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

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

If there’s one thing we learned in 2021, it’s that conversation matters. Allow me to indulge this truth by introducing Part Two of my annual yearbook—a means to reflect upon the twelve months past by revisiting some of the year’s most compelling podcast guests. It’s been an honor to share my conversations with so many extraordinary people over the course of 2021. Second listens brought new insights—and more reminders that these evergreen exchanges continue to both inspire and inform. For long-time listeners, approach this episode as a refresher to launch you into 2022 with renewed vigor. For those new to the podcast, my hope is this anthology will stir you to peruse the back catalog and explore episodes you may have missed. 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 Two 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. Thank you for taking this journey of growth alongside me. Here’s to an extraordinary 2022. Peace + Plants, Rich

The second that you're in a situation where you're procrastinating or you're thinking negative thoughts, it's your subconscious that's in charge of you. And so, in order to change, you have to interrupt subconscious patterns. You see, the five-second rule isn't just some dumb counting backwards thing. It is a form of metacognition that interrupts the pattern stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus, which flips on your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control over what you think and do next. That's the genius of it because it is simple, you remember it, and it immediately interrupts the negative and suicidal ideations that torture people.

And speaking of suicide, we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from taking their lives by 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, asking for help. So I am here to tell you, I want you to try it. I want you to share it with people because interrupting the patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back and pushing yourself to take action or to think something different, it is the only way you are going to change. And this is a tool that's going to help you bridge that gap. And if you program your mind correctly, and if you're clear about what you want to create, your mind will help you get what you want. That's Mel Robbins

in one of many clips to come in part two of our best of 2021 edition of the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Happy holidays, everybody. Welcome. I must say it has been fun revisiting these conversations and splicing together this special episode. 2021 was a transformative year in so many ways. And part two of this recap tradition does not disappoint. But before we dive in, let's take care of business.

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

recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. 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. 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 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 back on the year, I'm just filled with so much gratitude, not just for all of the incredible individuals who have shared their time and their wisdom and their hearts with me, but really for all of you guys, for the listeners. I don't take your attention and support for granted. I relish in our community. And this recap practice is just one way that I can honor all of you,

a way of saying thank you in this spirit of positive change, because I believe in the power we all have to do and be better and to own and actualize our best, most authentic selves. And so with that being said, what better way to kick things off today than by sharing the wisdom of author

and one of my personal heroes, Stephen Pressfield. Revered for his creative prolificacy, Stephen has 20 books to his name, including a book that radically changed my life, a book that I gift more than any other book, The War of Art. Stephen, join me on episode 584, serving up truths big and small on honing creativity, overcoming resistance, the importance of persistence persistence and why art is about discipline not talent please enjoy this excerpt from my conversation with stephen pressfield i call it resistance with a capital r and like if we had a typewriter or a keyboard in front of me now, or you've got one there with a blank screen or a blank page in it, you would feel, we would feel a force radiating off that page, a negative force trying to push you away from it, right? And that's what I call resistance.

as if we went out and bought an exercise bike or a treadmill and we brought it home to the house and suddenly we realize we're coming up with every excuse in the world not to get on that treadmill. So resistance is this negative force of self-sabotage that will work against us anytime we try to move from a lower level to a higher level, ethically, morally, creatively. If you have an idea for, creatively. If you have an idea for a book, if you have an idea for a podcast, if you have an idea for this studio or something that you want to do, a voice will come into your head immediately that will say, who are you to put this thing together? This has been done a million times and it's been done better than you ever could do or ever would do. You're too old, you're too young, you're too fat,

you're too skinny, you don't have enough education, you have too much education, et cetera, et cetera. And that negative force is universal. I can tell you from the thousands of emails I've got. And not only is it universal, it's the same voice in all of our heads. It may be tailored a little bit to you or to me, but it's the same voice in all of our heads. You know, it may be tailored a little bit to you or to me, but it's the same voice.

And I was never aware of that. When I first started to write as a 24-year-old, resistance just kicked my ass all over the place. And I, you know, I went through a lot of stuff before I finally kind of said to myself, you know what, there's a force out there that's working against me. You know, it's not just something I'm inventing.

There is a real force out there, just like gravity, just like the transit of Venus across the sky. And once I could sort of give a name to it, then I could say, okay, now I have something I can deal with. How can I overcome this? Can I develop habits that will help me overcome it? Can I organize my day in such a way? Can I change my mindset in such a way? So anyway, that's kind of my definition of resistance. Well, the first step seems to be disassociating your identity from

the resistance itself, because I think what we all kind of do is self-identify with that. That is part of who we are. That's a great way of putting it, Richard. I've never heard that before. That's exactly it. Well, you have talked about, you know, this idea that exists outside of yourself, right? If you're just thinking, well, I can't do it.

This is me telling myself this, as opposed to this external force that we can, you know, define as this pernicious entity working at odds with our effort to climb to that elevated place. But what was it that was like the light switch for you that allowed you to kind of come to that realization? Was it just pain?

You know, it was pain, I guess. But you know, I can't actually remember. There was not like a moment when I said that or if there was to myself, oh, this is resistance. You know, just over time, I guess. I mean, there was a moment that sort of where things turned around in that way for me, but I don't think I identified a force as resistance.

But what you just said, Rich, is exactly right. Of disassociating this concept of resistance, this fact of resistance from your own identity. Like when we hear this voice in our head that says you're not good enough, it's all been done, et cetera, et cetera, what makes that so powerful against us is we think it's our own thoughts.

We think, oh, that's me assessing the situation objectively, but it's not. It's this other siren voice, this force that's just out there, that's a fact of nature. And once we can say, oh, that's not me, that kind of is the key to the whole thing. Right.

I think that it's the inner war, the writer's war, the artist's war that we were talking about, that in a way to face the blank page, to write a book, to write a movie, to write whatever it is, or ultra endurance, things like that, you have to be a warrior. One way or another, you've got to take the warrior virtues, which I would name as courage, patience, camaraderie, love for one's brothers and sisters, selflessness, and very important,

the willing embracing of adversity. And there are a lot of other virtues, but those virtues that a warrior, a Spartan warrior or Alexander the Great would use for enemies out there, the artist or the endurance athlete uses those virtues against the enemies in here, right? When you're on your fourth Ironman in a row and every fiber of your being is screaming out,

stop, stop, this is insane, you're having to call upon something, right? And I think it's that warrior mentality, the same thing that the Spartans called on on the day three at Thermopylae, whatever. So I guess, again, I was sort of drawn to write these books, and I didn't even know why, but I think I was kind of reinforcing for myself, in a way, that code of honor, that sense of shame, and that ability to kind of endure and to keep going forward into the unknown.

Next up is a really powerful clip that's excerpted from perhaps the most emotionally resonant episode of the year, coming from elite marathoner and ultra marathoner Tommy Rivers Pusey, offering poignant words of wisdom, gleaned from his recent near-fatal battle with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. You know, I remember being very aware that it was serious. And anytime you have something that's going on with your respiratory system, you really quickly lose your ego.

I mean, there's not much bartering and you can't really tough your way through that. You take away somebody's oxygen and it's just a matter of minutes and you're begging for somebody, something, anything to save you. I mean, that's why, it's like being waterboarded, you know?

And there's a reason why, gosh, that that's so effective because there's this fear that comes over you when, um, everything protective within your body is telling you you're going to die. Like you're, you've got seconds, you know, unless you change something and you know, you become desperate and whatever it is, you know, whatever it is that needs to be done to, to be able to make you stop feeling that you're willing to, you're willing to do it, you're willing to concede. And, um, I remember a year ago, a year and a half ago, bartering with whoever it is that is in charge of all of this. You know, if I can just, just let me get through this year, just give me one more year. Like if I can just just let me get through this year just give me one more year like if I can have a year and then you know I'll gladly go and I've made it it's been a year and um

gosh and then you get selfish you're like okay five more 20 more 50 more right you know because we're humans yeah exactly but I mean it doesn't doesn't get any better than this. It really doesn't. And I mean, the tragedy is that we don't see it until afterwards, you know? I mean, I've been thinking about people say like, and they lived, and they lived happily ever after. Like the operative verb there is lived, you know? They were alive. That's why it was happily ever after. Then they died and it becomes a fucking tragedy. But like, gosh, life is incredible. I mean, it just, as bad as it seems, as hard as it seems,

it's just such a gift to be able to do it. And we talk about how tragic it is when somebody, when something happens, you know, somebody dies, somebody gets sick, there's an accident, there's a disaster. And as though that's out of the norm. And in reality, the fact that we're alive, it's just a miracle. I mean, the fact that we're here, that we're... It becomes hard to talk about this stuff because you can't express it in ways

that haven't been expressed in just such cliche terms, but the fact that we're living and breathing and talking and all of this with everything that's going on on a space rock. Yeah, exactly. That emits oxygen that we can breathe and we give it back CO2 hurtling through space. I mean, it's all insane, right?

It's spinning 16,000 miles an hour. But our brains can't really, you know, grok that whole thing. Of course, obviously we intellectually understand like that life is a miracle, but we can't fully embody that or appreciate that on a moment to moment basis. And, you know, in my experience,

people who have experienced certain types of trauma or life altering, you know, situations like yourself, come out of those experiences with obviously this renewed appreciation, but there's kind of a timeline, like that dissipates over time. It's hard to hold onto that. And so here you are a year later, like I feel like you really are holding onto that.

You really are in the moment. Like when we first sat down and you're like, this is great, man, I'm so happy. Like I can feel it, like that's real. And I think that's an incredible gift for all of us to like hear you express that, for you to fully embody that and a powerful reminder of just how precious all of this is

and how fleeting and how delicate and fragile. Yeah. And I just wanna, like I want a piece of that. Like I wanna like feel that on a soul level in the way that you feel it. The lucky part is that as good as things are, they'll get bad again for all of us. I guess the key is to not waste that suffering when it comes, like see it as a gift,

see it as an opportunity to open our eyes and to be able to really, to value, you know, what it is that we have. It's normal, a normal day, you know, just realizing how incredible that is. And the tragedy is that we don't recognize it until after the fact, but everything is, it's so cyclical, you know. it until after the fact, but everything is, it's so cyclical, you know, everything that is good. Um, anytime we're in, we're having a good time, a comfortable time, life is good. You know, um, we can be 100% guaranteed that it's going to get bad again, you know, and as bad as it is, it can be 100% guaranteed that it's going to get good again, you know, and it's just being able to see all of it all at once and recognize, recognize what is good and, um, and be able to see all of it all at once and recognize what is good and be able to really value it as

it's happening. Because like I was saying, there is no idealistic future where it's just gonna all be right and we're just gonna be happy. Happiness isn't something, we're not a victim of it. It doesn't just happen to us. It's happening all the time and it's our ability to see it and recognize it. And it's just, it's just incredible, really. Next up is author, education luminary, and fellow Stanford classmate, Julie Lithgott-Hames. education luminary and fellow Stanford classmate, Julie Lithgott-Hames. On the pod to promote her new book, Your Turn, How to Be an Adult, we discussed everything from the importance of owning conversation skills to fostering curiosity and how we can all grow up just a little bit more.

Childhood had changed. So parents were arriving differently on campus. They were arriving and staying. They weren't just dropping you off, helping you move in. They felt they had a role to play in the day-to-day management of life in the life of their child. And I found myself thinking, you know, this child could be in the Marines, but here they are, you know, not putting their lives in danger. They're at a well-resourced university, which you're paying a tremendous amount for them to attend quite likely. What are you so afraid of, parent? Why is it that you think you need to be

the one to have the run-of-the-mill conversation with a faculty member, to get involved if there's a roommate dispute, to attend an overseas studies orientation, because you don't think your child can go abroad unless you've had the orientation so that we know how we can be successful abroad. We listened to the pronouns changing. It was, we're going abroad. We've gotten into this seminar. So those were some of the changes I noticed. And my job was to root for young people to thrive. And I could see that those who were over-managed were lacking in agency. And I found myself asking, hey kid, have you ever made a choice? Have they let you make a choice? Or are you just incredibly good at doing what you're told? Yeah. And it saddened me. Yeah. it produces a certain handicap where the child not only lacks self-efficacy,

but that produces lower self-esteem and a lower sense of their own inherent capabilities. And certainly, Stanford is your experience, but this is not endemic simply to Stanford. Not at all. This is a nationwide, if not a global thing. Absolutely. That is so fascinating. And I feel like has only continued to metastasize.

So the catch all kind of umbrella phrase for this is helicopter parenting, of course, or the tiger mom phenomenon. What is your sense of how this started and how we got to this situation? Very interestingly, there were a set of changes happening in this country in the mid 80s that conspired to in the aggregate change all of childhood. So in no particular order, rich five things. Stranger Danger was born with a made for TV movie, Adam, about the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh in 1983. And everybody watched it.

There was no internet. All of your entertainment came through the big screen or the small screen or your headphones. Everybody tuned in for that show and it scared the bejesus out of everybody. So Stranger Danger was born in 83. And then that guy's dad became the host of, what was the show that he did?

America's Most Wanted. Exactly. Yeah, John Walsh, exactly. And missing kids began appearing on, photos began appearing on milk cartons. And yes, occasionally children were abducted by strangers. And it is, of course, as we know as parents, the most horrific thing we can imagine. And yet children are more likely to die at the hands of a family member than they are at the hands of a stranger. They're more likely to die as a passenger in a car, yet we drive them in cars constantly to get them to and from their activities. So we reshape childhood around the

very, very, very infinitesimal likelihood of a stranger harming our children. And we can really trace that back to that movie, Adam, 1983. The play date was born in 1984. Kids used to play with each other. We found each other, right, Rich? It was like, where are the bikes? That's where my friends are. That was a Gen X childhood. That changed. Parents started arranging play with other parents, deciding with whom and when, but also watching over it, hovering, micromanaging. Are they playing with the right things? Are they bored? Let me help them. The self-esteem movement, give them ribbons and trophies, certificates and awards just for playing soccer or just for swimming rather than for being any good at it. The notion that we need to always praise, great job, Billy, you slid down the slide. Great job, you didn't

hit Jack. A Nation at Risk was published saying American teenagers needed to be more high achieving vis-a-vis their international counterparts. We needed more testing, more teaching to the test. All of these things meant that childhood was now watched and managed by parents. We also got safer in cars with seatbelt laws and car seat laws and bike helmet laws and bicycles. We got safer in our transportation. It led to this mindset of you can put a helmet on them always. You can bubble wrap every aspect of their environment, prepare the road for the kid instead of prepare the kid for the road. All of those things happened in the span of three to five years. The first kids to come to college en masse with parents who couldn't let go in the late 90s were the first to have been subjected to play dates in 1984. And why does it persist? Because it works, Rich. When you stand next to the rock

wall and prevent your kid from falling onto the plastic wood chips, they go unharmed. So you've saved them in that moment. But over the long-term, your kid hasn't developed that kinesthetic sense of how their body works or of how to do something different or better next time. So short-term win, long-term loss. Right. And on top of that, it's all set up within the construct of performance, right? How do I set my kid up to get into the best college? Like that is the ultimate end game. Right. And so when you're looking at short-term gains, it's all oriented around academic performance, making sure that they have the appropriate extracurriculars. And the only way to ensure that is this level of over-involvement. That of course, even in

the successful cases where a kid ends up at Stanford, that kid ends up knocking on your door, having all kinds of mental issues or self-esteem issues or body dysmorphia. I'm sure it shows up in a million different ways where they're handicapped and unable to really figure out how to live and exist and thrive on their own. That's exactly right. So we've done the thinking for them, the planning for them, the troubleshooting, the fixing, the managing, the handling, all in furtherance of these outcomes, we think lead to a successful life. And it's almost like we take our helicopter rotors and we lift them in the helicopter and arrive them at the

future we have in mind. And then we can say, look, you've arrived, you're here. And then the kid is bewildered at the place of arrival because they haven't done the heavy lifting. They've certainly worked hard. It's not to say that kids aren't hardworking in this context, but they've been so over-managed and over-helped, they really are unfamiliar with their own selves. In my first book, How to Raise an Adult, I call it existential impotence, unfamiliar with the self.

My sense is that there's a pendulum that swings and that pendulum swings generation to generation where parents end up parenting in opposition to the way that they were parented to ensure that their kid gets what they feel like they didn't get, right? So if you have the Gen Xers who were the latchkey kids who were completely unattended to, they're going to be the ones who are more likely to show up and over parent. Is that how you feel like it works? Or have we arrived in a situation now where the pendulum is kind of locked in this place where

parents are fixated in an unhealthy way on how their kids are doing and performing? I certainly agree with you that many of us want to parent either the opposite of how we were raised, or we appreciate how we were raised and we want to do it the opposite of how we were raised or we appreciate how we were raised and we wanna do it the exact same way. We don't seem to have room for nuance. I wanna point out that it was the baby boomers that started the helicopter parenting phenomenon. We Gen Xers inherited it because you're in a community

and you see how other parents are doing their kids' homework in the fourth grade and the seventh grade. Well, how are you not gonna do your kids' homework? Cause you need your kid to keep up, right? So we arrived as parents in an environment where helicopter parenting was already in many communities. The norm, and I find it ironic that baby boomers

who questioned authority, I mean, that was their bumper sticker. When they were young, they were now questioning authority on behalf of their own kids. They had forgotten that they created and matured their own voice by using it. And instead, they sort of treated their own kids like little pets and projects that they would continually question authority on their behalf. With Gen X, you know, many of us can appreciate the freedoms of that latchkey childhood.

Yes, there were examples that were neglectful and harmful, and none of us want to replicate that. But you see in the Gen X memes on social media, the kind of lauding, the pride of like, you know, look what I was able to do. Look what my childhood entailed. There's pride in that. And I hope that Gen Xers listening will ask themselves, why am I not offering that same degree of freedom to my own child? Why do I want less for them? Despite what you might think, Alzheimer's is not a genetic inevitability, and a diagnosis need not come with a death sentence. So how do we take an insurance policy out against succumbing to these kinds of neurodegenerative diseases. Well, neurology duo Drs. Dean and Aisha Sherzai joined me on episode 589 to break down the basics of optimizing brain

health. Here's a snippet from that insightful exchange. Nobody wants to befall this fate, right? And, you know, when we're young and vital, we think we're bulletproof and this is never gonna happen, but these diseases start to take root early in our lives. We don't see the symptoms for many years. So it's all about these habits that we form around diet and lifestyle. So set us up with this paradigm

that you guys have come up with, and we can walk through some of these habits that you guys have realized have been extremely helpful in managing symptoms and preventing people from headed down this path. Sure, so not to go into the depth and details of the science, which we could do, and we probably will spend some hours just going into it. But when you look at the basis of the pathology that takes place in the brain and

the body for that matter is just a few processes. These are inflammatory processes, oxidation, abnormalities in metabolism of glucose or energy, and abnormalities in the metabolism of lipid. These are the four main pathways that cause damage to the vasculature, the blood vessels in the brain, and it causes damage to the neurons and the neural connections as well. And when you look at the mechanism of how these come about, they're very closely linked to your lifestyle. So it has to do with food, with the way you move and exercise,

with stress management, with sleep. My goodness, sleep, such an important part of our day. And also how we connect socially, emotionally to our communities. And whether it's studies coming from, say, for example, in Columbia University, where I trained from the Northern Manhattan study or from the Rush University studies or from the Adventist Health Study, different studies from around the world. When you look at the factors that stand out that contribute to better brain health,

it's nutrition, it's exercise, it's stress, it's sleep. And the one that we added is cognitive activity. So- That's the O, the optimism. That's right. So when we wrote the first book, we came with this acronym, NEURO, N-E-U-R-O. Of course, it's self-explanatory

and it was good because we're neurologists and helped us a lot too. It all came together. It came together. And N is for nutrition, E is for exercise, U is for unwind, which is stress management, not just getting rid of stress, but increasing good stress and getting rid of bad stress.

And R is for restorative sleep, deep restorative sleep that helps cleanse the brain and has its own function and optimization of cognitive activity. Right. Some of these, if not all of them, feel like common sense. And yet also, I mean, I think the nutrition piece, everybody knows you gotta, if you wanna take care of your body, you gotta eat right.

Sleep, exercise, challenging yourself mentally, being in a community of people that you're connected to. These are all things that we kind of intuitively know are good for our health. The nutrition piece, is there one that stands out as more important than the others or do these all work? Obviously this is a holistic thing,

so they're all interconnected, but if you had to pick one, is that even possible? I don't think it's fair. I guess if you don't sleep at all and you eat a perfect diet, it's not gonna matter. No, I think it's the multifaceted nature of this that actually makes a big difference. And when you look at different communities

and individuals as well, they might excel in one thing, but they might be falling behind on others. And I mean, it's understandable. We can't really control everything, but all of them are important. What would you say? No, I fully agree with you.

I think all of it has to be done. And it's incredibly empowering to know that because every time we say that somebody says, oh, my friend did all of it, but no, none of us did all of it. And we're talking about living a, let's, I'm not gonna, the food part is pretty specific.

I mean, we don't have that many communities that lived in the way that we were talking about. And we'll talk about it, as far as whole food plant-based. we were talking about. And we'll talk about it, you know, as far as whole food plant-based. We're talking about exercise, significant exercise. We're not talking about whenever we talk to our patients, they say, oh, I got, Dean, I'm fine.

I do the gardening, I do the walking. No. Or for example, my patients, when they say, I'm walking all day long from my living room to the kitchen, back to the living room. That's not exercise. It's gotta be significant amount of exercise. And then stress management.

It's not about just getting rid of bad stress. By the way, none of us are doing that well. And it's not just because you meditated. Meditation is phenomenal, but also about good stress. One of the things that actually gets people to the dementia stage fastest is what they did throughout their life as far as cognitive activity

and challenge, that's profoundly important. Sleep, none of us do sleep well, just because we took some medicine. We're talking about a restorative sleep where people go through the circadian, you know, the four phases of sleep, four to five times a night deeply. We invest in incredible resorts.

We've been invited to different venues. I say, take that money and, well, I mean, I can't tell, put it in your bedroom. There's a reason why we're knocked out. Evolutionarily, how would it make sense that you're subject to being mauled by bears and lions for one third of your life, unless it was that important? So sleep and investing in sleep is profoundly important.

We study, we're doing the largest one with the sleep study shows that 70% increased risk of dementia for those who have bad sleep. And then there's optimization, which is challenging mental activity. If you think you retire and you can go slide out on the beach, that's great for a few months. But if you continue, that's going to be the fastest point of decline for cognition. Because if this brain, which is consuming 25% of your body's weight and realizes, oh, I'm not being used,

especially at a time where you're aging, you know what it will do? It will actually shrink more rapidly. So all of it has to be done and all of them have to be done together. But the beauty is if they're done and if it's not just a diet du jour or the new resolution run or walk,

and if it's lifestyle, and especially if it's lived lifestyle, which is what we're trying to do in communities, we're talking about 90% reduction in Alzheimer's, dementia, stroke, without any biohacking or vitamin du jour or any of that stuff. What regular things you have in your environment. And I think one of the focus of our study, which is the largest community-based study in the

country now in beach cities is the applicability of this knowledge. I think we have tremendous amount of information about the kind of diet and the kind of exercises that are good for the brain, even stress management, so on and so forth. But what we haven't really focused and what I don't see much of is bridging that gap between the knowledge that we have, the incredible amount of information that we have

and how people apply it at their homes. That's always the trick. It really is. It really is. And so, I think more focus needs to go towards that, the translation of all this amount of information we have. When it comes to Phoenix-like personal transformation, there really is no one quite like Karamo Brown, who overcame tremendous adversity to enliven the best in others. The culture expert on Netflix's massive hit show Queer Eye, Karamo is a father, is a former social worker, psychotherapist, author, and just overall stellar human.

Here's a look in his powerful story that has led him to the life of service he lives today. When did the sexual identity aspect of growing up come to be a thing? I mean, you sort of came to terms with that around 16 or so? 15. 15? Yeah, it came across very quickly. I mean, you can't, you sort of came to terms with that around 16 or so? 15. 15. Yeah.

It came across very quickly. I mean, you know, Zach Morris on Saved by the Bell helped that a lot. You know, I kind of figured it out very quickly. Like, oh, I like boys. And so I think the journey to accepting and love myself was a difficult one because my father was Jamaican, is Jamaican, and the music and the culture previously, they've gotten a lot better, subscribed to a lot of homophobic ways. And so there was a song called Boom Bye Bye by an artist called Buju Bantan. And the song went like this, Boom Bye Bye in a batibuay, which means homosexual's head.

You're not supposed to promote these nasty men you have to kill them dead and that song would be playing at family functions consistently and had a great beat and people are dancing to it and the whole song is about killing any gay men on site and this was like number one on the radio and number like 10 on the radio here in the states so i want you to imagine a popular song that's promoting killing gay men, and I'm five, seven, eight, nine, and these songs are playing.

And so it made me feel fearful for my own life. It made me feel unsure about the love that my parents really have, because if you could sing that song, unknowing that I was gay, then do you really love me? Once I say this to you, are you gonna try to kill me? You know, those are the type of things you play in your head. That's horrible, man.

Yeah, you know, but I think about that, you know, we still haven't gotten to a place with some rap, pop, you know, some rock lyrics, you know, they still promote this. And people don't realize that, you know, you saying no, you know, they still promote this. And people don't realize that, you know, you saying no homo has a connotation to someone who identifies part of the LGBTQ community and who's having self-esteem issues. And every time you say no homo, how does that affect their self-esteem? Because you're saying that if I do something, no homo means it's not, it's bad. So

like, I'm not bad. That's bad. I'm not bad. And so I think it's not yeah it's bad so like i'm not bad that's bad i'm not bad and so i think it's just about being clear about what are you subscribing to and like really watching your language because language has power of how it affects people's mood self-esteem growth everything yeah wow that's heavy and you're are you where are you at with your dad these days? We have a, we have a like, you're good, I'm good. Like, hey, you know, you stay there. The problem is that even, my father's 70 now. We had many years that we didn't talk at all.

But then like, as I got older, I did try to reach out and he just could not, he just still to this day cannot reconcile his religion with his relationship with his son. And I think that's a problem. When you can't reconcile your religion with your relationships, then there's an issue there. Because for me, the religion is teaching you to have healthy relationships through love, but somehow the Bible is then teaching a different version of what could be coming out of other people's mouth or what's supposed to be. And so he's just never been able to reconcile it. And so I had to come to the place and say, you know what? Since you can't reconcile that decision, I have to make a decision for myself.

I have to love me more than I love you. I have to trust me more than I trust you. I have to be there for myself more than you could ever be there for me. And then that was sort of the first step in taking away the pressure of feeling like I have to have this relationship with my father just because he has a title father. Right, right, that's the thing. I mean, I feel like most people have some version of issues with their parents and it's the rare case

that somebody can really process it and heal from it and get to the other side of it where they're not carrying around this burdensome, you know, resentment and anger and, you know, constantly looking in the rear view mirror, like analyzing what that experience was like, like that takes a lot of work. And most people just compartmentalize it and move on. Well, one of the things that I used to tell myself and I try to help, especially when I worked in social services, I would tell kids as sort of something to springboard them to a happier, healthier life is that whatever situation happened didn't happen to you, it happened for you. And I think that language right there,

it didn't happen to me, it happened for me, is such a beautiful way of helping you to understand that, yes, you had an experience that was traumatic, but what could you learn from this experience? How can you grow? How can you be healthier? How can you be the best version of yourself? How can you start to heal? Because when you say it happened to me, you live in this place of letting the trauma overtake you. It's always like, this happened to me. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't strong enough to handle this. What did I do to make this, allow this to happen? Why wasn't good enough. I wasn't strong enough to handle this. What did I do to make this, allow this to happen? Why wasn't I loved enough? You start to do all these whys

instead of saying this happened for me so that I could understand that I could be stronger, that I could love myself. And so when I think about the relationship that I have with my father and uncles who couldn't reconcile their religion with their relationship with me because of my sexuality, I say, you know what, that happened for me so that I could be here today stronger, loving myself more versus it happened to me. Yeah, it's easier to be on the other side of it though and look at it that way.

Like intellectually, yeah, of course. But when you're in it, when you're mired in it, it's very hard to like see your way through and to really grab onto that. Oh, 100%. That's why I think that they should teach meditation. I think one of the things that I think that they should have not taken out of school

was quiet time. I think, you know, they got it right in kindergarten and pre-K when you have quiet time, because what would happen is that it would allow all the kids to settle their nerves, to take a moment to reflect, to recharge. And I think we get into this as a culture, a society, it's like you have to go,

go, go, go, go. And you don't look at social media, everything, and people don't slow down. And I think that if we had an opportunity for people to take a step back, especially in traumatic moments through an organized, you know, through school where they're like, let's stop so you can process what's going on. I think it would allow people to then get to that intellectual place at a younger age versus being older Because no one allowed me to stop so I felt like I had to continue to run I felt like I continue had to fight because of the fact that I was like if I stop They win when actually if I would have stopped sooner. I would have healed quicker. I would have won Because I would had more understanding that this is your shit. This is not my shit. You know what I mean?

Okay, let's get back into it with Courtney DeWalter, the world's best female ultra runner. And when it comes to races 200 miles and longer, arguably the best period. Humble master of grit and boundary busting physical prowess, Courtney joined me on episode 618 to share the mindset techniques and tactics that have propelled her superhuman accomplishments.

Here's a peek into our conversation. Let's go a into our conversation. Let's go a little bit deeper. Tell me a little bit more about what that is when you reach that point or that limit or that place where you feel like you can't put one foot in front of the other. Like what is the lesson that you find for yourself in that? So I call it the pain cave, that place.

And I guess like probably four or five years ago, I viewed the pain cave as like this place that you should try to put off as long as possible in a race. Like make your pain cave be as far away from you as you can. And if you arrive to it, then you just sit in it and you try and survive the pain cave. But in the past couple of years, I mean, it's just a mindset, right? It's like all in our heads, this thing. And in the past couple of years, it's been the place I want to get to. So like changing it to a place where I get to celebrate

that I made it there. And then that's where the work actually happened. So making the pain cave bigger is how I view it instead of like pushing the pain cave away. And I think, I mean, our minds are so powerful. So even just like changing the storyline makes it a whole different game. Right.

So what is the story that you, like what is the script that you flip when you're in that headspace and it's getting really hard? Yeah, it's like, perfect. This is what we wanted. Like now we get to actually do the hard work of making the cave bigger.

And so it's like picturing a chisel and just like making tunnels in my pain cave in my brain. Right. You actually visualize that? Yeah, I'm super visual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. It makes it very visceral and like real.

If you can, it's not just a mantra and mantras are great. I'm sure you have mantras, but actually creating that three-dimensional image in your mind. Yeah, yeah. And all, I mean, it's just telling myself a different story about that place where it hurts so bad, you know, where before it was like surviving it and now it's like, this is so cool.

We made it here and now we work. Yeah. As somebody who's out there pushing the envelope in your sport, showing the rest of us what's possible and breaking all these boundaries and barriers, how does that affect your mental disposition and how you approach other facets of your life? Like how does it spill over

and how you think about possibilities and potential in areas that are outside of running? I think it's possible in every area outside of running. I'm not like seeking it in any other area right now, but I think what it's shown me is that people are selling themselves short and setting their bars too low of what they could actually do

if they went all in on something, whatever they're psyched about to just see what happens if they invest a little more time and energy into it. And what about for yourself? For myself? So you deflected a little bit time and energy into it. And what about for yourself? For myself? So you deflected a little bit there? What?

Because I was asking you about you too. I never do that. Yeah, I know. Like, am I pursuing, am I? Well, right now you're all in on running, right? This is 110% all your focus and all your time. But there are other interests I'm sure that you have You're all in on running, right? This is 110% all your focus and all your time. But there are other interests I'm sure that you have and you're married and you have a relationship

and I'm sure there's other goals that maybe you're thinking about for your life after running or in conjunction with your running. Talk a little bit about that and how you kind of see your life unfolding. I don't know how I see it unfolding. Cause you're just, you're right where your feet are. Yeah.

What I know is- You wake up in the morning and decide. Yeah. I am having, like, I love this chapter that it's in right now. And so just enjoying that fully and knowing like chapters don't go on forever. So this ride, you know, will end at

some point and what comes next, I'm not sure, but I hope whatever, you know, page it flips to next, I can be just as excited about finding out what's possible in it. Punk rock icon, spiritual warrior, bhakti yoga devotee, and former monk, Raghunath Kapo, graced the pod back on episode 583, dropping many a pearl on finding meaning beyond the ego, transcending the illusions that hold us back, and what it really means to be a spiritual being having a human experience. to be a spiritual being, having a human experience. When you go to the ashram and you start living as a monk, what is the teaching like? And what is the day-to-day existence

where you start to, you know, intuit these teachings and put them into practice? There's a lot to share. I'm working on a book right now that extracted six very powerful principles that I taught from the teachings. And the first one is, and these are based on the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who was a great, considered by some as a child prodigy, because he was a child prodigy in Sanskrit. Other people that knew him more intimately thought that he was a mystic

because he performed so many mystical things, Christ-like mysticism. But his intimate followers, who are great gurus in their own right, they considered him an avatar. So his teachings were very simple. And one of him is very basic, and it's a great takeaway.

If you want to take away anything from today, you can take this way. and one of him is very basic and it's a great takeaway. If you wanna take away anything from today, you can take this way. Stop criticizing other people. Like the sound coming out of your mouth can be toxic. And that was a powerful thing. Stop criticizing. I realized I'm living with so much criticism in my mind. That doesn't mean we should throw discernment out.

We need discernment. But the condemning language that happens on a regular basis from finding fault with other people and how you would do things so much better if you were doing them, cut it out. Stop letting that pour out of your mouth. That's a big one. If you want, I'll just run through these.

Yeah, let's do it. No, this is great. That's one. And first of all, when did this guy live? That 1400, same time Columbus was showing up here. Right. This person, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, was in Bengal and traveled throughout India.

And basically it was a renaissance of bhakti. Bhakti means, bhakti yoga means connecting to source through love. That's all the word really means. And so a lot of the practices are singing, are cooking, are meditation, but everything is an action. Like you're acting in a loving way

and dealing with other people. And so, yeah, this is one of the teachings. I call it, the book is called the six pillars of Bhakti. And so one is not criticizing. The second one is being tolerant. Whereas criticism deals with other people. Another one is just dealing with life situation and stop blaming the world for your unhappiness.

And this is very powerful. It's transformational. Even if you're a materialist, this main teaching can transform your life. But if you want to really experience the higher echelons of meditation, it's got to be there. Criticism, tolerance, and this is a huge one, number three. And if you can add this one to your life, it's just such a game changer. It's, I take no offense,

meaning I will not be offended on a regular basis. And that's a very common thing. Sometimes we could see somebody talking over there and I get offended. I think they're talking about me. So without provocation, I think someone's got something against me. And sometimes we'll walk around

holding some resentment for a person who didn't even mean anything. And that gets split in two things, because sometimes people don't mean anything, but due to some proclivity that I have that I don't trust the world, that I take an offense and I carry that resentment around with me and it becomes a burden. But sometimes people have hurt me. They've actually deliberately hurt me. But still that desire or that need to forgive has to be there. Because in the Bhakti culture is nothing's actually happening to me,

it's happening for me, that there's a benevolent energy lifting us higher and higher and higher. And we have to see that everything is for my edification, for my purification and sometimes even tragic things. And so there's a firm faith that everything's happening for me. Now we shouldn't be heartless when it comes to someone else's suffering.

I should see, okay, he's having a hard time. We should feel like I have to reach out to that person. They're having a hard time. But for my own situation, I should feel like, I'm going through a hard time and this must be for my benefit. What is that benefit? And I can look at it.

I can look at life like that. So we don't hold any resentment. We don't criticize, we're tolerant. Next one, we see the good in others and we let them know it. Find good. And this is what we're talking about. Instead of finding what this person's doing so wrong,

what are they doing right? Why are they good? This is such a powerful practice in this day and age, because otherwise we're going to lock in and we're just going to foster hate with others. And we're going to have no commonality whatsoever. What do we have in common? What is right about this person? And it's such a great thing. Truthfully, it's a marriage saver. It's a relationship saver. What know, what is good about this person? And then sharing it with them,

telling them why I appreciate you. And that lack of appreciation can really kill, it can kill love quick. I mean, isn't that what romance is? Is full 100% appreciation for that person. Right, and the piece, the second piece about letting that person know is crazy powerful. Right.

And it's something that most of us don't do nearly enough of. I mean, we might have a person that would do anything for us. They would come anywhere at any time, at any moment. Hey, I need your help. Can you come here? Yeah, that person, I never let them know how much

I appreciate them. Sometimes the people that are the closest to us, we never share with them how much we appreciate them. The next one was quick to apologize. If you feel like you hurt someone's feeling, if you're a little obtuse and you apologize first, you say, hey, I'm sorry. I don't know if that offended you, but please forgive me if it did. A big game changer. And another one is we keep a tally of how we are blessed. We keep a list of how fortunate we are. A gratitude practice. A gratitude practice.

And sometimes people don't have a gratitude practice. They have a, this is unfair practice. This is why, or an entitlement practice. And the problem with that is it's simple math. Entitlement makes you sad. Gratitude makes you happy. If you feel like the world owes you everything, you're always gonna be miserable.

There's never enough the world can owe you. At the ripe age of 16, after qualifying for the Olympic trials, pro runner Mary Kane was quickly establishing herself as the fastest girl in a generation. Until that is, she joined Nike's elite Oregon project team run by infamous coach Alberto Salazar. After suffering immensely under Salazar's abusive coaching system, Mary bravely exposed it all in a New York Times video op-ed entitled, I was the fastest girl in America until I joined Nike. Now an advocate resolute on creating positive change for the next generation of female athletes. Mary joined me on episode 611 to share ways in which we can all work

to fix women's sports. This whole situation has made me, and this is bad, this is something I'm working on with my therapist, but less trusting. And it's made me more skeptical of authority. And it's made me like more skeptical of authority and it's made me question like society's behavior in a way that I just never had done before.

And I think that's really powerful and I think that's a great thing. But in that moment, it's like really horrifying to be like, oh my God, like this was condoned, this was normalized. People acted like this was okay. And I'm realizing right now how bad this was. And like, who am I kind of in this big world to like have figured it out.

And I think knowing that I did, it was like, you know, 24 hours ago, I didn't. And like that person almost scared me. And I was like, I need to help them. And obviously I couldn't go back in time and help myself. So how can I pass it forward to the next person? You know, it was like my immediate reaction. And I remember I pulled my parents aside, like maybe the next day or like really early on in this. And like, I had a, you know, I was like, I have to tell you everything. And like,

we did the deep dive and we went like, this was like an hour's long conversation of me just sharing everything. And as like, you know, there's obviously a lot of tears. I can't even get through a podcast without crying. And at the end, I think my parents' question was like, what are you going to do? And I said, and I don't know why I think I'm going to start crying, but I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to be a pro runner again, but I love this sport. And nobody's ever going to sign me. Nobody's ever going to follow me again. I said, but I can't live with myself if I don't share this. And if I don't like help that one person and I remember like they were so scared for me and so proud of me at the same time and I think for them it was just just like

like it was almost like this happy proud and this like you're doing something bigger than yourself like you're doing something bigger than yourself. And again, we didn't think anybody would watch the video. I thought if anything, and I'm gonna be very honest when I say this, having so many people watch that protected me in a way that I don't know do people understand. And had that been something where like a couple thousand people watched it,

like the same negativity from one side of that conversation would have been louder and it probably would have been stronger. And you see it in how other athletes from that program have since been treated when they left and when they came forward and when they were vocal. that program have since been treated when they left and when they came forward and when they were vocal. And in many ways, like that's what I thought I was going to experience. I mean, Kara Goucher has gone death threats. You know, athletes have been called horrible things across like websites, social media, they've been gaslighted. And I just, I was prepared for that. Like that was what I was signing up for. And, you know, the sport is one in which again, like what, what was done was really horrible.

And yet like a lot of the competitors of these organizations don't necessarily turn around and say like, oh wow, like you're really trying to do something good in the world. Like, let's, you know, like support you. If anything in the traditional space, it's much more like, no, you're not that fast anymore. Like whatever. Yeah, everybody's running to protect their own

at the same time. I mean, it is a David and Goliath story. It's not just, hey, this is Mary Kane and she's gonna share her story of how hard it was. This is you basically taking on Nike. I mean, that's a very, and you're a young person. Like that's very scary. And you still wanna have this career in running.

So you're gonna become, you're risking becoming persona non grata in doing this. And that takes like an unbelievable amount of courage to do that. And I thank you for saying that. And I think it's also like important for me as I'm going and embarking on this like new endeavor and creating a team and almost like learning, new endeavor and creating a team and almost like learning, like it's important to learn what not to do, right? That's, I have a lot of experience with what not to do. But I think the other thing is that as much as that's good, you know, you have to learn what to do and you can't almost only be coming into this like beautiful journey of creating a team that I'm embarking on with like a cynical perspective,

which I think would be really, really easy for me to do if I'm honest. And so there's so much importance. The fuck all those Nike guys team. Yeah, exactly. That's the name of the team. Pretty much. It's like really important for me

to like think about like so many people who've helped me and so many people who supported me through that time like the Alexis or people who just like like the Wesses who stepped up and said like I'm here for you um because those are the people who I can lean on and learn from when creating something beautiful versus just kind of creating something out of a fear of what was. You know, when you look on the past, it can't ever be like, I'm just trying to rewrite my own story. It's how can I really make something good going forward? The voice, the prophet of all things action sports, Salema Masikela is among many things about a surfer, a snowboarder, a skater, and the beloved host of the ESPN's X Games.

and the beloved host of the ESPN's X Games. On episode 594, we dove into his fascinating life story. We dug into the ways sport holds the power to break outdated paradigms and the progress many industries need to make to be truly accessible and equal to all. Move to Carlsbad, and we wake up up in the morning and you're in this place. Like we drove in that night in the U-Haul and then that next morning you wake up, walk out the front door. This smells different. I never smelled this before. Look up and like this air feels different.

Palm trees swaying and I remember remember looking panning right slowly. And I recognize that we're on a hill and about two miles away, a mile or two away is the ocean. And I'm like, huh, okay. I still don't, there's no point of reference about surfing. I'm just taking in where we're at. And like literally in that moment, as we're unloading the U-Haul, my stepfather and I,

like a kid comes driving by in a purple Honda Rivo scooter with a full waterfall haircut, a tank top t-shirt, board shorts, sandals, and a book bag between his legs. And I'm like, what is that? What kind of alien? I literally was an alien. And then my mind was like, is he, he's going to school? What?

And a couple of days later, I go enroll in this school and everyone's dressed like that. And I'm like in literally like in like Timberland boots, jeans. I look like I've come from another planet. Everyone's speaking in this weird dialect and said, you know, dude and bro and broad. Right. You're like run DMC in their Spicoli. Yeah, exactly.

But these kids that I met at church went to my high school and it turns out they were all surfers. And a couple of them were like deaf. They weren't like super holy. They were like, we're cool. And this kid, Justin, he invited me to lunch the next day at school and I was so stoked to meet some kids that were cool. And you could leave campus to go to lunch,

which I'd never experienced before the East. Like we go to school, you're in prison until it's time to get out. And we went to this beach parking lot after we'd gotten food at a place called Carl's Jr. that I didn't know existed. And we're sitting in the car in the back of his, I mean, I'm in the trunk of his Subaru hatchback

with in the cars packed with everybody, like, you know, eating and they're looking out in the lineup. And I look up and I'm like, ah, no way. Surfing. And these guys are speaking in the language, talking about what they're seeing, waves and swell. And I'm just sitting there quiet. Like what? I'm flashing back to a year ago in Bondi.

And I was like, hey, I've seen this before. And they're like, whatever, dude. I'm like, no, I was in Australia last year at Bondi Beach. And they're like, now wait, what? Pre-internet, like Bondi Beach must've been like Oz. Yeah, like seen it in magazines and movies. And also mind you, there's like couple thousand- You're the least likely guy they would ever imagine.

There's two other black kids in the school. One runs track and the other one plays football and I've shown up. And they're like, what are you talking about? And then I would tell them my story and like Paul Simon, my dad, like, what, who are you? Like, I'm like, I wanna do that. Like I saw this and I was like, if I ever get a chance, I told Justin, like, I wanna do that. Like I saw this and I was like, if I ever get a chance,

I told Justin, like, I wanna try it. And he's like, all right, be at my house on Saturday. And that's how I got to experience surfing. Yeah. Went there and they had a wetsuit and board for me and put the wetsuit on backwards. Everyone laughed and whatever. And that was it.

You ended up surfing like 170 days in a row, right? Without missing a day. Yeah, I surfed. So there's a, you were committed to figure this out. The first time I stood up was like for five seconds. And it was literally like, I had gone to church thousands of times, prayed in groups, in large conventions

and our three different religious meetings, I never, ever felt spirituality before. I'd never felt a soul calling like I did at 16 and a half standing on a surfboard for like five seconds. The time stopped, everything changed. It literally felt like whatever some spirit poured into me. And when I came up after falling, I screamed as loud as I could. And my whole life just pivoted. And it was like, okay, this is everything now. And I'd never, it was-

You had that clarity. I had that clarity. It was the greatest spiritual awakening that I could have ever asked for at the time. Yeah, I mean, we could talk for two hours about the spirituality of surfing, but what's interesting is that it was etched into your soul in a way that almost makes it sound like

some kind of past life thing. Like when you have that experience in Bondi, and then when you actually connected with it, I mean, first of all, you have that experience of Bondi and there's a knowingness about your path on some conscious, unconscious level. Then the universe conspires to move you to the epic surf spot in America.

Like completely, I mean, nobody could have predicted a set of circumstances that would bring that about. And then the manner in which you just go all in on it from the outset, like it's wild. In retrospect, yeah. You know? Yeah, I mean, it just was, it just clicked. It's like, oh, this is me.

Everything associated with this. I need to just soak. I would go to the library at school and read back issues of Surfer Magazine. I had to learn the culture, the origins, everything. And as you're coming of age and you're dealing with all the challenges of your teen angst and then the extra layers of, were particular to my family but every kid had a version of it surfing became this mega oasis for like none of that mattering like the ultimate freedom of expression of like that was the one place that i could express myself wholly that i

couldn't do with my mom and stepdad and i I couldn't even do with my dad. Like surfing literally was that place where I could just express. Even though I had the tensions of a community that thought they were the definition of the thing and that they were allowing me to visit in their space. And people many times feeling uninhibited to tell me that I shouldn't be out there and using the N-word, et cetera, et cetera, none of that could actually get in the way of the thing.

Like when I stood up to do the thing, there were no voices except mine. Wow. Point blank, Maggie Q is the hero we all need actress activist fashion designer and plant-based icon maggie is best known for her roles in action films like mission impossible and the divergent films performing her own stunts on screen and advocating for animal rights off screen. In episode 596, Maggie taught us the importance of finding your cause and giving your all fighting for it. Here's a clip from that empowering exchange. I mean, I work, you know, with a group.

I'm on the board of a group called Social Compassion and Legislation. We do a lot of legislative work up in Sacramento and it is the epitome of that, right? So you sort of like, you're going into these meetings with these senators and assemblymen and people who can, these are lawmakers, these are people that really essentially work for us, right? And I go there and I'm sort of lobbying senators

in this building and then there's no one there and I'm driving down Melrose and there's 40 people in line for lip gloss. And it bums me out because it's like, we have so much influence. All you have to do is care. All you have to do is show up. Half of it's showing up, right? Life, gotta show up. And then once you show up, you know, you really have to like be in those rooms with people that may not get it, but what you're gonna do in those rooms can be pretty remarkable.

Well, it's one thing to be a proponent of this lifestyle. And it's another thing to really shoulder that mantle and carry that responsibility, use like the platform that you have to advocate on behalf of these causes. So where does that like come from in you? Cause it would be very easy for you to be like, I'm just, I'm doing my movies.

I don't wanna make waves. Sure, it is much easier to do that. Yeah, I know, I know it, trust. Where does that pull come from? I know I know it, trust. So where does that pull come from? I kind of feel like it's almost not even a choice in that we live this very privileged existence like in every way, right?

And I mean that in things that I've earned, I mean it in things that I'm living, like, okay, I'm given my health. I have this like gift of health and I can walk and I function. So that's a gift. And then I've earned these other things where I'm living, like, okay, I'm given my health. I have this like gift of health and I can walk and I function. So that's a gift. And then I've earned these other things where I work in Hollywood and I have certain privileges and you start to develop a voice for certain things.

And it doesn't feel like a choice. It feels like a responsibility, you know, doesn't it? When you sort of, when you have a lot, how do you not, and it can be anything, you know, pick what it is that you sort of feel isn't right in your mind, in your heart, in your soul. And you go out there and you really, you fight for it. And you hope that other people will do the same when something matters to them, because I'm sure you get this all the time. I've gotten it for 20 years. Like, oh, you don't care

about kids. You don't care about women. You don't care about, you know, libraries. I don't know. Because you've chosen to advocate for one thing that's at the exclusion of other things that are important. This is exactly it. I'm like, you're so right. I hate children because I love the environment or whatever it is. And it's sort of, there's always this line.

And so it's always this thing of like, I have people that write into me and go, you care more about homeless pets than you do about homeless children. I'm like, interesting. I'm so glad that you care about homeless children. Well, I do. I said, well, tell me more.

What do you do for homeless children? I'm fascinated. I want to know. Nothing. Crickets. Absolutely nothing. So I've never, ever run into a person who puts themselves out there, who advocates for something they care about, regardless of what it is, who has ever criticized me.

And I'm in rooms with women's rights activists, my human rights friends in DC. We all kind of look at each other and go, thank you for what you do, because what you do matters in your lane and in your category. It's always people who do nothing, who have a ton to say about what you're doing. So going into this industry, I did have this work ethic that was kind of built in. I have

parents who work very hard and then Jackie, there's no one who works harder than Tom Cruise or Jackie Chan on different sides of the way. Same work ethic, same just tenacity, same leadership skills. I mean, they're very similar in that respect. Right. Yeah. So I'm surrounded by these people where it's like, you have to earn your way. There's no free lunch here. There's no like, you know, relying on your God-given skillset or looks or any of this stuff. You have to work hard. So, okay. So I had that and it was like, almost like emotional cutting. It was like very punishing the way I went about things

and like, okay, I'm just gonna work super hard. But I never felt like I had really gotten there. I had earned it. I was really worth much. I never felt that way. And that's a problem, right? Because no matter what you're achieving, it's never enough, but not in an obsessive way,

in an internal kind of sad way. And so it wasn't until we were actually in Rome, I think it was our first day of filming. We were on the Tiber River. Yeah. We're speeding up and down. With the speedboat stuff? Yeah, Tom does everything, right?

So he's manning the, I mean, the whole thing. And so we had a guy like kind of crouched on the bottom. If we, yeah, of course, if we had some like electrical failure or something, right? But he wasn't doing, Tom was doing everything. So it was me, it was the team, right? It was Tom, myself, Ving Rhames, and Johnny Reese Myers to run this boat.

And we have a, you know, they're changing a lens or something, right? So we're at our ones and we're just sitting there in this boat. And there's, it was so intimidating because there was maybe 5,000 people that had lined, just to get a glimpse of him. Lined up on the side of the river.

Oh, I mean, as far as the eye could see. And you're like, holy shit, I'm standing next to a movie star. This is a movie star. Like legit, like there's no question this man, like the power that he holds. I mean, just a glimpse of him. Like they were, it was crazy.

So anyway, I'm sitting in this boat and it, you know, it's a really intimidating day. Although I felt sort of like, no, I felt good about it. And it was fine. And we're sitting in the boat and Tom's like, Maggie, tell me about your, like, I haven't seen any of your US movies. And I was like, I don't have any US movies. He's like, what? Yeah. And he goes- Did he cast you? He's like, I don't understand. What do you mean? And I said, oh, this is my first US movie. And he goes, you're kidding me. And I said, no, no, this is my first US movie.

And he's like, I don't believe this. There's no way. He's like, Fing? And Fing's like on his phone or something. He's like, Fing, get over here, get over here. And Fing's like, yeah, what's going on? And he goes, this is Maggie's first US movie. And over here, get over here. And Finn's like, yeah, what's going on? And he goes, this is Maggie's first US movie. And Finn goes, no shit.

And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, damn. He's like, Johnny, Johnny, you believe this? And he brings Johnny. It's like so embarrassing. So Johnny comes over and he's like, Johnny, this is Maggie's first US movie. And Johnny's like, really?

No way. So everybody's like having this conversation about me in front of me. And I'm like, yeah, that's it. And Tom's like, let me get this straight. Let me get this straight. You have not done a movie in the US. And then the first movie you do

is like a $200 million like monstrosity where we're like on the Tiber River in Rome, speeding up and down with this 200 man crew, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's your first experience? I said, yeah, that's right. And he goes, you know, Maggie, if you didn't tell me that, he goes, I would never know it. He's like, you act like you belong here. And I don't know where it came from. I looked at him and I said,

I do belong here. And he looked at me and he said, you're goddamn right. You do. And he looked at me and he said, you're goddamn right you do. That's fucking cool. Like that's a moment. It was, it was really like, I can't believe I just said that to him. I got chills just hearing that. Well, I'm like, where did that even come from?

Like, I don't have the confidence to say that, but I know that I put in- But you paid your dues. Eight years of blood, sweat and tears, literally by the way. And I was there and I'm like, well, screw it. Like, why shouldn't I be here? But that is not to say that I took it for granted

where I thought I was like special and like, oh, it had to be me. No, by the way, like, I don't care who it is. It can always be someone else. It doesn't have to be you. It doesn't have to be me. You know what I mean? So it's keeping that in mind, I think that keeps it all into perspective for me in Hollywood.

Right. That's such a good story. As a plant-based endurance athlete, it's probably no surprise that the question I get asked most frequently is, where do you get your protein? where do you get your protein? Well, to help me dive into the nuances of this understandable inquiry, Matt Frazier and Robert Cheek, authors of the aptly titled book, The Plant-Based Athlete, joined me to break down the basics of optimizing athleticism from strength training to endurance, all on the power of plants. Here are a few of their thoughts on plant-based performance lifted from episode 608. More than like, this is the trick to becoming a great athlete. Like that's not really what this is about. It turns out that it is that for the right person.

And there are lots of people who, including all of us, I think, who kind of experienced the most success we had athletically once we went plant-based. But for me, it's more that like, you can do this and you can get all these great benefits of the longevity really and health span. To me, that's what it's all about. I mean, I just think, you know, you mentioned like the omnivorous diet, like what's wrong with this? This is natural, but natural doesn't really affect,

it doesn't really get into health, right? Nature selects for reaching reproductive age at a few years past to raise your kids, but it's not really about what gets you to 80, 90 and keep moving and being healthy because that doesn't matter for natural selection. So to me, that's like where we should think about, like not like what is,

and I don't honestly know what is the most natural diet or whatever that even means. But what's one is the data saying is keeping people, giving them the longest health span, keeping them mobile and happy and active and healthy and alive. And it looks a lot to me like that's the plant-based diet. That seems to be where the science

is all pointing these days. Right, right. You're on ramp, Robert was ethics. Matt, yours was more health days. Right, right. Your on-ramp Robert was ethics. Matt, yours was more health related. Mine was vanity, vanity and health and athletic performance ultimately. But what's so amazing and beautiful about how this movement has blossomed

is that now there are all these on-ramps from the ethical considerations, of course, to sustainability, to climate change concerns, environmentally sensitive, which we all should be, of course, and the longevity health considerations of the foods that we eat. And now with this book, Plant-Based Athletic Performance,

and I think it's so great because just like all the athletes profiled in your book, different people connect with and resonate with different individuals, right? So not everybody is gonna cotton onto the ethical argument, but perhaps they're concerned about the environment. And the way that I look at it as this umbrella lifestyle that checks every single box,

like you can opt out of the chronic lifestyle illnesses that are unnecessarily killing millions of people. Obesity rates right now are through the roof. Diabetes, it's predicted something like 50% of Americans are gonna be diabetic by 2030. All of these chronic illnesses are lifestyle illnesses directly correlated to the foods that we're eating. Meanwhile, we're decimating the planet because animal agriculture just requires too many inputs,

too much land, too many resources for us to sustainably produce enough animal products for the planet to eat as we careen down this path towards 10 billion people living on this planet. But the truth is most people are walking around thinking about themselves. They're like, that's fine. But like, I just wanna be buffed and I wanna eat what I wanna eat. And I wanna be able to kill it in the gym

or qualify for Boston or whatever it is. And the truth is, is that all of those goals are not just possible, but more possible by dent of learning what you guys have laid out in this book. And when you read the stories, one of the things you'll notice is that what brought people to a plant-based diet in the first place?

For many people, it's inflammation. It's pain that they feel even as a young person. Like take David Carter, NFL lineman. I mean, a completely star athlete in his 20s and he can barely push himself out of a bathtub because his joints hurt so badly. This is a guy who's supposed to be in his prime. He's playing in the NFL.

And then when he went to a plant-based diet, not only did he drop weight, which helped him get rid of some body fat and then which he later added the weight back on with more muscle, he got faster, he got stronger, but the pain went away. I mean, the pain just went away.

And his career lasted slightly longer than the average NFL career. And he's been in incredible shape since then too. I've seen him in his retirement and he looks fantastic. And you look at other athletes, national champion cyclists who had inflammation in their knees. And at age 19, it had pain that made their career suffer to some degree.

And then a plant-based diet eradicated that and they were able to perform and then become champions and all these different levels. And I know Fiona Oaks is someone you know, and I've talked to, I mean, she didn't have a kneecap in her right knee and wasn't even supposed to walk or let alone run and went on to overcome that and has been plant-based since age five or so, vegan for nearly 50 years and has gone on to set Guinness World Records. And when you look across the board, men or women, doesn't matter the sport, so many people came to this lifestyle to reduce inflammation, improve recovery, and have better results. And that's what they did.

And it's so fun to tell those stories. There's also stories of people who had all kinds of problems with addiction, you know, and overcame that, you know, like Dodsey Bausch is open about that. And, and John Joseph's rough childhood, you know, like these are, these are inspirational. And in a lot of ways their success is aspirational. And that's what, I mean, I get moved every time

I read the book because of those stories. Just this past week, have you guys been following the Iron Cowboy who's trying to do these 100 Ironmans in a row? You're aware of this guy? That was a couple of years ago. No, he did, well, he did 50 Ironmans in 50 states in 50 days.

But now he's in the midst of trying to do this thing called Conquer 100, where he's doing 100. He goes out the front door of his house and does an Ironman every day. And he's on like day 72 right now or something like that. Wow. It's insane. Right?

Like every single day doing an Ironman and he's had, you know, struggles that he's overcome. Like he, and the whole thing is playing out on Instagram stories and he'll, he's very transparent about his injuries or what he's dealing with. Like, this is no small fee, like this is a big deal. But just the other day, the reason I'm bringing this up

is just the other day, I think it was yesterday, he switched up his diet like a week ago. I've been trying to encourage this guy to go plant-based for a long time. And I've kind of, you know, he flirts with it, but then he goes, you know, whatever. I don't know what he was eating, you know, for the first 50 some odd of these Ironmans,

but he switched up his diet. I can only suspect that it became much more whole food based and more plant forward or plant leaning. I'm not gonna say he went plant-based, I know he didn't, but I know that he started building into his daily routine a lot more whole foods. And he said that he dropped five pounds of inflammation. Like he felt he went, and then the next four days

he felt the best, like through 68 to 72 of these Ironmans. He said he felt the best that he had felt so far. So my point being that inflammation is not just a real thing. Like that's an extreme example of the impact of the foods that you're eating on your body's response to exercise induced stress and how important it is. So if you're looking to recover,

eating a plant centric diet, plant-based diet is going to take you a long way towards, reducing that inflammation that impede your body's ability to repair itself in between workouts. And in turn, of course, will power, will power you through, you know, bigger breakthroughs than you would have ordinarily because that inflammation stunts your body's ability to adapt and grow.

Yeah, that's like, everyone always asks what the mechanism is. They're like, well, why does a plant-based diet supposedly so much better for sports if you're claiming that it is? And no one's ever really, you know, known. We don't know what it is. It just, it seems like you stopped getting injured.

And, but Brendan Brazier back in the, you know what it is. It just, it seems like you stopped getting injured. And, but Brendan Brasier back in the early 2000s was saying that it was when he experimented with a bunch of diets back in high school, he found that this was the one that let him recover fastest and get back so he could get in, whatever, 10 workouts in a week when the competition could only get six or something like that. And so I think that's a huge part of what,

of the story behind why plant-based diet seems to be so good for sports is that the anti-inflammatory compounds that are just naturally part of it without even trying, much less if you actually do try and seek out the foods that would maximize that, it just allows you to get back out there faster and be back out there 100% or very close to it

rather than every time you come out, you're a little bit worse so that eventually an injury follows. Former lawyer turned CNN legal analyst Mel Robbins absolutely turntables in the RRP community. One of the most widely booked public speakers in the world with followers in the millions, Mel dropped by the studio to promote her new book, The High Five Habit, and basically just ignited a movement

of self-belief along the way. Here's a peek into our conversation back on episode 630. Well, let me tell you my intention for this conversation. That you listening to us have this podcast be that crack that lets some light in and becomes a sliding door that you might just see, oh, wow, maybe if that phone call I'm avoiding or counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one,

or high-fiving myself in the mirror, even though I don't think I deserve it. And I think it's stupid and I'm a failure. And why is this gonna help that you try it? Yeah. Because I think that you can trace back again, back to our dots analogy. Any change in trajectory was just a moment.

And for me, that moment was when the alarm went off, I just counted backwards, like NASA launches a rocket, five, four, three, two, one. And I stood up and you know what my first reaction to it was? This is fucking stupid. Correct. Resignation. Yeah.

It was immediately like, okay, so you can get out of bed. So fucking what? You're $800,000 in debt, Mel. How is this gonna help? And thankfully I thought, well, what the hell do I have to lose? Why not just for one day, anytime Mel, you know what you should do, but you don't feel like it.

Or anytime your emotions start to hijack you or anytime you feel afraid or anxious or whatever, why don't you just count backwards and see what happens? And that's what I did. And I haven't looked back. I think the power of it, cause it is like on some level, it really is fucking stupid.

Oh, totally. And when I first saw you on Facebook or whatever before I knew you and I was like, who is this? What is this? You can say the word, I don't care. I can take a break. I was like, come on, you know, this is a bunch of bullshit, right?

Now I've gotten to know you, I adore you, I love you. I think you're brilliant and talented in so many ways, but it took me a minute to get my head around this thing. But I think where I'm at now with it, there's a certain genius in the simplicity and the low hanging fruit nature of it. Like I had to pick up a phone and make a very difficult phone call.

That phone weighs a thousand pounds. That's a leap, right? But to say, well, I can count down from five to one, right? I could do that at least. Like it's creating permission and a welcome mat and something that's so accessible for anybody, no matter how much pain they're in or whatever circumstances they might find themselves in.

So whether it's counting down from five to one or giving yourself a high five in the mirror, it may seem like childish or silly, but in truth, there's a neurochemical thing that takes place that sets in motion a chain of events that allow you to take that initial action. And that then puts you in a position to take further actions.

And that's where the cascading effect happens and lives change. Well, you said it earlier. So let me hit you with the science. Because the fact is I used it in secret for three years to five, four, three, two, one, pick up that phone that weighed a thousand pounds. And part of the genius of this

is that when you start counting backwards, you've already committed to taking action. So the counting itself moves you from a bias towards thinking toward a bias toward action. And the more you repeat it, the more you break the pattern of thinking and you program in a pattern of taking small actions. It creates agile moves and agile mindset.

So that's one thing. The second thing that's crazy cool about this is that the reason why it's so fucking hard to change is because you talk about changing with the prefrontal cortex. You're conscious when you sit in your therapist chair or you're listening to me and Rich, and you're using this sort of strategic part of your brain. The second that you're in a situation where you're procrastinating or you're thinking negative thoughts, it's your subconscious that's in charge of you. And so in order to change,

you have to interrupt subconscious patterns. You see, the five-second rule isn't just some dumb counting backwards thing. It is a form of metacognition that interrupts the pattern stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus, which flips on your prefrontal cortex. stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus,

which flips on your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control over what you think and do next. That's the genius of it. And the reason why I'm so fucking passionate about this is not only because kids can use it and senior citizens can use it. You don't have to have any kind of education or speak any kind of language.

It works for anybody that uses it, is because I am now standing with millions of people that have tried it. And we have pediatricians around the world that are using it to help kids interrupt thoughts that trigger anxiety, veterans organizations that are using 54321 to help reprogram responses to triggers.

We had an entire wing of a Pennsylvania psychiatric inpatient nursing unit show up at the talk show to tell me that of all of the tools that they give people that have an inpatient commit, the single most positive and effective tool is the five second rule. Because it is simple, you remember it and it immediately interrupts the negative

and suicidal ideations that torture people. And speaking of suicide, we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from taking their lives by five, four, three, two, one, asking for help. So I am here to tell you, I don't give a fuck how stupid you think this is. I want you to try it. I want you to share it with people

because interrupting the patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back and pushing yourself to take action or to think something different, it is the only way you're gonna change. And this is a tool that's gonna help you bridge that gap. Boom. are going to change. And this is a tool that's going to help you bridge that gap. Boom!

I think it's safe to say that there is no one quite like a singular and the bold David Cho. An icon and an artist in many different senses, David is best known for his Vice special, Thumbs Up, as well as The Cho Show on FX. But what interests me most about David has nothing to do with his copious talent, his wealth, or his fame. Instead, it's really just all about his honesty. He has this rare, beautiful, and raw vulnerability that is both sweet and endearing. So here's a slice of his wildlife story lifted from episode 626. So I've been to every type of 12 step meeting and ones like, because I'll be in a city where,

oh shit, I can't find a gamblers, overeaters or sex and love addict or whatever the addiction, codependence. I have- You're Helena Bonham Carter and Fight Club. Exactly. And they're like, oh, there's only a meeting or Narcotics Anonymous or Marijuana Anonymous. So I'll go to that meeting,

even though that's not my addiction. And as I listened to thousands of people share their story, I go, oh, it's all gambling. Every addiction is gambling addiction. Every single, when you drink and you get in a car, you're like, I kind of don't care if I make it home or not. Right, that's gambling. When you're like having sex and you're like,

I'm not gonna wear a condom. And you're like, oh, I might have a kid. I might get AIDS, I might, that's gambling. And so to go to my first Gamblers Anonymous meeting after going to 400 AA meetings in Los Angeles, I was shocked because AA meetings and drug NA meetings are kind of like parties in LA, right? Like it's very social, there are bright lights.

Yeah, especially in LA. 300 people, there's celebrities, speakers. When you go to a sex addicts meeting, a gamblers addicts meeting, the process ones, there's more shame. So the lights are a little lower. It's really fucking dark. Yeah, it's darker.

There's a lot of shares that end with suicide attempts. So I went to a GA meeting and we went in a circle and every single share, it was a small meeting, it was like six people. Every single person shared about how they try to kill themselves. And I've said this before, it's the reason why they don't have balconies in Vegas,

because if they did, there'd be someone jumping off every day. One out of four gambling addicts kills themselves. So people go, gambling, I don't understand. It's like, so I'm sitting at the meeting and everyone's like telling how much money they've stolen from their family or lied and manipulated people out of

so that they could keep gambling, getting that one lotto scratcher, horse rate, everything, right? And I'm scared to share because it's going around the circle and it gets to me and I'm like, I just won $3 million up to my last, you know, and I feel exactly the same as you.

You just said you broke into a car to steal a quarter so you can get the next scratcher. I'm sitting here telling you, I have two rotting lobsters in my hotel room. I'm having sex with all these prostitutes and gambling with millions of dollars, winning, handing like a hundred dollar bills to everyone I know. And I feel exactly the same as you. So I sat there and I go, how do I feel? How did I feel when I won $3 million on my last trip?

Right. And I'm playing a quarter million dollar hands of blackjack in private, private rooms, you know? And at that point, I felt very little, you know? But like you win $3 million, it feels good. But not that good, because I was already rich. When I lose $3 million and even better yet, when I lose 30 million, then that feels amazing, right? That feels amazing.

So I think that was the disconnect with trying to talk to people in my tribe who are addicts and people who aren't addicts, right? And it doesn't matter if you're an addict or you're not an addict because everyone knows an addict or at least has one in their family. So that's the thing when people go, I don't, but I don't understand.

Why don't you stop drinking? Or why don't you stop? Why don't you stop the behavior? It's like, I wanna fucking lose. That's why. Do you get it? Do you understand now? I don't wanna win.

I'm happier when I'm losing. I wanna lose everything. But that's even harder for somebody to understand because you're not operating on a rational plane. Right. You're trying to numb the discomfort of your internal pain while also seeking to feel something that will make you feel alive.

And if winning's not gonna do it, losing certainly is going to. To have- It doesn't matter what that feeling is as long as it's a feeling different from however you feel. Right, and so, sorry, I got fired up there for a second. Go ahead, no. So that's hard to explain.

That's hard to understand. Like, wait, you're trying to wrap your non-addict brain around someone who's doing everything they can to run away from everything, feel numb, feel nothing, feel everything. And so everything was off. I did like these expensive brain scans to show that I had like frontal,

like a kind of temporary brain damage from just like complete overstimulation. Like, yeah, your dopamine must've been completely fucked up. And so doctor's orders take a year off and I had to sit in that and it's like, well. When was that? This was seven years ago.

So is this like the bottom? I had never hit a bottom, which, you know, when I asked you about the podcast and you're like, it's good and there's the negative. So one of the things that I've taught myself into being a successful gambler was, it's the golden rule, get out while you're ahead, right? It's like, how do you win at life?

Get out while, it's like, I look at a guy like Conor McGregor, like just loved and just dude, if he had just stopped like three, four fights ago, he would just be a legend forever. And now he's starting to turn into the villain and I'm like, fuck, if he just got out while he's ahead. And I think of a lot of people like that, but you get addicted to the tension or what, you know

whatever the thing is. If you don't, and if you don't, you know, die at 27 and become that like glorified. Right, and that's what I was playing for. I was trying to die. I was like, once I hit 30, I was like, shit it was supposed to happen before that. Now I'm 45.

So the positives, if I'm looking at the bright side of gambling it had taught me I had taught myself through discipline and hard work how to get out while I was ahead so which is a very non-addict thing oh right and I was like man I've been to jail

multiple times I've lost you know small fortunes I've you know I had this like I've lost small fortunes. I've, I had this, like, I've always had this, like kind of no matter how much I try to hurt myself, there was, this is what it was. I've always, shit, I might start crying talking about it, but I've always, shit, I might start crying talking about it, but I've always my entire life have valued

friends over everything, right? So I've learned a lot. Now I have a lot of tools. I've learned a lot of things in recovery, but I have a lot of tools. I've learned a lot of things in recovery, but I have the same friends that I've met when I was in third grade, since I was eight years old. And I would do anything for my friends. And I know that they feel the same. So I knew like girlfriends would come and go. I knew things, but I was like, what is the one thing that I must,

cause you hear stories, you're like, oh yeah, we used to be friends in college and you know, life happens. And then you go, and I was like, no, like things come and go. The one thing that has to like stay constant in my life is friendship. So I nurtured those things. I nurtured, I made sure no matter what happened in my life,

I would take trips, I would call. And when we say love, we usually tend to refer to romantic relationships. But for me, I was like, love is for me, like man love, me loving another man, telling, calling a guy to tell him how much I love him. And so that if I didn't have that, I would be dead right now. If I didn't, I can tell you three stories right now

where if I didn't have a guy in my life that was like, we're not doing this, Dave, like I would be dead right now. So that's the one. And even in all the recovery places, people were like, holy fuck, dude, you're getting a letter every day from someone? Like you have, we have more friends than anyone. And I said that without that,

and I know that's not in the 12 steps or certain things, but like the most, one of the most important things for my life and my recovery is these friendships are invaluable. Spiritual psychologist, historian, philosopher, and the world's only rabbi with a black belt in jiu-jitsu, I cherished my time with Rabbi Mordecai Finley, PhD, back on episode 614.

A deep dive into the teachings of moral philosophy, spiritual psychology, skepticism, and stoicism. This exchange is appointment listening for anyone grappling with life's biggest questions. There is a definition of self because when people identify their ego, self, thoughts, feelings, and emotions as the self, I say, you know, there is such a larger self that you're gonna discover and you wanna get out of that prison because you're observing the world through prison bars.

And if you think that's all there is, you're gonna stay in that cell. But if you are willing to accept the fact that there's actually a world, this is not dissimilar to Plato's allegory of the cave. If you actually wanna break the shackles and prick out of those prison bars, there's a way. I say, and the main way you know you're living

in that prison is suffering. Right. If you're suffering or you're causing other people to suffer unnecessarily, there's an indication that your identification of self is insufficient. But there's a competing idea that that suffering is serving that individual in some way, right?

Like the attachment to that suffering is playing a role in how this person navigates throughout the world. And when you come to them and say, you gotta let go of this, and there's a whole larger world available to you. It's terrifying, right? So unless somebody's in sufficient amount of pain, getting them to transition out of that is an uphill battle.

It really is. So oftentimes when a person comes to me, I have several, I call this wisdom counseling. I have several methods depending on the person. But let's say a person comes to me and says, hey, Rabbi, what's this all about? Give me the big picture before I sign up. So I'll say, all right,

I want you to give me a theory of the good in your life, every part of your life, your romantic connections, children, work, and a relatively precise, as detailed as possible, what you would like, what you would think, what would you feel, as detailed as possible, what you would like, what you would think, what would you feel, what you would say, how others would react to you as precise as possible.

I call this a relatively precise vision for your life. If you could live optimally, what would it be like? So it's not that I say you have to, I want them to say, I have to. I say, I'm not telling you to do anything. But if you have a relatively detailed vision that you know yourself would lead to a life, a flourishing life, the Greek idea of eudaimonia, then the question is, what's the gap?

And how do we close the gap? And if you wanna close the gap, I'll help you. I think it would be good to just end this with a few thoughts for the person who's listening or watching who is tiptoeing around the idea of what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience is trying to, you know, reckon with finding a little bit more meaning

and purpose in their lives and doesn't have the vernacular or the experience to really do this by themselves. Like, how do you- Sure, I love the metaphor. Yeah. It's a very available metaphor, spiritual being having a human experience,

that what you said? But to mean that takes a tremendous amount of work because you have to go to your spiritual center and that is the most and only real thing. And getting to that spiritual center, you know, to the place deep in the inner life where the love of God is flowing in through the fountain and you're standing right there in the fountain.

You're at the deepest part of the soul and you come out of that and you have one urge, which is to love other people. And anything that gets in the way of that, you gotta stop it and love life and create beauty. So, so many things come from rooting yourself into the deepest part of what I will call the life of spirit, which for me as a religious person

is the interface between the mind of God and the mind of the human being, or the soul of the universe and the soul of the human being. Now, when you get there, it's not as if you have meaning, meaning has you. This is one thing I really believe deeply. We like to say I have meaning in my purpose in life, but if you really feel it,

it arrives at you and it grabs you by the lapels and it owns you. So I don't have meaning, meaning has me. I don't have purpose, purpose has me. It's claimed me. You know, going back to the stoic sense. So when you feel claimed by love, justice, truth, and beauty that propels you,

now that we have claimed you, here's what you must do. So what happens is that deepest sense of being claimed by the divine, I'm speaking as a religious person. When God claims you in the garments of love, justice, truth, and beauty, and pushes you into life, well, now you know how to be a human. And what you have to do is you have to live interfacing

in the world, propelled by the meaning and purpose that has claimed you, for me, in the modalities of love, justice, truth and beauty, but always go back to that deep experience of the soul. So it's a constant dialectic between, you know, being present in the world and being present to the soul, present to the world, being present to the soul.

So the person who's hearing this and says, how do I do that? You know, I would say, think deep things. What is love? What is beauty? What is truth? Just start taking your consciousness and drilling through the block

between the mind and the soul and drill down. I remember it happening to me when I thought, well, I have these holy words and knowing that they had soul resonance and drilling down through that granite block. And one time, and when I hit the water and the water just flowed up, that's what I'll tell people.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I think there is a epidemic of people feeling a desire for, but a lack of that animating force. And I think for those that lack it or are seeking it, that was beautifully put this idea of it claiming you, but in order to put yourself in a position to be so claimed, you have to commit to living an examined life and understand that patience is going to be important.

That's the key. Because it's not a light switch. The examined life. You have to examine the contents of consciousness and go to the deepest place you can and do it every day. And that, you'll hit the waters. You'll hit the living waters of the soul. Just keep at it. All right, we did it, you guys.

Our final guest. Who better to close things out than one of my most popular guests today, neuroscientist Matthew Walker. One of the world's leading authorities on the science of sleeping. Our conversation covered everything you need and truly ever wanted to know about,

you guessed it, sleep. All in all, this is life-altering listening that will completely reshape your relationship with slumber. Here's a powerful clip from episode 600. Sleep really is right up there with outer space and the depths of the ocean in terms of its mysteries and the idea that we're just beginning to learn what's actually going on. And it's not a matter of, I'm sure you get this question all the time, like, well, what's more important REM sleep

or non-REM sleep or what's the sort of significance of being deprived of one over the other, but it's really the interplay of all of these things. And the more complex you realize it to be, it becomes impossible to consider that it's not crucial to all facets of human health. That's right. And when we go back to that evolutionary story

of how detrimental sleep is as a state, and it is, let's face it. If there were any stage of sleep that were not important, that mother nature could have come in and excised and had you doing all of these benefits of wakefulness that you described, I'm quite sure she would have. And what we've learned is that every stage of sleep is important.

Different stages of sleep perform different functions for the brain and body at different times of night. And so, yeah, I'll often get that question. People will say, how can I get more deep sleep? How can I get more REM sleep? And I often say, well, why do you want more of that? And they say, well, isn't that the good stuff? And they're both absolutely critical.

Now, I could make a scientific argument that REM sleep could be a little bit more important from a simple mortality state because there were studies done back in the 1980s with rats and they've actually never been replicated again. I found them difficult to read. I do research in humans. I don't do animal research.

And I think they won't be replicated for good reason. What they wanted to do is see if a lack of sleep is deathly, is a lack of sleep fatal. And they had three different flavors of the experiment. In the first, they took rats and they just deprived them of sleep, night and day after day, night and day after day. And what they found is that those rats died

within about 20 days. So in other words, rats will die as quickly from a lack of food as they will from a lack of sleep. That's how fundamental it is. Then the two additional flavors of the experiment, they selectively deprive them of either just rapid eye movement sleep so that they could get just non-REM

or they did the opposite. They just deprive them of non-REM and gave them REM. And firstly, both of those were fatal. But what was interesting is that the rats died from REM sleep deprivation within about 30 to 40 days. And they died from deep non-REM sleep deprivation within about 30 to 40 days. And they died from deep non-REM sleep deprivation within about 50 or 60 days. So if we want to sort of do a Coke Pepsi challenge

between sort of non-REM and REM, which one wins out in the mortality battle, it seems to be REM sleep. And to me, that's interesting too. If you'd asked me where I would place my bets, I would have said non-REM. The reason is because non-REM came first. If you look during the sort of the time course of evolution

of cross phylogeny, non-REM sleep was the first sleep to emerge. And it was only when we went from reptiles, amphibians and fish, and then there was that bifurcation to birds and then mammals, did the evolution of REM sleep emerge. So REM sleep is the new kid on the evolutionary block. And furthermore, REM sleep evolved twice independently

in birds and mammals, which I find is fascinating too. So to come back to your point, I'm sorry, I'm drifting, but all stages of sleep are critical. No one stage of sleep you can do without suffering detriment. Right. I think if I were to have something, a single sentence, I would say that sleep is the single most effective thing

that we can do each day to reset the health of our brain and our body. That would be a beautiful place to end this, but I just realized there's an important thing we also didn't talk about that I would like you to touch on quickly. Yeah, of course. Which is you talked at the outset

about what happens when you get a flu shot and you're sleep deprived. We're still in the midst of this pandemic, we're slowly emerging out of it. But can you talk a little bit about what you've learned about sleep, COVID, immunity, and how people should be kind of thinking about their relationship with the virus?

Yeah, so let me, I'll speak about sleep and immunity sort of more generally, and then come on to sleep and COVID because sleep has changed in at least four different ways because of COVID. Quantity, quality, timing, and dreaming. So I'll try to mentally put those stickies up on my cerebral wall so I come back to them. But in terms of sleep and immunity,

there is a very intimate association between your sleep health and your immune health. Firstly, what we know is that individuals who report sleeping less than seven hours a night are almost three times more likely to become infected by the rhinovirus, which is the common cold. Second, we know from a prospective study

in I think it was well over 30,000 women, women sleeping five hours or less a night are more than 60% more likely to develop pneumonia across a five-year period, which of course is a critical part of the COVID mortality equation. We've also mentioned that statistic about if you're not getting sleep in the week

before you get your flu shot, you can't produce the normal antibody response. Do we know that that's the case for COVID yet? No, we don't, but we're looking at that. We also know it's the case for hepatitis A, hepatitis B vaccination too. So I think there's an interesting case to be made that it could make a difference.

We also know that just as we mentioned before, just one night of short sleep, just four hours will drop those critical anti-cancer fighting cells, natural killer cells by 70%. If that's true, then what is sleep doing for our emotional health? And sleep provides us two different benefits.

Firstly, it's during sleep and particularly during deep sleep, where the body will be stimulated to produce many more of those critical immune factors. Even better, the sleep will actually increase the sensitivity and the receptivity of your body to those increased immune factors. So you wake up the next morning

as a more robust immune individual. Sleep will restock the weaponry in your immune arsenal. So on that basis, I think sleep has become very relevant in this pandemic. I really hope you enjoyed this reflection in the rear view and found these two episodes uplifting and inspiring. Thank you for watching.

Thank you for listening. And of course, I appreciate all the love and all the support. The podcast has just been an absolutely amazing journey, and I'm just so grateful that you're on it with me. And I look forward to growing and learning together in the new year ahead. If you'd like to support the show, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to simply subscribe to it on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episode 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 podcast was created by Dan Drake and Blake Curtis. Portraits, courtesy of Davey Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic elements are by Daniel Solis and our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis.

I appreciate the love. I appreciate the support. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. See you back here soon. Peace, plants. Namaste. time. Thank you.