The Rich Roll Podcast - The Best of 2018: Part II

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

Welcome to the Best of 2018 — Part II: our way of taking a moment to reflect on the past twelve months by revisiting the year's most compelling podcast guests. It's been an honor to share my conversations with so many extraordinary people over the course of 2018. Second listens brought new insights — and more reminders that that these evergreen exchanges continue to inspire and inform. For long-time listeners, my intention is to launch you into 2019 with renewed vigor. If you're new to the show, my hope is that this anthology will stir you to peruse the back catalog and/or check out episodes you may have missed. Links to the full episodes excerpted in this anthology are enumerated below. Thank you for taking this journey with me. I appreciate you. I love you. To view the conversations (minus John McAvoy & Yuval Noah Harari, which were not filmed), click here: bit.ly/bestof2018_2 Here's to an extraordinary 2019. Join me, and let's do this thing together. Peace + Plants, Rich

you're far more likely to get someone to do something productive with their life if they're passionate about what they're doing and i know sport can play such a huge role in helping so many different sorts of people not just criminals but people in life it's such a powerful thing and i'm such an advocate of it because i've experienced it in my own life and as i said like you're not going to meet anyone from that extreme of crime than me. I wholeheartedly say that I was one of the most entrenched criminals you'd ever meet in your life. And sport has allowed me to give that up. That's John McAvoy. And this is part two of the best of 2018 edition of the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey everybody, happy holidays. Welcome or welcome back to the podcast, to the show where I do my best to have probing meaningful conversations with all manner of positive paradigm breaking change makers. That sounds kind of cheesy, doesn't it? I think it's true though. I don't know. What do you guys think? Anyway, thanks for listening. Thank you for subscribing to the show, for spreading the word, sharing it with your friends

and on social media. Hope you had a great Christmas, a great Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever holiday you choose to celebrate this time of year. Maybe it's Festivus. Did you listen to our part one recap? How did you like it? I thought it was pretty great. I thought it was really good.

If you did enjoy it, I promise that this episode, part two in this series, takes it to a whole new level. 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. Thank you. 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 and 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, 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. 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. All right. I said it last time. I'll say it again. It really is a difficult task to select which guests and clips to feature in these episodes. So if I did leave out one of your personal favorites, I get it. I understand the idea behind all of this is just to simply bring front of mind some of the lessons, some of the inspiration over the last year to help cement or imprint it in your mind, in your consciousness to help you get clear or more clear on who you want to be and what you want to manifest in the upcoming year. It's basically a love letter from me to you, a way of saying thank you to my guests and an expression of gratitude to all of you guys for taking this

journey of growth and betterment right alongside me. So sit back, relax, lean into your time off from work and enjoy. Because first up, we have a segment from one of my most popular episodes to date, episode 379 with John McAvoy. popular episodes to date, episode 379 with John McAvoy. John is a former high-profile armed robber who at just 16 became one of Britain's most successful career criminals and most wanted men. Today, John is a very different human being. He is the world's only Nike-sponsored Ironman athlete. After two spells in prison and a close friend's death during a heist gone wrong, John had this epiphany. He decided to seek redemption while serving a double life

sentence behind bars. And ultimately, he discovered it through the transformative power of sport. It's an absolutely riveting tale from one of the most compelling, improbable, inspirational people I have ever met. So here is John recalling the moment he decided to change his life forever. And I remember sitting in this prison cell watching my prison TV and my friend run up to the CCTV camera and sprayed a can of CS spray into the lens and the camera froze literally before he sprayed it. My friend ran up to the CCTV camera and sprayed a can of CS spray into the lens. And the camera froze literally before he sprayed it. And I know it was my friend.

I could tell by his eyes. I could see it was him. And I remember sitting in that cell watching the last moments of his life. And then the camera crew then cut away to the car. Because as they were getting away, the car tyre blew out, the car flipped. My mate got thrown out of the car. And the car was just a crumpled mess on the side of this dutch motorway and i remember sitting in that cell and and i i looked at my life and it and i realized that precious life is like that should have been me in that car

i should have been that person i was the one that nearly got shot by the police two times i was the one that had the mad car chases with the police. I was the one that drove guns up and down. My friend didn't. My friend got unlucky one night, never been in trouble with the police in his life. He committed a crime with a group of people and one night that cost him his life. And then I looked at my life in that place

and everything that I was brought up to believe in about the system, money was everything. It wasn't. And I the system. Money was everything. It wasn't. And I felt embarrassed. It was pathetic. Like I looked in my life in that prison cell and I had a 16,000 pound gold Rolex watch on my wrist. In prison?

In prison. No, because again, it was how arrogant I was. Because to me, that was a demonstration, an expression that even though you've put me in here, I've still got money and you can't take that off me and you can't change me and subconsciously again it was that expression of of of power over the system it wasn't about me saying to the working man fuck you like you've got no money or anything it was about me demonstrating to the system that i've got

these nice things and you can't do nothing and again it is it was it was controlling and i looked how perfect prophetic it was and all of these men that growing up as a kid that i looked up to and they were my heroes they were all old men sitting in prison or they were dead and my friend just lost his life and i knew from that moment that that was me done i honestly like i can't express it into words it was like someone switched on a light in my head and i had this awareness of how precious your life is as a human um and the next morning i went down for breakfast in the communal eating area and there was all these guys and they were talking about when they got out they was going to do this and that and this person was an informer and he was a grass and he was going to do this and that and i thought i can't be around these people no more i can't listen to this rubbish and the only way i can explain it is like if you was a drug addict and you wanted to get off drugs but you was locked in a crack den

around drug addicts and you're trying to get off and i needed i wasn't fortunate where i couldn't get up and walk out of that place i was was trapped physically. So again, I had to then develop a way of a form of escapism to take me out of that world, like take me out, not just prison physically, but mentally. And that's when training took on a far greater significance to me and exercise. So did you then resume that like diligent, uh, you know, protocol of the pushups and the sit-ups and the step-ups and all of that? Or was there, was there the rowing machine there and you just said, okay, I'm going to try this or like. What it was when, when you're in prison, you get limited to the amount of gym access that you can have. And I, and so your gym, your wing gets gym certain times

a week. That's it. So you get free gym sessions a week on your wing. And it's just stopped you from meeting people on different wings, case of fights stuff and when i went down the gym there was this guy on the round machine and he was down at every session i was on and he wasn't on my wing and i went up to him and i asked him said what are you doing and he said i'm around this million meters for a children's hospice and i said what and they let you have as much gym as you want and he said yes so i went to the prison officer that works in the gym and I said, can I do what he's doing? And he said, if you go back up on the wing

with sponsorship forms and the prisoners sponsor you, come back down and give it to us. You can row and raise money for the children's charity. So I went and did it. Come back, gave him the shorts and he forms and he gave me a dispensation note. So it's allowed me to get off the wing to go down the gym as much as i wanted so it was to row a million meters and you could row it 5k a day 10k a day 20k that however you want to write

got on the ram machine first session i've done at 26 was 20 miles so i rode 32 000 meters and when i did it i was in another world and I mean that like people left me alone prisoners didn't talk to me prison officers didn't talk to me and I remember looking at this little monitor in this prison gym and I could have been anywhere in the world and I just honestly it was like the only it's the nearest I could say it was like meditation it was a form it generally was like a form it transcended me out of prison I could have been anywhere in the world and obviously I didn't understand about endorphins I didn't understand about that but that is obviously what was happening i did it the next day i went back down 32 000 meters next day 32 000 meters

and then i just it become a compulsive to go down and keep doing the same distance i did the first million meters a thousand k in a month and then i thought i can keep doing this and this is going to help me get through my prison sentence so So I asked if I could do another million. I said, Jess did that, did the third million, three months. Then the prisoner went to me,

if you wrote 5 million meters, that's equivalent from around from Britain to the America. So it's equivalent to the Atlantic. So I asked the prison officer, I said, look, can I just wrote the extra 2 million? And it's cool thing to say that I've read across the land,

but really it was because it kept me in the gym for two more months. As I was getting through the fourth million, um, I woke up an ability in my body that I never knew I even had. I'm in this little bubble in a prison. Um, you, you're not in the real world.

You're in this cocoon. You don't know what fitness is. You don't, it's warped. I've never been against athletes. I didn't know what was good. You don't, it's warped. I'd never been against athletes. I didn't know what was good, what was bad. I just knew in prison on this round machine,

I could hold better numbers than Bob next to me. And the prison officer, Darren Davis walked behind me one day and he looked over my shoulder and he went, wow. He went, that is, is quick.

And he left. And then a couple of days later, he came back with all of these sheets of paper and they had all the world and British records on the indoor rail machine. And he gave them to me. And honestly, Rich, at that moment, I remember looking at this list and I was like,

I can break some of them records now. And I didn't think they were real. I generally didn't. And I'd woken up, this physical ability in my body, I never knew I had i was good at endurance sport and i never realized it and it planted the seed and i went back to my cell and i come back and i said can i do this can i try to break some of these records he went to a man called gareth sands and gareth sands was the governor of this prison he was a deeply religious man like

really really religious and darren went, this guy, prisoner John, he, he, he wants to do something with his life. He wants to change. And I believe this could help him. Will you let him try to break these records from prison? And I don't want to interrupt you, but had you voiced your desire to transcend your criminal upbringing and change your life? Or were you just sort of quietly, you know, hitting the erg every day? Had you told this guard, like, look, man, I really- Do you know what? I never had. I never, I never had that conversation with him because again, like- He could just see it in you. He sensed it.

He could sense a physical ability. And I think he could sense that I was a good guy. I wasn't horrible. The way I treated people in prison, even to the regard that the other week, like I can't even remember this, a guy on Instagram commented on one of my photos and I'd read this, I read the message and I met this guy. He said he was in prison with me.

I can't remember meeting him. And he was like, I remember the impact you had on my life when you was in prison and you was on the ram machine you was encouraging me and he you made me feel so special and it helped me better my life and i i can't remember but i that's what i mean again i wasn't a bully i wasn't a horrible person and i think darren could see that in me and he saw that i was good and he thought this guy could do something here so he went around the governor approved it so darren a lot of the prison officers they're not so sort of they're not so open-minded and stuff and they're trying to take you down a peg a lot of them don't want to a lot of them then didn't want to i don't know if you maybe not want you to succeed but

darren did so darren had to come in on his days off. So he wasn't being paid by the prison to sit with me to, to basically validate the records. Right. And they had to set a camera up. They had to put a special chip card in the RAM machine to pull the data off and take photographs and film it. So the first record I broke was for the marathon and I broke it by seven

minutes. And so marathon 26.2 miles. Yes. Right. On indoor. Right. British record. British record.

Right. You broke it by seven minutes. Seven minutes. I broke the first one. And your first attempt. First attempt. And I remember when I broke that record, I was laying on the gym mat after, and I remember when I broke that record I was laying on the gym mat after and I remember feeling this overwhelming sense of achievement and everything I'd ever wanted as a young kid to be better than

average to achieve something in my life to leave a legacy I felt everything I could do it through sport and I could use my body as a vehicle to get me out of that world and not only that but be successful and this was the thing that I could do to find that success then from that moment I become obsessed with being an athlete like to the degree where I'd go down to the library every Friday and I used to get the librarian she had to order books in from the outside library into the library because obviously there wasn't that many prisoners interested in sports nutrition and training and stuff so she would send to get these orders and bring them in and I'd have a

week I'd read read read read read and I started understanding about physiology I started understanding about sports nutrition then I started reading all these books Lance Armstrong's book all these Olympic rowers what year is this this was in 2009 and I started reading all these autobiographies of all these athletes and I was like I've got these characteristics I know I can be successful and then from that moment my dream in prison was be an athlete that was it within 16 months I'd set eight British records and three world records on the indoor rowing machine and I was at point, I was the only lightweight man in the world to have all three ultra endurance world records simultaneously at one point.

And that was it. I knew that I had this ability then. And Darren said it to me, he went, you've got the ability, not that you're fit, but you have the ability that you can suffer. And he went, if you come out of prison and you waste that gift,

it will be the biggest travesty that i've ever seen as a prison officer and those words to this day stick with me in my mind every single time i race in the iron man on that marathon all right next up we have susan david who is an award-winning psychologist on faculty at harvard medical school she's the CEO of Evidence-Based Psychology and the co-founder of the Institute of Coaching, which is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. In episode 356, we dove into her number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, Emotional Agility, as well as talking about her sensational viral TED Talk, which is called The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage. You should

all check that out. Here's Susan talking about our good versus bad emotions and the importance of embracing all of the emotions that we experience as human beings. Let's go back to this conversation about the good and the bad emotions and our sort of inability to just embrace that the human condition requires all of it. You have this beautiful phrase in your TED Talk, something about how the beauty and the fragility of life go hand in hand. I can't, I'm butchering it, I'm sure. But this idea that we need to embrace all of ourselves and that the path towards healing and wholeness and self-actualization requires us to, you know, have a meaningful embrace of whatever life throws in our path. Yeah, yes. It's this idea that life's fragility, life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility.

And, you know, I explore in the book this idea, you know, I think we've all had this. It's like you walk around and you're young and then one day you realize that you're not young, you're sexy, and then you realize actually no one's even looking at you anymore. You nag your children to clean their room and one day there's silence where their child once was. You're healthy until you get a diagnosis that brings you to your knees and really the reality of life is that tough emotions are part of our contract with life like we we don't get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or

leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. And yet we live in a culture that pays lip service to like going towards your, you know, going out of your comfort zone, but that at its core really has this idea that there's good and bad emotions. And so you start looking at the just frightening, you know, public health crisis, which is that depression is now the leading cause of disability globally. Right. It's crazy. Outstripping cancer. It's insane.

Outstripping heart disease. Heart disease. And so I think that what starts to happen is we start almost creating a situation where we aren't able to process difficult emotions when we're in a society that tells us positive thinking is all that matters or positive emotions, all that matter. And so we actually don't develop skill sets around this. And so the core ideas behind emotional agility is this idea that in order to navigate the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, we need to be able to strengthen our capability with the full range of this beautiful, messy, difficult human experience. And the irony, of course, is that if you can embrace all of that emotional complexity,

you could potentially get to a place where you have a positive attitude. Yes. So back to my point, which is that I'm not anti-happiness. I actually think that what I'm talking about is the pathway to authentic happiness. It's, it's, it's. Well, happiness is a tricky word. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even like it. Yeah. You know, a life of purpose and fulfillment, a life of personal meaning to you. Yeah. But even if we think about hate in a political spectrum, you know, there is this idea that there is the other, that there's this good and this bad, there's the right and the wrong. And sometimes we just, you know, if the gods of right came down and said to you, you know, you are right, that person is a complete idiot, you still get to choose how you want to engage with them. And unfortunately, I think what happens

is in our being hooked and being emotionally rigid about being right, we've lost our ability to have the conversation that really matters. Yeah. And I think in that example that you just gave, you know, to, let's say somebody wronged you and you have justifiable anger or you hold a resentment towards that person, ultimately you're the one who's suffering as a result of that, right? Yes. It's not serving you in that way, no matter how correct that you are. I'm often interviewed by Harvard Business Review and people will often ask questions like, what if my boss is a complete idiot? Like, what if my boss really is a complete idiot? Or what if this organization has really done me wrong?

Or what if my team member really is a slacker? And it just reaches the point, and with complete compassion, you can kind of understand that frustration. But if the gods of right came down and said, you are right, like, you are right, you are being mistreated, you are right. Where does that leave you? You know, where does that leave you? You know, is your action workable or is it not workable? Is your action bringing you closer to being the person you want to be? You know, if you are feeling wronged by your coworker and so you disengaging, shutting down in your career, not contributing, how is that serving your career goals? You know, and it might be that,

yes, this is a case where you want to make a shift, where you want to make a tweak. But I think, you know, one form of rigidity, of emotional rigidity is being hooked on being right. Yeah, that's a big one, I think, right? Rather than asking the question of, is my reaction serving what I'm trying to be? In sobriety, they say, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so, and happy would be recontextualized. In your example as, you know, do you want to, do you want to be right or do you want to live a life in accordance with your values? Correct. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we got to wrap this up here, but, but let's just leave the listeners with,

you know, some sense of a first step, perhaps somebody who's listening, the lights are going on for the first time and they're like, oh my God, I've been telling myself this or that. Of course, you know, pick up the book, Emotional Agility, and this will see your, see yourself through and hopefully raise additional awareness around these things. But what is like a first step for somebody who's on the very first page of beginning this process of trying to better understand their motivations and what their values are? Absolutely. So just to sum, emotional agility is the ability to be with your thoughts, your emotions, your stories in ways that are compassionate, curious, and courageous, and to take actions that are concordant with your values. And so I think a first step is if you're

someone who becomes judgy about whether you're right or wrong, whether you should or shouldn't you're right or wrong, whether you should or shouldn't have a story. One of the most critical aspects is ending the struggle by dropping the rope. And what I mean by that is just making a conscious choice to notice your emotions. It's a great place to start. Next up is the guest who has clocked the most appearances on the show over the years john joseph john is a hardcore punk rock icon who transformed his life kind of turned into this renaissance man he is a plant-based 10-time iron man athlete an author a musician he's the original and current vocalist for a band called the Cro-Mags and a self-proclaimed graduate of New York City's University of the Streets. We sat down this past August for his unprecedented sixth appearance on the show. That was episode 388.

And we talked about all kinds of things, including his latest book, The PMA Effect, as well as being a bhakti yoga devotee. So here's my man, JJ, on his life as a spiritual warrior dedicated to the service of others. But let's talk about service a little bit. Like you're somebody, I mean, you're really an inspiration to me for the level, you know, the service aspect of your life is really the priority of everything you do, right? And that really, like, I've watched you over the years, and time and time again, I've seen you as somebody who's had opportunities to kind of capitalize on this and monopolize on this, like, get a better apartment apartment or kind of just do what we do as humans,

as humans with aspirations to, you know, live better lives. And consistently, I see you make choices where you walk away from those things in order to ensure that your priority of being of service is always first and foremost like intact whether that's the soup kitchens that you do or you know whatever it is bro like this documentary like everything that you do is about that is about helping people and and i'm interested in like your perspective on on how like what i know is that people that that live in place, which is a place I aspire to live in more, are the people that ultimately not only have the biggest impact on the world in a positive way. Well, I shouldn't say always, but I see the impact of that. But they're also the most purpose-driven fulfilled and the happiest I have to

say you know that's true I mean my happiness is not derived from getting the next thing or me you know and I wrote about this in this book I said that somewhere along the line I realized that having a lot of shit ain't what brings you happiness. Because I never had nothing. And I've given what I did make when I had it. I gave it away. And my mom, she couldn't understand. When I took $150,000 that I had saved up and opened up the yoga center and then maintained it for 10 years, spending probably close to half a million.

She's like, you could have- As a non-profit. It's a non-profit. It was for free, right? Yeah. I didn't get anything. As a matter of fact, I did the construction in the place too at 93 St. Mark's, and then I just turned over the key. too at 93 St. Mark's and then I just turned over the key and I was kind of like the protector of the place making sure nobody came there and fucked with it or did anything what's known as like the

temple commander I just made sure nobody fucked around and did anything stupid and when people came in there and misbehaved they got a warning and then the next time it's like all right motherfucker but the point is my mother was, you could have had a house. You could have had all. And I'm like, Ma, this is what I want you to do. I want you to come to the Sunday feast. And I want you to meet the people that this place is helping. And the family that we've developed with the community and all these beautiful people that have gotten off drugs.

developed with the community and all these beautiful people that had gotten off drugs and and and overcome horrible shit by doing what i did with with the bhakti yoga and this is the place that they're they're learning it and they're healing so she came to the sunday feast and she's like now i understand she was like this is the most fucking beautiful thing that these people are changing their lives. You're helping so many people. And I'm like, there's a lot of people living in big mansions, man, and they're miserable people, and they have no love. And all their friends are there to fucking... There's a lot of them around here. Yeah, we pass some places, but everyone's sponging off them them and they don't know who to trust are they after my money

it's like if you're my friend i know you're my friend because you're my friend i ain't got shit to give you only thing i could give you is my time and and my service and try to help you you're not my friend because you could get something from me materialistically. I don't have that to offer. And, you know, when it comes, it comes. I'm not attached to it either way. The Bhagavad Gita says you have the right to the work. You don't have the right to the results of the work. That's not what you're supposed to concentrate and meditate on.

But the happiness of the service that I've done since I learned about it in 81 and started my journey, I wouldn't trade it for the fucking world. If you said to me, yo, you can go back and I'm going to give you fucking $10 million, I wouldn't take it. And that's the God's honest truth. I've turned down TV shows and all kinds of shit because it's not along the lines of my core values and what I see as important. So my happiness is not derived from, you know, it's derived from service.

And what's interesting is that that's very punk rock. It is. It's not selling out. You're not supposed to sell out. That's the ethics of punk rock but too many motherfuckers did sell out everybody could talk the talk but guess what what is McKee say true characters revealed under pressure and when that money came dangling in front of people's faces you saw a lot of people change and take off one uniform and put on another.

This ain't a motherfucking uniform for me. That's why even back in the day, I said, this ain't about fashion and clothes and how you look. Some of the most punk rock motherfuckers I ever met don't look like a punk rocker. Punk rock is a spirit, man. It's a fucking consciousness. It's like, fuck the man. It's about us, the the people and how do we help people you know you can't just and that's one of the things i always said about punk rock i'm like

it ain't enough to just fucking complain about something and bitch about it how do we fix it and that's where that's not punk rock punk rock is more like anarchy, like blow it up, right? They're not big on solution. Yeah, well, that was what I was finding. But then I was seeing people like the Bad Brains and Crass who started organic plant-based communities and fucking this and that. And you started hearing about other people and Chrissy Hine and what's she into. And she's into Vedic stuff and and all these different people and

even the guy from the dam captain sensible was vegan and like all of this you you saw an underlying spirituality in the in the punk rock movement and a lot of people in the movement like i said when i was getting down with this shit in 81 82 there, there wasn't too many aware, conscious punk rockers. A lot of them motherfuckers laughed that I stopped eating meat and that I would go to the Krishna temple and meditate and go do yoga. Oh, what are you? I mean, they would say to my face. Well, there's a straight edge, you know, movement within punk. That came later.

But that was later, right? That came later. And that was part of the whole kind of judgmental. They didn't come at people on the same level. They came at people thinking they were superior to everybody else, and that's why everybody hated that fucking movement, and that's why everybody hated the fucking vegan movement because they didn't come out of compassion.

A lot of people just were like, I have this knowledge that makes me superior to you i'm even gonna fucking you know talk down to you like i'm better than you and i think that's changed a lot now uh because more and more conscious people are getting into this for the right reasons like i said i see it as a positive thing and a lot of those people's voices uh got silenced as a matter of fact i've seen a lot of them go back to eating meat and and and uh and leaving punk rock and straight edge and going back to do drugs and all kinds of shit so when you get into something for

the wrong reasons that's not going to sustain your values and your desire will always be tested in life whatever the fuck you pick up and decide to attach yourself to. That's why I don't put any of them labels on myself. I know what my ultimate service is. It's Bhakti Yoga. Here's my mantra. That's from the Bhagavad Gita. There's nutshell verses of the Bhagavad Gita. There's nutshell verses of the Bhagavad Gita, the essence of the Bhagavad Gita.

And that means those who are constantly devoted to the path, I give them the understanding by which they can come to the Supreme. In other words, it's action. Take action. Better yourself every day. Don't just keep talking. Zip it. take action better yourself every day don't just keep talking zip it there's a chapter in my book called yo zip it and that's what it's about take action man and push through every single day that's what it's about god bless everybody man next up is the great des linden des is a two-time olympian who really captured the hearts of

millions of people the world over this past April when she became the first American female in 33 years to win the prestigious Boston Marathon. We talked about it in episode 375 along with her longtime manager, a friend of mine, former elite marathoner and US 50K record holder himself, Josh Cox. And we talked about how Des chose to sacrifice herself and her personal performance for the benefit of her friends during that race when she famously detoured to pace Shalane Flanagan back to the group after Shalane's port-a-potty break, and then did it again, selflessly repeating this gesture to help Molly Huddle bridge a separation gap, only for then, Des to go on and win the race. It was an incredible thing if you had an opportunity to see it. And it was a great podcast. So here's Des on

the importance of persistence and the importance of consistently showing up. Consistence and the importance of consistently showing up. Right. I mean, having the passion for competing and for what you're doing, you know, makes all the difference. If it's a job, if all it is is a job, like, you're not going to be great. You got to love the work, too. But at some point, it must have clicked in, like, okay, I'm going to Boston. Like, it's time to get serious.

Yeah. I mean, Boston's always been the race that got me fired up. So once that was on the schedule and it was like, I'm going to that race. Um, that's when I have an easy time preparing and like, okay, this is where I visualize myself down Boylston. And, um, you know, I've been doing that ever since I first ran there in 2007, Like I'm picturing yourself winning that race. You named your dog Boston, right? I did. Yeah. So this is like a heavy thing. Like why, why? I mean, I understand, but like why, why Boston? Why not New York? Why not Berlin? Sure. Um, Boston was my debut marathon 2007. It was a similar conditions to this year's, um, not quite as bad, but, uh, you know, it was a thing that kept me in the sport. I never thought I was going to be a professional runner. And I was

like, well, I'll try this marathon, try to qualify for the Olympic trials and then move on to the next thing. Um, but after that race, I was like, I love this event. I love 26.2 miles, but this course and with all the history, it just captured my heart. And it was like, I wanted to see what I can do here. But prior to that, I think I had read that you thought like marathoning was crazy. Like it wasn't like you were always pining to run a marathon. Yeah, no, I still think it's crazy. But yeah, I wasn't sold on it at all. I mean, coming out of in college, I was a person who was at all. I mean, coming out of, in college, I was a person who was like, the 10K is insane. There's no way I'm running that far. I'm a 1500 meter runner. And the coach was like, 5K. And you're like, oh, fine. You get tucked into the

longer stuff. It's interesting looking at the trajectory of your career, because you were a good high school runner and you were a good college runner, but you weren't like a superstar. Like I think you got third at Pac-10s or something like that at ASU. So it wasn't like, oh, I'm going to have a career as a professional runner and just rise all the way to the top. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. Yeah. Same type of bridesmaid thing where I was an all American. Um, I was a runner up, I believe at, at the high school level at a state championships and, uh, but I always competed and worked out with athletes who had those big breakthrough

performances. Like I ran with Amy Hastings, now Craig, uh, Victoria Jackson, Lisa Aguilera, all these people who won national championships. And I did everything with them. So it was like, what am I doing wrong that I can't have this breakthrough? What am I doing wrong that, you know, I'm working out and doing the exact same stuff as these guys. So I have the ability, I'm just haven't got it done yet. So what do you think it was that was not allowing you to get up on that next rung at that time? Like, what did you learn over the years that has allowed you to come?

Because, like, your career is really just one of gradual progression upward, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was patience, just letting my body adapt to the work and not forcing things. to the work and not forcing things. But it was also even in college, it was like, I wanted it so bad that I tried to force it. And sometimes you have to like step back and like, again, like love what you're doing and just engage in the process and not worry about the result. Like just worry about what you're doing right now. So walk me through like crossing that finish line. I mean, what is that experience like?

Yeah. Um, it's right on Hereford left on Boylston. I made the left and it was like the heavens just opened up and the wind gusted even harder. And I think I laughed, like someone asked me the other day, did you smile when you turned onto Boylston? I think I did because it was like, again, it was just comical how bad the weather was. And it was like, there's 600 meters to go and I'm going to get one last like from mother nature. And I still wasn't sure I had it in the bag. So I felt like I just needed to run strong and be ready to respond if someone was on me. So that's how I ran that stretch. And, uh, when I got past the Lenox hotel, um, I think that's where I got out kicked in 2011. That's

when I was like, okay, I think, I think I got this. Um, and then I saw Tom Grilk of the BAA did like a fist pump and you could start hearing the loud them announcing like, this is Desiree Linden. She's going to be your Boston champion. And I was like, okay, no one's, did like a fist pump and you could start hearing the loud them announcing like this desert linden she's going to be your boston champion and i was like okay no one's i got it and and that's when i was able to celebrate so it was a couple strides from the line um and i was in disbelief i was just this this can't be real and it was all this stuff we talked about, you know, it just seemed like it was not going to be my year. Yeah, that's what makes it so beautiful and poetic that you had sacrificed yourself twice. You had thought like this is, you know, if anything, I'm going to help these other women.

And then for it all to switch and make it your day is just something really amazing. really amazing. Okay, next up is Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval is an author and renowned historian, best known for his groundbreaking, massive bestsellers, Sapiens and Homo Deus. In episode 392, we sat down in his hotel room in New York City to discuss Yuval's latest work, which is called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, which is an amazing book. Everybody should read this. It's a probing and absolutely visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the unchartered territory of the future. So this is Little Me with one of the world's great public intellectuals, Yuval Noah Harari.

The first sentence in the book really sets the tone and kind of encapsulates everything that you're about and the work that you do, which is clarity is power. So can you explain that concept for me? Yes. It's common to say that information is power and knowledge is power. And this was true for much of history when information was very scarce and censorship worked by withholding information, by blocking the flow of information. worked by withholding information, by blocking the flow of information. But we now live in a very different age when we are flooded by enormous amounts of information. We have far too much of it. We don't know how to make sense of it. And censorship now actually works by distracting people with too much information, with irrelevant information, with disinformation. And in this age, clarity is more important than ever before

because we need to know what to focus on. Attention becomes maybe the most scarce resource of all. And where to direct your attention and how to keep your attention on the important things, this is extremely important. And one of the things that I guess differentiate the powerful people today from the less powerful is knowing what to do with their attention. Yeah, there's never been greater demands for our attention. Things like fake news, although ascending and we're having this fake news moment are certainly nothing new.

Misinformation and disinformation and propaganda are as old as humanity. But this watershed moment that we're having where we're just inundated with attention by virtue of devices that are specifically designed to addict us and distract us, it's become increasingly more and more difficult to discern truth from fiction, reality from obfuscation, and to just kind of navigate our lives with that sense of clarity. our lives with that sense of clarity. Yeah, and I would agree that fake news and disinformation are definitely not something new. We had them from the very beginning of history, and in many ways, it was much worse in the

past. With all the talk about Facebook and Twitter spreading rumors and fake news, just think about yourself in some medieval village a thousand years ago, maybe in England somewhere. And somebody comes along and tells you, hey, do you know this old lady who lives at the edge of the village? I just saw her flying on a broomstick. And, you know, within an hour, you would have a raging mob with pitchforks and torches ready to burn this old lady to death. So fake news is not a new are surrounded by devices which were designed to hack our brains

in a way which was never possible before because until today, nobody really understood the human brain. In the Middle Ages, the understanding of how the human body and how the human brain function and how human attention functions was extremely rudimentary. So yes, people knew a few tricks about how to grab attention but it was nothing like what we see today simply because science has progressed since the Middle Ages.

And I think maybe the most important thing for people to realize about living in the 21st century as against the Middle Ages or the Stone Age is that we are now hackable animals. People don't want to hear that. We like to think that we're sentient and that we have agency beyond the capabilities that you're sort of writing about? Yes, we are sentient. We do have agency, but something is changing. Until today, basically, nobody could really hack us. We were just too complicated

and science and technology were too primitive. So if you went around believing that, hey, I'm a free free agent nobody can really look into my brain nobody can really understand my mind no nobody can manipulate me and predict what i'm going to do next this was true but uh this is no longer true humans are extremely complicated animals, but they are not infinitely complicated. And in order for us to cross this watershed, we don't really need algorithms that know us perfectly. This is impossible.

Nothing is perfect in the world. You can't build a system that predicts everything or that understands you perfectly. But in order to have a big revolution in politics, in culture, you don't need a perfect system. The system just needs to be better than the average human. And this is not so very difficult because, you know, humans often make terrible mistakes in the decisions and the most important decisions of their lives. Humans often know surprisingly little about themselves, about their desires, about their minds. So if this is the yardstick to build an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself, this is not an impossible mission.

then you know yourself, this is not an impossible mission. And we are very close to the point when somebody like Amazon or like the Chinese government are going to have these kinds of algorithms, these kinds of systems. Our hour is almost up and I want to be conscious of your time, but I want to end this conversation bringing it back to where we started, which is this idea of clarity as power. And your methodology for being as clear as possible is your devotion to your meditation practice, Vipassana meditation. You meditate two hours a day. So, perhaps a good

way to end this is to talk a little bit about the impact that that practice has had on you as a human being and how it informs the work that you do. I don't think I could have survived these last few years without the meditation. You know, all the publication of the book and all the attention and traveling around the world without the peace of mind that the meditation brings, I could not have done it. I couldn't have written the book in the first place without the meditation because, as you say, it brings a kind of clarity and focus, especially if you try to condense the entire history of the world into like 450 pages. Which is very ambitious. Yes, you need. It gives you, it gave you this incredible objectivity though,

to see everything from 10,000 feet. Yeah, but you need to be able to focus because there are so many details that can take you here and there, and then you end up writing 4,000 pages and not 400 pages. But really, for me, the most important contribution of meditation is to really be able to see reality as it is and to tell the difference between what is really happening and what is just stories generated by the mind. The human mind- But you can pull your smartphone out and the algorithm would tell you.

This is the one thing that so far algorithms are not getting even close to telling you. Uh-huh. That the human mind is a factory for generating fictional stories about myself, about my family, about my country, about the world. And it's so difficult to tell the difference between the stories we invent and objective reality. And when I came to my first meditation retreat, Vipassana retreat, it was 18 years ago. I was doing a PhD in Oxford

and I thought I was a very smart person and that I know myself very well and I'm in control of my life. And the teacher gave us the first few days, the practice is very, very simple in a way. Just observe your breath. Just observe when the breath is coming in. Be aware when it's coming in, you know it's coming in. When it's going out, you just know it's going out. You don't need to do anything. Not a breathing exercise. You don't need to control the breath. You just know now it's coming in. It sounds like the simplest thing in the world. And I was absolutely shocked that I couldn't do it for more than 10 seconds. Like I would try to just know,

oh, is it coming in or out? And within like five seconds, the mind would run away to some memory, some fantasy. Oh, I forgot I needed to do this. So I needed to do that and whatever. And I realize I know almost nothing about my mind. I have absolutely no control over it. nothing about my mind. I have absolutely no control over it. We need to start from zero. I mean, and this was, I think it was the most important thing anybody ever told me in my life. And it was the most shocking realization of my life. And also- And transformative. And transformative. Yeah, very, very transformative.

And from then on, both in my private life and also in my work, I try to just stick with this very simple exercise. Just try to see what is really happening right now. Next up is my buddy Jesse Itzler. And this guy does a lot of stuff. He's a guy who fast talked his way right out of college into a recording contract, ultimately taking his music all the way to MTV, the Billboard 100, and even an Emmy. He's run 100 mile races. He's raised millions for charity. He's a super dad to four kids. He's an in-demand motivational speaker. And he just so happens to be a co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks.

After a barn burner appearance on the podcast back in 2015, which was episode 197, if you missed it, Jesse returned to the show in episode 369 for another absolutely stellar exchange about building your life resume and never, ever being afraid to fail. So here's Jesse. And to reframe it that way, that's super interesting. I've never heard anybody put it that way. Like, what if in 100 years, there's no more human beings? How does that change how you look at what you're going to do today?

If you knew that was factual, you'd probably travel more. You'd want to see more of the beauty of the world. You'd probably, you know, won't be on your phone as much. You won't be sitting there liking and texting and retweeting and doing all that stuff. You know, and we have a vision of what we think it's going to be.

But what if it's not? What if that did happen? It's fascinating to think about, man. And like, you know, that's the shit that happens when I've turned 50. I'm like, you know, my head hits the pillow and it's just like, oh my God, man. You know, if I do have 30 years left, me personally,

it's like, it just, it changes a lot of things for me. And it's a lot different than my thought pattern when I was 20. What was your thought pattern at 20? No consequences for my actions, you know, wanting, trying to make money. When I was 20, I was laughing at jokes that weren't funny, you know, going to meetings and wanting to get a sale or sell a marquee jet card. And I'd be like, you know, very often I'd be in a meeting and I'd be like, this guy is not my kind of guy.

You know, this is not my kind of guy. And then he would tell a joke and I'd be like, ah, because I wanted to make a... Yeah. Putting the mask on. Yeah. And it didn't feel good. Right. It didn't feel good in those situations.

What does happiness look like for you now? I mean, I know you gave a TED talk about this. Oh, I did. It's a lifestyle. It's not a decision. It's not a happiness is for me, it looks like a lifestyle and doing the things that it really is. It's a lot. I think a lot of people look at happiness as a decision, like, oh, I want to be happy now.

And I look at it more of how I choose to live my life, doing things that make me happy with the people that make me happy. There's so much power behind the momentum of our daily habits. And as somebody who's like, you're always putting yourself in these new situations. Like that's very different from how most people live. Like, you know, they get up, they go to their job, you know, whether you're living for the weekend or whatever, you kind of have your routine. And as you age, it's easier and easier to settle into that and more and more difficult to like think creatively out of the box about what the possibilities, you know, may be. So, you know,

how do you, you're going around, you're giving all these talks and talking to all these people, like, what are you telling them? Like, how are you getting people to, you know, to try to like jackhammer them out of like their worldview? Well, I think one thing is I encourage people to put something big on their calendar every year, circle it, commit to it, tell the world. So you have, you know, it's easy to tell the world now with social media. So you have accountability. And I feel like if, if you follow through with that big event or challenge or whatever it is, I believe that the benefits are so great. They last a lifetime potentially, and it becomes somewhat addicting. So that's one thing I really encourage people to do. One very simple thing that I suggest doing is when I was on top

of Mount Washington with one of my friends, when I took my son, he took his daughter. There were four of us. I said to him, he's a police officer. And one of the happiest guys I've ever met, I assume is not super wealthy. You know, he works for the local police department, but mega happy. And I said to him, I said, Kevin, how many of these trips do you take? We're sitting in our sleeping bag at midnight.

It's pitch dark. And he said, you know what? I take one trip a year with my high school friends. And I'm like, I got to do that because I only see my high school friends once every five years. That means I'm only seeing them like six more times. That's unacceptable. I can do that. And then he said, I take one trip, one or two trips. Every other month, I take a trip for myself. I just ran the LA marathon. I did whatever. And then I take a family trip. So every other month he takes a weekend and he circles it and he does something with his family or friends or

whatever. I call it the Kevin rule. I'm like, if I can't take one weekend out of every eight weekends of my life to do something with people that I love or that I want to do, then I'm living out of balance completely. And that's an easy thing to do. And most of those things don't cost money. Mount Washington, there's no, it's free to park. There's no cost to go climb the mountain. They may have to get gear, but most of those things don't cost, and they don't have to be physical.

It could be like, I wanna be in a book club or whatever. And that's a very easy thing to do, but so few of us do it, honestly. And why do you think that is? Like, what's holding people back? It's easy and comfortable to be in your pattern and your routine. It's very hard to break habit, food habits, daily habits, anything. And, you know, and people are very set in their ways.

That's A. And then B, they're told what to do. It's like we have a universal playbook. You know, work your ass off and take two vacations a year. You know, and like, that's not living for me. And it has nothing to do with where I am in my life now. When I was 20, I'm doing the same shit, Rich, I was doing when I was 21. I run every morning for an hour.

I eat fruit till noon. I have the same friends. The same shit gets me off. You know, it's like, I just, it might be, it's just grander, but there's a playbook and the playbook is broken. If you look at the playbook, you know, with divorce rate at 40, 50%, what 40% of American males are obese. I think something like 66- Higher than that. Higher than that. 66% of American adults are unhappy.

There's a Harris survey that just came out about that. It's like, I want to say it's like, I don't have the exact stat, but I think it's like 65%, it's even more, percent of all Americans over 35 don't have over $1, dollars in savings. I mean, the playbook's broken. It's broken. And then you go to this monastery where these guys are

living this super simple life and they're happy. And you hear this from anybody who travels from, you know, you're in a small village in Peru or something like that, where people have nothing or Costa Rica and there's community and these people are engaged and they're living longer and they don't have these diseases and they're not obese and they're not staring at their phones. And we're so judgmental. We have all these opinions about how people are supposed to live and we're such a prosperous nation. It's just, it's bizarre and disorienting that we've got so many things so wrong. And listen, if you love to work 80-hour work weeks and that's what you love to do, that's fine.

I'm not knocking it. All I'm saying is I think there are a lot of people, and I fall into this area sometimes myself, and I catch myself, that have dreams and aspirations of things that they always wanted to do, but it wasn't the right time, or they didn't have enough money, or they didn't have enough experience. It's never the right time. You're never going to have the right experience. And all of a sudden, you wake up and you're 70. And that's my point. And you're like, God, I wish I could have done it. And I think if you were to interview 1,000 elderly people, they would all probably say the same thing. Like, I wish I would have done this then. And once you become aware of that, the earlier you become aware of that, the fuller your life is. One of the things, maybe I'll wrap it up

with this. One of the things that I, a takeaway that I write about in my book, one of the 10, are two words that changed my life. And those words are remember tomorrow. When you have a split second decision that you have to make or whatever, remember how that decision is going to make you feel tomorrow. You want to drop out of the marathon at mile 18? Fine. How are you going to feel tomorrow when someone says, how'd you do? You want to take off your shirt and drink tequila at the holiday party and dance on the table and swing around and be the life of the party. That's amazing at the party until tomorrow. And, you know, those two words, if you really think about it, when you have a key decision

or you're at a critical juncture in something big, how are you gonna feel when you make this decision tomorrow? And it comes to peer pressure with decisions, with drugs, with whatever. And that's really, those words have really impacted me. I'm gonna blow off the workout today. Rich, we went late, it's an hour and a half. You haven't worked out yet. You know what?

It's already the afternoon. How are you gonna feel feel tomorrow about that? You're going to be pissed. Right? So that's a powerful thing. And any technique or tool or thing that you can give yourself to give you an edge and help you be better is amazing. And for me, those techniques come through trial and error, trying a bunch of different things. And it's not some expert telling me what to do. Yeah, maybe I'll try it, but I have to convince myself that it works, you know? And that's been something, those words have been two words that really have worked for me. Powerful, dude. Come on, you guys know Julie, right? My beautiful wife, Julie Pyatt, aka Srimati. In addition to being my life partner, my business partner, the mother of my children, Julie is an accomplished yogi, healer, musician, host of her own podcast called Divine Throughline.

And in episode 374, which was entitled The Power of Story, she joined me in a conversation as well as an interactive audience Q&A that was excerpted from a group session during our retreat in Italy. And it was kind of an open freewheeling exchange oriented around the theme of storytelling, about the courage of vulnerability, about how owning and sharing your story can serve as a vehicle to connect with yourself and others. And in this clip, Julie and I talk about our origin story and the very rocky road of near financial ruin that we had to endure on our way to doing what we do today and becoming who we are today. So here's me and the one and only Srimati. You must do what you love.

That's what you must do in your life. You must do what you love. And so it made no sense. It made no intellectual sense whatsoever. We had no money. We had cars repossessed. We lost our health insurance. I lost my bank account. I didn't have a bank account for four years. Like, how does that happen? I was like a real person,

like making real money. And, you know, in the bank, you know, I go in the bank and I've had like how many car leases with them and like how many, you know, and I go in to talk to them and I'm like, okay, I'm in this problem. And, you know, and, and I overdrew my account and there's all these charges and I need you to reverse them. And they were just like, fuck off. And I was like, really? Like, I thought we like had a thing. I thought you were, what do you mean? You know, and I wasn't making like tons of money, but you know, I was, I was there. I was in, I was in the system. So within all of that, we had these experiences. So I knew I was telling Rich, I was like, what you have to do is you have to train. You have to go out and cycle and run and be in that vibration because I always

believe what I just told you guys that you have to do what you love. Because if we do what we love, then the world will be brighter and better because creation is beautiful, right? So how could I want that for myself and then yell at him and tell him to go get a law job. It's not right. Just, it wasn't right. And I also knew that wasn't the way through. I knew that he could take a law job if he needed, needed, or if he wanted to, and it might give us some medium level of band-aid, but it wouldn't be the transformation that

was the life I wanted for me and for him and for our kids. And so I begged him, I said, you train first, you see to me and the children second. And if a law job literally lands in your lap, you service it with complete neutrality. You just do what needs to be done and just get it done and that's it and he was in agony many days just looking at me and I would just be good I mean whoever is giving you the message to sit down that's not the message that I was getting and I don't know who was delivering you that message but I was freaking out throughout this whole process. And it was her conviction, her complete strength in this knowingness that allowed me to have the space to explore in this way. But there were many times

where I was like, this is totally insane. What are we doing, we had no money coming in. And I would go out and train and think, this is not really a smart thing to do right now. And then I would feel ashamed. And it was very emasculating as, you know, somebody who sort of, you know, is supposed to be the guy who's providing. And I was really unable to do that at that time. It was very confusing. And there were also plenty of times where I would be at the park with the girls, like in the middle of the day with the other moms, and thinking like, what am I doing with my life? Like, I used to be a lawyer and I had this stuff going on and like now I don't know what I'm doing. So it's very disorienting. And I think that's part of the alchemizing process that Julie was referring to.

And on some level, it was a test of like, how deep are you willing to go? Like, how much are you willing to suffer? Like, are you willing to put yourself on the line to this extent every day providing a new challenge and a new obstacle to overcome? That was really like a test of your mettle. Like, are you really committed to this or not? And looking back on it now, it's this weird thing of having 20-20 vision in the rear view

where it all looks like it was perfectly designed and it all makes perfect sense. And it appears as if it happened seamlessly and in a compressed period of time. But in truth, it took a decade, basically, for us to be in a place where we can sit here before you guys now. We had to suffer tremendously to get here, and I wouldn't change a thing. And I think without that process, we wouldn't be able to carry the vibration of non-judgment and compassion and presence that allows us to do these things that we get to do now. Yeah, and because we understood this as a spiritual alchemy process, as an opportunity.

And let me back up. So when I first started doing these retreats here, I had a really beautiful vision for a lifestyle company. It was called Jai Lifestyle. That's why I call the yoga Jai Yoga. Jai means hail or praise or victory. And it's a great three-letter word that you, beautiful for branding, right? It's good. So I had this whole vision and my home is called Jai House and it was Jai Yoga and we were doing these retreats, and then I was doing Jai environments. I was designing people's spaces, and we had a community that would come and sing kirtan in our teepees called Jai Tribe. So we had the whole thing. We

had the whole thing, and it was good. It was really good, and like a good idea and a good intention. And yet, in order to really be the way showers that we were meant to be, we were too immature. There was too much personal ambition in there. And I always refer to Derek Zoolander. It's like, we want to make a school for kids who can't read good. But the problem is we hadn't really gone through the alchemy. We hadn't really gotten real.

We were still wanting it for a different reason. We weren't totally empty. We weren't really totally empty. Because there were still some wounds or some image or some things that we were trying to achieve for that reason. And so we had a beautiful sacred wedding on our land. It was magnificent. One of the most beautiful days of my life.

So gorgeous. We had Bhagavan Das doing a Vedic fire ceremony. We had gospel singers. We had channelers. We had African wedding singers. My boys were adorable and walked you know, walked me down the aisle and we were on our land. And it was truly just a joyous, joyous day. And on that day, we activated the initiation that would lead us through the fall and allow us to rise up.

fall and allow us to rise up. So many of us in this room are being faced with challenges. We have very serious things that are going on in life. I don't know all the details, but I just know because we have a collective group of around 50 people. So within that, there's going to be a whole sort of array of things. And so what we can offer you is that you can't get away from life's challenges. You can't avoid whatever your life plan is for you. But what you can do is you can shift the lens and you can meet it in a different way. So again, we have all heard people say it's not what happens to you, but who do you become in the face of what happens to you? And mostly every time that something's happening to us, we can't imagine that our higher soul would have chosen this for us. We're just kind of like,

what the fuck? Are you kidding me? Like, this is not what I want. What? Like, how is this happening? Right? But if you shift the way you come to it and you view it as a spiritual test or an initiation and you refine your emotional reaction to it, your judgment, your labels of what you attach to it, you will find that you can transform it. Okay, next we have one of the world's leading scientific authorities on the subject of longevity, Dr. Walter Longo. Walter is an expert in gerontology and biological science, as well as the director of the USC Longevity Institute and the program on longevity and cancer at IFOM in Milan.

He is the author of an extraordinary book called The Longevity Diet. I urge all of you to read. And in episode 367, we sat down to discuss his specific longevity prescription, a daily diet regimen based on a study group of centenarians. Think of the blue zones. But he then combines with this periodic fasting protocol that he calls the fasting mimicking diet. So here's Dr. Longo on developing

a better scientific understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of aging, of disease, and of course, longevity. So aging is actually not a bad thing, right? I mean, violins age and they get better, right? And marathon runners, they get better, at least for a while, as they age. And then, you know, maybe the peak performance for a marathon runner peaks around 32 to 35, which is very different from other athletes. Senescence is really the word that deals with

changes that are detrimental. So accumulation of damage and other dysregulation that leads to dysfunction, right? So that's the word. Senescence, usually we use aging because people, everybody understands that word better. So it's fine to use aging. But yeah, so as time goes by, systems accumulate damage and they start becoming dysfunctional. Why does the body suddenly become less adept at repairing that damage? Well, I mean, there are a lot of theories of aging and a lot of people, most people have focused on the aging part itself. I come up with a term which I call juventology or uventology. And the difference is that I focus on what is the program that keeps you young versus

what is the process that makes you old, right? So it's very different. Gerontology versus juventology is sort of like the study and science of health versus the study and science of disease, which is really the model of Western medicine. Yes, yes. In a sense, I think so. Because if you're studying things going wrong, aging, right, then you focus on the deterioration.

So for example, if you think of a car, and that's one of the pillars that I talk about in the book, you can study the tires and you can say, okay, I'm going to learn everything about the rubber, how the rubber gets older and older, and how to make it not get older and older. But I can come around with uventology and say, why are you worried about that? Just change the tires. Do 50,000 miles and put a new set of tires on. Now all of a sudden, all the research, you can see how it's pointless, right?

You just have to find out how to replace the tires. So you got to figure out how the body can produce new tires, right? Which gets into this stem cell regeneration work that you do. Okay, so let's get into this world of fasting. I mean, when does it first become evident to you that this relationship between a caloric restriction and the impact biochemically, positive impacts biochemically, starts to percolate into your awareness? And where do you go with that? Yes, so first of all, a caloric restriction, which is what Walford was doing, which refers to

eating, let's say, 25% to 30% less all the time, it doesn't work, right? And it doesn't work for some reason we know, some reason we don't know. But even in mice, you know, the original observation were made 100 years ago. And then it turns out that about a third of the genetic backgrounds benefited from calorie restriction. A third had neutral effects and a third had negative effects, right? And so jumping ahead 20 years, then, is the mouse studies that we first did, which were, you know, what if you take a mouse and you give it this fasting-mimicking diet? Why is it a fasting-mimicking diet? if you take a mouse and you give it this fasting making diet why is it a fasting making diet is is uh um you know what i was talking earlier about the nutrients determine what genes are

activated or not so if you have a certain composition low protein low levels of certain amino acids um and then uh low sugar high carbohydrate but low sugar um and high fat but good fats right all that you put it together then the response of the system is just like if you're giving it water only fasting. You just would give water. And you heal for four days, and then you put them back on a bad diet, a relatively bad diet. It is a vegan, so four vegan days for the mice, and then 10 days of animal-based diet.

And then you keep doing this twice a month. Now we show that the mice live longer, about 11% longer. But the remarkable part is the cancers were reduced by almost 50%. Wow. And the inflammatory diseases were reduced by 50%. And these mice, their cognitive abilities was much improved, right? So they just look younger, healthier. So they live longer, younger, and healthier. Then we did the human clinical trial with this prolon fasting mimicking diet.

And we did three cycles once a month, five days, again, vegan, five vegan days of this low-protein, low-sugar, high-good-fat diet. And then we give them 25 days of no recommendation. Go back and do whatever it is that you always done. No exercise recommendation, no food, no nutrition recommendation. And then we measure the effects after a week and three months after the last cycle. And, you know, I think the results were remarkable. So lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, lower triglyceride, lower fasting glucose, lower inflammation, systemic inflammation as measured by CRP, and lower IGF-1, which

we believe is one of the key markers, risk factors for both aging and cancer. But the interesting thing, this happened much more power, it was much more powerful in people that had the problem to begin with. So if somebody started from an ideal situation, there were a lot less changes than somebody that started with high levels of this. Yeah, of course. Of course. One of the things that I thought was fascinating in reading your book and your work was this idea that the fasting mimicking diet will have a, will make healthy cells more resistant to, like if you have cancer, right, it will make those cancer cells more susceptible to the cancer treatments, to the chemotherapy, and the healthier cells strong so that they will be able to withstand those treatments. I didn't say that very eloquently. No, that's exactly right. Yeah.

So, yeah, then like we had observed for bacteria and yeast, you take a normal cell, at least in a mouse, and the early data from clinical studies is suggesting the same. We've shown already for white blood cells, for example, from humans. So if you give them chemo, the good cells know what to do during starvation. They become protected. They stop dividing or they reduce growth rate and they enter a protective mode. The cancer cells, by definition, by the way, rebel against this. They cannot.

Otherwise, they wouldn't be defined as a cancer cell. So one of the hallmarks of cancer cells is the ability to grow independently of growth factor and to refuse anti-growth signals, to rebel against anti-growth signals. So fasting is an anti-growth signal, and the cancer the cancer cell rebound. Now you got a problem with that. And I use the analogy of imagining somebody running in the desert without shade, right? And without water. Now, if you were running in the desert, like cancer cells do, you know, you have shade and water, you may make it, right? And so if you have, in the case of cancer cell, lots of growth factors, lots of proteins, amino acids, and sugar, fine.

That's what they've evolved in. That's what they understand. As soon as you start removing glucose and removing growth factors like IGF-1, et cetera, and adding anti-growth factors, now the cancer cells are going to have a problem. And that's what we see. That's why we see the fasting-mimicking diet being as effective as chemo. But particularly, we see this working together. And that's where the sun comes in, right?

The sun is the chemo. And so, you know, you have no water and you have the sun hitting you, you're going to be dead. It's just a matter of time. Right. and you have the sun hitting you, you're going to be dead. It's just a matter of time. Right. It's amazing how that's worked out, that it has the desired effect on the cancer cells, which is to hopefully make them go away, and at the same time, strengthening the healthy cells. It might have not worked out. It might be evolved, right?

So we're starting to suspect that. Think about sleep, right? So you sleep, and sleep is not there by mistake, right? It's forcing you to rest for however many hours. So we're starting to think, is it possible that because all these organisms mostly stay yeast, bacteria, mostly they stay in a starvation mode. Once in a while, they start eating, right? Humans were not in that situation, but fasting was probably so common that you didn't have to force anybody to do it because

they were forced by the condition, right? So then what if fasting was the moment where the pre-cancerous cells were getting killed and now you use it to protect your cells in the moment of starvation from the sun, from whatever other, you know, problems and toxins you might be exposed to. So it may very well be an adapted process where you're starving, protect your good cells, protect your genes, and then get rid of cells that are, you know, not functional anymore. Also to eat them, you know. All right. Well, we have to wind this down, but I have two questions that I can't let you go without asking. The first is, if somebody is listening to this or they're watching this and they're health conscious, they're interested in taking care of themselves. But this is brand new information. They never heard anything like this before.

You know, what's the thing that you want people to bear in mind that might not be self-evident to the average consumer about how they approach their day, their diet, their lifestyle habits? diet, their lifestyle habits? Well, I mean, you know, I have a list at the end of the chapter four, I think, in the book, and there's 10 things that I think people all should do that are not very hard. And of course, you know, different people will get to different levels of it. You know, so for example, what we talked about earlier, the 12-hour limit, you do 15 hours and I say 12 and you can get to 13. Well, at least you're close. And that's the idea.

Try to get as close as possible to all these recommendations because they're really based on five pillars. I mean, my opinion is in there, but not very much. I mean, it's more like a systematic way of looking at this, including our history, you know, where do we come from? Not just systematic in Silicon Valley way of, you know, trying to hack everything, but more like, you know, let's combine that hacking with our history and where we come from, you know, to make sure that we stay in tune with evolution. Great. That's a great answer. And if you were to wake up and find yourself to be the Surgeon

General of the United States, what would be your primary first policy initiative? Like, what needs to change in our healthcare system? Yeah, so I get fired within probably like a week. Somebody tell me that. Everybody, I ask every doctor that comes on the show the same question. I mean, every one of them will get fired for what they would wanna make happen. But it's funny because I believe that the surgeon general

when 50 years ago say smoking is bad for you and he was fired for saying that. And it was way before. Yeah, I think that's before. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I, I think that for sure, um, these, uh, five meals a day, uh, is a bad idea. Um, it's, it's a company, this obesity, uh, epidemic in the United States and around the world. You know, when you have 70% of people in the U.S. that are either obese or overweight, and you still recommend eating five times a day, it's entertaining to me that they don't understand

that what could work in a clinic. You know, if you brought somebody into a clinic, as we do, and you keep them there, then it could actually work. But if you tell somebody eat five times a day, then what happens is they start eating more and they eat for 15, 16 hours a day. Next up is hands down a podcast favorite

and good friend of mine, Darren O'Lean. Who is Darren? Darren is a wellness advocate, a supplement formulator, an environmental activist, basically an inspiration to me and many, many other people across the world, because this guy knows what he's talking about and walks his talk from the food he consumes to the lifestyle habits he practices. He's essentially the thriving embodiment of what it means to truly own and take responsibility for your health and your life and the planet we all enjoy. This excerpt is from his third appearance on the show.

It's episode 382. And it was, of course, another deep dive filled with next level nutrition insights that he's gleaned along the way from years of all of his adventures as an exotic superfood hunter. We talk about his latest endeavor, barucas, the baroonut. That's his new thing. It's pretty amazing. And in this clip, Darren shares some of his personal insights on the why behind his quote-unquote super life. So without further ado, here's Darren.

The only reason I started superfood hunting is because, and that wasn't even a term I gave myself for sure. It was because my father was an agricultural professor in Minnesota. I grew up around farmers. I grew up around some sense of the business around it. the business around it. And by playing with these things and formulating with them and looking at them, how would you not have the morality and ethics of showing up and seeing where they're from,

how they're handled, what's the real history, what's the real usage and how do you process things to do what? My goal is a catalyst to let these things, all of these things in front of me, all of these said superfoods are just a catalyst for these nutrients to get to people so that those people can thrive, period. That my why is way beyond superfood hunting because I suffered as a kid. I was having issues

and challenges as a kid. I realized finally that what I was putting in my mouth made a difference in my brain, made a difference in my body, made a difference in my outlook. So that was in my DNA. So to be able to go out to me and find these things and preserve the quality and preserve these things that have been used for thousands and thousands of years for really good reason. It is my mission to make sure that when people are, they're hard-earned money and they're not getting quality, they're not even getting active compounds that they were meant to get by buying these. That's a shame because they're then walking around going, no, it didn't do anything for me. And so that goes back to what I'm saying.

Like, and part of what I want people to get the nutrients so that they can combat this modern day stressful world. And that's a whole nother conversation in this underwhelming nutrient food that we have so that you're not pulling around this suffering. I want people to fricking live. That's why I'm doing this stuff. I'm fascinated by it, but ultimately I want people to consume the greatest foods in the world so they

can not just exist, but they can actually, you know, thrive and have enough energy to kick some ass and live, live the kind of dream life they want. Yeah. I think that's, that's something that gets lost in the conversation about nutrition.

It's not just about like losing weight or, you know, promoting longevity. These are great things, but, you know, if you can rejuvenate yourself to a point where you truly are thriving in an optimal state, then the conversation needs to be about what you're going to do with that, right? And I think something that gets underserved in the conversation about Darren is that I think, you know, like, you're very clear, and you said this to me many times, like, I know what I'm here on earth to do. Like, I'm very clear about that. But this is really like a spiritual odyssey for you. 100%. And you're coming from like this profound spiritual place. I know you've done a lot of work in that arena.

And so it's much more than just like, hey, healthy food. Yeah. Well, he's talking about addiction hitting my life. You know, when my dad, I've said the story, so I don't need to get into it. But in 2005, when my dad passed away said the story so i don't need to get into it but in 2005 when my dad passed away from 30 years of sobriety and started drinking again it was when you when i lost my father there was something that hit me so bloody deeply

through that pain that i was like darren uh sorry, audience, quit fucking around. You know what I mean? It's like, quit dabbling in this stuff. You've been to these things, you've seen things, take that knowledge and do something with it. And that to me has never left me, it never will. And so it expresses itself in Superfoods. It expresses itself on other projects. It expresses itself in, you know, why I called my book super life is because ultimately underneath

all of it, Rich, I do want people. I want myself. I want you. I want the camera guys. I want myself, I want you, I want the camera guys. I want people to live a super life. Like I really do. Like, cause the ladder is just pain, suffering and existing. And we're all gonna hit that, but getting and cultivating the skills and getting the nutrient value so that you have more tools to deal with it and think straight and then figure out the

other things that you need to support yourself. If that's finding a guru, if it's finding a practitioner, if it's listening. I mean, here's the thing about purpose. It's so easy to blow it off because it's a whisper. And that whisper is often taken over by a megaphone of all the other crap the world tells us we should do. You know that, right? Your freaking story is right down the center of that. You're this, you're a lawyer, you're studying this. Like saying, oh, like who is that? So I get that. And I listened to my father say this

when I was nine years old. I could barely see over the dashboard of the car. And I asked my dad, don't know, asked me how I did. I said, what do you want in your life? And my dad said, I want to sail because I was in the Navy and I always want to have a boat. I want to be in the sunshine. And here we are in Minnesota. I want to motorcycle again and feel the wind on my face. And so he had a few other things. I heard that. And then I spent the next 30 years with that man and him not fulfilling that stuff. Do you think that his addiction and his sadness and his pain and his anger of A, all the things that that came from, from his childhood, but also not fulfilling

his purpose that he revealed to me. And the gift that he gave me was I heard it, but I am going to actually do it. And somewhere in me, I heard that and I felt that. I think one thing I became aware of is if you don't intend your life, if you don't set in motion what it is that you want, guess what? That choice is going to be made for you. Yeah, I know what that's like. Yeah. You'll be reacting to your life. And so many people are like, I just got through the day.

Oh, man. But you're doing nothing to grow the part of you that wants to cultivate the life that will give you joy. It's not easy. But if you don't give your energy to it, then that wolf inside of you goes hungry. And then the other wolf who is just reacting all the time is hungry. So now you're just addicted to that weird ass life getting by. Next thing you know, you blink a year, five years, 10 years, and you're like, what am I doing? five years, 10 years, and you're like, what am I doing? This next guest rocks hands down one of the most impressive physiques that I've ever seen in my entire life, Nimai Delgado. Nimai is an IFBB professional men's physique bodybuilder,

but here's the unexpected twist. Nimai has never eaten meat in his entire life, not one bite ever. He's also just an unbelievable sweetheart of a guy. He joined the podcast in episode 385, and we sat down to talk about his impressive vegan gains, how he does it. We talked about his daily diet and fitness tips to help people out there trying to get more fit. And it's a conversation that I think will leave you not only inspired, but also questioning more than a few long-held assumptions about the role of nutrition in athletic performance. So, here's Nimai on how he deals with people who find it impossible to understand that he is vegan.

So, we referenced earlier that the more successful you get and every kind of hurdle that you overcome, you know, in your mind makes you makes you more bulletproof to, you know, the voice of dissent. But also there's going to be the people who are like, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but right. So I can't let you go without asking about the steroids because you're in a culture in which that is, look, it's ubiquitous, right? So, I'm sure there are people out there like, well, he's not eating animal products, but he's doing steroids, right? So, where do you come down on all of this? Yeah, there's a lot of people say that. There's videos about it. There's like-

Oh, are there? I mean, you name it, there's articles. There's like, it's the internet, right? Remember that. So, just remember that everything on the internet isn't true, right? You don't know who wrote it. So, it's a sad truth that society has set the bar so low about what's possible and what's not. So, I get accused of it daily.

You know, I even, I think I blocked the word on my Instagram because it was just like every other comment was that. And I was like, I'm sick of hearing it. You know, I'm not here to defend myself to anybody. I'm here to talk about the benefits of this diet. You know what I mean? Like, if you don't believe me, it's not my job to convince you. Then, like, I'll just keep on living my life and talking about what I want to talk about. But the issue there is that people have set the bar so low

about what's possible and what's not possible naturally. And they think that they are doing like justice by accusing somebody of taking steroids. And don't get me wrong. A lot of guys do. A lot of guys that are listening probably don't know that a lot of guys they know are doing steroids because just because you do steroids doesn't mean that you're going to blow up. Like it's always about the hard work. It's always about the diet. It's always about sacrifice and effort, right? Supplementation, all this other crap, it accounts for this much. If you don't have this huge pyramid, you can't get like, this is the amount that supplements accounts for. pyramid. You can't get like, this is the amount that supplements accounts for. So that bar has been set so low and people are so easily accusing other people of doing it that it perpetuates that thought. And the person below that reading saying like, oh yeah, you only got this way because of

steroids. Like now that person thinks that that is the only way that you can get that way, but they've never tried it. They don't know their limitations. Like how could you possibly know your limitations if you never pushed yourself to your limitations and know how far that bar really is. And I'm the type of guy like I pride myself on work. I pride myself on work ethic. I pride myself on optimizing things. It's like I'm very analytical data driven. So I find out what works and I apply it. And there's so much room for growth when you optimize your nutrition and you optimize your, uh, your exercise protocol, like your exercise programs. So many people don't do that. They think that they're going to take a magic pill, take a magic juice or whatever, and they can get

there without doing all the hard work that comes before it. So, my answer is like, it's really easy to judge somebody based off of a photo or one picture. You don't know me. You know, you don't know where I come from. You can look at me and never ever assume that I'm a white Argentinian Hindu, right? Like, you don't know my story. So, how could somebody possibly know someone from one photo or one video when 99% of the time that person doesn't even know who they are? Right? So, it's like I've accepted it. Like, I've just come to terms with it. It's an argument I'll never win.

It doesn't matter what I do. I'll never convince anybody. But it's just a sad reality that these people think it's impossible, but they've already exposed the limitations of their own mindset because they don't believe it's possible for them. So it definitely can't be possible for anybody else. But it's about understanding people as well and just understanding that people judge something they don't know. Same way that I was judged when I was a little kid and the way I was raised. And it's okay. You know, you just have to approach them and help them understand. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to

convince anybody to go vegan, like, because I want them to go vegan or anything like that. It's like, I'm just trying to help you. Like, I just want you to feel as good as I feel, you know? And if, you know, if you put all this stuff aside as ego and these like paradigms, then maybe you can experience a different version of life that you never anticipated. So, it's just where I'm at. Yeah. Beautifully said, man. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. How much are you training right now?

I train daily. Like I said, that's my meditation. But I heard you say somewhere like, oh, it's 45 minutes in the gym, right? Like I have this vision. Like I used to live on Marine Street around the corner from Gold's Gym and I would go to Gold's Gym.

And then, you know, over, I've lived in Los Angeles like 20 years and every blue moon I'll pop in over there. And it's like- The same guys. From nine to five, it is the same people. They've been going there for 30 years and they look the same.

And they're literally, it's like they check in in the morning and they're there like all day long. You know, the same like sort of aging bodybuilder crew, female bodybuilders and the like. I always say it's like a mix between like a prison yard and a porn set. Yeah, it's weird, man. You know? But then when I heard you say like,

look, if you can't get it done in 45 minutes, like you're not focused. Essentially, it's what it is. Like, even when I was working as an engineer, people thought I was a professional bodybuilder full time. They had no idea. You know, like I talk about that for that reason is that like, yeah, but it's easy because you have all the time in the world to spend three hours in the gym. I don't have that because I have a job and all this stuff. And I was like, wait, wait a minute. Like I was an engineer for, you know, five years and I lived that same lifestyle and all you need is an hour a day, you know, like that is about like it's not like like

endurance training i guess like where you have to go like yeah more time equals so much better you know what i'm saying like there's a certain limit there where you can't break down anymore you just you become useless at that point so there's no point in working out two hours when you know an hour and a half of it you're on your phoneshitting, talking to people and just kind of spinning your wheels. Like, that's the reason why you're not seeing results, bro. Like, cause you talk all day, you know, if you go in there with 45 minutes to an hour and really put in the work, you will walk out of there, like crawl out of there. Like, that's why I like spend a day with like your gym buddy and then spend a day with me or spend a day with another professional bodybuilder. And you'll

understand why they look that way. You know, people think that just by being in the gym, you're going to get results. There's a whole industry built upon that idea. Very much so. Very much so. So you only need an hour max, you know, but then think about this, is that you're outside of the gym 23 hours. Which one do you think holds more weight for building muscle? You know, like, yeah, you break down in the gym, but you build outside of the gym. Your daily habits outside of the gym hold way more value than what you do inside of the gym. So if you can get your diet right, you can get your daily habits right, get everything kind of just your ducks in a row, then the results will really start to come in. So that's what I'm talking about, the extra growth in different aspects of people's lives.

Next up is Sanjay Rawal, who is the film director behind a great new documentary called 3100 Run and Become, which is a behind-the-scenes immersion into this crazy race called the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 mile run. It's essentially the world's most elusive and elite multi-day running race. A 3100 mile race that takes place around a half mile city block in Queens, New York. It's an amazing film. You should all check it out. It's streaming online in the U.S. and Canada. So just Google it. It's easy to find. He dropped by the podcast in episode 389. it out. It's streaming online in the US and Canada. So just Google it. It's easy to find. He dropped by the podcast in episode 389. So here's Sanjay on running as ritual, running as a way of connecting us with nature, with the divine, and the power of running to unite us all.

Running unites us. You know, at one point, every single culture on earth relied on running. Again, we weren't agricultural. No one was agricultural until 10,000 years ago, which meant that we were all hunters and gatherers. And the fastest, strongest runners were the ones that were most adept at hunting. So it's literally baked into our DNA, and it's baked into our culture if we can rediscover that. So, when someone says to you, we were born to run, like what does that mean to you?

You know, the book was really, really inspiring. But I think there were some parts of the book that might have been misunderstood. parts of the book that might have been misunderstood. There's a fascination with these traditional ancestral, call them ancient running cultures, like the Tarahumara, like the Navajo, like the Hopi, like the Bushmen, that they have some deep genetic advantage, that they're superhuman or they have special DNA or that it's their food, their chia seeds that make them- Right, their chia seeds that make them better runners. But they're better runners because they work harder at it and they feel it's more important. I mean, for someone who wants to run to lose weight or run to win a race, those are really strong and powerful motivations.

But if you feel that running is a form of prayer, you have a different attitude. And our Navajo character, who actually is the race director of the Tarahumara's Copper Canyon race, he told me, he said, running is a prayer. You know, when you're running, your feet are praying to Mother Earth. You're breathing in Father Sky. Running is a celebration of life. It's like when you run, you appreciate everything around you. And running is a teacher. It teaches you about who you are.

It helps you get through hardships. And I think running is a safe way to show that there are actually things that unite people. Like when you're on a trail or you're in a race, there's no red, there's no blue, there's no elections. There's no red, there's no blue, there's no elections. When you're running, especially when you're competing, you only have yourself and if you're in a relay, your teammates. But ultimately you have your feet and your breath and your heart. It's elemental.

And that's given me a lot of solace. I know that we've been running for millions of years and it's an activity that we're going to continue doing for lot of solace. It's like, I know that we've been running for millions of years, and it's an activity that we're going to continue doing for hundreds of thousands more, regardless of what the political state of humanity is. If we can go back to that state, I think we'll all realize that there are things that unite us that are much stronger than the things that we think divide us. Yeah, this ritualization of human behavior. And I like the

characterization of running as a vehicle to connect with your breath and the power of breath, right? When you think of it in those terms, it starts to sound a lot more like a meditation practice than an athletic endeavor. At the same time, I think the question is, and here's a question for you, how do you balance your spiritual life and the aspect of competitive racing? Yeah, that's a tricky thing, right? I mean, I think my personal perspective on competition has always been inward facing. Like, I'm not that concerned with what anyone else is doing. I'm trying to be the best version of myself.

else is doing. I'm trying to be the best version of myself. And if I can walk away from an event satisfied that I had done that, then that's a win irrespective of whatever the leaderboard says, right? And I think that's echoed in the movie with these runners in the 3100. As much as, you know, Ashbrahanal, I don't know how to say that. Exactly. That's exactly right. Is, I don't want to spoil it. I was about to spoil it, but I'm not going to. He sort of iterates throughout the movie that it is a competition, but that it's really not about that. these competitors or anybody for that matter can get to a place of being able to let go of that externality, ultimately the better they perform anyway.

We began our theatrical run on Friday in Santa Fe. And as you know, the film's going to be rolling out around the country from the Southwest to the Pacific Northwest, California, Colorado. But we were really lucky that at opening night, Billy Mills, the Oglala Lakota 10,000 meter champion from the 1964 Olympics was the host of the event. Oh, that's cool. And I got to ask him that very same question. I said, from a traditional native standpoint,

you've told us about the importance of the spirituality of running. At the same time, it's like you made your mark as a competitive runner, winning a race that nobody but you thought you were going to win. I mean, nobody thought that Billy Mills was going to win that 10,000 meter race. And if anybody needs a pick me up just on YouTube, type in Billy Mills Olympics, greatest last lap, I think, in any modern race. And he said exactly what you did. He said, I never raced to compete. He said, even when I won, I was racing against myself. I was racing against my pain. I was

racing against my limitation. I was racing against what my body was telling me it couldn't do. And I pushed it beyond. And it just so happened that I won the 1964 Olympic gold medal in the 10,000 meters. But that's not how I defined my races. Yeah. That was the external manifestation of, of, of a mindset that allowed him to do that, but it wasn't the goal. No. And that, and that's the interesting thing because I think like once I realized that I could run for spiritual reasons, I became a better competitor. that I could run for spiritual reasons, I became a better competitor. It's like I was much less dissatisfied with the second or third, even in a local race,

than I ever would have been. It's like I look a lot more to preparation. I look a lot more to the ritual of practice. And I know that if I show up at the starting line and I've done all the right things, I'm going to have a good experience. You sound like you're ready to toe the line at next year's 3100. I would love to. Yeah? I would love to.

If not next year, then the year after. What is it that you want people to take away from this movie? That's a great question. I think a lot of people have come in contact with running. I think a lot of people have come in contact with running. Some people haven't enjoyed it because they weren't taught the real purpose of running. I think a lot of us that do enjoy running might not have the words to expand our enjoyment of running. And I'm not saying that I know anything more than anybody else, And I'm not saying that I know anything more than anybody else, but the characters in the 3100 bring these perspectives, which I hesitate to say aren't mainstream, but they're so core and identifiable that I'm hoping that when people see the movie, they'll have a newfound appreciation, not just for running, but for physical activity and our place in the world.

Yeah, I would imagine you come across people who will say, this is great, but like, I hate running. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like, if you hate running, that's okay. But it's like, do you like walking? Do you like hiking? Is there a way, is there an activity where you can go outside and put your feet on mother earth and understand that your breath is your connection to the heavens. Do that. That's the attitude that we all used to have back before we were encumbered by cars and shoes and Strava and GPS. Next up is Scott Harrison, who is the founder and CEO of a nonprofit organization called Charity Water, which works to bring clean water to those most in need. Scott is just basically one of the most impressive people I've ever met. His story is so inspiring from lost to found.

He's just an amazing example of what can be achieved when a life pivots from self-serving to selfless service. He first was on the show back in July of 2017. That was episode 305. And he returned in episode 399 to kind of pick up where we last left off, diving deeper into previously unexplored aspects of his personal evolution. We discussed his amazing new book called Thirst, which you should all check out. We talked about the progress made by Charity Water and the work that remains and the important role that faith has played in his journey.

So here's Scott on the true meaning of charity and the sense of purpose and personal fulfillment that goes hand in hand with a life devoted to service. We just finished 12 years of Charity Water. I actually do think the best is yet to come. I mean, today we're going to get 4,000 new people clean drinking water for the first time in their lives. And we do it again tomorrow and again the next day and again the next day. Now I want that number to be 40,000, but it's, it's now significant. You know, the eight and a half million people we've helped, it's more than the population of New York city and all the boroughs. You know, we're starting to add up, you know, seven states worth of people in impact. And it's

one 78th of the global problem. So you put eight and a half million into the current 663 and 178, like that sounds better than one 1000th, right? Like let's do 78 times more. Let's invite 78 times more people to participate. You know, the mission of Charity Water is to bring clean water to people on earth. And that's a very clear mission. Mission is accomplished when no human being on earth is drinking dirty water. But the vision is actually much softer. It's to bring people back to the true meaning of charity.

Charity means love. It means to look after your neighbor in need and get nothing in return. And I was so upset that that word, that this, it's become tainted for so many people. And charity is a bad thing, not a good thing. Like we need more love in this world. I mean, look around, right? We need more people agreeing to agree on serving others, on ending needless suffering, of using our time and our talent and our money to help people, to improve the world.

And I just thought that the way most people, most charities approach this was wrong. Like you said, it was shame. It was guilt. It was, you have too much. You know, you should, even the language, giving back. I loat um, you, you have too much, you know, you should even, even the language giving back. I loathe this language giving back. Um, you hear it everywhere. It's in the lexicon now, right? Oh, I'm giving back our companies giving back. That makes it sound like we have pillaged and plundered to such extent that we should finally throw a few scraps down to the

floor. Let's give a little bit back. So if I snatch something, you know, if I take your phone out of your hand, you're going to say, give it back. Right. Right. Why don't we drop the back? We should just, we should frame giving in the positive. We are just giving. Let's build a culture of giving in our family, in our company, maybe in our faith community. Let's give because we can, because we want to, because it's a blessing, not out of guilt or shame or debt or obligation, but because it is an amazing opportunity to share our blessing with others. And I actually would love to get people addicted to giving. You know, it's funny. My ambition right now around money, and I'm 43. I've got a beautiful wife and two kids.

But my ambition around money is to give more away, is to personally give more away. Someone, and I write about this, someone many years ago wrote a million dollar check that changed the game for Charity Water. It was an inflection point and it took us from the brink of insolvency because we hadn't yet worked out. We talked about that last time. Yeah, we hadn't worked it out, but I want to do that for somebody else. Like I, I just have this dream of one day. I don't know how I'm going to do it on a charity salary, but one day I would love to walk into someone else's office, a young social entrepreneur, and not just give them advice. Okay. Cause I can give a lot of people advice,

but I would like to actually, so, so that's the ambition, not the house in the Hamptons, not the Mercedes or the Tesla, you know, not the vacation, you know, the four seasons. And that that's really true, you know, and in some ways it's freeing because I'm, I don't feel trapped by not having, you know, the next, like the minute I would get the Tesla, I'm sure I'd want a better car, you know, or the minute I went on that vacation, well, somebody went on an even nicer vacation or stayed at the nicer hotel on the Island. Right. So there's, it's been so freeing 12 years ago to just step off of that rat race and think about think about how I can be useful, how I can be a vessel. I think people would think of you or who don't really understand you or what you do or somebody similar to you as like martyrs, like, oh, you know, they're like, like you're, you're, you're, you're flogging yourself in your hair shirt every day.

Yes, not like that though, you know that. Because, you know, you can't stand the suffering of others, but you're one of the happiest people that I know, right? people that I know, right? Like you're, you're a living example of how great you can feel and how good your life experience can be when you're, when you're in that mode, right? And the fact that you're driving ambition is to give, is to give more like, uh, you're in a place right now. You've how much have you, you've,. Yeah. OK. Three hundred thirty million. I don't know what your salary is, but it's a charity salary. I would imagine that if the board of Charity Water came to you and said, listen, Scott, like, let's just double your salary. You're doing a great job that the donor base would celebrate that. They're like, Scott should be, you know, getting paid more.

But knowing you a little bit, I would imagine you would just give that away, right? Like you wouldn't even keep it. Well, we give 20% of our income away. Right. I believe I have to be the biggest giver. Right. So even of the salary that they give you, when everything that you do is for the charity, you're still giving it. Does that go back into charity water or do you get to other organizations?

It's funny. We, um, I had them pull the numbers recently. Just, I was like, well, I'm,

I might get some really hard questions about like, do you give your own organization? And since we started, we've given my wife and I've given 185,000 of our salary back to charity water. And you know, so that's 18 wells, which is like a total joy to be able to do.

So we give to our local church. We give to Charity Water. We give to other charities. There's probably 20 other organizations we support. But we're fine. It's not a martyr. I live in a, you know, in a 1,200 square foot, two bedroom, you know, really nice apartment in New York City, seven minutes from my office in Battery Park City in Tribeca.

I drive a Kia Sorento that's a lease. I love my Kia, right? It's got the two car seats installed in Tribeca. I drive a Kia Sorento that's a lease. I love my Kia, right? It's got the two car seats installed in the back. Like we, we, we have food on the table. We have, you know, I fly coach. That sucks. I'm 43 and I'm six foot one. 14 hours on air Ethiopian is not a fun experience, but you know, they're, that's like, that's the worst of it. Like that is the worst of it. So we have these amazing, I mean, it's just an amazing life. Like I get to, I've been to 69 countries. I've been to Ethiopia 30 times. I get to, I get to, I get to preach a message of generosity, of trying to invite people into something really beautiful for them, of trying to invite people into something really beautiful for them,

you know, invite them into transformation through selflessness. You know, one of the things I talk about, you know, at the end of the book is this idea of work that has no end. And if, and if you can, for me,

it was, it was selfishness with no end. It was accumulation with no end. You know, it was, it was more girls, more drugs, more, you know, cars, things, watches, better clothes. And for the last 12 years, it's been more for others.

More resources, more time, more energy spent to try to make the world a better place, to try to help people who have nothing, who are truly suffering. And that is a never ending work, but I've just come to embrace that. And I think that, you know, I love the one well idea that you brought up because it did start with one and then there were five and then there were 10. And it's, it's like that Nietzsche quote of, you know, the long obedience in the same direction. One day, if you just keep showing up, you turn around and you're like, oh, there's 29,000 wells. And, and, you know,

check in, like maybe I come back on three years and like, who knows what that is? Or maybe some other amazing things have happened because you just keep showing up. And you know that I, I, I think we're at the beginning. You know, I think like this is, this is the beginning of the journey. I hope that I would be able to put in 30 years like Dr. Gary Parker and look back. I mean, think of how many surgeries he's done now. And you probably signed up for a few surgeries. Oh, I'm going to go, I'm going to fix a couple of cleft lips and cleft palates. And I'm going to go back to my practice in California and I'm gonna make a lot of money. And you know, has it been tens of thousands of people he's operated on now who never would have gotten an operation had he not said yes, had he not answered the call. Do not fear work that has no end. Yeah, I love that. It's a rabbinical thing, right?

It is. It comes from an obscure rabbinic text. Somebody took a picture of that quote outside of Bodega 10 years ago in New York City. And I just, I love that. It's like the call to infinite giving. call to, you know, infinite giving. Next up is my man Guru Singh, the modern day Gandalf himself, the guy who rocks like Hendrix while dropping pearls of wisdom that beautifully fuse Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism. I just love this guy. He's a beautiful, highly relatable consciousness, a person I'm proud to call friend, proud to call mentor, and somebody I consider a member of my family. He joined the podcast a couple times over the course of the year. And this clip is excerpted from episode 393, Guru Corner, entitled Disrupting

Depression, which was an intimate exploration into the depths of our darkest emotions, things like shame, grief, and sadness, and the lessons that they hold. He's just my favorite teacher on all things mystic, metaphysical, and ethereal. So please enjoy this clip with the one, the only, Guru Singh. Education hasn't prepared anyone for the new way of living. Education is still stuck in the world of the three R's, which is obviously a misspelling of the words. But the idea that kids are dropping out of school

and that there's people with dyslexia and people with what they call ADD, ADHD. These are not disorders. These are new orders. And we're not addressing those people with our education. And consequently, people are coming out into the world completely unprepared for the world. And therefore, the world has more pressure than they do. And therefore, they become depressed. Yeah. Well, a couple observations. First of all, I think that's beginning to change. We're seeing more and more people deciding not to go to college, for one thing. And I think it was just last week that Google and at least one or two

other of the huge tech companies came out and said, we're no longer requiring a college diploma for applications for employment. I mean, that's a huge change when you think about that. They're basically decoupling that nexus that has always existed between higher education and upward mobility, which I think is fascinating. That is a good one, isn't it? But you're absolutely correct. And I think the pace, the accelerated pace with which culture, society is advancing, is changing, is evolving, is so outpacing our evolutionary ability to adapt. You know, we're still, we're evolutionarily, you know,

built into our GNA and to our genetic code is a life that looks like whatever's going on in the, you know, the indigenous tribes of Africa. And if you go to those places, you always hear these stories. Oh, I went to India. I went to Peru. I went wherever it is.

And people who spend time with cultures that are relatively immunized from the way that we live, realize how much happier they are, how much more connected they are, how much more communal they are, how much more communal they are, and content. They have all of these things that we're trying so desperately to build into our own lives, but which continue to elude us because the very things that contribute to that which we seek, we've decided are either optional or not important. And even after having that experience, we may have that epiphany. And yet after returning to our lives, we slowly sort of

return to how we're always living. And we fail to make those changes that would allow us to experience life in the way these people are. One of the things that education doesn't educate is the emotional body. Think about these. Depression has a value because when you're depressed, you can go into some pretty deep places, some pretty dark places. And when you go into those places with the sense of, let me explore rather than, you know, let me feel horrible, those deep places can find character, can find parts of your being that are able to come forward

that would never be noticed if you were just giddy and happy all the time. And the same thing with good grief, right? Grieving, sadness, grief. These are also valuable moments, but they're not moments that we should use if we want to go back to the idea of a diet. We shouldn't use them as entrees. We should use them as maybe spices or maybe side dishes to the main course. The main course, our focus on becoming enthusiastic, becoming inspired, focus on becoming enthusiastic, becoming inspired, becoming fulfilled. That's our main course. With side courses that are either warning signs or augmenting components like salt augments the food. So depression and grief and sadness are all things that when they come upon us, we should go into fully, but giving ourselves the space, I'm going to take a sick day because I'm feeling really sad.

And let me go into this sadness. Let me process this sadness. Let me gain the messaging from this sadness, just as if I was to take a sick day because I've got the flu. Yeah. These emotional states are part of what it means to be human, to embrace and accept the fact that it's perfectly natural and fine to experience sadness, to experience grief, to experience intermittent bouts with depression. And I just have to make a correction here. I don't ever do this, but Rich, I'm just going to make a correction. You said what it takes to be human. I saw your dog be sad in a moment because he couldn't come in here and hang out with us. Poor girl. Poor girl. And she went, oh. Maybe we'll bring her in for round two. But yeah,

I mean, it goes back to the messages that we receive about what's okay and what's not okay in this collective experience that we're having. And we're kind of taught like you should love your life and be happy and be enthusiastic all the time. And if you experience a moment of depression, that you should actually compound that by being ashamed or feeling bad about yourself because you're experiencing something that you feel like you shouldn't be experiencing. And of course, that's at cross purposes with how we're kind of wired, right? But I think there is a difference between that sine wave of emotional experience that we all have versus chronic states of depression. And that's really kind of what I'm focused on is this incredible increase in persistent chronic states of depression that people are experiencing.

And you were saying that you disagreed with me about what the cause of that is, but I want to go a little bit deeper into that. No, I said I agreed with you about that they were part of the equation, but that the cause was that we're not prepared. Think about chronic. What about chronic flu? That you go through a winter and you get it, you seem to be well, you go out and do something energetically, you get a relapse.

You get it, you go through it, you seem to be well well you go out and do something energetically you get a relapse what's not happening what is not happening is that there's not a a full forced cure so if i'm to go into my flu or if i'm to go into my depression and I can fully experience the experience, as the Buddha said, anything fully experienced, any of the emotions fully experienced will ultimately become its base factor, which is joy. Because going in, and I've been depressed, we've all been depressed. The difference between someone who has the awareness or the knowledge when that depression comes on is the same as when someone has the awareness or the knowledge when the flu comes on. the flu comes on, if you can go into and fully work with that flu germ and get it so that it's completely removed from the body after you've gone through the cycle. It's the same way with depression, with sadness, with other things, with grief, etc. Think about the grief of people dying.

other things with grief, etc. Think about the grief of people dying. I've had three or four people just recently reach out to me because someone very, very dear to them has passed away. And that idea of shame, that you need to grieve in private, or that you should wear dark glasses at a funeral so to hide the tears that are rolling down your face. All of this is exactly what you were saying, that crossed purposes, that shame for sadness, shame for depression, shame for grief, is something that we need to remove through education.

We need to inform people that their grief is good, that their sadness is a value, and that their depression has some message. And just like the flu, if you give yourself the opportunity to go through that cycle that you were just mentioning, then it won't become chronic depression. It will become deep depression, maybe even deeper than the cycles of chronic depression, but it will be fully experienced and then relieved from the psycho-emotional body.

Okay, we're going to land this plane and bring it all to a beautiful crescendo with none other than my friend, the beautiful man himself, the extraordinary storyteller Jedediah Jenkins. I just love this guy. He has such an incredible acuity for exploring the interior landscape, this elegant gift for sharing his unique perspective, a deeply personal perspective, but one that also taps into something that we all share, something that's pure and true within all of us, that unites us. And I loved this conversation. It's from episode 395, picking up where we left off three years prior. That was episode 186, if you missed it, Jed's first appearance on the podcast.

And most of this podcast was discussing his recently released book, To Shake the Sleeping Self, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller, which is just amazing and so well-deserved. One of my favorite books of the year, hands down. So here is Jedediah on everything from gender to identity to being a gay male and really ultimately the power of owning your story. This decision to embark on this ride from Oregon to Patagonia speaks to this theme that you kind of address in the very first

pages of the book, which is this tension between these mixed messages that were given when we're kind of coming of age, which is on the one hand, you know, seek the, you know, the career that's going to be, that puts you on an upwardly mobile trajectory. And then out of the other side of the mouth of that same person is think different or live your passion. And those butt up against each other, and it becomes very difficult to reconcile what fits your own personal blueprint. What fits your own personal blueprint? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, is the, the circumstances of your youth often deeply influence. I mean, always influence that chain of events in your twenties.

If you were raised where your parents were in crushing credit card debt and life was falling apart, you, you think I'm not going to be like them. I'm going to be financially responsible. I'm going to do the opposite. If you're, I have friends who were raised in fabulous wealth in Texas and they went on to be barefoot serving the homeless. I ain't going to be like that. And they're going to drive a beat up Camry to show that they don't want daddy's money. And so there's like a lot of identity, like pendulum fluctuation there. But I totally understand that it's society's duty to actually give you a certain flow chart of how to make it in this world, because it's really hard to do it, to figure it out on your own. So I don't fault society for like telling us, here's how you do it.

But I also would hope that society would say, there are a million ways to do this. Don't get sucked into the, like to the allure of thinking you have to do it this way, and if you don't, you're going to fail. And I really think with the gig economy and what's happening now that millennials are in their 30s and late 20s, they're discovering really that that old pathway is not functioning the way it used to. And that's why, I mean, I don't know the stats, but huge numbers of people, my age and younger don't work in offices, don't have traditional

jobs. Do you know anybody that has a normal job? I, I, I swear to you, I have to think about it. Yeah. Like I live in LA and to like go on a hike on a Tuesday at 11 a.m. is the most normal thing in the world. It's so true. I mean, I think, you know, L.A. I remember when I have a vivid memory of when I first moved to L.A. And I was a lawyer in San Francisco, and I moved here for a law firm job. And this is pre-gig economy, but there's something very unique and strange about Los Angeles because you could go into a Starbucks at two in the afternoon and it would be packed with people.

And you're like, do any of these people work? Like they all look like they took a shower this morning. You know, like how does that even make sense? I remember it just blew my mind. This city is more than any other. Yeah. But it, it, it expanded my horizons of what was possible. I mean, prior to moving here, I, I never, it never would have occurred to me that you could find gainful employment pursuing something that you cared about in a way that, um, that defied our traditional notions of what that social contract looks like. Because, because of the entertainment industry, somebody who like, who's very talented at, uh, carving faces out of styrofoam can actually have a career,

you know, like exactly. Well, and you're like, how did you get there? Yeah. But that's what you're saying speaks so clearly to the importance of modeling or representation of different ways of being. I mean, in terms of representation in the arts where you have people of color, you have people with different abilities and talents coming up in storytelling. I know that when I was a kid watching Will and Grace changed my life because I thought being gay was flamboyant in a pride parade, and then I saw Will, who's a lawyer in New York, and I was like, oh, you can just be, you don't have to be in a thong.

You can just hang out and be normal. Yeah. We have this idea that, that every, uh, young gay male is the kid who's sashaying down the hallway, which is great. If he is like fantastic, but that wasn't me. And so I didn't see the, I thought, Oh, okay. All this, all these things that the Christians are saying are true. You either become hypersexual and hate God. And you're in a parade. This is like, I don't want to assume that that's true. I'm just saying that's

what I perceived. And I was like, well, where are the like happy married gay couples who like are clothed and have jobs? Like, where are they? And that was really powerful with Will and Grace. And then seeing, that's what I love about all the different people you have on your podcast. They show you like all the different careers and adventures they've been on and expertises. You see model, you see model different ways of making it in this world and in contributing something important. And that's really encouraging to me about Gen Z or whatever it is and millennials figuring out what they're doing. I think there's going to be a lot of surprising contributions because of a certain level of just modeled access to ways of being.

I think that's right. I think that's right. I mean, I think you see it. I mean, you see it manifest already. You know, people who are driven not by salaries and 401ks and benefits, but by impact. Like, how is taking this job going to move the needle in terms of making the world a better place? Like that's certainly nothing that occurred to me when I was looking for my first job or my second job or my third job. But that is very much the mindset of

young people now. And amidst all the craziness and the chaos and the lack of civility and everything that's going on right now, that gives me tremendous hope and optimism for the future. Me too. And I, and I wonder, I mean, you have kids this exact age of just, I'm so curious about what the brandification of identity is going to do to young people where you're like worried about your brand in eighth grade. Like, Oh, I need to wear this shirt. I need to post this photo. How many, how many likes is it going to get? That's such a tired conversation. Everyone that's a parent is like freaking out, but it's, I'm, I'm curious. I don't have skin in the game.

freaking out, but it's, I'm, I'm curious. I don't have skin in the game. I'm like, yeah. Like, are they going to become, are they going to get burned on not getting a job because someone went deep in their Instagram and found and found something? Or are people going to become more open to just the fact that people grow and change? And I think we're going to have to be, yeah, your whole life is documented. And I think this idea of generations is being accelerated. You know, it's no longer boomers, Gen Xers, Gen Y. It's like now every, every three years is a new generation. You know, my older boys are 22 and 23. They're that pendulum has swung towards analog. Like they're really, I mean, that's interesting. Yeah.

They have Instagram accounts. Maybe once a month they post they're not on Facebook. They're not on Twitter. They're not, they're not interested. Yeah. You know, which is cool. Maybe that's a reaction to, you know, how my wife and I are living or just what they're seeing amongst their peers. But that was very interesting to see both of them make that choice. And now I have younger daughters who are very different from that. They're a totally different generation, even though they're only separated by a short number of years. I don't know how to delineate Christian influence from millennial influence of my own life, but I know making an impact was a really big deal to me always. And I don't, I don't know if it's like, because you're a brand ambassador for Jesus,

you need to be on your best behavior and you need to be an excellent brand ambassador. That's like wired into me in college and high school. And that's still a huge part of me now with my writing. I just, my only dream is that some people who feel trapped in their identity, feel trapped in their tradition, feel, and don't see a way out, read this book. And it just shot, it just models the sometimes difficult, sometimes tender exiting out of that entrapment. Yeah. And, and I, and I, what's fun about the time we live in is normally when you're a writer, you write a book and maybe you get some letters in the mail from people who were impacted by your words. Maybe someone writes a nice review. I write online mostly. And I, I see people being impacted by my thing. Yeah. The immediacy of it is astonishing and it feels incredible. The very first sentence of the book is,

if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine, which is such a fucking awesome sentence. How long did it take you to come up with that? I mean, the pressure, you know, the first sentence of the book, it's like, it's so important. Like I just, I was like, I read that and I was like, it's so great. And I'm like, Oh,'m like, how many versions of this sentence did you write? That's what I knew I wanted to say in the first sentence. And then I'm sure I wrote it a different way and would come back two weeks later and look at it and be like, close, but not there. And then, I don't know. I mean, I don't think my words are that precious.

I don't labor over them. If it makes sense, it can stay. If it's too cliche or too cheesy, it's got to go. Uh-huh. And I, I just believe that, you know, the book is called to shake the sleeping self. And there's like parts of you that need to be removed from their comfort zone to even wake up. And you can't do it yourself. You have to remove yourself from the routine, from the thing, you know, and travel is a perfect way to do that.

All right, we did it. 2018. It's concluded. How do you feel? I feel pretty good. I think we accomplished a lot this year. I hope you enjoyed this two parter.

I'm super excited for 2019. And I feel like this experience of culling all of these clips together to kind of share this with you today really has created a little bit more clarity for me on what I still need to work on. What do I want to accomplish in 2019? What do I want to manifest? And I hope that that was your experience as well. A reminder that you can watch a version of this recap on YouTube at youtube.com forward slash

richroll. It's a little different because we didn't have all of the guests on videotape, but it's pretty similar and I think you'll enjoy it. A final reminder that our new gift cards for the Plant Power Meal Planner are a great gift for the new year. So check them out at meals.richroll.com. And if you would like to support the work that we do here on the podcast, it's easy. Just tell your friends about it, about your favorite episode. Share the show in general. Share it on social media.

Hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, on Google Podcasts, wherever you listen to this. Leave a review on Apple podcasts, and you can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank the entire team for all the hard work, all the toil and the energy and the love and the passion that they put into this show, not just today, but over the course of this past year, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing this podcast for YouTube and for all their graphics wizardry. Aided, of course, by Jessica Miranda. Reese Robinson and Allie Rogers for taking portraits throughout the year.

DK, David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music, as always, by Annalema. All right, that's it. That's a wrap on 2018. Thank you for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple days for the very first episode of 2019. And let me tell you, it rocks. David Goggins. David Goggins is going to kick off the new year just like he did two years ago.

And I'm telling you, you have no idea what's coming your way. It's so good. So, roger that. And until then, peace and plants. Happy New Year. Thank you.