The Rich Roll Podcast - The Best Of 2021: Part One

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

As the Earth embarks upon another miraculous arc around the sun, let us prepare by taking space to pause, breathe, and reflect. A blank slate represents potential energy. Let us infuse the 2022 tabula rasa with the energy of hope and inspiration to catalyze your new year ambitions into reality. This process requires taking inventory of the twelve months past. Where you were this time last year. Celebrate your victories. Deconstruct your setbacks. Imagine yourself this time next year. Set your intention for that experience. Establish specific time-bound goals and the stepping stones to get there. Create accountability for those benchmarks. And vision the better self laying dormant within, yearning to be more fully expressed. But first, we pause. Because it is in quiet that we gain clarity—a crucial first step on the trudge towards self-actualization. It is in this spirit that we indulge a tradition here at the podcast—our annual ‘Best Of’ series—wherein we reflect upon the previous 12 months with a 2-part compilation of clips excerpted from a handful of the year’s most compelling guests. Think of it as a refresher course for the avid fans. An anthology or digest for those newer to the podcast. A love letter to my guests. And most importantly, a way of thanking you, the audience, for taking this journey of growth alongside me. Guests featured in this first of two total anthology episodes (hyperlinked to their respective episodes) are listed here: The Rich Roll Podcast: Best Of 2021: Part One Compiling this auditory yearbook is both a joy and a challenge. I have great fondness for all my guests. I take no comfort in leaving anyone out. Should you find one of your personal favorites missing, I get it—please don’t @ me! Special thanks to Blake Curtis, Jason Camiolo and Dan Drake for the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting required to pull this two-parter together. To read more click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Here’s to an extraordinary 2022. Peace + Plants, Rich

So I was in total denial that I was sick. I didn't understand that your brain can get injured just like your knee. I just, I didn't understand that. I was of the mindset that I needed to keep pressing forward and fix all on my own whatever it was that I was feeling. And then I started to have these even darker thoughts. And that's when I felt like I understood my mom in a way that I never wanted to understand her. Like you have these thoughts that like you want to die. And it was terrifying because I've always been afraid my whole life for the moment that that might happen to me.

And where that fear came from was I have a photo book of her when she was like teenager and she looked really happy. And I was like, there's no way. I just don't believe that this 16 year old knows what's going to happen to her. And that was so scary because I was like, am I a ticking time bomb? Does it just happen to people? Her brother took his own life. It runs deep in her family.

So I just knew that there was a possibility. And then when it did, I thought that that was just my fate. It now happened to me. And because the narrative I was told about her was she just had to go. Like she just, she was so sick that she had to go. And I was like, well, I guess I'm so sick that maybe I have to go. Cause I don't know what else there is. That's Alexi Pappas. And yes, it must be that time of year again because this is part one of our annual best of 2021 edition of The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Greetings and happy holidays from everyone here at the RRP Mothership. Welcome to the show where for the last nine years, I have endeavored to have deep, meaningful, long-form conversations about things that matter with a wide swath of the world's best and brightest minds discussing everything from fitness and education, science, nutrition, and environmentalism to art, spirituality, literature, entrepreneurship, athleticism, creativity, and positive culture change. And this past year was no different. and positive culture change. And this past year was no different. Despite 2021 being a year that we can all safely label as challenging for a variety of reasons,

I yet find myself full of gratitude for the just astounding number of incredible evergreen conversations we were able to produce and gift to you over the course of the past 12 months. And so, as the earth has made its way back to this fateful position, having made yet another miraculous trek around the sun, it is time once again to prepare for the coming new year by taking time to pause, to breathe, and to reflect, to take inventory of where you were last year in order to celebrate victories, deconstruct setbacks, and set goals

for who you want to be when we all find ourselves in this same celestial position 12 months from now. I believe in this annual practice that the blank slate 2022 represents can bring the hope and inspiration required to make our goals a reality. And so it is in this spirit that we indulge in annual tradition here at the podcast to end each year with a two-part compilation of the finest podcast excerpts from the previous 12 months of the show, full episodes of which can be found in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Think of these next two episodes

as both a refresher course for the devoted RRP fans, and also as an anthology for those of you who are brand new to the show. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing

and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. 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, a parent of a struggling teen or battling addiction yourself. I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful

and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just

how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. 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 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. Okay, let's kick off this best of with the man who got the year started, former Navy SEAL Commander Rich Deviney. On the pod to promote his book, The Attributes, Rich delivered an incredibly powerful primer on how your attributes determine life outcomes and how you can train said disposition to create more optimal performance in all areas

of your life. So here it is from episode 571, Rich Deviney. How is my life better now in January 2021 than it was in January 2020? Admittedly, that might take some thought, right? But you will come up with answers. One of the best ways to put yourself in the proper state, and I love this question, is to ask what you're grateful for. Gratitude also is an enormously powerful chemical combination when you are truly grateful. You're getting oxytocin, you're getting DHEA, you're getting dopamine.

Asking yourselves, what am I grateful for now is a great way in. So then you say, okay, what are some of those things that I learned? What are the things I have to think about going into 2021? Okay, well, it's gonna be uncertain, we know that. So when I think about my grid attributes, I'm going to need a little bit of courage. If I feel like I'm low on courage,

I should probably try to develop that a little bit. I'm definitely going to need adaptability. Perseverance. Okay. I have some goals. Obviously, my goals might have been derailed in January 2020. Okay. Now, what do I do? What are the things I can do to persevere and affect my goals in 2021, no matter what happens? And how am I going to adapt to do that? I think an enormously important, in fact, if I were to scale them, I'd probably say one of the most important attributes that we can all focus on in 2021 is open-mindedness.

The closed mind is not driven because the closed mind is certain. And certain minds aren't curious and they're not seeking what's next. They weren't seeking what could be. And if 2020 taught us anything is that we don't know. We don't know what's coming down the pike. And if we're open-minded enough to start understanding,

okay, I'm going to take, now this is a passive, it's a passive act. Optimism is, I'm going to take, now this is a passive, it's a passive act. It's, you know, optimism is, I would call optimism proactive pathway. Open-mindedness is a passive pathway where you're saying, okay, I am going to be open to other ideas, viewpoint situations so that I can try to look at them from a positive, not necessarily positive,

but a proactive and effective lens. But there's a difference between making that decision and actually effectuating it, right? You can say I'm open-minded, but then you find yourself in a situation and you're very much not open-minded. Yeah, yeah. And I think we all found ourselves in that situation in 2020. And again, I come back to this idea of asking questions. Ultimately's all, ultimately it comes down to the questions we ask ourselves. If we find ourselves in a situation where we're feeling like,

okay, this person I'm talking to seems to be of complete opposite political beliefs than me. How might I be wrong? What might this person be feeling? What might this person be experiencing that I'm not? You start to tap into empathy, certainly. What might this person be feeling? What might this person be experiencing that I'm not? You start to tap into empathy, certainly. But again, empathy is about feeling what that person feels.

That's a little bit more of a leap, but you can certainly start having a perspective without necessarily feeling. Curiosity. Curiosity is the buttress to open-mindedness, absolutely. But I say, some people are more naturally curious than others. And most of those people are to open-mindedness, absolutely. But I say, you know, some people are more naturally curious than others. And most of those people are automatically open-minded. So the reason why I didn't put curiosity there is because I think open-mindedness can be accessed by almost anybody, you know, just by asking the right question. Can I just, let me give this person, this situation, this event a chance.

And let me start seeing what might be positive about that. Let me see it in a different light. Take myself out of my own perspective. If I'm not this 47-year-old male former Navy SEAL author living in Virginia, if I'm not that person, right, then how does this look? And those are really powerful questions to ask and ones that can help open your mind quite a bit. The best news of all is we all have uncertainty

and challenge and strife in our lives. And those are wonderful crucibles inside of which we can start understanding ourselves. Yeah. Next up is storytelling superstar, Joanne Molinaro, AKA the Korean vegan. In an excerpt from episode 632, where we trace her path to a plant-based diet,

the many ways in which food and social justice advocacy intersect, and the importance of humanizing the immigrant experience, specifically through her beautiful and moving videos on TikTok. My biggest value is compassion. I feel like it is one of the most underrated characteristics in the world. And I feel like people think that compassion is weakness or compassion is crying or too much

empathy. And for me, compassion is strength. It's the strongest thing that you could do is to be compassionate. So fundamentally the Korean vegan in its current version is about compassion in every way. What role do you think that hardship and challenge plays in the kind of cauldron that those formative experiences that lead to like the kind of resonance that you need to understand your own story and really grasp the power that it might hold to be transformative for others.

So I always think about sort of the crucible, right? I was actually thinking about that this morning. I was like, that is- You were thinking about a lot of things this morning. Oh yeah, well this- Just this morning, you know, like among the 7,000 other things you said you were thinking about this morning.

I was running, I was running this morning and I was like, this is what my brain goes through. But I was thinking about the crucible and how that's such a great metaphor for my life, right? And how I had to go through this period of what I call the dark ages, right? Of my life in order to come out and be the person that I am today.

And what that period in my life has afforded me is again, the fundamental of the Korean vegan, which is compassion. The most important thing I feel like in the whole world is compassion. The most important thing I feel like in the whole world is compassion. And I can now relate to a lot of different kinds of pains and struggles because I went through what I did.

And what I'm trying to convey through the Korean vegan is the sense of, hey, I understand your pain. I understand your struggle. And if I don't, then I'm here to listen to that struggle. I'm here to be a safe space for your pain and your struggle because you need to feel like you're listened to and that you will be safe if you are going to be empowered to execute on that next

chapter of your life, to come out of that crucible stronger. And my own story is really that, went through a really difficult time in the earlier years of my life. And now I'm deliriously happy and always seeking out the pockets of joy and every day. And I don't know that I would be able to appreciate joy the way that I do without having gone through what I did in that crucible. You know, like sometimes you have to fail in order to be your best version of self at some point in the future. So don't be so

afraid of failure. That's a necessary component to the crucible. You know, you got to go through some of that in order to know where you're going to succeed and really shine. And that's certainly something that resonated with me a lot is thinking about, wow, I've kind of had my finger in a lot of different things and maybe that's the reason I'm Joanne and nobody else is. I mean, it sounds very trite and banal in some respects, but it's also simply beautiful. I want to leave this place more wonderful than it was when I came into it. And I don't right now sitting here today, thinking about when this podcast will be airing, I'm not sure that that's me as a lawyer.

I really don't think that makes sense. I think that the feedback that I've received over the past seven to eight months is, no, I can do a lot more in that regard as the Korean vegan. And I don't even know what that is right now because it hasn't seen its full potential. In a powerful addition to the Coach's Corner series, Olympians Chris Houth and Caroline Burkle

joined me in episode 595 for a round table discussion on the power of endurance training as a tool for self-actualization. It's really stuck with me. Here is a slice of that conversation. To speak more towards the purpose, my enjoyment lies 100% in helping others get that sort of deep understanding of their why or their purpose or their path.

I mean, the biggest frustration that many athletes that come to me have is that I keep telling them, it will appear for you. Do not try to force it. You can't manipulate your life path and they don't wanna hear that. And it takes a few years and then they'll come back and go, you know what?

You're sort of right back then. I'm ready to take that journey now. Right. But my power meter says this, Chris, and I needed to say this. Yes, but the only way it's gonna say that is if you let go and let, you know, it's like we know from swimming, you know,

it's like whenever we're too tight on, today this set is gonna be so intense. Like you try to get yourself mentally ready for it. And then you get there and you're three or four repeats in and you're nervous and you're not swimming well and your walls are awful. And you're just like chopping through the water. And then it's like,

what am I making such a big deal out of this? And then slowly you return into what you're capable of. And that's the hardest part, that dichotomy. Caring enough for the result and the outcome, but also letting go enough for letting the result and outcome to happen for you. The Eckhart Tolle. Yeah, that's literally my favorite.

Right now I'm living in a space of possibilities on both sides of everything. Like both things can be true. And I don't work with older athletes like you do, but the younger generation, these teenagers, it's the same thing. It's like this, I don't want to let go of that control because if I let go of that control, then I'm gonna fail.

I have, you know, then my confidence will, you know, go down the drain, all of these other things that people just hold on so tightly to. And to let go is such a physical experience too that you have to experience through your body, which I'm a big fan of just that whole conversation. But I think we try to use our minds to wrap around that to where it's like, I'm just gonna let go with my mind. And then yes, we can let go with our minds,

but then we're just, our bodies are still tense and our minds are trying to let go and conceptualize this thing that we haven't actually experienced through our whole physical being, which I think quarantine has allowed people to tap in to themselves in a different way because they don't have

that physical outlet in the same way. So they have to release physically through other modalities. Right. I think that's an appropriate kind of place to segue and to think about not just working out, but working in, which is kind of what we've already been talking about, but also this idea of showing up is not enough. Like where is the intentionality that you're bringing

to what it is that you're doing? And of course, this is something that's applicable to any athlete, how they're approaching their training regimen, but in life too, whatever it is that we're doing, particularly now where everything has been upended and it's causing confusion and anxiety. And we're all kind of asking ourselves questions

about like, why am I doing this? Like, we're all being- Re-evaluating. Yeah, we're all, everybody's re-evaluating in their own way right now. Yeah, but that's part of what I go into there. And that is, once you have your purpose and your clarity, you can show up with intention

because you're not questioning the intention because you're not questioning the goals. You're not questioning the path. Now you can focus all your attention onto executing the next workout, the next day at work, this project to the best of your ability. Cause you're not wondering, well, why am I, you don't want to be asking, why am I doing this? That takes everything that you have in that workout or in that project or that vacation with your family, you show up with intention too. Like if you start wondering, why am I here?

You're not gonna have a good vacation. You're not gonna have a good workout. You're not gonna have a good workout, work outcome. And so the big thing there is once you've have the bigger picture, the purpose, and once you have the clarity, which is what I call the coaching, the path, the manual, the sort of map, then you can execute the workout properly. You can execute your training without wondering, why am I doing this? How is this going to help me? Is this keeping me on my path towards my

desired outcome? And is this what the coach and I discussed? It's all been laid out already. And we know that from swimming, we're just so ingrained in this that we don't, well, of course these 400 IMs are helping me swim my 400 IM better. Of course, this set of 200s with the middle 100 fly is helping me swim my 400 IM better.

But in the endurance training world or in just in the work world, if you don't know where you're heading and why you're doing it, the quality of your work is always going to be limited because you're just constantly wasting cognitive energy, cognitive load as they call it, on other things in order to make it more intentional

and clear for you. Once you have that out, you can hit flow. You can, you're right in the moment because you're not worried about all the other things because they've been clarified for you. The scaffolding is set. And what I mean by that is when we start training, especially as masters athletes, not when we're younger,

but as the training is a scaffolding, what happens inside that scaffolding is unique to everybody. I might be doing a lot of mental work. Other people might be doing physical work. Other people are doing spiritual work. The training is the placeholder and what's being rebuilt in that building.

Is it a complete rebuild? Is it some sort of remodeling, right? But the training sets up the opportunity every day to spend time with yourself. And you might not want to go in that day. Might just sort of, you know, do a little paint job. But other days you're like knocking down walls and you are doing some serious work

inside and the tears come or the aha moment comes. And you're like, wow, I hadn't realized how badly I'm avoiding, or, you know, you're listening to a podcast and something you say, for example, just trigger something, boom, pause the podcast, keep rolling and just work with that sentence or with that emotion that just came up. But again, I think it's important

that that curiosity sets up the training, the scaffolding, so that you have an opportunity every day or every few days if you're not training every day to sort of do that working in and working out. When vegan transcontinental runner, Hella Sidibe ran across America, I was instantly taken by his incredible energy and immediately got to work to book him on the show.

We spoke of his four plus year run streak and why mindset and service are key to his success. But more than anything else, it's Hella's infectious positivity that makes this one of the best of the year. Here's a snippet from our exchange from episode 612. I literally told myself one day, I'm tired of making excuses. I got to do something that I can hold myself accountable for. And then fitness comes to your mind. You're an athlete.

And I said, hell, whenever you tell yourself you're going to the gym for a week straight, you go two, three days, you tap out. And I said, what is something that I'm afraid of? Running hit me immediately. So playing Division I, even at the pro level, running, I was always afraid of it. At UMass Amherst, the track team used to look at us. Are you guys the UMass track team? You guys run so much. Our coach was very proud of me.

He rest in peace. Sam Cook was very proud to say, you guys are going to be the fittest team in the country. So anything you do, any mistake on the line, we want to play top teams the day before. He makes us run. So I was fitness test. I was afraid of it.

I couldn't sleep the night before. I was playing. I could play 90 minutes, no problem. Because with soccer, you're heading 50-50 ball. You're attacking, you're defending. It's not just solely focused on running. So I asked myself, what are you afraid of? And running hit me. And with soccer, you're heading 50-50 ball, you're attacking, you're defending. It's not just solely focused on running. So I asked myself, what are you afraid of? And running hit me.

And I said, you know what? I'm going to go face my fear of running. Let me just go 10 minutes a day for two weeks and zero pressure. It doesn't matter if 10 minutes mean you don't even get to a mile. That's okay. So I told myself that.

Within the first week, I fell in love with it immediately. So I ran to Alexa Torres, my fiance. I was like, I think I can do this for the rest of my life, but I don't wanna get ahead of myself. Let me do this every day for a year. So that's how the whole run streak started. Right, so it was really born out of this frustration and a little bit of confusion

about what the next chapter was gonna look like. Yes, exactly, exactly. That's how it all started. It's also interesting that your frame on running is through the lens of punishment. When you are on a sports team, it's not run specific. It's like that's, you know,

being told to run is what happens when you get in trouble. Literally. You know, it's like the stick. If he has teammates of mine, I get so stressed the night before a fitness test. They can see it. They're like, hell, are you okay?

I'm like, I just can't stop thinking about that beep test tomorrow morning. Or like the Cooper test where you gotta run two miles under 12 minutes. And if you don't make this time, you gotta be in breakfast club, which is extra fitness before the actual practice. And the actual practice has its own fitness in it. So it really got me all confused and scared and petrified.

But you're super fit. So when you started this streak, I think you said you went out and ran 10 minutes or something like that. But you're certainly capable of doing more than that. Yeah, way capable. And in that 10 minutes didn't even last. It was just the first week I was,

ended up finding myself running even four miles. But the whole point of that idea of saying 10 minutes a day was to have zero pressure. Cause I know if I were to tell myself, hello, you gotta run at least five miles a day. That's something at that point in my mentality and physical ability for running wasn't something I was kind of capable of maintaining, but I knew it was something attainable to the 10 minutes.

So it was a mental thing. So that made me feel like, okay, you're doing this with no pressure, enjoying. Spring was in the air, it was May 15th of 2017. So it was just a perfect amount of time for me to be out there. So that's why I said 10 minutes. Streaks are so interesting psychologically, right?

I think it's really powerful to talk about setting a really low bar if you're contemplating something like that, making it doable so that you can actually learn to enjoy it before it becomes too challenging. Exactly. You're gonna pull the rip cord before you've even gotten out of the gate.

Yeah. But once you develop a little bit of momentum, it becomes like this self perpetuating thing, right? I don't know why that is. It's that thing and I've said it many times before, when you're going to the gym consistently, it's just easier to go. Or if you're running every day,

it's easier to get out and run. But if you break that cycle, if you interrupt it even once, you just create all kinds of anxiety and strain on yourself that makes it so difficult. Yeah, the starting over thinking and all that. So it's very true exactly how you said it. Right, so when you first began this, was the idea of a streak even in your mind

or you're just like, I'm gonna go out and run because I wanna be able to have some control over myself. It wasn't even a streak, it was just two weeks that I needed to do. And the thing is to my, now I didn't know what streaking actually was for running. I didn't even know it was a thing in the running community. I was so new to the running community.

Just for the record, we're not talking about running naked. Oh yeah. Yes, the direct running. Consecutively, yes. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so I was very ignorant to it, didn't know. And that was really good. I'm glad I didn't know about it

because also that would have been, oh, people shriek. That's another pressure that I didn't need. So I didn't even know. And it was just to get out there and I just knew I wanted to do it every day now for a year. Is there a whole world of people who do these streaks out there? I discovered not document.

I think humbly we became hella good, like my YouTube channel and with my fiance, cause it's a team. We became basically the first people to really put it on the platform of running every day and running every day for a year, 365 days. And then now everybody that were actually been doing it started documenting it and push it out.

And which I'm so happy about because I actually am happier for more people who are doing the streak compared to me because a lot of questions comes, oh, he's the lucky one. How is he able to do it? But when I see someone else, I'm like, see, it's not just me.

Look at this person did it. That person did it. So when you made your 365 day, your one year streak video, most of that video was clips of other people out running in different parts of the world. Exactly, because I realized how much running brought us together and we started building a community. And I wanted to show that to people

and talk about my story of how running every day changed my life and how people became a part of it. So to me, it's all about the people. I think people make the experience. You could do a lot of stuff by yourself, but without the people, I feel like it's not the same. Right, well, at first it becomes this journey of self-discovery and an exploration

of your own personal potential. But at some point it becomes rote and it has to become about something else in order to maintain its meaningfulness. I agree with you 100%. So you start this thing off, you're doing it, you're not sharing anything about it until you reach a certain point.

And then you decide to kind of break public on this whole thing. Actually, that's a good point to bring up because for me, this was not meant for social media. It was just for myself. And it was called her Belle, my fiance. When I started this running streak, she was like, I think we got to do a YouTube video. This is really cool.

You're running every day and you're going for a year. People need to hear about this. I keep pushing it off. I was always pushing it off. So on day 163, she came to me and she said, hey, do you want to do a YouTube video on this? So I was like, all right, fine. You keep asking. Let's just do it. I had just done my run for the day. So I said, can I just you want to do a YouTube video on this? So I was like, all right, fine. You keep asking, let's just do it.

I had just done my run for the day. So I said, can I just go to the barbershop and get my haircut, get this like nice fade so I can look pretty in front of the camera. And then I went to get my haircut, came back, we did a video and the title was Why I Run Every Day, day 163. And I started explaining to people.

So that video actually sat on YouTube for a month or two. It wasn't a lot of views,, couple, maybe 20, 30 views. So one morning I woke up, it was like 2000 views overnight. And I was like, Bill, look at this. This is really weird. Why is this catching on like this? And then we see 20,000 views overnight. And that kind of went in mini viral.

And it got over 600,000 views really quick. And everybody's asking me, are you still continuing this streak? What's happening? Can you update us? So my DM on Instagram is getting flooded now. Comments on YouTube is getting up. and views really quick. And everybody's asking me, are you still continuing the streak? What's happening? Can you update us? So my DM on Instagram is getting flooded now. Comments on YouTube is getting up.

So I said, well, let's keep updating people. And I started doing updates day 254, day 365. And then we just became YouTubers by accident. So it's one of the things I was afraid of that turned into passion. And now that turned into something bigger than I ever imagined. Yeah.

And Belle really drives that, right? She, without her, there's no hell of a good, 100%. So basically she dropped whatever she's doing to help me chase my dreams and goals. She never went to school for filmography or photography or anything. She just self-taught even editing. Just, we started doing it together

as I'm running and sharing the passion with everybody. And she's recording it and she got better with kind of get the content out. You can see the evolution from the early videos through the present, how much better she's gotten at it. And in fact, they'd be like, oh, this is awesome. We look back and I'm like, oh, okay. You definitely got so much better.

Yeah, it's cool. And some of those videos have millions of views now. Yeah, a few of them went viral. We've had all the running every day for a year, the three years and the 1000 days, day eight or two. So we had a few of them over a few million views, which was really cool. Yeah. So you meet the 365 goal. You did it for a year. You're like, I'm going to keep going. Yeah. So how long had you been doing it before the idea of running across America came into your brain? So it was two years in.

So after the first year, I knew I wasn't gonna stop, but the thinking was, can I do it again? Cause now I know everything to expect this season cause the goal is to be outside no matter the circumstances, raining, sunshine, snow, I have to run outside. If I go run on a treadmill, it won't count. It's extra run, but it's not counting toward my streak.

I have to be outside. That was my biggest goal. So after that second year coming up, you knew what to expect. So it wasn't as joyful to the first year. Everything was new first year. You're like, whoa, this is happening. New discovery.

And I got hurt the second year. So, but in the second year, it really hit me quick. Hella, this is bigger than yourself. You prove to yourself you can run every day for a year. You're going on year two. That's going to be a daily routine. Do it for something that's bigger than yourself. You prove to yourself, you can run every day for a year. You're going on year two. That's going to be a daily routine. Do it for something that's bigger than yourself. So, and I realized quick how running is a privilege

that not everyone has. And I want to use that privilege of mine to do it for something greater. So the ideas of doing it for things, even doing races, I don't care about my own PR numbers. I want to have a reason to go fight for. So if I'm dying out there, I'm thinking about why I'm running.

So I'm sitting home one day and came out of the shower and I said, I think I want to run across the country. Has anyone done that? And again, I thought I was going to be the first one. I have no idea, clueless. And she looked at me, she goes, oh no. Cause she knows when I try to do something now, that point I have to do it.

And her, she's like, all right. She started doing research for me. And then that's when we discovered Robbie Ballinger. Right. And that's how the idea of running across the country came up after year two, when I said I needed to run across the country. Olympic runner, award-winning writer, poet, filmmaker, and dear friend, Alexi Pappas, joined me on episode 579 to discuss the courage required to blaze your own path, as well as the self-belief needed to set audacious goals. And in a display of vulnerability, how healing her past trauma taught her to thrive and find the joy in the journey.

Here's a powerful clip from that conversation. So much of your life was premised on differentiating yourself from your mom, like out of a fear that you might, you know, follow in her footsteps in a certain way. And I would imagine that you felt like you had, escaped that in some way, but as the op doc shows, and as you talk about in your book,

like nonetheless, you have this experience with depression in the aftermath of the Olympics, most acutely, it must've been terrifying when that was visited upon you. You must've thought like, oh my goodness, like am I gonna end up like my mother? Yeah, it was, I mean, when I started having, first of all, I didn't have the vocabulary

that I tried to share in the Op Doc. I didn't have that vocabulary when I started experiencing these symptoms. So I was in total denial that I was sick because I didn't understand that your brain can get injured just like your knee. I just, I didn't understand that. And so I was of the mindset, as I had always been in my life,

that I needed to keep pressing forward and fix all on my own, whatever it was that I was feeling to the point where I wasn't sleeping, but I tried to force myself to sleep. And it's called falling asleep for a reason. You have to let it, right? Let it happen. Being a good type A athlete,

you're trying to will everything into existence. And then I started to have these even darker thoughts. And that's when I felt like I understood my mom in a way that I never wanted to understand her. Like I, it's, you have these thoughts that like you wanna die and I don't think you really want to want to die, but the thoughts say otherwise.

And that's when you're sick. And it was terrifying because I always, I've always been afraid my whole life for the moment that that might happen to me. And where that fear came from was, I have a photo book of her when she was like teenager and she looked really happy. And I was like, there's no way. I just don't believe that this 16 year old

knows what's gonna happen to her. And that was so scary. Cause I was like, is it gonna, am I a ticking time bomb? Does it just happen to people? And her brother took his own life. Like it runs deep in her family. So I just knew that there was a possibility. and her brother took his own life. It runs deep in her family. So I just knew that there was a possibility.

And then when it did, but before I understood that there was a way to get better, I thought that that was just my fate, that like that was, it now happened to me. And because the narrative I was told about her was, she just had to go. Like she just, she was so sick that she had to go. And I was like, well, I guess I'm so sick

that maybe I have to go. Cause what, I don't know what else there is. Wow. And that's so embarrassing, honestly, to share because I don't feel that way anymore, but I didn't understand. And I think it's sad that even someone who was susceptible to these things, you know, my family history was public, right? There was no prehab, if you will, if you

want to call, like, if we want to use this body comparison of the brain is a body part, I had no prehab. I had no preparation to deal with this. And it wasn't until my dad, because of his experience with my mom, made me get help that I met a doctor, Dr. Arpaia, who told me very simply that I was sick and that my brain had a scratch on it and that it could get injured like any other body part, but it could also heal like any other body part. And suddenly everything, like it literally turned around in a day, not I wasn't happy, but I believed that I could be on a path to healing

and that I could commit to it just like I would an Olympic dream. We are in a place where we can accept, I think as a world that elite athletes and high achievers can have these mental injuries, these mental illnesses. But I think the most important thing now is like, what do we do about them? And that was something that I found,

I find that sometimes, you know, we point fingers at the like, the pinnacle institutions that we're chasing, but actually I truly think that this kind of education or shift has to happen much younger and on a more universal level, not just at those pinnacles. So what would that look like if you were in charge

and could put those things in place? Well, let's look at body, the way we've approached the body and like how that's progressed over the last, let's say 10 years, like 10 years ago, I don't think my dad or my friend's little sister would have seen a PT for their body without having an injury, meaning like regularly take care of their body. And so just looking at that world, we've come a long way to accepting that our body is something not only elite athletes should take care of,

but everybody should take care of. And that we should take care of it before it's a problem, ideally, if you are able to have that kind of support. And it's not, there's just like systems and you can always, you can get that kind of help if you can and need it. Right. And I think with mental health, the comparing it to healing and injury is so simple to me and makes so much sense. So what it would look like to me is accepting honestly, that our brain is a body part and it can get injured. And when it gets injured,

just like when we break our leg or feel something strange in our leg, we have no shame about sharing that something is off and we get help and we know where to get help. And it's either built into the system that we're in, like a team might have a physio, they might have a psychologist too, or someone can refer you to their favorite physio

or their favorite psychologist. Like there's just more accessibility, just like there is in like the PT world. And then we get that help and we are as kind to ourselves as we are hard on ourselves, knowing that it's not gonna resolve overnight. Like nobody is demanding that somebody's broken leg heal tomorrow.

And so why are we demanding that somebody's depression heal tomorrow? Organizational psychologist, Harvard alum and new york times best-selling author of think again adam grant graced the podcast way back on episode 580 sharing sage advice on how to engage with others who see the world differently finding joy in being wrong and embracing the art of rethinking. Prepare your noodle for this one. Right, so the idea, and this was the subject of this New York Times opinion piece,

basically that came out the other day. The idea being that you approach these conversations rather than from the paradigm that you outline in the book, which is as prosecutor, as preacher, or as politician, but rather lead with curiosity, ask a lot of questions and receive the answers to those questions without judgment, but rather more curiosity. That's the goal.

Is that accurate? Yeah, I think that's a great summary of both the mindset of approaching this like a scientist and saying, look, I'm not gonna preach that I'm right. I'm not gonna prosecute you for being wrong, but I'm also not gonna be a politician and just tell you what you wanna hear to try to campaign for your approval. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, as a scientist, I'm going to say,

you know, Rich, this is totally fascinating to me that your beliefs are so different from mine. And I genuinely want to understand them better. And if you could help me make sense of how this works and how this played out. And then, you know, I also want to understand, I'm sure I have some beliefs that are wrong. I suspect you also do too, right? Nobody's omniscient. I'd want to understand, I'm sure I have some beliefs that are wrong. I suspect you also do too, right? Nobody's omniscient. I'd love to understand what kind of information would lead you to consider changing your mind. And I'm also thrilled to talk about what might change my mind.

And then the hope is we're both going to find out that our knowledge was incomplete through this conversation. And of course, it doesn't work if that's a tactic, right? Because the other person will see right through it. But if you adopt what counseling psychologists call motivational interviewing, and you really try to understand the person's reasons for change and what would lead them to consider shifting their opinion a little bit, then you might surface information that would lead them to change their own mind. Right. So let's dig into that a little bit deeper, but maybe we can start with elaborating a little bit more

on this prosecutor, preacher, politician rubric that you've set up here. The original idea comes from a colleague of mine, Phil Tutlock, who's studied political psychology and social psychology most of his career. And Phil observed that in decision-making, in judgment, we spend a lot of time thinking like preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. And we're usually not aware of it when we're doing it. A preacher mindset is essentially believing that you've already

seen the light and now you have to go and proselytize to everybody else and get them on board. So you've drunk the intellectual Kool-Aid and now your job is to serve it. A prosecuting mindset is more about proving everyone else wrong and winning your side of the case. And then a politician mindset is really about saying, okay, I've got some constituents here and I need to lobby for their buy-in. I want their support. And my big worry, Rich, was when I learned about this framework, I thought, okay, preaching and prosecuting, those stop you from thinking again. Because if I know I'm right and I'm sure you're wrong, I don't need to budge in any of my opinions

or any of the knowledge that I hold. I just need to convince you to do that. And in politician mode, we see people sounding a lot more flexible, but it's really just adjusting what they say to fit in. It's not actually changing what they believe internally. And that's just basically flip-flopping. Yeah. I think I fall mostly into the politicking camp as a... Really? I'm surprised to hear you say that. Really? Why would you say that? Well, I would have guessed just because of the way that you've inspired so many people, I would have guessed that preaching might be the default of those three for you.

Preaching is very uncomfortable for me. I'm much more interested in approval and being liked to a default in a not so great way. Like I've really made your life decisions based on approval or doing this socially acceptable. I mean, I was a lawyer for over a decade, trying to jam a square peg into a round hole for way too long and very reluctant to get out of it, out of fear of social repercussions and familial expectations and the like.

And I would sit in deposition And I would sit in depositions or in hearings and just see the gray and everything and just felt like I'm a really bad advocate because I really wanna appreciate the nuance in all of this and can't we just all get along. Like I'm conflict averse, I'm a people pleaser. And I host these podcasts and I wanna be challenging in the conversations, but also I only have the people on

that I respect and admire. So I'm sitting here and if I'm being honest, it's like, I want Adam to like me, I want him to respect me. That's like just calling myself out in a vulnerable way over like my own motivations. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about that, but I also, I wanna throw like a little bit of a test case out to you.

So I've been vegan for about 14 years now, and I guess for better or worse, that's part of my identity. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I embody that ethos, how I carry that message, how I advocate for something that I believe in. And I've realized that for my own personal makeup, I don't feel, it doesn't feel natural to me to be a preacher about it.

I'm not interested in taking other people's inventory and criticizing their decisions. I don't think it's effective. And I kind of settled into a mode that's a little bit outside of your paradigm, which is this idea of being kind of a lighthouse. Like if I live my life well and equip myself as an athlete, as somebody who is excelling intellectually, mentally,

emotionally, and just living well, it acts more like a magnet or a tractor beam that will bring the receptive audience to me who might be willing or interested to hear about it. And it also goes back to 12 step and how I got sober and the tools that I learned in the program, which are all about not giving advice, but just sharing your experience.

And so I'm curious about how that fits into how you think about these ideas of influencing people and getting people to kind of open up their minds and consider different concepts. Wow, I think that's brilliant. I'm kicking myself now because if we had had this conversation a year ago,

I would have written that in to think again. Oh, well now I'm bummed. I wish I'd met you earlier. It's not my idea though, but it's just something that seems to work better than any of these other three options. Although it doesn't start with a P. You can come up with a P word for it.

It's not alliterative. it's not alliterative I think you articulated it so beautifully though there's a lot to react to there so I want to double click on a few things you said let's just start with the lighthouse idea I think that might be the most compelling workaround I don't even want to call it a workaround I think that's not doing justice to it it's the most compelling solutionaround that I've, I don't even want to call it a workaround. That's, I think that's not doing justice to it. It's the most compelling solution I can think of

to the tension between what I guess was my preferred alternative to preaching, prosecuting, and politicking, which is thinking like a scientist. And the need, if you want to influence people in the world to do some preaching. And I've always been uncomfortable with that tension because, so I guess I should take a step back and just say, thinking like a scientist is what I would love for more people to do more often. And I don't mean you have to go and wear a white coat all the time or carry around test tubes or even own a microscope, right? What I mean is that just the broadest idea of science is the pursuit of knowledge and truth. And if your identity is anchored in being a scientist, it means that you don't have to stick

to a certain set of beliefs at any one time. You want to find out what's going to be effective or what the right way is to live your values. And that means when you form an opinion, it's a hypothesis. You can go out and test it. You can observe. You can interact. You can run experiments, and the hope is that you're as excited to find out that you were wrong as you are to prove that you were right because either way, you've potentially learned something, and I would argue even you learn more when you discover that your hypothesis was false than when you validate it, and yet, Phil Tetlock, when I talked to him first about this framework saying, okay, I want everyone to think more like scientists.

He said, well, yeah, but sometimes you have to talk much more like a preacher in order to be heard. Just look at any pundit on TV or any leader who gives an inspiring speech. Just look at any pundit on TV or any leader who gives an inspiring speech. And I've never liked that as something that you have to do. And I think you just gave an alternative, which is to say, okay, I can think like a scientist. I can test in my own life whether I'm gonna be at my best in an Ironman when I go vegan, right?

That's an experiment you ran. And then once I do that, if I'm willing to share what I've learned from that, and I talk about that publicly, I don't have to tell other people to do it. I don't have to preach about it. I'm just telling my story and that will draw people to me. I just think that's ingenious. Author, Shreemu plant-based cheese founder, and my in-house guru and better half, Julie Pyatt, aka Shreemati, joined me not once, but twice in 2021, dropping wisdom on the importance of celebrating humanity,

cultivating relationships, and igniting intimacy in long-term partnerships. Here's a slice of the spiritual pie we baked on episode 637. Humans are amazing. Is that it? Expound. No, just because I really feel and you really feel, I mean, there's so much beauty in humanity. I mean, humans are just, you know, they're all individual and unique and resilient and creative and courageous and empathic and loving and feeling. And, you know, we often hear narratives that are tearing down the negative or sort of highlighting all the horrible things that are going on in our world. And as we know, we are powerful creators and where we put our

attention is what expands. And so I feel that through this timeout that we've all gone through in the last couple of years, we've even come to appreciate our friends and our community even deeper, not only our close friends, but also our extended communities, even on social media or through the podcast or through different mentorship groups or the Shreemu community. And I think that there's wisdom and power and intelligence in highlighting the beauty of humanity, because there's a lot more beauty than what is brought up for review or, you know, to be considered. And I think it's human, sort of the human tendency to feel justified pointing out everything that's wrong. And then there's something within the personality or the ego that feels like, oh, you know, see, I'm right.

How wrong is that? And this is so wrong and this is so wrong. And so I just think it's a wonderful time. We're all alive in a body. Hopefully if you're listening to this podcast and you're breathing, you have the privilege of being alive, the privilege of being connected to this podcast. And just to highlight the beauty of humanity and how all of us have something so meaningful to bring and offer and share. Yeah, wealth is the company you keep. And I've been doing that and it's been great.

And I feel like I'm in a much better place than I was last year at this time. So I feel good. It's beautiful to see. What else about humans being amazing? I mean, I think one of the great opportunities that we have is to exercise the will to connect in the face of forced separation.

When you see agendas that are operating in our world that are seeking to separate, we have a choice. We can find a neutrality and understanding that everything in life is sacred. Everything comes from divine, even the things that you consider dark or the things that you don't agree with. And if we can sort of relax into that direct connection with our own source consciousness, we can stop comparing and trying to analyze a situation into an intellectual place where we feel safe with it. And so the work is, is in the face of separation, can we be neutral and open and in awe and wonder and just allow all things? And it's more of a not

this or that or either or, it's about a yes and. Both things can be true from a certain perspective. And life is full of billions of different kinds of life forms that are completely unique. So how could one opinion or one lens know that it is the way for all things at all times? I think it's just the fear of the personality that wants to create a box that gives some certainty. And I think many of us know and realize now there is no certainty. And there really wasn't ever certainty in that way, but we had things sort of in a place where we could be in that illusion. So it really is what you and I just described is in the constriction, coming into the present moment, activating neutrality, understanding that everything comes from a sacred place.

It is all part of the play. And we can find a way into transformation by going into the separation rather than running away from it or turning away from it. We can have the courage to go into the experience with that neutrality. And if we're lucky, we're probably going to learn something or expand or soften or experience something that maybe we never imagined. Expert meditation and spiritual teacher, three-time podcast guest, and author of one of my favorite daily doses of inspiration, Knowing Where to Look, Light Watkins joined me on episode 603 to talk about cultivating intuition and more importantly, how to have the courage to trust it.

I remember being 29 years old in my kitchen in Harlem and saying to myself, I'm gonna follow my heart no matter what. And after watching the Chris Rock movie. Takes what it takes, man. No, that story is where you talk about this idea of wiggle room. Like even if you feel like you're on a good path

for yourself, like not holding on too tightly to it and always making room to be malleable. To be inspired. Yeah, so that you can be available for the magical opportunity of going to India, in the case of your story. And it's not about, because some people may look at the hair that and go, that's just you not committing

to whatever you said you were gonna do. And I would refine that and say, what's really your feeling about your path, whatever that is, whether you have language for it or not, is always gonna be there. But the day-to-day plans may change about how you get there or what occupation or what family lifestyle choices you have to go through

in order to get there. And so that's where you wanna be malleable and be open to inspiration, not in questioning the ultimate goal or plan. You really can't go wrong if you just keep following whatever you're feeling inside. You also can't expect to be smiled upon by, perhaps your peers and your colleagues.

Because that will- No, it takes you completely away from social proof. You're gonna look like a dilettante. You know what I mean? Like, oh, this guy just goes from one thing to the next. You can't really like stick with anything. Did you read David Epstein's book, Range? No.

So it's a very interesting kind of study of a variety of people who have excelled in different fields from science and education to athletics and art, et cetera. And it belies this sort of Malcolm Gladwell myth of the 10,000 hour rule and demonstrates that there are those people, of course, the Tiger Woods and people like that.

But by and large, most people who are fully expressed and excelling at the highest level of their, you know, specialized field are people who earlier in life did lots of different stuff and were the people who just really couldn't commit to anything. And as a result, they develop this robustness of experience that back to that idea of in retrospect, all the dots line up, make perfect sense

with where they end up, but they're people of varied interests and many different passions who develop that capacity early to be malleable and flexible to have that wiggle room. And, you know, it's those people that we look at now as lazy dilettantes who, you know, ultimately, it's reframing that and saying, well, and you talk about this, like how do you suspend judgment in the book?

Like maybe they're like, we should look at this a little bit differently. Perhaps they're in their exploratory phase and they're gonna be magnificent and amazing and world-changing and something that they finally latch onto later in life. Yeah, there is a story in there about how, I talk about leaving that first job

for the reasons that I left. And then while I was writing, I remember the day I wrote that story, I was in Airbnb. I think it was in London, living out of a backpack, didn't own anything, still don't own anything. I've got a little money saved up, but I had less saved up at the time. And I was like, you know, compared to my peers,

I don't really, I haven't succeeded. I haven't really done anything that led to the material success that we kind of aspire towards today, but I've never felt more fulfilled. And I realized that the true wealth is the fulfillment inside, right? And that's, again, this is a living experiment.

And it's not that, this is a living experiment. Yeah. And it's not that I'm like walking around beaming all the time because I feel fulfilled inside. That's not really what we're talking about. It's just, it's having us inner security that wherever you are is where you're supposed to be. And if that means you get challenged in certain ways, then that challenge is there for you to learn something

new about yourself. And that new thing that you learn is going to add to the feeling tone of fulfillment, right? And so that's the underlying message of this whole path is your path is not leading you to more success or more comfort, it's leading you to know yourself better and ultimately to feel your connection with other people. And that could be a very, very treacherous path at some points, could be incredibly uncomfortable at other points, but the happiness that people tend to look for outside in success is much more temporal

compared to what you can feel inside while you're going through all of those other moments and obstacles in life. All right, people, up next is one of the world's leading authorities on the neuroscience of addiction, Anna Lemke, MD. Author of two important books, Drug Dealer MD, and her newest work, Dopamine Nation. In episode 623, she gave us a powerful primer on why the relentless pursuit of pleasure always leads to pain. For so long, we've had this idea

that addiction is a downstream consequence of some other problem, but addiction is its own problem. You can have a perfect life and get very, very addicted. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really important point. I've had conversations with Gabor Mate and for him, it's all about childhood trauma, resolve that, you resolve the addiction. I had Johan Hari here, for him, it's all about lost connections, your connectivity to your friends and your family and your community.

And I think those are important pieces in this puzzle, but I'm reluctant to be reductionist about the role that those play in the broader context of addiction. Thank you so much for invoking those examples, because that shows me that you perfectly understand what I'm trying to communicate here. Because yes, it's true that childhood trauma

increases your risk for developing addiction. Yes, it's true that addiction leads to isolation and that the antidote to addiction is social connection in part. But what is so important to understand is you can have the perfect childhood, the perfect parents, the greatest social network, the best spouse, wonderful kids, and you can get really, really addicted.

And that is so important for people to understand and also healthcare providers, because everybody's sort of looking for the reason behind the addiction, but everybody's sort of looking for the reason behind the addiction, but there doesn't have to be a reason behind addiction. Addiction just can be on its own. Yeah, I think that's a crucial point.

I mean, I get asked very frequently, like, what do you think caused this? Like, what is the source of your addiction? And, you know, I'm heavily indoctrinated in 12 step and I'm sure I have some biases around that. But one of the things that you learn is that it's fine if you want to psychoanalyze that aspect of your origin story, but ultimately it doesn't avail you with the tools for how to live today and how to move productively forward. And, you know, there is an argument to be made that it's sort of

a fool's errand to spend too much time on that. Yes, insight can be the booby prize. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is a really very, very important concept. And the other reason it's important is because I think we're natural storytellers and we want to rationalize irrational behavior. And so theellers and we want to rationalize irrational behavior. And so the first thing that we try to do

when we are doing something that's irrational and self and other destructive is to tell ourselves a story or have someone else tell us a story about why we would do that crazy thing. But- And if we can solve that equation, then suddenly everything makes sense and you can figure this out. Right.

But it doesn't work that way. No, I mean, I have had over 20 plus years, countless patients come into my office and say, Dr. Lemke, the reason that I'm addicted to alcohol or I'm addicted to cannabis, or I'm a compulsive gambler is because I'm depressed and anxious. And if you would just fix that,

then I wouldn't have that other problem. And what I have to do is say to them, you know what, I wish depressed and anxious. And if you would just fix that, then I wouldn't have that other problem. And what I have to do is say to them, you know what, I wish that were true. But here's the truth. Number one, even if I could magically wave my wand and make your depression and anxiety go away, once you're addicted, you're addicted. And if we don't focus on that problem,

that's not gonna get better. The other thing is that, you know, that relationship between psychological symptoms and addiction, it's complicated. And it's not necessarily that the depression comes first and then the addiction comes. Addiction can lead to depression and anxiety, which is why my first intervention so often

is to have people abstain. But I'll never forget a patient of mine who said, you know, Dr. Lemke, I realized I was an alcoholic when I got started on an antidepressant, wasn't depressed anymore, but kept drinking. That was his aha moment because he was like, oh, I thought I was drinking because I was depressed. But when I stopped being depressed, I was still drinking.

Yeah, that's kind of the genius behind your dual diagnosis clinic, right? It's almost a Trojan horse way of just treating addiction because the way you get them in the door in a non-threatening way is under the rubric of treating their anxiety or depression, et cetera. Right, yes. Although it's not without effort

because people are resistant to that idea, right? They come in and they want help with depression, anxiety. They see the addiction as a secondary problem. And it takes all my powers of persuasion to get them on board. None too happy to be told that you can't deal with your, you know, condition X until we deal with this substance or behavioral addiction that you have.

And they storm out and leave a one-star Yelp review or something. Exactly, you've got it exactly, you understand. Yeah, if people don't wanna hear that, it's interesting that piece, I mean, as a psychiatrist though, you must have honed tools for how to communicate with people to kind of crack that core.

Yes, and the key piece is to be empathic at the same time that you're telling people what they don't wanna hear. You know what I mean? That's tough, that's a tightrope walk. It is, it is, but I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it. Having teenagers also helps, you know, to sort of, you breathe and you stay calm

and you say, you know, I understand what you're and you stay calm and you say, you know, I understand what you're saying, right? So the typical sort of validating first, but then you give them kind of the real deal, you know, what the science shows, what my clinical experience shows, what I'm asking them to experiment with so that they can gather their own data and see if what I'm saying is right.

But on the data piece, I mean, this doesn't operate, you know, in a logical framework, it's an emotional framework and timing is so important. Right, like I'm happy to talk sobriety with anyone who's suffering, but I've learned to detach or from any expectations of what they will or won't do. Like people get sober when they're ready to.

Yeah, and one of the main things I have to teach my trainees, my fellows, is that an essential part of the work that we do is that we have to actually really care about our patients. But there is a point at which you can care too much. And when we're trying harder than the patient is or wanting it more than the patient wants it, we're not actually helping them.

Then you gotta go to the Al-Anon meeting. That's right. We have to conduct our own little Al-Anon session, you know, right there at work. Cause I work with a bunch of young folks, which I can say is one of the most exciting things that's happened in the last 10 years. You know, 10 years ago,

I couldn't find a medical student under a rock who wanted to learn about addiction. Now they're beating down my door, which is really awesome. Yeah, I think it brings up an important kind of broader point about culture in general. And this idea that we live in a situation in which there's this asymmetry in terms of how we approach our lives

with respect to pleasure and pain. And we organize our lives completely around the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. But as you kind of astutely put in the book, the more that we pursue that, ultimately the more pain that we reap because these systems require a level of homeostasis that we're constantly trying to avoid.

So we're just delaying the inevitable onslaught of pain that we so fear. Yes, absolutely. We live in a world in which we are saturated with dopamine and we live in a culture which encourages us to pursue it. But the ultimate end result of pursuing dopamine is to feel worse than when you started. And this is really the central message. People are more depressed, more anxious, more suicidal and more addicted than they were 30 years ago. And I contend that one of the main reasons

is because of this relentless pursuit of pleasure that essentially adjusts the dopamine levels, changes the hedonic or pleasure set point to make people anhedonic, meaning without joy. The godfather of integrative medicine and a true pioneer of health, Dr. Andrew Weil, is a legend in the realm of mind-body healing. In the 606 drop, we talked psychedelics, fungi, food, and breath, and the best practices you can adopt to sidestep chronic lifestyle disease. to sidestep chronic lifestyle disease.

What goes on in your mind really determines and shapes your experience of the external world. And I've applied that very much in my work with patients because I just find over and over again that the root causes of illness are often in the mental emotional sphere and not in the physical body or they're like they're in both but conventional medicine has so ignored that non-physical part of ourselves.

And I think that's a great limitation. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I appreciate about you the most is just that level of cognizance and emphasis that you put on the mind and your willingness to delve deep into the nature of consciousness. And these are just anathema in conventional medical practice.

Yeah, it just doesn't compute. I took one of the most interesting courses I ever took was in medical hypnosis at Columbia University was for physicians. I learned so many fascinating things there. And as a result of that, I made mind body medicine, a major component of the integrative medicine curriculum that I developed.

And I very frequently refer patients to mind body practitioners, whether that's a hypnotherapists or visualization practitioners, or any one of a number of other modalities because I find these things to be incredibly effective, cost-effective, I mean, even fun for both practitioner and patient.

And relatively free of risk. Totally, and they are so underutilized in medicine. And I remember once I was challenged to a public debate by Arnold Relman, who was the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. And it was a very publicized event. And I mean, I have never met a more closed minded person. He said his position was,

all you have to do is show me the evidence. You know, you show me the evidence, blah, blah, blah. So anything you'd show him, he'd say, oh, well, that's not evidence. You know, and one of the questions that I asked him, I said that the best research area of what I do is mind-body interactions. There's been 30 years of studies on that.

And yet these modalities are so underutilized, what would you do to increase their use? And his response was, there is no evidence for mind-body interactions. So, I don't know what you can do with that. Yeah, I mean, how are you? Yeah, there's a profound hubris around the scientific method science is truth, science is fact,

but that overlooks the fact that it's a method. It's not a fact in and of itself. It's a means of approximating truth. It's a way to approach or discover truth, but it's also not the sole method and it's flawed. And I think there's so much arrogance around, this is the way that we do it. And that kind of approach is very dualistic or binary in that, you know, it's controlling for this variable or this and that. And obviously we've made, you know, I'm not dismissing it.

It's like, this is the engine of progress, of course, but it overlooks the holistic nature of the human body and the interplay between all of these very sensitive systems. And science and medicine and our part of the world are totally dominated by materialism. A philosophy that says that the only thing that's real is that which can be seen and touched and measured. And that if you see a change in a physical system, the cause has

to be physical. Non-physical causation of physical events doesn't compute. It's not allowed for. So, you know, in hypnosis, there are so many demonstrations like you can touch a person with a finger and you have them believe it's a piece of red hot metal. And if they're in a deep trance, they get an actual blister. I mean, that is non-physical causation of a physical event. So if you try to get a doctor to look at that or scientists, oh, it's just a curious thing. It doesn't have any meaning.

Yeah, that kind of makes me think of your interesting ideas around the placebo effect and the way that we kind of think about that backwards. Fortunately, that's one of the things that's changing now, which is makes me very happy, but the still the most common ways I hear the word placebo used are in phrases like, how do you know that's not just a placebo effect?

And the most interesting word there is just, or we have to rule out the placebo effect. That's what we wanna rule in. The placebo response is pure healing from within, mediated by the mind, unmixed up with the direct effects of treatment, which are likely to be harmful. Yeah, I think I've heard you talk about the fact that

in every kind of double blind trial, if you look at the placebo group, there's always a few people that have experienced the result as if they had taken the medication. And that's the most interesting thing. Amazing that any change we can produce with a pharmacological agent can be exactly mimicked in at least some people some of the time

by a mind mediated mechanism. So fortunately the change that's happened, and this is the result of these new brain imaging technologies, is that now you can show that certain parts of the brain are active when people have placebo responses, and this makes it accessible and real know, and real to people. So I think placebos are being taken much more seriously.

Right, because now the imaging science has caught up and neuroscience has progressed to the point where they can provide an explanation that makes sense to the conventional community. And the same thing's happened with meditation. There've been a tremendous number of studies of very long time series meditators showing different activity

and in different brain areas as a result. So the fact that a meditation practice can actually physically change the brain. I mean, that's really interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But within that, there's this profound, deep appreciation for the mystical, right? Which is like my favorite thing to. Yes. Right? Yeah.

Which is like my favorite thing to talk about. Oh, good. Yeah. And I suspect that was in part informed by all these shamans and various healing practitioners that you've experienced over the decades in South America and Asia, et cetera. One of the attitudes that I just can't stand

is that when scientists believe that it's their job to make mystery go away, it seems to me mystery is an essential aspect of the universe and that you have to appreciate that and wonder at it. Terence McKenna, I once heard say that, the bigger you build the fire, the more you're aware of the extent of the darkness.

And I think that's true. And I think that our experience at the heart of our experience is mystery. That's stuff that we can appreciate, but we can't really understand with our mind. Right. What does it mean to be human? How do you be a good person?

What happens when you die? If you find yourself grappling with these big questions, then my audio experiment with Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan, hosts of Metaphysical Milkshake, back on episode 633 is definitely your jam. Here's a little something to whet your appetite. I believe that everyone has a purpose. I believe this with all of my heart and in a very strong way because as a member of the Baha'i faith, but not just a Baha'i faith, I think anyone who has, I mean, I think that's an answer

that applies to both theists and atheists, but as a member of the Baha'i faith, I believe that we are on an eternal spiritual journey, that this, you know, our, whatever, our soul or eternal part of ourselves is encased in this flesh tuxedo for 80 or 90 years. We slough it off and we continue our journey beyond time and space.

So while we're here, everyone has a purpose. Now, it may not be like everyone on planet Earth has a purpose like Oprah has a purpose. I mean, it's about- We can't all be Oprah. We can't have 7 billion Oprahs on the planet, but I do think that this is one of the really exciting tasks is there's a riddle wrapped inside this question, which is our purpose is to find our purpose. And as soon as we found our purpose, we have to be not sure that that's

our purpose and we have to keep finding our purpose. So by the time we're 97 and we keel over, hopefully we're all continuously at the very beginning footsteps of this eternal journey toward finding what that purpose is. And it may shift and change. And so whether you call that, you know, God or, or spirit or just the power of the universe or the winds of the cosmos or the mystic connection or whatever you want to call God, which has become a four letter word and is a tough concept to dig into. But the winds, the Holy Spirit, the winds of the cosmic power of the creative force that surrounds us, that's within us, without us, beyond us, beyond the limitations of time and space. These winds have a very special, we have a very special relationship with them, I believe. And it's like when you go sailing, I don't know anything about sailing. I've been sailing like twice, but the whole idea that you tack your sails to try and get the most out of the wind, depending on, you have a vague, you know, I want to go toward that twice, but the whole idea that you, you tack your sails to try and get the most out

of the wind, depending on you have a vague, you know, I want to go toward that Island, but you may not go directly to the Island. You may, the winds may take you off to the left a little bit and then back, or you may have to zigzag the wind stall for a little bit. You turn on your motor, then the winds are pushing you right there, but you, you are trying to align yourself with those, with those winds. And it's, it's really, it's exciting. I think it's a really exciting part of being alive, maybe the most exciting part of being alive. And this is where I think that young people,

especially, I don't know about older people. I mean, older people, we get set in our ways. And like Reza said, we've got kids and jobs and mortgages and kind of, you know, we have a little bit of stuff figured out, but especially for this mental health crisis that is afflicting kids under 20 or 30, it's astonishingly insidious and toxic and fatal. But this connection to this question is a big part of helping to use a spiritual tool to solve that issue, to solve that problem. Beautifully put. Hard agree. Thanks. Let me just end the podcast.

Hard agree. Boom. The only thing that I'll just say to people who are listening to this, because I mean, I could have listened to that all day. It's 100% true. I agree with it 100%. And I have like philosophical and theological reasons why I agree with it and experiential reasons why I agree with it. But what I'll just say is that if you are listening to this and saying, okay, fine, everybody has a purpose. Well then, how do I, am I doing my purpose? How do I know what my purpose is? If you don't know, then you're not doing it. For those people, like, I feel like I am achieving my purpose. I would say probably you too, Rich. Yeah, Rain.

I mean, you're doing what your purpose is. I wrestle with it, truth be told, but yes, by and large, I do. Well, I mean, the meta- It's a constant, constant for me a constant a series of the use going back to the sailboat metaphor that's what i was just gonna say yeah but that metaphor is so perfect because everyone everyone who has had this experience will tell you that when the wind is right and your sail is you, exactly where it's supposed to be and you're moving smoothly.

And I mean this metaphorically, not actually on the water, but I mean in life, you know it, you know it. And you always know when you're fighting the wind. So pay attention to that feeling. Yeah. Pay attention to that. If you're sitting there thinking to yourself, well, then how do I know what my purpose is? Are you fighting the wind? Is that what it feels like? Then you're not pursuing your purpose. Have a mission, not a job. I say this to my students all the time, because I think so many

of us pursue jobs. I want to be an actor. That's what my passion is. I want to be a writer. That's where my passion is. That's great. But what's your mission? You know, your mission is bigger than the things that you do, right? If you have a mission, then you can have multiple ways in which that mission expresses itself, like acting or, you know, writing or service or whatever the thing is. So, if you're sitting there and you're thinking to yourself, what do I want to do with my life? Tweak that question just a little bit. What is your mission in life? Pursue that mission. And I promise you, people will pay you for it. But it's the rare individual who has a grip on that. I feel like, especially with young people, you have to live some life.

You have to travel, you have to collect experiences. You have to put yourself out there. How could you possibly, it's not a thunderbolt thing. I mean, there's always the kid who at age six knows what he or she wants to do, but that's really the outlier. This is what I always say to when I, cause I do some speaking at college campuses and stuff too.

And I just tell people like, 20s are a waste of time. Like, don't even worry about it. Don't try and get it figured out. Like the point of your 20s is to try 12 different things and fail at nine of them so that you can come out. But there's all this societal pressure of like, that's not urination, by the way,

if you're hearing that in a microphone, that's Reza pouring a glass of water. There's no proof of that. But truthfully in society right now, you talk to so many college kids and they're so depressed at 2021 because they haven't gotten the perfect internship over the summer and they're not pre-enrolled

in the perfect grad program and they don't have their job aligned. Now I know it's hard to make a living out there. It's hard to have a career and make a living. It's much harder than in the 80s and 90s when we were getting our educations. But nonetheless, if you view the 20s as a workshop stage, then it gives you some, you can relax a little bit. But you gotta do some counter-programming around that. You're asking young people to step off the hamster wheel. And that's pretty scary, especially for a kid who's kind of been on that track where it's like,

get into the right college, get the right job. And then, oh, if I opt out of that, then life's gonna pass me by. But obviously, it's quite the contrary. And I think too, for mission, and we've been on this topic too long, but- Yeah, we're gonna have to pick another thing. I think, here you go, Reza.

I just think in terms of mission too, it doesn't have to be grand, you know, like we don't all have to change the world. Your mission can be, I wanna build beautiful things out of wood and I wanna have a nice family. That's exactly what I mean. Yeah, my mission from a very early age was to change the way that people think through stories.

I didn't say to myself, I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to be a television producer. You know, I'm going to be like a podcast host. But all of those are just different ways of telling stories to change the way that people think. So those are the jobs that I do, but the mission is something else. That's great. Beyond politics and religion, few topics are more hotly debated than nutrition. So to help us parse facts from fiction and guide us towards an evidence-based, rational model for nutritional health,

I convened with my friend, Simon Hill, author of The Proof is in the Plants on episode 638. Here is a tasty morsel. I'm big on diet quality being more important than focusing too much on the macronutrients. The macronutrients can be important if you have a very specific goal. And for example, athletes or bodybuilders, etc. But I think what's more important first is the quality of those macronutrients, the quality of the fat, the quality of the carbohydrates.

It's less jelly beans, more black beans, the quality of the protein. That's my favorite quote of yours, by the way. So, where there are a lot of people that are very anti-carbohydrates, but carbohydrates is a, it's an umbrella term. And what matters is where you're getting those carbohydrates from.

If they're coming from jelly beans, then you're going to run into problems. Right, this idea, you know, in terms of kind of falsified narratives out there, vilifying all carbohydrates, lumping in, you know, the black beans with the jelly beans is preposterous or analogizing fruit to diet soda or soda, sugar soda. Yeah.

We've talked extensively on this podcast about protein, meeting your protein needs on a plant-based diet. So I don't wanna belabor the point, but I haven't had you here to do it. And you being a very strong physical specimen, I think it's worthy if somebody's tuning into this and isn't familiar with either of us, and perhaps this is their first introduction

to some of the ideas we're talking about, to at least spend a couple minutes talking about the big protein question. Because it still propagates in terms of people who are interested in moving towards a more plant centric diet, but are fearful of what that implies in terms of meeting their protein needs,

especially for the active people amongst that cohort. Yeah, so this was a very large fear of mine when I was initially making the changes to my diet. And I always remind myself of that because it's easy to kind of dismiss it and forget that the sort of general school of thought is that you get your protein from animal foods and that plants are missing protein.

And to this day, when you go to a restaurant or you go to Chipotle, they say, what protein do you want on this? And yeah, very rarely does that include plant protein. Although that's, it's starting to change. I think the food environment's starting to modify and we're seeing increases in plant protein options. And I was chatting with Paul Shapiro a couple of weeks ago

now, and he's doing exciting things with mycobrotein. What his company is doing right now with mushrooms. Yeah, it's crazy, feeding these fungi microbes, potato and sorghum, and then producing this super protein rich food. I tried some as well and it's incredible. So I haven't tried it yet. That's certainly future food.

You know, that's certainly future food. But overall, I think there are a few aspects of protein that are somewhat misunderstood. And we can perhaps clear up some of that confusion. The first would be that plant protein is missing certain essential amino acids. And protein is made up of amino acids. They're the little building blocks and our body can make 11 of them.

And the other nine are considered essential amino acids. We have to get them through our food. And the idea for many decades has been that plants are missing some of those amino acids. And you hear this idea of complete protein, right? And often people speak to quinoa and soy. And I think definition here is really important. It's critical to this

because I think there's a misunderstanding of what complete protein means. I think most people think, okay, well, if quinoa and soy are complete proteins, that means that these other plants are missing amino acids. They're inferior. Yeah, or that they're just totally missing something. And that's not true.

So all plants contain all nine essential amino acids. They're not missing. There just are some of those plants where certain amino acids are in lower amounts. And so the definition of incomplete, actually by definition within the science, although it's not used this way in general conversation, is not that an amino acid is missing. It's just that it is in a smaller percentage. And if you were to eat only that food for all of your calories, then you might run into some

trouble. You might not consume enough of a certain amino acid to meet your body's daily requirement. So you can imagine that that's kind of a useful definition for developing countries, places where there is food security problems. And if someone's living on one or two foods, then that's important. But if you're eating a diet where you have a range of an abundance of food options, then really it's not that helpful. And so if you are eating with diversity, you might be consuming, for example,

grains that are low in lysine. And look, it's true. If you were to eat certain grains and that was providing your 3,000, 2,500 calories, then you might fall short on lysine. And the same could be said about certain beans. If you eat a certain bean for all of your calories, you might fall short on methionine. But beans are very rich in lysine.

And when you start adding all these foods into your diet, some might be low in a certain amino acid, but the other food is really high. Right, it's really an academic exercise because almost no one is only eating one food unless you're like the Spud Fit guy who's eating just potatoes for a year, or you are in a developing country

and there's a legitimate food scarcity issue, but almost everybody is eating at least two, three, five, six, seven, 10 different foods throughout the course of a day or two. And if you're doing that, you're eating with that diversity and you're eating enough calories, you will not run into problems. You will get all of the essential amino acids

that your body needs. And anyone can run a simple exercise. Don't believe me, download the Cronometer app. It's a free app. Plug in a day of eating and you will quickly see that you will exceed the 100% recommended amount for all nine essential amino acids.

And you'll see it's very hard not to exceed. It would be more challenging to fall short on them than it would be to consume enough of them. All right, people of Podcastlandia, we did it. This is the end. And to put a cap on part one of this year's recap is none other than planetary change agent and entrepreneur, Paul Hawken,

who joined me back on episode 627 to share his beautiful new book, Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Paul is someone who has indelibly shaped my perspective and my actions when it comes to ecological responsibility. And it's just an honor to close things out with his words today. The root cause of global warming

is a massive disconnections between each other, between people, between people in nature and nature itself, which is caused by humans, habitat fragmentation, pollution, acidification of the oceans and onwards. And regenerating and reversing the climate crisis is really about reconnecting those broken strands.

And that's what the solutions really are, is really about reconnecting those broken strands. And that's what the solutions really are, as opposed to sort of standalone techniques or technologies, that's going to fix it. That word fix doesn't even belong in the conversation because it's not an it and you can't fix it. The atmosphere is the biosphere. There's the same thing and we are part of it and nature never makes a mistake, only we do.

So let's look at what we're doing. And regeneration is very much about alignment with the living world, with the way it works and always has. And so, as you said, what we've done conversationally and sort of declaratively and almost imperatively is individuate the problem, which is this is what you can do or should do. And it's true, those are good things,

recycling and use cold water in your washing machine and try not to drive an EV if you can afford it, et cetera, et cetera. But I think people understand that even if they do them, they know it's not sufficient to the task at hand. And so it actually makes people more disempowered in a funny way, even though they're actually participating in the kind of token way.

And then they look to governments, they look to the conference of the parties, the UN framework on climate change, they look for these annual meetings, this one in Glasgow in November for something to happen, like hoping that politicians will get together and solve the problem. If politicians knew what to happen, like hoping that politicians will get together and solve the problem. If politicians knew what to do,

we wouldn't be in the situation we are today. And that's just not gonna happen, not to say we can't say it, but, so then you feel like there's this gulf between these huge meta or institutions, corporations and governments, and then you as an individual. And that's again, what regeneration is trying to say, whoa, meta or institutions, corporations and governments and then you as an individual. And that's again, what regeneration is trying to say,

whoa, wait a minute, that's not where the solution is gonna come from. Right. Regeneration is sort of bedfellows with this idea of symbiosis. Like how can we live more symbiotically on the planet? And understanding that and really embodying that begins with really fully embracing

and acknowledging that we are all, you know, micro systems that are part of a macro system. And it's sort of belying the idea that nature's over there and we're over here and we venture into nature and out of nature. And yet, you know, fundamentally that's just a falsehood because the cells in our body and everything that we're made up of is of course,

part and parcel of this environment. And in terms of the solution, you know, once you acknowledge that, I think what you begin to understand and what the book kind of does a beautiful job conveying is the idea that the problem is systemic, that we can't truly move into, you know, this more symbiotic regenerative relationship

with the planet until we, you know, have some corrective measures with our systems at large. Right, there's this gigantic misalignment of incentives across the board, be it by dint of governmental bodies or the tectonic plates of capitalism, all of these forces that the individual feels powerless to have any control over or say over that perpetuate the problem.

So short of revolution, like how are we creating better incentives for the systems that are in play, or how do we create better systems with incentives that could supplant the systems that are leading us astray? That is the question. And I think that between the individual and meta institutions and global institutions is something else called agency.

And agency is sort of been overlooked. There is no such thing as an individual. That's sort of a delusion we wake up with in the morning. But functionally there's no such thing. And every person has agency. It's their family, it's their friends, it's their community, it's their neighborhood, it's their church, it's their synagogue, it's their school,

it's where they teach, it's their city, it's their company, colleagues, it goes on and on and on. And we have a network, we're all part of networks. And that is where we have influence and where we're all part of networks. And that is where we have influence and where we can make a difference. And I think a lot of people have felt or come to think that, you know, if we get renewables right, or we do this, we do that,

you know, that again, we'll fix it, you know, but like there's some Archimedean solution. If we pull hard enough, the problem is gonna go away. And rather than understanding that the solution is everywhere, it's ubiquitous, it's local, regional, it's where agency exists. And that is everywhere on earth with every culture, every society and every country.

And so that's the good news, which is that we can solve this. We really can, but we can't solve it if we think someone's gonna solve it for us or if we come to believe that individuals are to blame and that they're responsible and they'll solve it, we kind of know that one's not true. Right.

I'm not saying we all have, we don't have personal responsibility, of course we do, but that alone is going to be sufficient. And so when we look at the institutions and the perverse incentives that they have, the economic institutions, the political institutions, they are all extractive. That is to say, every institution that we've come to know and trust or not trust, but buy from or believe in

or invest in or own shares in is extractive. In other words, it's taking life. And we sort of take that for granted. Well, don't make a mess, you know, or clean up your mess, you know, that kind of thing. And that's sustainability in a way. But extraction is taking life. And when you take life, that's degeneration. That's what degeneration is when you take life.

And so regeneration is really not about blaming and sort of demonizing those institutions or those economic sectors so much as saying, wait, that road, that degeneration road doesn't go much further. That's everything screaming at us, all the science, our experiences and so forth. Like that road doesn't go much further. Why's everything screaming at us, all the science, our experiences and so forth. Like that road doesn't go much further. Why are we going down that road?

And so regeneration is about a 180 pivot. Like, can we just stop and go the other way? Can we not regenerate the world and have a GDP and an economy and jobs rather than degenerate it? And the fact is we can, and it's really a question of healing the future or stealing the future,

because what we're doing is stealing the future. Now, it used to be from our children, now it's from ourselves practically. And so it really isn't like something that, that what's happening with respect to climate is wrong or not at all, it's all great, what everybody's doing is fantastic. But unless we actually do address those institutional incentives,

and actually assumptions that are so deep that people don't even understand them as assumptions, then we won't have a chance at all because the, you know, Richard, one of the things too, go back to the fix it thing, like, you know, Bill Gates and others, like John Kerry, for example, are saying, if we don't do nuclear, we're screwed, okay?

And this idea, you know, that there is this one thing, but you could have renewable energy and nuclear energy for the whole world today. And we still be going right over the cliff because we're destroying all the living systems on earth. We're destroying our oceans, our fisheries, our land, our forests, our insects, our pollinators. And so that has nothing to do with renewable energy or fossil fuel energy.

That has to do with us. And so we have to see it as you said earlier as a system it's whole you can't you can't silo it and separate it out and say we're going to do that and do this and do that you can do that but unless you step back and look at it systemically you're not going to get to the core cause or car cure. What an incredible year. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed this look in the rear view.

Links to all the full episodes and the social media accounts for all the guests excerpted today can be found in the show notes and on the episode page at richroll.com. Part two with a bunch more awesome excerpted convos will be up later in the week, so stay tuned for that. And if you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do

is to subscribe to the show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the like. Sharing the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media is, of course, always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, you can subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page on richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the show was created by Dan Drake and Blake Curtis. Portraits by Davey Greenberg and Grayson Wilder.

Graphic elements, courtesy of Daniel Solis. And our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love and support. I will see you back here in a couple of days with part two of our best of 2021. Until then, relax. It's okay to take a break. Pause when agitated.

Try to enjoy the holidays. Peace, plants. Namaste. Thank you.