that whole era. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. It's this incredible, are we gonna spoil it?

Let's try not to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it. There's no spoiler. Limited series on HBO from the brain of Mike White, who is just an exceptional chronicler of the human psyche in all its strangeness. Credit School of Rock, he was the writer of School of Rock.

Yeah, School of Rock doesn't really capture what he's about. I mean, his show Enlightenment is probably a better touchstone, flashpoint for kind of his sensibility. And the White Lotus is just this impeccable, incisive dissection of race, class, privilege, colonialism, and done in a really contemporary, modern, and comedic way that you just can't look away from. I mean, I don't know, what'd you think?

So I agree with you. My favorite thing I just wrote down I was just kind of sketching notes just now is what I love about it is that nobody is likable. Right. And that's not ruining anything, but there's no character that's 100% likable. Let's put it that way.

Maybe there's one, maybe there's one, but I don't even think that the young guy is. Nobody is likable. And what I love about that is everyone has something that you're like a little cringy about, you know? And that's great because I'm so sick of work that there's always some person who's good and other people are bad. And that's just not the way the world works. You know, like everyone has this in them

and to have these gradations of goodness and badness or, or kind of greed and, and selfishness and, and, and, uh, enlightenment and have them within individual characters. Some you're gonna like more than others, obviously, but nobody is ultimately that likable. And that's what's so delicious about this. Right. And so I applaud Mike White because you don't see a lot of that these days. It's much more black and white usually.

It's interesting how this all came together during the pandemic under a very compressed period of time as a limited series. I wonder what would have happened had he had a runway in the traditional sense where this could go on for multiple seasons in the same location, given that it was sort of set up to be a one-time kind of mini series situation,

he has to provide an arc and finality for each of the characters that ends up being, making it like as great as it is. Like everybody kind of comes to their ultimate conclusion in a way that really hammers home this idea of like class and privilege. It's set at essentially the four seasons in Maui that's called the White Lotus. I mean Maui that's called the White Lotus.

I mean, the show is called the White Lotus. It's like Mike White, the Lotus eater. It's unbelievable, right? And it's so infected with his sensibility in the most beautiful way. And the idea I think is that subsequent seasons are just gonna be different White Lotus. So it's gonna travel.

In that idea of the four seasons being like a brand, it'll just be another location with a completely new cast. I think there were some news about how maybe one or two of the characters might carry over. I kind of hope not. Armand's gonna get reassigned. I mean, you know, listen, every performance in this show is pitch perfect.

It's unbelievable. Across the board, when I think of any of these characters, they just crush it completely. Armand, if there is kind of like a standout breakaway kind of career defining performance, you gotta give it up for Murray Bartlett as Armand because he just, I mean, chef's kiss, especially in the finale.

Unbelievable. When he goes off the rails, it's the most delicious viewing experience you can imagine. Unbelievable, and Steve Zahn, I think it's the best thing you'll ever see Steve Zahn, at least to date, it's incredible work for him. And then your friend, you said someone you knew or that who plays Steve Zahn's wife, I forget.

No, I mean, I don't know her. I mean, Connie Britton who plays Nicole Mosbacher. I mean, she, I knew her a little bit. Like when I lived in New York city, right after college, she went to Dartmouth and was friends with a bunch of guys that I ran around with. So, I mean, I haven't talked to her. I wouldn't consider her a friend.

She's somebody I've met, you know. I actually met Steve Zahn when he was like a teenager. When I was living in New York, I was a PA on an independent feature that he was in in the early phases of his career. But I think like all across the board, everybody's doing their best work from Mike White all the way down.

And it's just kind of an amazing dissection in the most contemporary way of our blind spots as a culture from the perspective of privilege. You know, just the idea of being at a high end resort in Hawaii where, you know, at night there's the luau's and the kind of bring the natives out and make them dance in this kind of Disney ask, performance of indigenous tradition.

And when you see it that way, you realize how kind of offensive it is. And the way that every character kind of pivots back to their privilege in the end. I mean, it's certainly about race as well, but even the most kind of performatively woke characters, the two teenage girls or young women pivot back to their privilege when pressed against the wall.

It's you were saying that the portrayal of the teenagers was like so spot on. Yeah, I mean, as a parent of teenagers, like it's just the archetypes are just pitch perfect. Yeah, and those two actresses really great chemistry. Oh my God. And yeah. Have you ever seen a more like invective with the eye roll?

Like, I mean, it's so unbelievable, right? Like the terror of those young women, you know, and the ire that they carry is just, you know. And there's like great intergenerational repartee and there's other characters and we're not even getting into it. The way that the young women, you know, relate to the parents and all of that

is all incredibly accurate. The customer who's like from hell, there's the guest from hell that's in this, you know, that the staff has to contend with. There's the, you know, the woman who needs to have a million spa treatments to feel good about her life is there, but all these people, me saying that is not really, first of all, that's not a spoiler, but it's also every character is a whole person. Well, I think, I think what makes it great is, is despite the flaws that these characters all inhabit

in their own way, Mike White writes them with such depth and such affection for them. Like he still loves these people, you know, in a certain way, despite their flaws. And it allows, like you opened this by talking about how none of these, these are all terrible people, but still you kind of root for them.

Yes. Right, and Jennifer Coolidge's character, ultimately in the end, like, you know, the whole narrative about how she might invest in this, you know, in this woman's, you know, future spa, like to get her out of the context of working at this resort, you know, it's not gonna work out.

Like, you know that's never gonna happen, right? But ultimately the way that Jennifer Coolidge kind of delivers the verdict of like, I'm not gonna do this is in a way that we can celebrate for her because she's setting a healthy boundary for herself. So even though it's done in a way that's so uncomfortable. It's not good though.

It's not good. No, it's not good at all. And yet, Jennifer Coolidge's character kind of needed to do that for herself. And her character is so, at first you don't even wanna look at her. And by the end you love her. And it's, yeah.

I mean, she's seen on the boat with the ashes and all of that is like, she's a genius. It's masterful. She might be like, in terms of just the comedy actress genius, like she's been great for many, many years. I think Mike White has to get full credit for these performances too,

because he's able to, obviously he's pushing some amazing buttons to get these incredible performances. Right, and these are all actors who are now given the opportunity with great writing to show how good they actually are. Yeah, that too. The one thing I would say is because there is

that commentary, it is explicit, the idea of indigenous people in a location as prop, even though that there's something to that that kind of doesn't feel right. Like everyone has their choice, but there's also some legacy there, that legacy of colonialism that you have to reckon with. I will say being, having said that,

like the local people, the local Hawaiian people in this show are still kind of props. Like it's not- But that's the point. I don't know. They're interchangeable and they're disposable. So when, is it Kai, the character Kai who pulls off this. No spoilers, no spoilers.

All right, he gets into trouble and when the shit hits the fan, like that guy just disappears. Right. And that's the point. So you say that's the point. Yeah, it's purposeful. It's to say that this doesn't really matter.

And when the two young girls are, Paula and what's- Olivia. Olivia are having a conversation about this and Olivia is like, well, at least nothing bad happened or something bad could have happened. And Paula has to say something, has to remind her like something bad did happen. Yeah.

It's like, oh yeah, something bad did happen. But does that really matter? And ultimately Paula pivoting back to, now Paula could have done something in that moment. And Paul was like, I gotta go to college and I'm leaving and I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna like pretend this never happened. That's my point.

Like every character and even, yeah. So all the way down the line, they all make choices that are regrettable and you're watching it in real time. The one character that has the amazing kind of celebratory arc is Quinn, the young son who, we're not gonna spoil it, but like he's the only one who kind you know, we're not gonna spoil it, but like,

he's the only one who kind of breaks free from all of these constraints. Yes. In a positive way. He's the one that, yeah, that Mike White takes care of the most, I think, in terms of his outcome. But like, I mean, you could say his dad too, but, you know, we don't wanna spoil it anymore,

but I thought like it's so interesting to see uh that mike white there's there's this whole reality tv aspect of it like you know he's a reality tv obsessive one of the bellman is someone he met on survivor yeah and he went yeah he will he mean, he's a legendary contestant on The Amazing Race and he's obsessed with reality TV. And when you see like Connie Britton's character, like you see a little bit of the housewives of, kind of vein like being expressed through that.

And that's a medium in which you kind of hate these people, but you fall in love with them too. And it's confusing. And all of the reality TV media, it is kind of hate these people, but you fall in love with them too. And it's confusing. And all of the reality TV media, it is kind of all like that. Like, and I think that Mike White came in second on Survivor on some celebrity survivor or something. Oh, he did? I didn't know that.

I think so. And I think he met- I saw Mike White in Hawaii once. Did you? Which is weird. You gotta get him on the pod. I would love to have him on. I'd also love to have Jake Lacey on too.

Jake Lacey who is I think another breakout performance in this show. Holla at your boy. Yeah, yeah. Amazing performance by him. Follow her. Yeah, so I mean, this show is incredible. If you haven't watched it,

I guess all we're saying is make time to watch it. My boys like loved it. They just wanna talk about it like all the time. We started rewatching it. My parents were in town for Asuma's birthday and we watched the first couple episodes again with them. And who knows, maybe we'll keep going. It's a rewatchable.

How about the score? The music is spectacular. The music is unbelievable. It's so full of tension and anxiety, all that. Yeah, tropical anxiety. And what's this Saturday Night Live alum who comes in as Shane's mother? Molly Shannon.

Oh my God. Yeah, I know. All time fingernails on the chalkboard performance. I know. But then you understand why Jake Lacy's character is the way that he is. And it allows you to feel the slightest bit of compassion for this very, you know, like sort of, you know, broken human being.

And Armand is the all time anti-hero. Like, you know. I mean, now his performance is so legendary in the show that now you're seeing memes of him, like everywhere all over the internet. Like the whole world just fell in love with this guy. And I hope that his career just explodes as a result of this.

Like he should be in everything. He, you know, he has that same kind of comic timing that what is that Jojo Rabbit, the writer director. Oh, Taika Waititi. Yeah, doesn't he kind of have that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit. Yeah, funny and kind of offbeat and-

But how he has to switch gears and put on the happy face. And then just, he goes insane. He loses it. As a sober person, did you, the idea is he's sober and then- Again, like, are we spoiling it or are we not? Let's just say he goes on one of the most epic relapse- Epic benders, relapse benders.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did that hurt you to just watch it or you enjoy it? No, I'm like, I'm with you, brother. You know, he got pushed to the edge. I was feeling it. Good shit. I mean, look, we could talk about this show for hours. Just go see it or see it in the comfort of your home. Yes, or on your Oculus, actually.

You can't watch it on Oculus. For a 360 experience of the white Lotus. Let's talk about the Val documentary. Dude, go for it. So you watched, you saw the first hour of it. I did, I consume movies in chunks now. I hate to tell you movie makers, but that's, I am a product of our shortened attention span.

Yeah, this Val Kilmer documentary that's on Amazon Prime right now, it's called Val. It was so fascinating to watch this. I think most of us have a sense of who we think Val Kilmer is because he's such a icon of the screen. And you realize in watching this movie because he's such a icon of the screen. And you realize in watching this movie

that despite the fact that we know he's playing characters in movies, it's almost impossible to disassociate that from who you think the person is. And my realization in watching this movie is just how different he is than what I thought he was. I mean, I'd heard stories about him being difficult and that's kind of the lore.

It's like, oh, he's super talented, but he's impossible to work with. And you kind of just leave it at that. And you think about Iceman and Top Gun and you think about his Jim Morrison portrayal. And that's about all I knew about this guy. Other than that, he has a son who's now an actor and has been in some cool movies

like Palo Alto. Okay. But I really didn't know that much about him. And it's a really beautiful, I won't call it, it's not really a documentary. It's more an autobiography. It's a version of his life through his perspective. I don't know if he self-funded it or what the kind of mechanics of it behind the scene.

Remember that movie, Kid Stays in the Picture? Yeah, but you had really legendary documentarians who were making that and they had a take on their protagonist. Whereas I think Val, although there are directors to this movie, it feels like Val's the one who's at the helm of this. And it's premised on all of this footage that he has.

Like this guy bought a video camera way before people were buying video cameras and literally rolled camera on his entire life and has insane amounts of footage throughout his entire career. In storage, like they actually go to storage. They go to storage and it's like, he's in this giant warehouse and he's unearthing

all of these tapes that date back to like the early 80s. And the documentary is an attempt to string that together and craft a narrative of this guy's life. And you realize like, he has a very interesting childhood. His brother who was like his filmmaking partner drowns in a swimming pool, having an epileptic seizure and has a dramatic impact on young Val's life. And it's really the story of a very sensitive artist.

That happens right when Val gets into Juilliard. Right, right. He was the youngest person admitted to Juilliard at the time. And really wanted to be a theater actor and wrote this play when he was at Juilliard that gets put up off Broadway and then they put it up at the public, I think like. And he's got this crazy footage of him backstage

on Broadway with Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn. They all have to be like 23 years old or something like that at the time. Yes. It's unreal. They look great. It's so fun to see. And they, you know, we don't wanna spoil it, but there's a great little back and forth.

And then you see him with, he talks about how on Top Gun, it goes basically through his over. Over? Of. Of. His of. His of.

It goes through like film by film and then intersperses some present day with that. Cause the idea, he's had throat cancer surgery and he can't speak without pressing his throat. Yeah, so he got through the cancer, he's cancer free, but it took a toll on his voice box. And now he has like a tracheotomy and he has to put his finger over the air hole

in order to speak and it's barely understandable. So there's subtitles for every time he talks. And then his son, Jack, whose voice is remarkably like Val's, narrates voiceover that was written by Val. And he's fantastic. And so I'm left with kind of three things. There's the, obviously the footage is number one

and his life story is very interesting. But I'm also interested in how beautiful his relationship seems to be with his children. And obviously this is a documentary, but you wouldn't get that kind of collaboration unless there was, I mean, he even lives next door to his daughter. Yeah. Who's an adult. Yeah, it's very touching and heartwarming.

And then there's the idea of overcoming a horrible health crisis that he's says, he sounds terrible, but he feels great. This is kind of paraphrasing. And he seems to have made peace with it. Yeah, and then there's this some, but then within all that is the artist himself and the, the footage where he's in, um, an acting workshop with Peter Moss and where basically he

gives a, he gives, I think he does a Hamlet monologue and the acting coach is pushing him saying like, you know, what was that choice? Why was that? Why'd you make that choice? He's like, well, he's basically saying, you know, I never had the urge to kill myself. So I don't know what that's like. So I did X, Y, and Z. And he's like, the teacher is basically saying

you have had it, you know? And there's this idea of creation that kind of hit home for me as a writer. You don't have to have actually had it to explore the feeling. You don't actually have, there's no feeling, there's no, there's nothing that has happened on this earth that has not happened to you.

That's what he's basically positing, right? Whether how true that is, I'm not gonna debate. I just think there's something beautiful in the creative zone of that and giving permission to inhabit a space on, you know, personally, even something you haven't experienced. There's something there. That's what makes actors great, I think.

And certainly there's something there for all creative people to think about. Yeah. I thought that was cool. Yeah, that is cool. And then the audition tapes for the doors and all that. Oh, I know the way that he kind of went the extra mile to audition for all of these parts by creating his own basically mini movies of him auditioning.

Failed. He auditioned for Goodfellas. Yep, failed. And they're not just like him talking to camera, like he creates a little movie. So he fails at getting the Henry Hill part in Goodfellas. He fails at getting the Matthew Modine part for Full Metal Jacket.

So Ray Liotta gets him, Matthew Modine gets him. And then he sends it to become Jim Morrison and it clicks. And they're like, but otherwise he would not have gotten the part. This is after he's already been in some big movies. So it's so interesting, like how you have to keep fighting. That's another thing to take away. Yeah, and also the challenges of, you know,

being a movie star stuck in the body of a guy who's fundamentally, you know, a sensitive artist. Like he talks about being, I don't know if you got to this part, but what it was like for him to be Batman and how challenging it was and the pressure to, you know, kind of be a big movie star when he was interested in parts that weren't coming his way.

And I think within that, there is this conversation about, you know, how difficult he was and they address it, but they don't really give it. I would have felt better had there been a real honest reckoning with that kind of narrative about his past and had him like talk to camera and acknowledge what's true about that or rebut what's not true about that.

Because I think that's kind of what, cause we're all walking around or anybody who knows anything about him is kind of walking around with a certain impression. They do deal with it. Robert Downey Jr. kind of dismisses it. They were in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang together. Right.

But I felt like I wanted a little bit more, you know, kind of like real, like I'm at the, you know, I'm done with my, that part of my career. Like, here's how I reflect back on that. And here's what I would have done differently. And here's what I would have done differently, or here's where I was misunderstood. Cause it isn't a documentary in which people are talking to camera

and sharing their perspective of him. It's just archival footage and then following him around as he's doing whatever he's doing. And I think within that, there is a sadness because this guy, lost his voice and could no longer do the thing that he loves to do. And now he's reduced to going to Comic-Con and signing posters.

And he talks about how he had to make peace with that and find like gratitude and spending time with people who are fans of his and how there's beauty in that as opposed to looking at it like, well, this is the bottom of the barrel now that I have to do this. And that's uplifting in and of itself. But you see a guy who had so much more inside of him

yet to be expressed that will never be expressed in that medium, but it's compelled him to reinvent himself as a visual artist. And now he paints and he's got this studio space and he's opened it up to other artists and it's birthed this whole other kind of creative life. I mean, he's also, he was an Adonis and now he's like,

Right, and yeah, to like have to reckon with your ego in that regard as well, I think is interesting. So I don't know, I thought it was beautiful. Like, you know, you do, you know, it's not the definitive word on Val Kilmer because it is his perspective on his own life. And it should be, it should be consumed and enjoyed with that in mind.

Not as like, you know, cause you can be like, you know, is this the real Val Kilmer? I mean, this is the Val Kilmer that he wants us to see. Right. And I enjoyed it very much. And I left that documentary deeply touched and kind of in love with the guy. But you could say the same thing

of the Michael Jordan documentary series. It was made by someone else with a point of view, but it was obviously with Michael Jordan's tacit approval. And there was nothing in there that Jordan and Kobe Bryant had a documentary. And I love Kobe, rest his soul, but like his book, I think didn't reckon with everything. And there's arguments for all of these kinds of,

doesn't mean it's not worth watching because there is something there for you. Right. Yeah. All right. Check it out. Cool. What else do we want to talk about? The Alpinist is coming out September 7th, I believe is the, and then it's in theaters. That's a premiere.

And I think it's in theater shortly after that. It's the new Red Bull climbing documentary by one of the producers of the Don Wall, which was the Tommy Caldwell story of them climbing the Don Wall, he and his partner. And this one follows Marc Andre Leclerc. And basically the idea, he's a Canadian that no one really had heard of, a 23 year old.

And he is a free soloist, but also free solo high Alpine ice climbing. So I think the movie starts with, I mean, I watched it's a beautiful movie. The filmmaker is Peter Mortimer. And basically it starts with Alex Honnold's voice saying, is there someone out there that you admire? This is during the press of all around free solo.

Cause you know, Alex has blown up so huge and he cites Marc Andre Leclerc as someone to watch. And cause he's this guy no one's heard of doing stuff that like even Alex is like, wow. And the footage is absolutely spectacular. Seeing him, because he's using equipment, but sometimes with no ropes, climbing waterfalls with no ropes,

with like just a blade, like a centimeter blade into ice and hanging off with one arm and just how slow, but also personal you have to move to keep climbing up some of this. The kind of third act revolves around his amazing Torrey Egger climb, which is the first person to solo up Torrey Egger in Patagonia during winter.

And he uses ropes on that one. And so, you kind of see that happen. There's a failed attempt and he has to come down in the middle of a blizzard during avalanche conditions. And then he tries to get up again. And then, if you look up Marc Andre, you realize he's no longer with us and it gets into that as well.

But his whole story of being from a young kid, wanting to become this climber and then doing it and living in a tent in the woods with his girlfriend, Brett Harrington, he's still the dirt bag climber. It's not like it's post dirt bag. Yeah, it's current. There's a purist.

I mean, I haven't seen the movie yet, but from what I know of this guy, I mean, he's the purest, purest. Like you watch Free Solo and you think, could you be any more purist than Alex? And here's a guy who is living in even more kind of dirtbag purist experience because he's doing such death defying things

and really doesn't care if anyone knows about it or sees it. Like it's purely for the act of doing it. Some of the best climbing footage you'll ever wanna see. If you loved Free Solo, if you love Dawn Wall, you will love this. And it definitely belongs in conversation with those three. It's, you know, I think for most people, Free Solo obviously looms above all of them.

There's a reason for that. You know, you have Jimmy Chin, an incredible cinematographer, photographer on the wall with them. So this is a little bit different than that. There are great climbers following Marc Andre around, but sometimes they lose track of him because he doesn't wanna be on camera until he's done the pure thing.

So there's that element of it. And then you have the filmmaker struggling with trying to locate him, which is interesting, but it's not the same kind of collaboration. But they are- You're super young too, right? 23. Yeah.

23. Wow, I look forward to checking that out. Yeah, yeah, beautiful movie. Cool. Yeah. All right, man, let's pivot here. I think we did streamed of the week. Yep, we streamed it.

Oh, you know what we should talk about? What's that? We need to, I mean, this is related to streams of the week. We got to talk about the latest in Matt Fury and news from the world of feels good, man. I feel like Matt Fury just- Like this is the craziest turn of events ever for this guy. Well, you set it up.

Well, there's an NFT. Someone tried to create a Pepe the Frog. Well, first of all, let's say we talked about Feels Good Man many times on the show. We had the filmmakers on the program. So if you're not familiar, you should check out that podcast but essentially it's a documentary about this guy, Matt Fury, who is the artist, comic book artist

behind this character, Pepe the Frog, that was then co-opted by the alt-right and became a symbol of hatred and all kinds of insanity that ensued. And the documentary chronicles Matt's attempt to re-secure kind of sovereignty over this character, this frog, this green frog that ended up in all these Twitter bios

and symbolically means something that he never intended to try to regain that or to take it back and redefine it through the lens of like his original intentions. And so what happened with this NFT drop? So yeah, Walker, sorry, I interrupted you, go for it. Well, my understanding was there was, he was, it wasn't his drop, right?

It was like, so someone tried to put together a Pepe the Frog NFT and there was- Well, there's more than that. There's like a whole, there's Sad Frogs District. Like there's this whole project in which it's a NFT, marketplace that was listed as officially verified, meaning they had the rights to kind of offer up all of these NFTs that were kind of Pepe,

related or adjacent. Kind of like goblin versions of Pepe, right? I guess. Yeah. You know, I'm not like an expert in all of this. I mean, this is all based on an article, a vice article that we'll share on the show notes. And there was, so basically the Sad Frog District

netted $4 million in training volume, a medium price of $450 each, right? In ether per Sad Frog, yeah. In ether, whatever. Yeah yeah. In ether, whatever. Yeah, Ethereum. Ethereum, okay. Which is like the currency of choice in the NFT space. There you go.

And Fury, how did he, how did he? Well, he's got these lawyers now cause he's been on this campaign to, you know, re-secure the rights to his original creation. So he issued, you know, basically a copyright takedown that, you know, OpenSea had to acknowledge and respect. So this was, you know, basically shut down that whole kind of trading set, you know,

Sad Frog District, Sad Frogs District trading. I'm probably butchering this completely because I'm not steeped in this world, but essentially it shut all that down, right? Where does that money go back? Does it have to flow back? So that's the thing, if you read this article, like it's controversial

because a lot of the people that were trading in these things had spent money for these things and they're out of, now is their investment worth nothing now? It's worthless now. It seems like the marketplace should have to pay them. There's all this carnage, right? And so there's blowback on Fury, like how dare you do this?

But ultimately he, I'm siding with Matt Fury. Like this is his creation. These people were out creating artwork based on his IP and profiting off of it. And he should have say over whether, I mean, if you went out and made a bunch of NFTs with Mickey Mouse, you don't think Disney's gonna go after you? Also, fuck your bullshit NFT environmental,

like draining bullshit, all right? Like let Adam the cynic rule on this. Who cares about your $500 NFT bullshit frog nobody wants? Okay, boomer. The NFT thing, I don't even begin to understand what's going on here, but I can tell you that it's real. And a lot of people are like making money and doing all kinds of stuff here.

There's a lot of doing. Alludes my ability to understand, but it's certainly a thing. But I celebrate Matt Fury taking a stand for his creation. Me too. Getting it back and not for nothing profiting off of it. Now he's like making millions of dollars after all of this. Is he gonna make that money?

Is he getting that money? Well, he's offering up NFTs of Pepe and he's making money as he should off of this. Okay, so he's doing his own NFTs. Yeah, so where is it in this article? This article is pretty long, but yeah, there was one that went for like 4 million bucks or something like that, it's crazy.

Well, Matt Fury, well done my friend. So good for him. You deserve it. Yeah. Although it's still an NFT, I'm not sure I'm in favor of it. Yeah, the blowback here is interesting, but anyway, it's good to see Matt Fury doing well,

I guess is the point of even bringing this up. He took a lot of garbage. I know. So that's cool. We've been joking about how you come here right after you finish your shift at Ben and Jerry's, and there's a lot of speculation as to whether you actually work at Ben and Jerry's or not.

We're gonna say with finality that you don't. I do not. Although there is a bit of back to cynicism. Yes. Cynicism in the popular vernacular, being cynical about somebody who would work at Ben and Jerry's. Well, I was more being cynical about my choice

in tie dye wear. Yeah. But the joke was that like, I'm wearing this tie dye shirt that looks like a Ben and Jerry's tie dye shirt because it's really colorful versus the kind that's like the cool kind that everyone's wearing now. But is there not a thinly veiled layer of like,

just snarkiness about like working a job at an ice cream parlor? Yeah, there is. Right. There is. There's a little cultural elitism, West coast elitism going on. Sure. Enter stage left ice cream TikTok. Are you familiar with ice cream TikTok, Adam Skolnick?

I am now. You are now. So I knew nothing about this until friend of the pod, friend in real life, Joanne Molinaro, the Korean vegan, responded to our snarky back and forth about you either working at Ben and Jerry's or not working at Ben and Jerry's by alerting us to the fact that there's a guy on TikTok who works at an ice cream parlor

and mounts a camera basically in front of his face, like his phone. So it's facing the ice cream and serves ice cream to people and has accumulated like 10 million followers and is making- Dylan LeMay. Yeah, which is insane. And he's now got 2 million subs, I think on YouTube.

Does he? Yeah, I think, let me look it up right now. So then that turned me to, whoops, I gotta turn that off. I don't wanna get in trouble here. Sorry about that. My friends, Colin and Samir, who are YouTubers, who do a really cool show,

everybody should subscribe to them, they're great. They did a video about this called the wildly lucrative world of ice cream TikTok. And it's about Dylan LeMay and just this trend. 1.85 million subs on YouTube. And it's because YouTube has gotten into short form video because of TikTok. They're like getting pushed by TikTok to get shorts.

And so he's tapped into that. Colin and Samir are extremely intelligent. Like they're great. He's tapped into that. Colin and Samir are extremely intelligent. Like, they're great. They really know how to handicap the world of creators, explain the business behind it in a really transparent and thoughtful way. They like their subjects.

It's clear, which is good. There's no cynicism involved there unless it's being watched by me. No, I really liked the video. The one thing I'd say is that even their merch, like they do an advertisement for their merch and they talk about how they sold like 3000 or I forget what the number was,

but they made 15 grand off their merch. And I would just say, I love calling Samir, but just say no to merch because we don't need more merch in the world. There's enough merch. Yeah, I know. The cynic. I know, Adam the cynic.

Rearing up again. Even if we- Adam the cynic says just say no to merch. So I shared on Instagram that friend of the pod, Brogan Graham, friend of Skolnick, Brogan Graham dropped by the studio the other week. Brogan. Semi unannounced.

He was in town for a brief period of time. And he sat in your seat and he said, is this Adam's seat? He did. Yes. And he wore. And I put on his shirt, like I took a piece of tape, black tape and I wrote Skolnick on it and put it on. And you said, this is gonna be the new merch line.

That was gonna be my new merch line. So even if we created merch with like a version of black tape that said Skolnick on it, you're not supportive of that? Well, here's the thing. Like if we're gonna do merch, you could do like the hashtag team swim mask thing, which would be cute for our listeners and your fans.

The problem with merch is it does create a lot of waste. Like, you know, it's basically, you know, buying into this fast fashion kind of gestalt of how clothing is manufactured and then quickly kind of discarded that we're trying to opt out of. So I completely understand that. And my wife having been a fashion designer in a past life

has explained to me at length, like just how much waste being in fashion causes. So I think there is an environmental footprint to this whole merch thing as lucrative as it is for these creators. And listen, I don't begrudge any creator who's trying to make a living. And I think Colin and Samir are fantastic at what they do.

I think they should have millions and millions of subscribers, especially anybody who's interested in the creator economy. Like you said, they do a great job of kind of canvassing that and making understandable kind of what's happening online in terms of trends. And they do it in a very accessible way. And they're both great filmmakers

and they're great human beings. I've gotten to know them a little bit. And I think they're super cool guys. If they had millions and millions of subscribers, maybe they wouldn't have to do merch or maybe they would just sell more merch. There's no have to do with merch. But there is this thing where if you're a creator online,

that merch is like, you know, what you do. Well, there's an unironic, so- And listen, we've sold merch. I have t-shirts and, you know, we sell certain things. These guys are creators. They're creator enthusiasts, right? So they're gonna look at a creator, even like Dylan or whoever it is,

from an enthusiast perspective, which is good. They're not looking at it from the Adam the Cynic perspective that is vaguely sad that people are sitting around watching someone scoop ice cream. Even though I like the idea of educating people about this interesting kind of ice cream from the Philippines.

I think it was Uba. It was, they were talking about. And even though I like the color and all of that, I get it. But I also don't get it. Like, do we need to be, like, why are people watching that? Well, that's a bigger question, right? Why are we watching that? Clearly he's doing something that people are responding to.

I know, but. So the question is,? Why are we watching that? Clearly he's doing something that people are responding to. I know, but- So the question is, why are they responding to that? What is the need that's being met by this guy serving ice cream? And maybe it's just, we need a little bit of light good news. I don't know. One thing that was interesting

that Colin and Samir pointed out was that he's, so TikTok barely pays these guys. Like he has 10 million subscribers, but it was something like he alluded to low six figures. If you have 10 million people following what you're doing, making a living shouldn't be a problem. And he's making a living. He's making like 120 grand a year, according to like the estimates that like,

based on that video. But commanding the attention of 10 million people is much more valuable than that. So then he did one drop on Snapchat and he, it sounds like he made close to that with just one video from Snapchat. So Snapchat's creator space offers more money. And obviously YouTube is going to be more lucrative

for him at 1.85 million subscribers and climbing. And he's looking in New York for space. So he's, so the whole idea is he works at Cold Stone. So the joke, the me living, working at Ben and Jerry's and how funny that is. And Joanne saying, how about this guy who actually works at Cold Stone. And has 10 million people who care about him

scooping ice cream every day. But pretty soon he will no longer work at Cold Stone. Because at the time, I think he's only now working there two days a week. It's in LA and he's moved. I think he's moving to New York and opening his own space and gonna create his own flavors. And he's gonna have like celebrity.

He's gonna have a retail ice cream place. Yes, it's in that. Continue to do the ice cream thing. He can't like let go of that. You can't stop it. It's like JVN still has to do hair occasionally. Right. Yeah. But this guy was still has to make,

I think he really wants to make ice cream think he really wants to make ice cream. He really wants to make ice cream. So he loves ice cream. What's cool about him, what I loved most about watching Dylan was that he's dreamt about owning an ice cream shop since he was a little kid. So this is like-

It's authentic. Yeah, it's real. So that's what I liked about him. I'm joking. And the merch thing is just funny. Like I didn't realize how little you actually had to sell to make good money. Like they talked about, they tell you,

they made 15 grand by selling, I forget what the number was. I think it was like 300 something items. That's how, that's why people do merch. Cause it's, you don't have to sell that many. And, but to me, I just was wondering, I'm like, well, do we need that? I know. I feel you. Yeah. Let's do some listener questions. Oh, we're rounding third base. We are.

Listener questions. We're going to land this prop seaplane. You know where we're going first? Where is that? Manitou Springs. Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Annie from Manitou Springs, Colorado. I love the pod and you can absolutely use us in the show. My question for you guys is about combating self-sabotage. I found in my life that this has been a pattern for me, whether it's sabotaging my vegan diet, relationships, exercise, or other efforts I make for self-improvement. My question for you is, what advice do you guys have on this? Or do you currently or have you ever dealt with this self-sabotage beast? Thanks for all you guys do and which I've been listening to you for years and you've gotten me through many

long training runs. So thanks for the constant inspiration. Cheers, you guys. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you for that question, Annie. That's a big one. I have a history with self-sabotage. Do you? You just seem too grounded. Does smoking too much pot count for that? Well, only if you're doing it purposefully to ruin your life. What about if it's unconscious? Yeah, I guess you can unconsciously self-sabotage yourself, of course.

I think, you know, unpacking this is complicated, but ultimately self-sabotage has to do with a deep seated belief that you're undeserving of good things, right? Like if you think that you're not worthy, then when you approach something good in your life, you will create drama to destroy it, to adhere to this narrative or this story

that you tell yourself about yourself and your lack of deservedness. I think it's something that is rooted in, in of course, fear of failure. Like if you sabotage yourself, then you have an excuse. Right? Like if you self, if you conduct some self-sabotage, then you can say, well, you know, I didn't really try,

or, you know, you're not really putting, you're opting out of putting yourself on the line. But it's also about fear of success, just the same. Like what would it say about the story that you tell yourself about who you are if you actually succeeded? And that for many people is scarier than failure, the fear of success, I think.

And so I think getting behind the urge or the, you know, the compulsion to self-sabotage your life requires unpacking the root of that belief and deconstructing what led you to believe that you're not deserving of good things, that you lack deservedness. And I think to believe that you're not deserving of good things, that you lack deservedness. And I think to do that, you need to perform an inventory of your life

and identify the stories that defy that narrative. Like think of all the times where good things did happen, or you were deserving of love or whatever it is that you feel like you're lacking. And then moving forward is all about performing esteemable acts because self-esteem is a result of the performance of esteemable acts. It's a muscle, it's a habit, just like anything else.

But it is a bit of a Titanic situation and it's, you know, to turn it around, like you're gonna have to, you know, practice this for long periods of time. I don't know, what do you think? Unpacking the stories that lead you into that pattern of behavior, then figuring out how to correct that action

or how to avoid those kinds of patterns. Yeah, and it begins with awareness. If you slip up, not beating yourself up for having slipped up. Right, so Annie has awareness that she's doing it. A lot of people don't, they're just doing it and they're not even aware that they're sabotaging their life.

So at least Annie has this awareness. So I think rooting yourself in that awareness around the behavior so that when you're doing it, you can understand, okay, this is what I'm doing. Then it is what you just said, which is not beating yourself up about it, trying to figure out why you were doing it in the moment, identifying that fear,

and then figuring out what the contrary action is and taking that action as uncomfortable as it is. Because I think it's about breaking the pattern of this self-fulfilling prophecy. Because if you feel like you're undeserving, then you perform the self-sabotage and then you create the reality that affirms the belief. So you have to break,

there's a pattern that you have to break. And I think humans being creatures of habit and creatures of pattern, like forming new patterns is difficult and uncomfortable. But I think that's, you know, the process of, of trying to, you know, change that for yourself. Yeah, I think you're right. I think most people who self-sabotage

are totally unconscious that they're even doing it. So you're right about that. So they'll just do it and they'll be like, and then, and there's a weird kind of rush or release with affirming the narrative. Like, see, see, it happened again. Yeah. I'm a victim or, you know,

I never get the promotion. I can't be loved or whatever. Yeah, see, another person broke up with me. Like you create that reality so that you can double down on that narrative. And there's a perverse kind of like, not euphoria, but maybe it's a, you know, I'm sure there's a neurochemical release involved in that,

that, you know, anchors you in that. And I think really, you know, concretizes or makes it even more difficult to break out of it. The fear of success thing is something I always have a heart. I've heard it before, but I'm like, no, I'm much more worried about failing than like fear of success.

Like what story would you tell me? I've heard that before. I don't quite identify with it. What would it look like if you actually got what you wanted and that's frightening. What if my life got bigger? Maybe I'm not ready to handle that. It's scary, it's intimidating.

You think that's mostly subconscious? Or do you think it's conscious? Yeah, I think it's mostly subconscious. Mostly subconscious. Interesting. Anyway, that's mostly subconscious? Yeah, I think it's mostly subconscious. Mostly subconscious. Interesting. Anyway, that's a really good question. It's a great question. Let's go to Brian from London.

All right. Hi, Adam. Hi, Rich. My name's Brian Marshall, and I'm calling from London in the United Kingdom. Okay to play this message. I have a question. the playlist message um i i have a question um i have a hundred kilometer ultra marathon coming up in three weeks time i have been training hard for this uh i've been training probably now for 18 months last year i completed a 60 kilometer self-supported run which was a challenge but I guess the biggest dilemma I have I'm really

looking for some tips guidance is just trying to figure out how my body is going to respond to the extra distance between the 60 that I've already done and the 100 trying to focus on nutrition and hydration throughout I've had quite a journey to get this far. I had my own issues with alcohol over 10 years ago. In fact, I did contract septicemia and was in intensive care for three and a half weeks and actually flatlined twice. So literally 10 years ago, I was learning to walk again. And here I am embarking on a 100-kilometer run in memory of my late brother, who unfortunately passed away at the age of 25 from an inoperable

brain tumor. So running for the Brain Tumor Charity and looking to raise some good money, but would welcome any thoughts, advice, guidance to help me achieve this. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Wow. Thanks guys, appreciate it. Wow, that's quite a story. How great is that guy? Yeah, unbelievable.

I mean, first of all, congrats on making those changes. I mean, that's quite an arc, Brian, and something to be celebrated in its own right. And sorry about your brother. I can't imagine what that experience must have been like for him to pass away at such a young age. As to the ultra marathon question,

look, if you can do 60 kilometers, you can definitely do a hundred. I mean, that's kind of what I always say. You've already done 60, you know what you're capable of and you've been training for 18 months for a hundred. I mean, that's kind of what I always say. You've already done 60, you know what you're capable of. And you've been training for 18 months for this hundred. Like, I'm not worried about you. I feel like you're being perhaps a little bit neurotic about this because if you've been properly training

and working out your hydration and your nutrition and practicing that in your training and increasing, you know, the volume of your running to, you know, prepare your ligaments and your training and increasing the volume of your running to prepare your ligaments and your joints, as well as your muscles and your heart and your lungs for enduring a hundred kilometers, like I'm pretty confident that you're gonna be just fine. In terms of the training, it sounds like you've got that sussed already.

I mean, the training changes are pretty basic. It's just a slow expansion of volume and then figuring out your hydration and nutrition strategy which you should be practicing in your training so that there's no unexpected things that are gonna happen with respect to that during the race. Or if unexpected things happen, you'll at least have some options to pivot to

because you've worked it out in your training. I don't have to tell you that doing a run like this is not about going fast. It's about keeping going. It's about persistent endurance. As I said, in Finding Ultra, in the words of Chris Howe, the prize does not go to the fastest person.

It goes to the person who slows down the least. And you're training your body to slow down as little as possible over the duration of this day. Charlie Engel. So the guy who just won Leadville, he averaged a 10 minute per mile pace, right? It's not that fast. Most people who are runners can run a 10 minute mile,

but can you do it all day? That's really what you're training for. I mean, Charlie Engle talks about this all the time. If you could run 10 minute miles all day long, then you can not only win bad water, you can like crush the record. So it's not about running fast, it's about training your body to be able to stay upright

and moving forward as efficiently as possible. So I think the real leap here from 60 to 100 for Brian is a mental leap as much as it is, much more than it is a physical leap. And the subtext in my sense is the subtext in Brian's question is him trying to talk himself into believing that he's capable of doing this. Did you get that? Yeah, I could see it. I mean, to train from 60 to 100, like what's the biggest chunk of running you think he'd have to do at once? I think that he's gonna have to do some race approximation weekends

or doing back to back big runs so that he learns how to run when he's tired or maybe running in the middle of the night. So he's used to running when he's sleep deprived, acclimating the body and the mind to those sorts of things. Like a marathon and then another marathon the next day. Maybe something like that. I mean, there's only so much that you can run

without getting injured. So there's a cap on the volume. And once you've reached that cap, and I don't know where he's at because he wasn't specific about his training, it's just mental. It's understanding that your body is more capable than we allow ourselves to believe.

And it's a thing, it goes back to the Goggins thing of the 40% rule. Like you're capable, you know, when you think you're done, you've only tapped into 40% of what you're truly capable of. And that really is a mental game. So it's about cultivating that belief that you can do it. And the process of cultivating that belief

happens during training. Like when you have a breakthrough run or you do like a big block and you get through it, that starts to root you in this sense that it is possible, but you've done a 60, so you know you can do that. This isn't that much crazier than that. And then it's about when you're in the race, managing the pain, managing the lows that you're gonna face,

managing the unforeseen variables that are gonna kick up and throw you off your plan and being emotionally resilient to weather that and manage that because things change. You're gonna feel like shit. You're gonna wanna quit. You've gotta train your mind and your body to continue to move forward and push through

so that you have some tactile experience with the fact that these things change just because you feel lousy now doesn't mean you're always gonna feel lousy. And becoming persistent and resilient and flexible and all the things that you want in your toolbox going into this race. And I think your biggest asset perhaps

when your back is up against it and you reach that point where you think you can't go any further is that you have a really strong why, you have your brother and this charity and it's obviously very meaningful and authentic to you. So, you know, when all is lost, pivot to the why and remind yourself why it is that you're doing this. And I think your why is so strong

that that's gonna elevate you and carry you through whatever obstacles you face across this finish line. Beautiful. Well said. Anything to add to that? Not really, no. I've never run a 30 nor a 60 unless you count the four by.

But you ran 80 miles this month and swam 10 kilometers. No, 10 miles. Yeah, so. Thanks. I'm no Brian Marshall from London though. No, you're not. Because only Brian Marshall from London is Brian Marshall from London.

That could be a t-shirt. Yeah, all right. All right, ready? Let's go to Scott from Vermont. Only Scott from Vermont is Scott from Vermont. Hey, Adam and Rich. be a t-shirt yeah all right all right ready let's go to scott from vermont only scott from vermont it's scott from vermont hey adam and rich really appreciate the podcast i love listening to you both it's my favorite podcast of the week i get to listen to real quick question is when you're exercising and breathing what's the best way to? I've read a lot of information on

nasal breathing. I'm trying to get the hang of in through the nose, out through the nose, but I'm struggling with that. Is it in through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose, out through the mouth? What's the best way to breathe? Again, Scott from Vermont, really appreciate your podcast each week and keep up the great work. Yes, it's okay to play this on the air. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. If I'm being honest, I struggle with how to answer this question

because on the one hand, like I appreciate his desire to try to understand how to kind of go the extra mile and take advantage of certain techniques that can be beneficial. And there's certainly a lot that has been studied and written about when it comes to the benefits of nasal breathing.

Essentially, it helps achieve what's called the Bohr effect, which is about increasing your body's ability to tolerate carbon dioxide through slower, more steady breathing. And I think practicing nasal breathing when you're training is a good kind of like reflex to develop and perhaps it will help you utilize oxygen more efficiently

and make you a better athlete over time. But I also think that, I mean, I don't know, you know, where Scott is at in terms of his success as an athlete or his accomplishments or his experience, et cetera. But I don't know any elite athletes who are like, I only breathe through my nose. Certainly when I'm swimming, I don't. And when I'm running, I mean, I try to breathe through my nose. Certainly when I'm swimming, I don't. Isn't that- And I don't, and when I'm running, I mean, I try to inhale through my nose

and exhale through my mouth, but when I'm really up against it, I'm trying to get oxygen into my lungs however I can. Mouth breather. Yeah, and so part of me, like my resistance to this is that it feels like the final 1% on the mountain when we should really be focusing more on fundamental stuff. Like, are you training as hard as you can otherwise?

How's your nutrition? How's your rest? How's your sleep? Like the big kind of foundational aspects of optimizing performance. Focus on honing those in first. Stuff like nasal breathing I I think is great. And it's a good kind of practice,

but only if it's on top of an already strong foundation. If you're focusing on nasal breathing, when other stuff that is more important to be paying attention to isn't exactly locked in, then I feel like it's sort of like taking vitamins when you're eating fast food every day. So Nicholas Ramirez, Catalina swim run champion, Attila world champion, I think one time

and is in the next week, they're gonna line up again. Yeah, that's right. He still sends me some training plans now or we just restarted, but at times what he likes us to do is during the warmup, whether if you're doing a run, he always has a 10 to 20 minute warmup involved. So it's usually 15 or 20 minutes. So if it's going to be an hour, 75 minute run, it's going to be a 20 minute warmup. So that's zone two. And part of that is, uh, he likes you to nasal breathe. Yeah. So I think his argument, this is not me talking, it's him. I mean, I understand this is coming

from probably the James Nestor book, "'Breathe' where he gets into the power of it. And I've tried this also, I should say, like I've tried to do nasal breathing when I sleep because I wake up in the middle of the night and my mouth is wide open and I'm all dry. So I've put tape on- You did the James Nestor experiment.

Yeah, I put tape on my mouth so that I can focus on nasal breathing when I sleep because there's like a sympathetic, parasympathetic nervous system kind of resetting that goes on. Then I wake up in the morning and the tape's off and my mouth is wide open, which shows me how much I need this.

So I'm not dismissive of this in any way. Like I understand that this is something that we should be, you know, practicing and paying attention to. But I question like how, anyway, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna finish. Nicholas says basically just do it then. So it's in through the nose, out through the nose,

but just in the first warmup period, 10 minute, maybe 15 minute. Obviously if you miss a breath and you have to go to the mouth and it's no big deal and you'll find it's harder to keep that pace doing nasal breathing. But after that, when you're really running and trying to accomplish whatever your goal is

for that day exercise or whatever, then just go to normal. That's what he would say. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever tried to just nasal breathe when you're swimming? It's not gonna work. I can't, cause I have a mask on but um i can i can exhale that was not a setup by the way i can exhale through my nose with my mask on it's what that's what's

so great about my swim mask is you can still breathe through your nose in this particular swim mask thank you for only in the exhale version though but But normally I inhale through the mouth and exhale. But even if I was in a pool with goggles, I don't know that I would inhale through my nose. I've never really tried it, no. There is a thing that happens with your nervous system though. Yeah.

And I should know more about this than I do. So I feel like I'm not really satisfying Scott's inquiry. Scott, I've got a book for you. It's called how to be idle, a loafers manifesto. Don't worry about nasal breathing. Just lie down and do nothing. When you're lying down, you can nasal breathe. Should you be nasal breathing when you're lying down on your parents? Let me check. Let me check chapter 8 p.m. smoking. Yeah, not helpful. All right. I think we're, you know, needing to land this prop plane.

All right. This sea plane. Let's do it. All right. I feel bad for Scott. I feel like I didn't answer this question very well. No, I mean, we gave him some, you know, Nicholas Ramirez. I mean, the truth is like, you know,

I could have done a bunch of research and said, here's what you should do and all this kind of stuff. The honest truth is like, I don't really think about this that much. Okay. When I do, I'll like, okay, I'll do kind of like warmup exercises and I do try to do this at night and all the like,

but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this. And maybe if we get anything out of this, it's Scott reminding me that perhaps I should focus on this for myself a little bit more. Or maybe your answer is just mouth breathe. Who cares? It's not really that important. What's wrong with that?

Read James Nestor's book, Breath. I have not read it yet. Have you read it? No, I haven't. Have you had him on? No, I haven't. I should have him on though. Yeah. Maybe Nestor's book, Breath. I have not read it yet. Have you read it? No, I haven't. Have you had him on? No, I haven't. I should have him on though.

Yeah. Maybe that's what this is about. Maybe. This will prompt me to reach out to him. I think that would be a great podcast actually. Yeah. Cool, all right. We did it, we're done.

How do you feel? I feel good, man. I feel good too. I feel good, man. Feel good, man. You're not, but you're not banking those NFTs like Matt Fury. I don't think I'm gonna get complaints when people ask me at the end,

when you ask me how I'm doing, I always say I feel good like at first. Now I've changed my intro. I gotta work on my outro. Well, we'll see what you come up with next time. Yes. All right, my friend. Follow Adam at Adam Skolnick. Leave us a message if you want your question

ineffectively answered. Please, please. We would love more questions. So yeah, 424-235-4626. Check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com to dive into everything we talked about today. Please make sure that you subscribe to the show on YouTube,

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We'll see you in Ready Player One. Thanks for the love you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with another awesome episode. Peace, plants. Coyote. you