The Rich Roll Podcast - The Best Of 2023: Part Two

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

We are here to grow. We are here to transform. This is our birthright. This is our purpose. As the year ends, I want to honor this truth by sharing wisdom gleaned from some of the brightest minds on the podcast this year. I’ve engaged with so many extraordinary changemakers throughout 2023. Reviewing the year in conversation brought powerful new insights—a reminder that these evergreen exchanges continue to inspire and inform. I have so much gratitude for all the guests who shared their wisdom openly, for my incredible team, for the enormous growth of the show over the last 12 months, and for the sponsors who keep this podcast going. But more than anything I am grateful for you, the listener. I don’t take your attention and support for granted. Thank you for taking this journey of growth alongside me. Here’s to an extraordinary 2024. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RICHROLL AG1: DrinkAg1.com/RICHROLL Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Athletic Brewing: AthleticBrewing.com On: On.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich

I remember I was in Italy, I saw a ladybug and I was like, this ladybug has no idea it's Italian. Find positivity in any situation. Every single person watching can get happier. The superpower is relaxation. The only zen you're going to find at the top of the mountain is the zen you bring up there with you. We stay stable not by resisting change, but by changing. To not be Patrick Stewart, but by changing. To not be Patrick Stewart was such a relief.

Love is woven into every aspect of our lives. We need to get stronger. We need to not be afraid of failure. We have to be willing to go through hardship, through suffering, through pain. Greetings, everybody, and happy holidays from everyone here at the RRP Mothership. As it says right here on my beanie, this is a time to pause. It's a time to breathe and perhaps most importantly, a time to reflect, something we're doing today courtesy of part two of our Best of 2023 anthology,

which is essentially a look back at some of the most impactful conversations of the year that we've had here, and to do that with gratitude. Gratitude for, of course, all the guests who shared their wisdom openly with all of us. Gratitude for, of course, all the guests who shared their wisdom openly with all of us. Gratitude for my incredible team. Gratitude for the quite enormous growth of the show over the last 12 months. Gratitude for the sponsors that keep the show going. But most of all, gratitude to you, the listener. Truly, I do not take your attention nor your support for granted.

Truly, I do not take your attention nor your support for granted. And this recap practice is my way of honoring the magic that we make here together, as well as a reminder of the power that I think we all have to do and be better. Better for ourselves, better for our loved ones, and better for the world. So let's kick off this Best of 2023 part two with one of my favorite luminaries, expert meditation and spiritual teacher, as well as author of many transformative books, Light Watkins, returned in episode 768,

where we discussed meditation, we talked about minimalism, but mostly it was a conversation about living a life of purpose. but mostly it was a conversation about living a life of purpose. You have everything you need to create the life that you ultimately want right now. Is that that you need more than what you have? If anything, it's you need less, less distraction.

You need less temptation to use coping mechanisms and things like that. You need less stuff to buy in order to be fulfilled or happy. And so if you go inside and you start with cultivating the voice of your inner guidance and you start listening to that voice and you start acting upon that voice, that will take you in the direction of whatever it is that you envision for yourself. You're not expected to know how it happens. You just make yourself as loyal as possible to those little impulses without any expectation or anticipation of a specific result. And eventually you will live your way into that life of your dreams, which is going to come with lots of challenges. It's going to come with you being stretched

out of your comfort zone and into your potential. And you will look back at those experiences as the highlights of your life and those challenging times as again, the good parts of your story. That's what people are going to want to talk about. And it's a real time process. So it's about really being process oriented as opposed to outcome oriented. And that's the thing. You can have the most sparse, beautiful looking, Zen-like external environment,

but on the inside, you're still cluttered. You're holding on to toxic relationships. You're maybe holding on to a soul-sucking job or a path in your life. And if you're experiencing all that clutter, it prohibits you from being present with this beautiful Zen space that you happen to be in. that you happen to be in. And it's kind of like what Robert Persick, the guy who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Making that said, the only Zen you're gonna find at the top of the mountain is the Zen you bring up there with you. So it's like that.

Every space you enter, every relationship you enter, any accomplishment you have, you're gonna bring all the happiness that you're gonna get from that with you to the relationship, to the space, to the accomplishment. Right. And everybody ultimately, no matter what you do in your life,

everybody ultimately wants to be fulfilled, right? So how do you get to be fulfilled? Well, that's where people have different ideas. Some people think it's because it's from accomplishments or it's from money or it's from some other external circumstance. But really what brings fulfillment is living a purposeful life, right?

I was listening to this other podcast interview and this guy was helping people get out of prison. And he said, there's no drug I've ever taken that gives me the same high as helping these inmates who were innocent get freed from prison. And if you're being of service or if you're raising a family and that's what you've identified with as your purpose, or if you're doing something else that's related to your heart, then you're experiencing some degree of fulfillment that you would not be experiencing otherwise.

And really the only way to know that is to have the experience. So then how do you lead a purposeful life? Well, a lot of people are confused about, I don't know what my purpose is. I write about purpose a lot and I get a lot of replies. I feel like I don't live that purposeful life. And so I say, you have to follow curiosity.

You know, don't worry about trying to find your purpose. Just follow curiosity and your purpose will find you. Well, how do you follow your curiosity? Well, your curiosity is going to have you doing things that are going to make you look foolish, probably. And it's not going to be practical and it's not going to make a lot of sense to the people around you. So you have to be okay with that. And the only way to be okay with that is to feel so called by your purpose, by your curiosity that you're willing to do it

anyway. And what stands in between you being able to do that, follow the curiosity with the FOMO, right? Fear of other people's opinions, FOPO, fear of other people's opinions in full play is you have to get rid of the stuff that keeps you shackled to those opinions, which is some degree of stress, right? Because stress, when you're tired, stress makes you tired, Stress makes you anxious. Stress

makes you, um, future thinking, or you're, you're focused on a past regret. It's hard to follow your curiosity when you have those things playing out in the back of your awareness. What is the process? Like, how would you, like, if, if I just said that to you and I was your student, your meditation student, like walk me through how you would untangle that knot and get me into a place where I could hear the voice of my own innate curiosity. So that voice is in there. We usually refer to it as the still small voice,

like those internal nudging, those hunches saying, hey, maybe go left instead of going right on your commute today. Just see what happens. Or hey, go and compliment that person on their nice shoes. Or hey, stay at home today and just read a book, you know, these kinds of things. And so that voice is in there. It's a still small voice. And we had it when we were kids. Everybody has it as a kid. You see kids, they can play with a stick for hours or they can just go out and imagine things and make believe. And there's something that happens once you start getting schooled is you get indoctrinated to believe what success is supposed to look like,

which is being disciplined, being responsible, achieving things, getting married, having a good job, et cetera, et cetera. And then that becomes the primary focus. And then the voice of curiosity or the still small voice gets filed away in the extracurricular activity folder, where if you have enough time when you're not being responsible

and working on your job or your whatever, then you can play around with that on the weekends. And actually it's the opposite. We should be prioritizing that voice because that voice is keeping us on track with whatever it is that our purpose or our passion truly is in this lifetime, which no one can tell you what that

is. You can't go to anyone. You can't go to me. You can't go to any psychic or therapist, and they can sit you down and say, your purpose is to dot, dot, dot. Only you know what that is, but you have to get conversational in the language of that internal voice. Next up is 2021 Facebook whistleblower, Francis Haugen, who joined me back in episode 779 to explain the nuanced impact of social media on society, as well as why algorithms prioritize extreme content and the tools available to us to combat these important and admittedly, at times, terrifying issues. As a data scientist, a lot of people, you hear a lot of people saying, well, we don't even know how these algorithms work. Is that true? What parts of it do you understand and which parts of it elude even someone like yourself?

So it's one of these things where, you know, this is a very young field. Like this is one of these things where I talk about in the book. And we can design a system and say, this is the data we put into it. Like we can describe that, we can see it. We can, you know, when Elon published the algorithm, like he can see what provisions it says. But the problem is that all these things work together in ways that are unexpected. Like no one at Facebook, when they made the shift from saying, can we keep you on the platform as long as possible to, can we get you to react as much

as possible? No one said, I think this is going to lead to more extreme content. Like no one, no one set out to do that. And I want to validate the things that Facebook has said. You know, they say, we don't recognize these allegations. We would never intend to do that. I don't think they did. But the problem is that when they learned there were these side effects and right now the only people who get to ask questions about could there be side effects are the people inside the companies. about could there be side effects? Are the people inside the companies, you know, people who have a vested interest in not knowing, you know, when they learned that there were these consequences, and to be clear, like,

the shift was big enough that like the CEO of BuzzFeed wrote to Facebook and said, I think something's broken. Jonah Peretti? I don't remember which, which gender, it would have been in like 2018 or 2019.

So I don't know which era that is. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. And it's getting wilder, right? Like when we think about what went down in terms of election interference in 2016 and in 2020, it feels kind of very, you know, kind of not that big of a deal in consideration with what we're contending as we, you know, careen towards the 2024 election.

due to the release of these various LLMs, the rapid growth of generative AI, deepfake technology, like the tools that are now available on the disinformation battlefield are just extraordinarily powerful. So how do you think about how those tools are going to be deployed and what we can expect as we move towards November? So I think there's two areas that we need to really pay attention to. what we can expect as we move towards November.

So I think there's two areas that we need to really pay attention to. So one is, when Mark Zuckerberg, excuse me, when Elon Musk fired a lot of his safety teams, it really shifted the information environment. So one of my, my husband and I like to watch YouTube together, cause we're nerdy. And there's a guy named Peter Zaihand who follows a lot of the politics in Russia. And he was talking about how it used

to be one of his best data sources was Twitter. And when Elon came in, he ended up blocking a lot of people who were in Russia. But he also, because he fired the teams that were looking for the coordinated behavior, you can really obviously tell the trolls on both sides of the conflict now just outweigh the real voices. And so one is we are investing less in catching bad actors. But the second is the way the tools have changed what's even possible with misinformation. changed what's even possible with misinformation. So for context for people, one of the ways we used to catch those bots or like catch the networks of people who were pushing an information operation

was we look for repetition. So, you know, there's always this interesting trade-off between how much distribution can you do and how much unique content can you do, right? So if you really don't want to get caught, you write a different thing every time. Before the large language models came out, you were limited. You know, you weren't going to reach a ton of people if every single thing you posted was unique. So you could start looking and saying, interesting, you keep sharing the same links,

or this group of people keeps saying very, very similar things, or maybe even the same thing. Right. And it becomes clear that this is a bot farm. Yeah, or like China was particularly egregious at this because they would do things like, they would have brigades of tens of thousands of people who would just like flood the common threads on dissidents posts with like just the Chinese flag. You know, like you can tell this is all the same thing.

When you start having large language models, it's now possible to go and generate tens of thousands of unique pieces of content that all basically say the same thing, but say it in slightly different ways. And that makes it a lot harder to see that coordination. Or for example, you know, part of what makes misinformation so pernicious

is consensus reality is like a channel. You know, there's not like a huge continuum of what you can talk about. There's like, you know, we can sit and come to a view of like reality if we talk long enough. When it comes to misinformation, it can play in the entire field of ideas. And whatever is like the most seductive or like most incendiary on the algorithm, that's the thing that gets distributed. In a world with large language models, you can generate 10,000 different variations and send them to lots of different nooks and figure out what meme, like what idea is most seductive. And that just supercharges what can be done with a misinformation campaign.

It's terrifying. It is. And that doesn't even get into all the deep fake stuff when you can mock somebody's voice or their likeness in a compelling way that's indistinguishable from reality, then our footing in what is real and what isn't real vanishes.

Yeah. And things get really scary. We are living, and this is part of why we have to start having more transparency, because we have tools where we can start saying, hey, we got to move this ball down the field. But there is no economic incentive today to do those things on their own. So what are we going to do, Frances? Like, what's the solution here?

How do we put a better foot forward? So part of, I think, the first step is just, and this is a big part about why I wrote the book. Like, I think of the things that I regret the most about the rollout of my book is no conservative media has offered to, like, talk to me. Right, like, I haven't been on Fox News. I haven't, we've reached out to a number of-

That's interesting. I would think they'd be happy to talk to you. I would think so too. Because like I've been saying consistently since the beginning, you know, content moderation is a flawed strategy, but Facebook spent a huge sum of money on a whisper campaign saying, you know,

she's a dark horse for censorship. And so I think the place we start from is an idea that people have the right to see how these systems work, right? Like I should have the right to know I am not allowed to sell my book on Facebook, right? We, the public should be able to see what content gets taken down. Right now, the only avenues that we have are you can appeal to the Facebook oversight board, but it disappears into a black hole, right? Things can really change if we have transparency. And so we need to first work on how do we make that a bipartisan issue, that we cannot have an information environment that is run by a private company in the dark and have a democracy. run by a private company in the dark and have a democracy. And the second thing is like, so how might we actually do that?

So Europe passed a law called the Digital Services Act last year. I talk about it in the book. That basically, it sounds pretty blah. It's like, you know, if you know there's a risk to your platform, you gotta tell us about it. Like we know you get to operate behind the curtain, but we can't see.

We'll never catch up with you unless you tell us what you already know. You have to tell us what your plan is for reducing that risk. And you need to give us enough data that we can see that you're making progress. And if we ask you a question, you have to give us an answer.

And if we don't comply? So I think it's like 10% of global revenues. Oh, wow. It's the penalty. That's the penalty. That's for real. A real one. Though, when you have a 35% profit margin, it's possible Facebook would come out and say,

we are now 25% profitable. It's just a business expense. A business expense. Right. Relentless experimenter and master of podcasting and productivity, Tim Ferriss joined me for a rather vulnerable exchange on how he grapples with anxiety and depression.

We talked about how to face difficult emotions and the various modalities that he's explored from silent meditation to psychotherapy, including some grounded thoughts on his experiences with psychedelics. You know, maybe we can spend a couple minutes on some of the more helpful resources, like we talked about, they're all on your blog.

But there's a quote that kind of recurs that I've heard you say a couple times. To me, it almost acts like a talisman or a way into this process. And I believe it's Tara Brach who said it, focusing on like, or thinking about what it is that you're unwilling to feel. Yeah.

Right, like as a, that like really kind of like pulls focus on- Totally. Where to begin. Yeah, the Tara Brach, and I really recommend, I'm actually rereading it right now. Radical Acceptance. Some of you may find that a bit nauseating in title.

And I also was sort of repelled by this very generic title, but it was recommended to me by a PhD in neuroscience who's not in the Wu camp at all. And I read it many years ago and I found it so helpful and I've been recommending it and recommending it and recommending it. And I recommended it to someone a week ago. I was like, you know what? Maybe it's time for me to reread that. So I dug back into it. And I think it is in Radical Acceptance, Tara Brock, B-R-A-C-H. I think it is in that book, maybe at the head of one of the chapters where she says, a wise sage once said,

there is only one question that really matters. What is it that you are unwilling to feel? And that is a very focusing question. So that is a good place to start. I'm a journaling junkie. I really find that it is difficult to think clearly or to even learn what you think without trapping it on paper. So you can examine the thoughts. They're very difficult to capture or cross-examine without putting them on paper. Morning pages, I find very, very helpful for this. So in terms of tools, and feel free to direct me in any way that you'd like, but in terms of just a handful of tools, there are ongoing tools and then there are inputs in the form of books. I would say there are a few that have really impacted me. I've already mentioned Radical Acceptance, so I would put that pretty high on the list.

Another book which is shorter and easier to complete, but that many people find super abrasive is a book called Awareness by Anthony DeMello. It's a short book. It's mostly a cleaned up transcript of public lectures that he gave Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who has since passed. He has a very no BS approach to things, which some people find very offensive. I like that kind of tough love coach type vibe. So it works for me. The waking up app introductory course,

I think for people who have never meditated, who have the opinion, which I did for a very long time, it just ain't for me. Sitting still, hummina, hummina, hummina, whatever you do, I don't think I can do that. My mind's all over the place. The Waking Up app introductory course

presents a logical sequence of skill development. That is what makes it, I think, unique and very appealing. It's 10 minutes each morning and do it for a month. Your life, I think, will change. Your awareness of the scripts that are running your life will become more acute. And then I would say focusing on sleep first and foremost, and I've had a number of chats with Matt Walker of UCSF I would say focusing on sleep first and foremost,

and I've had a number of chats with Matt Walker of UCSF on my podcast, really focusing on sleep since I've had lifelong issues with insomnia, onset insomnia specifically. Tim on consistent good sleep for even three days and Tim on mediocre sleep for three days, those are two different Tims. So really making the compromises necessary, taking the actions necessary.

For instance, like zone two or higher level aerobic training, which historically I hate. I hate it with a passion. I would much rather go into the gym and do sets of five with heavier weights. I hate aerobic exercise generally. However, I found a few that seem to A,

dramatically improve my mood and really help me sleep for whatever set of reasons. And then we can talk about perhaps the one that I've been not so deftly, maybe super obviously navigating around, which is psychedelic assisted therapy. That is the amplifier. That is the tool that has allowed me most consistently to take an observer seat where I can look at the beliefs and behaviors that I take for granted, that are automatic, that I think are unavoidable

or that I don't think about at all, that are dictating the quality of my life or the self-punishment that I'm inflicting. Author, Shreemu plant-based cheese founder and my in-house Oracle and better half, Julie Pyatt joined me on episode 791, dropping wisdom on finding enlightenment, honoring your physical form, and the beauty that comes from embodying self-love. I recently heard somebody raving about, oh, you know, there's this enlightened being and he's

made it through the 12 stages of enlightenment, you know, and I just sort of smiled. I mean, you know, I'm sure that the being is very amazing and very beautiful, but it's all a system. It's all a perspective. It's just a fractal. It's a perspective of the crystal of which we all make up.

We all come from that. And so the other thing that I would like to just offer you as your beloved and as someone who cares for you deeply. And I know that we share this. So you say this self-love part is so tough for you. Well, it's tough for all of us. I mean, that is the thing. I mean, you can talk to Giselle, who's like the most beautiful super model ever. And she'll tell you that she felt ugly, judged. I mean, I don't know her. So Giselle, I don't know if you really said that, but I'm just, I'm going to wager that that's true. It doesn't matter. It's like, it's part of the human condition because we leave the one and we come into a

body and we feel this immense separation. And with that separation comes this, you know, falling from the unity basically. So it's by design that it happens that way. But what I would offer to you is that I'm starting to think that it's not going to be hard at all, actually. I've had a couple experiences in the last few months where I've glimpsed aspects of being embodied in, let's say, a more high vibrating life form, like in my body. And so, as we're, I'm doing Pilates or I'm taking care of my skin or I'm making sure that I hike and that I meditate and that I don't carry stress in my body. I don't carry stress in my body.

I'm feeling like I wanna take care of my physical form. And I had this moment where this sort of quantum presence came into my body and showed me just a glimpse of the power, the perfection, the beauty that is just there beyond this density. And then I started laughing and I said, actually, maybe it's not gonna be hard at all. Maybe when the frequency gets to that point, it's gonna be like the wind blows across your cheek

and suddenly you're rejuvenated. Your back is feeling better. So again, it's like this idea of hard work is old in a lot of ways, old paradigm. It shouldn't be hard work. I am not disciplined. I'm not working hard at spirituality. I am in a state of beingness, of connection to the breath, the moment, the presence, the allowing, the surrender. And the greatest secret that I can share on your show today and right now in my life,

the superpower is relaxation. That is the superpower. So everyone listening to this, just consider how you are when you're working so hard You're going for things so You know committed you're you're wanting this so badly. It's like just observe all the things in your body that are constricting It's closing off your life force It's it's causing a closing down of energy. And what if you knew that the more you

could relax, just everybody just let your belly go, let your body just relax, start to connect to your breath. And what if you knew that the more you relaxed, the more light could enter you, the more help you can get from the universe, the more you merge with that, which is really sourcing you, living you, breathing you. So this whole idea of this work, we got to work and it's got to be so hard, doesn't. It's actually not true. It's an illusion. So again, many years ago, when your beloved friend who was on the cover of Time Magazine, the Olympian, the swimmer, he's a reverend. Byron Davis? Yeah, Byron Davis. He was sitting at our kitchen table and you guys were having this conversation. We were having this

conversation. And I was like, how about training for the love of it? Like just for the love of it. And he told this story. He was training for qualifying round or something. And he woke up with the flu and he was not in his best self. And he was swimming and he was getting beat. And then suddenly he said something beyond himself came in and he entered this relaxation and he won. And we had that conversation back then. So it's not foreign to you. I know that,

but I'm reminding you and I'm not saying, so then don't say that, oh, well then how does anything get done? You know, I do 29 things all the time. It's the way it's done. It's the intention that it's done in. And so this world is a beautiful world where we get to evolve through experiences. And that's why every single one of your desires, you should experience it. You should do it.

You should go for it, go in it, feel it, you know, be it, become it, because that's evolution. And that's what we're here for. So much more on its way, but first, a quick word from our partners who make the show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. 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, support and empower you to find the ideal level of care 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,

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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. Director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford University Prevention Research Center, Dr. Christopher Gardner, joined me to share an evidence-based rational model for nutritional health, as well as a discussion about how to distinguish good nutrition science from bad. Here's an excerpt from that conversation. excerpt from that conversation. The American Heart Association has regularly for 50 years updated their dietary guidelines. And the previous most recent update was 2006. And in 2021,

they did it again. Didn't honestly change all that much, but they refined a few things and they spent a ton of time in this paper looking at all the literature that was available before 2006 and between 2006 and 2021. Here's all the data we have on who has a heart attack, myocardial infarction, stroke, any kind of cardiovascular disease. Here's 10 domains that cover a heart healthy diet. And those are sort of individual things about whole grains and veggies and beans and salt and saturated fat. And they said, here's the things to include or avoid. And then the public said, so what does that mean?

Should I be vegan or should I be Mediterranean or should I be paleo? I said, ah, you know what? We should do another paper on patterns. So instead of individual components, how many of these popular dietary patterns out there could be consistent with this set of domains? In other words, like the overlap in the Venn diagram between all of these different perspectives. And so I want to focus on the overlap at first. So the 10 patterns we picked were the DASH diet, that's the dietary approaches to stop hypertension. Mediterranean, three types of vegetarians

who had pesca, we had the ovo-lacto-vegetarian, we had vegan, sort of a higher fat vegan. We also had a really low fat vegan diet. We had a low carb, a low fat, a paleo, and a keto. I hope that was 10 because we had 10 patterns. And we tried to match them up to the 10 domains. And we scored them from high to low and Dash and Mediterranean got the best score and Paleo and Keto got the worst score as you were matching these domains. And happy to go into some of those details if you want. But one of my takeaways that I thought was great

was across all 10, they all said more vegetables, more whole foods, less added sugar, and less refined grain across all 10. Now this could be a trivial response if those are things we already did. Those are four of the biggest problems with the US diet. We don't eat many vegetables. We eat a lot of ultra-processed food. We eat a crap ton of added sugar and a crap ton of refined grain. So for me, this is a kumbaya moment. Oh my God, all the patterns agree on 50% of probably what plagues human health associated with diet. Why don't we all get together and work on that? That's no fun. Yes, it's not as the clickbait doesn't work, but we really all agree on those. And those are all big issues. The one extra one I'd love to add in there is beans. I actually think eating more

beans is probably the biggest thing Americans could do to change their diet in a positive way. And there's so many kinds of beans, culturally appropriate, lots of unapologetically delicious dishes with lentils and chickpeas and kidney beans and refried beans. Oh my God. But you wouldn't get the paleo and keto in there, right? Because they're super low carb and beans are full of carbs. After the four things I mentioned first that they all agree on, the next ones I would add would be beans. We kind of all agree on beans. That would come next, yeah. I mean, I like that way of looking at it, like this heat map sort of perspective

that allows you to transcend all the labels and the tribalism and all of that and really just focus on, you know, this is, I think you've characterized this as being like 50% of the, but it's kind of like 90%, isn't it? I mean, it's really like if you do those four things and then maybe the fifth with the beans, like you're on the five yard line pretty much, right? And another way to appreciate, to, yeah, acknowledge that, appreciate it is, I do think there are arguments

for some of these low carb, low fat, high protein, individual things. For whom and when? At the margins. At the margins. After you got the foundation right. So there'd be a lot less bickering if, yeah, I do all these things.

And I actually prefer avocado to steel cut oats or something. I prefer this higher protein to this higher carb, whatever. Yeah, I think you could hedge your bets. And at that point, sort of biohack your own metabolism and come up with something that's a little better for you than the other thing. But can you please fix the first 50 or 90%?

Because we all agree on that and you're doing that wrong. Right. So this first tier of the heat map, less added sugar, less refined grains, way more starchy veg, more whole foods, less ultra processed foods.

And then with the footnote around beans, but then there's a tier just below this, right? Okay, we've done that. Now, how do we get to the next level? And I would flip that one little thing. You said starchy veg. So the one things they all agree on is non-starchy veg. That's what I meant to say. Sorry about that. Now, how do we get to the next level? I would flip that one little thing. You said starchy veg. So the one things they all agree on is non-starchy veg. That's what I meant to say. Sorry about that. Broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens, red bell peppers. But then you get to the

avocado, the avocados, the nuts, the seeds, the olive oil, fruits, or we can eat fish, or we can eat eggs. That kind of all falls into that next tier. You're talking about this core that has a second ring. And my second ring is beans. Oh my God, with lectins. Fruits. Oh my God, they have sugar. Nuts. Oh my God, they have fat. Eggs. Oh my God, they have cholesterol. Fish. Oh my God, they have a face. You know, at that second level, the lectins don't matter. The sugar in fruits is fine. It's in the food matrix. The nuts have unsaturated fat.

So that next tier of foods is pretty good. But it's at the margin after you deal with that thing in the middle. And let's assume we've now mastered this tier. Okay. What comes next? Where are we gonna, we're gonna go behind the velvet rope

and put the cherry on top of the sundae. Yeah. So to be honest, Americans eat too much wheat. They eat too much grain. They even eat too much whole grain bread. So glycemic index is how fast the glucose from the food you're eating ends up in your blood. And a shocking thing for people who read into this

and look it up is that white flour bread and whole wheat bread have the same glycemic index. It's like, wait. Very high. High glycemic index is not good. I switched from white flour to whole wheat flour. Why wasn't that better? And the reason it wasn't better

is because it was ground to a powder and most of the digestion was done. So the time it takes you to eat it and absorb it is really small. If you had used the whole grain, which is the wheat berry, it would have taken much longer for your enzymes to digest it and make the molecules small enough to absorb. So you were saying go to the next level of these concentric rings. So grains. So a funny thing that I learned

from doing some studies related to protein and trying to figure out where our protein comes from is looking at the USDA's fabulous website of all the food we produce and what we eat. And under grains, it said, okay, grains include oats and barley and wheat and this other thing. But because Americans, 90% of the grains they eat are wheat, we're simply using the value for wheat for this thing that we're analyzing. And I stopped for a moment. I said,

really? There's all these grains out there and 90% of what Americans eat is wheat. And most of that is bread, right? Pizza crust, donuts, some kind of bread-like thing. So at that next level, I think is grains. So I've actually, I hosted a debate one time between a paleo person and a Mediterranean person and a middle of the road person. And I tried to force them to say, what do you agree on? I know you guys disagree on some things. What do you agree on? And the first thing I got them all to agree on that people didn't expect

was grains. Even like the vegan person said, yeah, if I was going to get rid of anything next, it would be grains because so much of it is refined, even the whole grain bread. Your darkest moments will either break you beyond repair or they're going to make you stronger. Well, this was the choice faced by Steph Kachudal as her husband, beloved ultra runner Tommy Rives, battled a very rare form of cancer that nearly took his life. Steph joined me in episode 787 to discuss the big things in life, trauma, mortality, love, grief, and meaning, all of which are beautifully explored in her memoir, Everything All at Once.

beautifully explored in her memoir, Everything All at Once. If you co-sign to the idea that all of us have capacity and potential that we're walking around with that we're just not aware of, or we haven't really brought forth in our own lives, do we really need to be in that kind of a tragic event or to suffer extreme pain in order to manifest it? It's a choice.

It just rarely happens short of, basically being boxed into a corner in that kind of a way. Yeah. Well, similarly, Rives and I are, for lack of a better word, happier together than we've ever been. And people are like, how are you so happy? I'm like, just we've ever been. And people are like, how are you so happy? I'm like, just make him almost die. And then you'll, you know what I

mean? You'll go through together this recognition of how much you love each other and how important you are to each other and things that we take for granted that are sometimes only shown to us in the depths of despair. Sadly, how do you access that feeling of gratitude and awareness when you're not in the depths? And I'm struggling with that now even. Please tell me how to do that. Yeah. Oh, you don't know? Because I'm now even, I want to maintain the lessons I learned, be present. There's no better moment than this moment right now. And all the love you ever need is inside of you. All of these truths, I know them, but it's harder to feel them when life is good. What I learned and what I'm learning

is that memory is the cursor to things that are always happening. These memories are actually ever present and we can access them and go back to that that are always happening. These memories are actually ever present and we can access them and go back to that time in a moment. Well, they're consciously or unconsciously impacting every decision that we make. So they do live in the present. They do. Absolutely. And I mean, the most, the like the starkest example of this was when Rives was at the end of his life and I went in there to say goodbye is what they told me to do and I rested my head on his chest and in a moment we were dancing together and we were living that moment together in the present and nobody could tell me that

didn't happen that I was not metaphysically there because I was my body was here but I was there with him and we were dancing together and that that memory I feel drew us back together into this world and and called him back to this life and I think that example was why I wanted to weave the malleability of time into my whole book. Because I realized that it was memory that was saving me over and over again. Mostly the memory of love. And that's what I feel kept me my whole life from going over the edge. These ever-present moments of presence

that I was called back to. And on the other hand, Rives, he lived lifetimes in his coma. He was, I mean, he has some incredible stories about where he was and where he went and how many different families he had. And who's to say that those weren't real that those weren't really occurring lives you know i'm not i would never say he says some of those

memories of when he was in the coma feel more real than this life memory you know wow so i'm really really interested in the quantum aspect that i don't, I wish I understood on a physics level. Yeah. But all I know is my experience with time and yeah. So what do we take from that? How are we supposed to interpret that? Or how is that meant to, from your perspective, inform our lives?

Is that meant to, from your perspective, inform our lives? I mean, really it's that love is woven into every aspect of our lives in the form of memory. And that in the most tragic moments, love or the memory of love is still there. And I like to think of my father, whether he exists in a spiritual realm or just in a memory, I think that the memory of his love is the same as saying that he lives in some spirit world. And that love is entwined in every aspect of my life. And it's in all of our lives. And if one of the most pivotal moments of, of my, um, life today was recognizing how that love had been in, in everything, absolutely everything. When I was drunk, crying under a table, when I was hitchhiking through Guatemala, when I was, you know, everything that I did, love was there. I just didn't recognize it in myself,

so I couldn't recognize it in other people. Up next is serial entrepreneur and the host of the United Kingdom's number one podcast, Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett, who shared some really great wisdom on how to hone discipline and balance ambition with self-care. In this moment, how I'm feeling is I feel like I've overextended myself in my life. I feel like 12 months ago or six months ago, I must have said yes to too many things and not have been cognizant of the nature of my, the fact that my time is finite. And this is a constant battle I have in my life, which is my ambition is maybe exceeding my

capacity, which I need to put into check because I pay the price for that. I end up having, letting someone down somewhere and also therefore myself in the process. And right now where I'm at, I've definitely taken on too much stuff. So endurance is great. What we need is consistency and sustainability. We don't need intensity. Intensity is maybe useful in spurts, but you can't maintain intensity for a consistent enduring period of time.

Nobody can without something falling by the wayside. That matters. And the frame i try and apply to the decisions when i see something on my list a request that comes in is how would i feel if i had to do that tomorrow and that's the frame i should be applying which is how would i feel if i had to do that later on today or tomorrow because i fall under the same bias which is i defer it to a future steve who I can't yet understand the circumstances of the day that he's currently in.

And by bringing it to today's Steve, it kind of helps me filter out things against my values and intentions. And that whole frame generally, I was talking about this last night to one of my friends, of really being cognizant that when you wake up every day after spending eight of your, as I talk about my first book,

proverbial chips on sleep, you have these 16 chips left. And how you place those 16 chips on the roulette table of life is the center point of your influence on your own life. The allocation of those 16 chips on this proverbial roulette table of life. And when the wheel spins every day, you find out the returns you've got. So these 16 chips, how do I place them? And what are my values? And you're trying to place them where your values are. And if you land on your values, you get great returns. So placing two against spending time with my girlfriend in the evening, placing four against my podcast, four against my businesses, two against

DJing, one against gym, that's time I'll spend. And I might also, it's important to say this, I might place one against binging Netflix. If I might also, it's important to say this, I might place one against binging Netflix. If it was intentional, it's not wasted time. It's only wasted time in my regard when you didn't do it consciously and intentionally. And that framework is so important because if you look at anyone's, how we allocate our time, it's so clear we think we're going to live forever. It's why on all of my desks, on my bookshelf, behind me on the diary of a CEO, I have this sound timer because I don't believe humans can imagine in infancy or finality. I don't think we're capable of such a thing. So we allocate our time in trivial, regrettable ways, but our time is literally the currency we have. The allocation

of my time up until this moment where I'm sat with you today is the thing that has put me in this chair today. It's like well-allocated time in my regard because I managed to get, you know, to have a conversation with you. So thinking through that framework and reminding myself that, you know, time is so precious and so finite

allows you to hopefully make decisions about what you're doing with your day that are unregrettable, which is my goal at the moment. Yeah. I think it requires or it demands a certain type of discipline that might not be immediately obvious. Because when we think about discipline, we think about how hard can we work or how can we make that hard choice to delay gratification. But discipline comes in many forms. I think the chapter in the new book about discipline, you come up with this equation about that, which kind of speaks to what you just mentioned.

I actually, the title of that law in my book was about time. It was about time management. I started out to write about time. It was about time management. I started out to write about time management because everyone wants time management techniques. And as I go down there, and as I start doing my research on time management techniques, I discovered there are hundreds, right? And I also, if I'm honest with myself, there's none that I use. So I asked myself why. And in the same way that there's lots of fad diets out there, the reason why there's so many time management techniques is because none of them fundamentally work. So people keep going in search of new ones

and creating new ones because they lack the fundamental skill of discipline. So I asked myself, okay, why does discipline matter? Well, in a world where time is finite, as we've just discussed, you can only do so many things. And so I try and figure out why in some areas of my life, I've been disciplined with the gym six, seven days a week, with DJing, with my businesses, and why in other areas of my life has my discipline lapsed? So I tried to write a simple equation, which is, and I'd love you to interrogate this with me

because I'm still trying to refine the equation. But at the start of the equation, you have in simple terms, why does the goal matter to you, right? Plus the psychological enjoyment you get in the pursuit of the goal, minus let's call it the psychological disengagement or the psychological friction associated with the goal. So with going to the gym,

I started going on March 2020, and I've been going for over three years now. March 2020, I watched a pandemic sweep the world, and I watched through my TV screen people dying because of their health circumstances and the correlation between outcomes and your health circumstance. It was so traumatic to me that it increased my why to so much so that the habit stuck. And it was so clear to me now that the foundation of all my goals, my businesses, my girlfriend, my relationship, my dog, my family was my health. I saw the tectonic plate shake underneath everything I care about. The pursuit itself of going to the gym is psychologically enjoyable as long as the gym is close and as long as it's private. So I'm not spending a lot of time just talking about

the podcast with people, minus the friction associated to it. So reducing the friction means me finding a private gym. I actually stopped going to the gym when people knew who I was because people came up to me a lot, the friction increased. And Simon Sinek challenged this the other day with me. And he goes, well, you know, like, I get up every morning and I go and empty the bin outside my house because I don't enjoy that. And it's not meaningful to me. I go, yeah, but it is, Simon. Because what happens if you, so if we examine that through that framework, what happens if you don't empty the bin outside your house, Simon? Well, you're going to get fined and it's going to overflow for the whole week. So your why is actually pretty high. The psychological

enjoyment is low. Sorry, the enjoyment is low and the friction is high, but the why is higher than the friction is. Getting out of bed at 8am. It matters more to you, the why, the pursuit, you know, achieving that goal, than the friction is unmotivating for you. If at some point, they reduced the why, so you would no longer get fines and you had a second bin, you wouldn't get out of bed, the friction would win out. And so the reason it's important to think through that framework is you can influence it. If there's something in your life where you're not disciplined, you can focus on that first half of the equation. Remind yourself why this really, really matters to you. And then do everything you can to make the pursuit of the equation. Remind yourself why this really, really matters to you,

and then do everything you can to make the pursuit of the goal as enjoyable and as engaging as you can. What do you do when you have two very different dreams vying for your attention? Well, this is the dilemma faced by five-time world champion professional triathlete and the Oscar nominated screenwriter of last year's best picture winner, All Quiet on the Western Front. Her name is Leslie Patterson. And here she shares some wisdom gold from that exchange. My whole life, like there's athletes and there's artists.

Right. And never the twain shall meet. These are people who are configured differently. Yep. And it's up to you to figure out which one of those two, if you're interested in both, you kind of have to pick one. Totally. And nobody's gonna tell you that it's cool to do both.

No, absolutely. And you're kind of like an outlier in both, right? So, as an athlete, everyone makes fun of the artists and they have a completely different time clock they stay up all night smoke they don't take care of their bodies they have they cannot understand the athlete um and then equally you know um that the the the artist is like you know they have no sense of the athlete, what that's like. You know, neither camp can truly understand. And yet I feel like there's so much similarity and there's so much you can draw down from each craft.

So what would be some of those things? those things? So I think the main thing is the discipline that I learned from sport really helped the creativity because as ethereal as being creative and when is that good idea going to come, if you still give yourself some sense of structure, then you're working towards something. And certainly when it comes to to screenplay writing right there's a lot of structure it's almost like if you know the structure enough then you can let it go and it becomes intuitive and that's the same in sport if you train enough to push yourself to the limits enough then in the race you'll find your zone so it's enough, then in the race, you'll find your zone. So it's kind of like the same. And then equally, I think in sport, if you really want to get to the top, you have to be creative.

You have to think outside the box about how you're going to push your mind and your body to truly achieve greatness. And, you know, I went down a lot of systems in sports, you know, a lot of national bodies, the British national body body and certainly this was back kind of in the 90s in the early 2000s when they weren't as developed as they are now but it was so it was like okay there's one way to do this and if you're not good at this one way then you're never going to be a world champion and i wasn't good at that one way and i'm like well yeah but i still think i could be good. So the creativity allowed me to investigate so many other ways. And I love it because my husband, Simon,

says it's a cargo net, it's not a ladder to the top. Explain that. It's a cargo net, not a ladder. A cargo net means there's many different ways to the top. A ladder, there's one. The one way. There's one route. Yeah, and that's kind of a beautiful analogy

because that's how I think I've gotten to the top in both is just kind of like really going to the side and up and down and up and to the side and across and being at peace with that as well, which is taking time. Right, because you are an outlier and you are bucking the system. And as a result, there will be pushback or resistance

or criticism for trying to find a different way. Oh yeah, all the time. Yeah, and I think it puts the lie to the test, this notion that the artist is struck with inspiration after a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of bourbon at 3 a.m. And helps one to realize, and this is a very kind of Steven Pressfield, Seth Godin kind of thing,

that creativity is a discipline in the same way the pursuit of excellence in sport is. It requires rigor and structure, accountability and all of those things. You have to create those structures in order to make space for the creativity to appear. Exactly. In that idea of like, you know,

the war of art or turning pro, like, are you a professional? Like if you're a professional creative, then you show up for it every day in the same way you show up for practice for your sport. You can't say, I have writer's block. That would be like saying, I have sport block today. I'm not going to show up for practice. But equally, it's like, even if you do have some kind of block or you're not making the forward momentum that you want to, it's saying, how can i get a positive result today what does that mean

what does that look like and having again that's that cargo net analogy where you know what you deem to be successful in any given day you know is is different for every individual but certainly for me in sport right i would have many shitty days I mean any top athlete I'll tell you that many many shitty days I've dealt with Lyme disease chronic injuries so how can you find something positive that you can still make a step forward in some capacity whether that's mentally or physically and similarly you know on the on the art front on storytelling front on script writing front you know it's understanding how your brain works, what suits you, what doesn't,

how to still find some kind of momentum, even when you're having a bad day. And maybe that's, I'm such a positive person. I love to find the positivity in anything. And I don't know if that's because I grew up, you know, my dad's pretty, pretty tough Scottishman, you know, nothing is ever going to impress him. However, it has. Now I'm getting the truth. This is what I was getting at earlier.

Yeah. But, you know, nothing really impresses him, right? You know, and that real Scottish, you know, bring people down that are successful. You know, whereas my mom is the opposite, right? Gushing and everything's amazing. And so it's like you kind of strike the balance between both, but they create your driving force to understand how to find positivity in any situation. Where does happiness come from and how do we get more of it?

If you find yourself grappling with these questions, then my conversation with Arthur Brooks from episode 683 is going to be your jam. Arthur is a professor at Harvard Business School and the best-selling author of Build the Life You Want. Here is a clip from that conversation. Most people say, I want to be happy. To begin with, that's the wrong goal because you can't be happy. Happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a direction. You can't be, I mean, for somebody to be truly happy, it would mean that you would need to eliminate the parts

of your life that are literally keeping you alive, like your negative emotions. You need anger and sadness and disgust and you need grief and you need all these things to stay alive and deal with the world. So pure happiness shouldn't be the goal, but getting happier is a legitimate goal for everybody. The biggest mistake that people make is thinking that it's a feeling and chasing a feeling.

Happiness is not a feeling. It has feelings associated with it, but feelings of happiness are really evidence of happiness. Sort of the smell of dinner is the evidence of dinner. It's not dinner itself. It would be a very disappointing dinner if it were just the smell of Thanksgiving, shoot it into the air.

And then that's what chasing feelings is really like. It's incredibly ephemeral. And it's a terrible thing to live that way, to live hoping that tomorrow you'll feel a different way. And so the first freeing thing is that number one, don't worry about being happier. Let's work on getting happier. It's a project.

That's number one, very empowering. And number two is that it's not a feeling. It's something that you really can work on. It's something, it's a skill you can really get better at. So that's the prelude to, you know, how people see it wrong and how they can really get better at. So that's the prelude to how people see it wrong and how they can be encouraged to see it correctly and start to get better at it.

Then the whole question becomes, okay, it's not a feeling, what is it? And that's a big, that's a controversy in the world of social psychology and social science in general, even neuroscience, what is happiness? But as a functional definition, you find that people who have the most wellbeing

in their lives have balance and abundance across three things, sort of macronutrients. So the protein, carbohydrates, and fat of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Those are the three things that people actually need. And none of those things is as simple as it sounds. Each one has a literature of science behind it and has protocols and habits that we can all pursue

and get better at. So the great news is that every single person watching us can get happier. And the better news is we know what they can work on to get happier, but they need the knowledge. Right, so this idea that happiness, we can have a debate on how we particularly define what it is,

but the truth of the matter is that that's less important than this idea that it is evidence or something that comes about as a result of these three macronutrients that we should all pursue. Getting better at. That will, yeah, as a kind of these three macro nutrients that we should all pursue. Getting better at. That will, yeah, as a kind of way of life, it's not something you do once,

it's something that you incorporate into the way that you're living your life, correct? That will time and again produce that sensation of happiness, however ephemeral or fleeting it may be, but with some regularity, it will build more of that into your life. Exactly right. Exactly right. And these are skills that you can get better at. This is the best news of all, but you have to know what they are. And it's not straightforward. No, it's not. When you say enjoyment as one of these, that could create

some confusion. It can. And part of confusion is, especially for people that are really into improving themselves through knowledge that they can get on the Rich Roll podcast, for example, is they might make the mistake of thinking that enjoyment is pleasure. And it's absolutely not. Pleasure is a limbic phenomenon. It's an ancient phenomenon.

It's a signal to you that something is gonna be good for your survival or passing on your genes. But the pursuit of pleasure will not bring you happiness. It will bring you addiction. That's as sure as we're sitting here is what it will do. And the reason is because it's a fleeting thing. It's a fleeting sensation. If you hit the lever and hit the lever, you'll change your brain chemistry to get really, really good to bring you that pleasure and that will give you addiction. All addictions are based in an excessive and unhealthy stimulation of dopamine, the neuromodulator dopamine in the human brain. So the reason that, for example, that drinking too much brings pleasure but doesn't

bring happiness is because it doesn't actually bring enjoyment. So this is the key thing to understand. Enjoyment has a base in pleasure, but it adds two things. It adds people and memory. So anything that you do that brings pleasure that you do alone, look out. As a rule of thumb, anything as pleasurable that you do alone is not going to bring you happiness. You need people involved and you need memory,

which is part of your prefrontal cortex is your executive function has to be involved in that. And a good example of how we understand this intuitively, you know, Anheuser-Busch has a beer commercial. They never have how a lot of people are using Bud Light, which is pounding a 12 pack alone in their apartment. That's, and the reason that they don't advertise it that way, which is that they don't wanna advertise their product

as a way to get pleasure, but not happiness. They have people drinking Bud Light with their friends or with their family and making a memory because it's pleasure, feels good, plus people, plus memory. And then you actually get happiness. And so this is the way to think about gambling if you're going to gamble.

This is the way to think about sexual activity. This is the way to think about any if you're gonna gamble. This is the way to think about sexual activity. This is the way to think about any of these things that if it's alone and compulsive becomes a problem, but if it's sociable and it creates memory, it actually can enhance your happiness. Everybody who, and I don't drink alcohol, you don't drink alcohol. I don't know how to drink alcohol in a normal way.

Why? Because I started drinking alcohol when I was 13, 14 years old and it was nothing but solitary pleasure. And I never learned how to make it into a source of enjoyment. That's the reason that it became a problem is because I was never able to use it

in a responsible way where it could enhance my happiness. We've got a lot more to come, but first. All right, people, enter Brad Stolberg, a writer and a coach specializing in human performance. Brad made his fourth appearance on the podcast this year, delivering a powerful primer on embracing transformation, how to cultivate resilience, and how to adapt to an ever-changing world.

We tend to think of change as something that happens to us or these singular events, when in reality, we are just always in conversation with change. And because we think of it as these singular events, we often relate to change as something that happens to us instead of something that we're in conversation with. And the kernel of the idea, I know you said you want to get into it, so I'm sure we will in more detail. Early COVID, just article after article with the headline, when are things going to get back to normal? And it struck me that back to normal is probably never going to happen. And then I did what I do,

which is I got really curious and I started looking at the literature on how we think about change and realized these two competing models of homeostasis and allostasis. And we spent a lot of time thinking about homeostasis and that's kind of the conventional prevailing model, but it's not necessarily the best fit one. So explain that difference between homeostasis and allostasis.

What is that concept? So homeostasis is this notion that living systems crave stability. And anytime that they are confronted with change or disruption, they try to get back to that stability as swiftly as possible. So it describes a pattern of order or stability and some sort of disorder or change and then back to order. Right. And that was sort of the prevailing, I don't know if theology is the right word, but kind of operating system for how things work, how biological systems operate,

how ecosystems operate for a long time. That's right. Since the mid 1800s, a scientist named Walter Cannon coined it and science was very different in the mid 1800s. We're talking like pre-vaccines, germ theory of disease. Yeah, it stuck with us for a very long time.

And it's really encroached upon not just scientific or biological change, but how we think about so many different changes, including habit change. I mean, if you Google homeostasis and change, you'll see like, this is why losing weight is hard. This is why starting a habit is hard. This is why stopping a bad habit is hard. This is why starting a habit is hard. This is why stopping a bad habit is hard. But then about 20 years ago, researchers re-evaluated this model of homeostasis. And they said, actually, when you look at really vital thriving systems, they don't follow this path of order, disorder, order. Yes, systems want to be stable, but that stability is achieved

somewhere new by changing. And allostasis is a process of order, disorder, reorder. And what's fascinating is if you look at the etymology of these words, homo means same and stasis means standing. So it's having the same standing by being the same. And allo means variable. So allostasis is literally translated into stability through change. And I think that it's this beautiful double meaning where the way

that we're stable is by being able to change to some extent. So we stay stable not by resisting change, but by changing. Extrapolating on that idea, you can't help but think about evolution. Like if it was order, disorder, order, there would be no evolution. It is only through the reordering that you see the adaptation really. So what you're saying basically is there's a status quo, there's an intervening set of circumstances, and then there's an adaptation to those circumstances

that hopefully creates a new version of that impermanent homeostasis. That's it. Yeah. And evolution is, I think, change on the grandest scale that we know of. And you see allostasis playing out at the species level, but then you zoom in on a given individual and you think about personal evolution or how we grow over the course of our life. And it's very much the same. Like we're constantly somewhere in that cycle of order, disorder, reorder. Even if you lived in like a container that was completely shielded from the elements, you're still aging. So I think it is really helpful to think of your identity like a house. And within that house, you want to have some different rooms.

And you might have the room of parent, of partner, of creative, of athlete, of employee, you name it. It's okay to go spend all your time in one room for a season of your life, maybe even a few, right? I mean, a couple books ago, right? I co-wrote The Passion Paradox. It's literally in the subtitle, like a guide to going all in. So it's okay. You don't have to balance your time across all five of those rooms or six of those rooms. But I think it is just so important to make sure that those other rooms are available to you so that when shit hits the fan in the room that you're in, available to you so that when shit hits the fan in the room that you're in, you can go step into another room. And this isn't just my hypothesis. In the literature, it's called self-complexity.

And individuals that have higher levels of self-complexity tend to be more resilient to change. One of the world's most compelling and iconic public figures, the singular Arnold Schwarzenegger, shared how he reached the pinnacle of success in three very different careers. We also discussed why he believes adversity breeds character, as well as lessons from his book, Be Useful. I think that one of the things that you learn in sports is that if you just get stuck in your own training routine and not learn from other people, that you will never become a champion. And so open-mindedness was very important to me. And so I think, like I said in my book, I learned a lot of my lessons from sports. I think, like I said in my book,

I learned a lot of my lessons from sports. And to me, that kind of like, and having people like Freddie Gerstle, that mentor that talked about open-mindedness and learning from others, to me, it was always kind of like learning new things and being able to, the more you become a celebrity, to be able to use that celebrity power

for something positive, for something good. And so to me, it was, I learned, the more I opened up my mind, the better it was. There was a guy by the name of Vince Gironda. You maybe have heard of him since you're a fitness fanatic yourself. He had a gym over in the valley, Vince's gym. And I saw him doing an exercise, a triceps exercise. And I looked at him, I said, what are you doing? He said, this is

for the outside tricep that splits the one head from the other. And I said, this looks like a kind of a Mickey Mouse exercise. Jesus Christ. It looked like some heavy lift of some sort. And he says, well, just try it. So I said to myself, well, the way you try it, the way I tried it in those days was I would do an exercise 40 sets of 20 reps. So I was lying there on the bench on my back, taking this dumbbell and going like this 20 times

and take it over to this side, do the same thing over here, same to this arm, back and forth, back and forth like this. The next day, this muscle here was just jumping all over the place. So I realized he was absolutely correct. I never ever thought of that.

There's actually a specific muscle. We always know about sculpting your body that you add more chest or more serratus muscles or some obliques or some biceps or some more triceps but that you can actually dissect it

to a specific part of the three muscles. That's why it's called triceps. The three muscles there and one separates the bicep from the tricep and makes it appear, not that measurement-wise it's bigger, but makes it appear much larger. So I was doing that and that exercise from that point on. And it just, it was, I said to myself,

if I wouldn't have listened to him, I would have never learned that exercise. But I listened to him. I first said to myself, brushed it off, I said, Mickey Mouse exercise, and I said, no, no, no. Let's just try it before we kind of like come to a conclusion. And sure enough, so you learn from those kind of experiences. And you then apply this rule with everything. And so that's why I was always rather more hungry for more information,

more hungry for listening rather than talking. You know, how do you think about the way that our culture now thinks about mental health and our relationship with this idea of powerlessness? I think that in general, idea of powerlessness? I think that in general, I think what the book is trying to do is to say to people, you need to work on yourself. If you just try to be pampered, and if you're trying to be soft, and if you're trying to be soft and if you're trying to be the victim and all that stuff, you're not going to go anywhere.

We need to get stronger. We need to get bossier. We need to get tougher. We need to not be afraid of failure. We got to go and do the work. We got to face adversity. Adversity breeds character. The strength and fighting and resistance does not only make the muscle grow, but it makes also your head grow, makes you a stronger person. We have to be willing to go through hardship, through suffering,

through pain, through crying periods, all of that stuff, don't shy away from any of that because it just makes you stronger. And I think today, a lot of times, our youth is so into kind of, oh, let's make him feel good. Oh, no, let's be more sensitive. Well, I totally agree with you to be sensitive about things, but I mean, there's also a sweet spot.

Can we go too far? You know, it's like when someone says, well, today I just need to sleep in. It's that bullshit. You don't need to sleep in. This country was not built on sleeping in. So let's get up in the morning and let's get on that bike

and let's do some exercise and don't even think about it. Don't look at your email or anything like this. Let's just get going. Boom, boom, boom. Let's get going and let's start building. And so that's the idea is just not to be overly soft and overly kind of sensitive and everyone is the victim kind of a thing. I just don't buy into that.

But you have to understand that every person has to be approached also differently. It's like the mind is just like the body. I cannot give you exactly the same training routine that I had because your body is different. You're a much leaner person. You need kind of to do maybe less reps. And what this, you have to have a different diet if you want to bulk up and all this. So I have to be aware of that, that even within my family, one of my daughters had to be approached differently than my other daughter. One son had to be approached differently than the other son.

So you have to be sensitive about those kind of things. But overall, it was discipline in the house. You don't turn out that light, I will unscrew those light bulbs and you will be going into a dark room at the age of three and you will be scared. So you better start learning to turn off those lights. You have someone else make your bed, okay, I'm going to take the mattress and throw it down the balcony. And then you carry it upstairs and you make your own bed again.

Resilience. Yeah, I understand. You got to just kind of figure it out, you know, how to do that. But, you know, it's not easy. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not an expert in this, but one thing I know for sure,

I can help anyone to go and be a little bit better. Right. And I think that's what we want to ask. We cannot ask everyone to be a genius, ask everyone to be the world's strongest man and all that stuff, but little bit better. Right. And I think that's what we want to ask. We cannot ask everyone to be a genius, ask everyone to be the world's strongest man and all that stuff, but to be better. Because when you're better, when you get better, then you feel good.

When we improve, we feel good. When we have accomplished something, we feel good. And that then rubs off on everything. Our nation is lonelier than ever before, and this event is so severe, the U.S. Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Dr. Vivek Murthy, labeled it an epidemic. Dr. Murthy joined me in Episode 784 to discuss the physical and psychological effects of loneliness and why it's become such a major public health crisis. Loneliness isn't something that's new, but what is new is this epidemic of loneliness that currently defines our culture.

The statistics as you lay them out are quite shocking. Like you say, one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness, one in two people. That's more people than suffer from diabetes. Like this is a huge problem, right? So I guess the question I have is, how did we get here? What are the tectonic plates that have led us

to this state that we're in? Yeah, the numbers are quite shocking. And you're right that this is extraordinarily common. And as surprising as the one in two number is, the rates of loneliness are even higher among young people, which surprises people who think, hey, aren't they connected by technology? Yet they are saying, whether it's in spite of that

or in some cases because of the use of social media, that the sense of connection people feel has actually diminished. So how do we get here? Well, several things happen and we didn't get here overnight either, but I think that our sense of disconnection has been building for some time. So here are a few things that started to happen. Over the last 20, 30 years, we have become more mobile, right? So we move more often for work, for school. And we often move multiple times,

sometimes in a short timeframe. Whereas before that, people would often stay in the areas that they grew up in. They would stay connected to the people they were friends with in high school. They still lived around them. But as you move more, communities become more fragmented. So that's sort of one piece.

The second thing that has happened is historically, going back generations, people tended to live in extended family environments. And so, you know, not that that was all simple or that it was all good, you know, but those environments, you know, more often than not, ensure that people were connected with others. The shift away from, you know, from extended families, you know, more often than not ensure that people were connected with others. The shift away from, you know, from extended families has been one more factor. I mean, it's like people that live in smaller

and smaller circles. But the other factors I think that are important here is that we've also seen over the last half century a significant decline in participation in the community organizations that used to bring people together, particularly faith organizations, but also service organizations,

recreational leagues, youth leagues. These used to bring folks together from different walks of life to get to know one another, to break bread together, to engage in activities together. But that opportunity has also been lost. Two other factors worth mentioning.

One is the rise of what I think of as convenience technology, right? So today, if I can sit in my home and get groceries delivered to me, I don't really need to go to a post office. I can get most things I need from Amazon. I don't need to go to a store. My need to go out and have interaction with other people is dramatically lower just from a practical standpoint. So we have lost actually a lot of those informal loose ties, if you will. But finally, I think we have to look at the phenomenon of social media itself, which has dramatically transformed how we interact with each other and also has transformed how many people see themselves

and their friendships. And this is particularly true for young people. But while there are some benefits of social media, it can be helpful to get messages out, to share useful information, to share honest reflections with a large group of people, more often than not, what we're finding is that for many people, well, I'll just tell you what young people tell me most commonly. They tell me three things. They say their use of social media often makes them feel worse about themselves as they're constantly comparing themselves to others, makes them feel worse about their friendships as they're constantly seeing what other people are doing without them and feeling left out.

are often designed to maximize how much time we spend on them, not necessarily the quality of time, but the quantity of time. And what is happening, especially to many young people, but frankly, to many older people as well, is that that is taking time away from other critical activities like sleep, like in-person interaction, and other activities that are essential for our health and well-being. So you put all these factors together, Rich, and what you see is that we have become lonelier, we've become more isolated. And I think we've realized, and this is not just an American phenomenon, by the way,

this is a broader feature of modernity that the UK, Australia, Japan, and many other countries are experiencing as well. So we've got to recognize that. And it doesn't mean that we should go back to 1920 or 1930 or 1950. But what it does mean is that we have to recognize that if we don't consciously make rebuilding connection a priority in our individual lives

and in society more broadly, if we don't do that through individual actions and the building of social infrastructure in our communities, then we will continue to see an erosion of our relationships. And we'll see not only the health consequences of loneliness, which are profound,

mental and physical, but also the economic and the national security implications of loneliness, which make us more prone to division and to polarization. So we've got to make that choice. And right now it feels like the choice is being made for us, that we're steeped in this information environment that's extraordinarily negative, that's telling us everything is broken about the world, that nobody can be trusted, and that everyone is only out for themselves. We've got to turn that off and tune in to what's actually happening in our communities

and choose, again, love. I always say that every decision that we make, we can ask ourselves a question, am I making this decision out of love or out of fear? And if we choose love as often as we can, then we'll build a kind of life that feels good for us, that's good for our communities, that our kids can be proud of, and that will help create the world that ultimately future

generations need. 2023 marked the return of comedian and fellow podcast host, Pete Holmes. In episode 788, we talked about everything from spirituality to comedy, creativity, consciousness, fatherhood, and the many disorientations of midlife. Here's a glimpse into our equal parts hilarious and thought-provoking exchange. There are some truths so big they can only be told with lies. That's a cute way of saying metaphor is the only language we have to speak of God. And I say this in the special, it's Richard Rohr as well. Metaphor means always true, sometimes really happened. Because what's interesting about the Bible,

one of the weird things about that text is that it's metaphor overlaid with history. You know what I mean? It's like metaphorized history and we don't know where the line is. Uh, you know, opinions vary, but when you're trying to, and if you've taken psychedelics and that was a huge part of my appreciation of metaphor, but when you're trying to talk about the ineffable metaphor, isn't just as close as you can get it's the only way to do it it it stirs you and moves you and in a way that it's the truth of it is it's true in the way that

energy moves in the world it's it's true in the way the patterns of the universe are reflected in the story because you can tell a story and it's bullshit like you know, but the metaphors and the myths that stick with us, they'll rock you. And you hear it and your skin's lit on fire and we're fucking stuck with numbers and measurements and recipes.

Like, get the fuck out of here. None of that shit helps you when your heart is broken. None of that helps when your grandfather is dying or when your heart is broken. None of that helps when your grandfather is dying or when a baby is born. Like poetry is similar. Get that shit out of here. Until your wife leaves you.

Then William Blake gets a lot more important. But we've become interested in or fascinated or obsessed with the quantifiable and the reproducible and the material. And it's like, okay, but we're leaving a lot in our rear view that's essential. Yeah.

It's so emasculated in our culture. Well, because you can't have sex with it and you can't sell it, really. You know what I mean? So what are you doing? I'll tell you what you're doing is you're feeling more at home in the universe. This is my whole thing. The fact that it's, like, cowardly to go to therapy,

like the people where I'm from, if you say you're in therapy, they're like, it's like, oh. I'm like, is there anything more cowardly than not facing your demons like who's the coward I might just be sitting on a couch but I'm going into the cave

where the Vader mask cuts open and it's my face like that's the hero and it's easy to do the same with spirituality be like it's a bunch of lies yeah Santa Claus isn't real great but what is the story, Santa Claus isn't real. Great. But what is the story of Santa Claus? What is the point? What is done in secret is rewarded or

whatever it might be. I don't know, man. Literalism is a fucking terrible body to snuggle up to in your bed at night. And the warm bosom of myth has kept human beings alive. And by the way, don't get me started. Every video game, every movie, it's all right there. Every Avenger, get the fuck out of here. And Joseph Campbell is like the gateway drug. Yeah. For a lot of people, especially in this town. That's right. Well, he changed my life. He

said, God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought, including being and non-being. So that I could get on board with. That's a God. I feel like that's a God anyone could agree on. It's a metaphor, meaning God is not an old man in the sky. An old man in the sky is a metaphor for a metaphor. God itself is a metaphor. And a metaphor for that metaphor is an old man in the sky. Old, he's older than you. He's been around. In the sky. An old man in the sky is a metaphor for a metaphor. God itself is a metaphor. And a metaphor for that metaphor is an old man in the sky. Old, he's older than you. He's been around. In the sky, he has a higher perspective than you. On a throne, he's powerful. These are just ways of understanding a force, right? But that's a metaphor for God, which is itself a metaphor for a mystery. Something unknown is doing something we know not what, right?

So this is also in my special, Barry Taylor, the road manager for ACDC says, God is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it a shape. God is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it a shape. And I say, shouldn't we have learned this in church? Why am I learning this

from the road manager for ACDC? And it's not about solving the mystery. It's about appreciating the fact that it is a mystery. And we want to talk about it. And more than that, we want to commune with it. And to know that, we have to give it some sort of symbol. Carl Jung says we're not transformed by ideas. We're transformed by symbols.

This is why the crucified Christ is still a hot thing. And a story. Yes! But how do you, like, I'm thinking of the person who's listening to this who hasn't had their reckoning yet. They haven't hit their pain moment. Like, how do you communicate to that person? Or how do you get somebody to, you know,

connect with that possibility in their own life? That's why I'm not putting that question off to eckhart tolle but when people email me you know on social or something and they're like i can't it's nails on a chalkboard you say i'm god's child it's nails on a chalkboard or jesus or buddha or any because of the the baggage of that people are carrying around from whatever experiences they had yeah i relate to that. I had that. And people like, first of all, Joseph Campbell, who's just going to say it's a story and that's great. But then Eckhart Tolle, who's all just the sacrament of the present moment.

And when you start getting naked, I was just talking about this today on my own podcast. I was like, why are Adam and Eve naked? It's because they're not clothed in the ego and the story, just pure. And when you drop through practices, through reading that book, whatever it might be, and you start getting familiar with who are you, like you're wearing a space suit, you know what I mean? Right. And we start thinking we're the suit. This is Ram Dass. Ram Dass would say, I go, hello, Rich. And you go, hello, Pete.

You're a comedian. I go, yes, and we are Americans. I remember I was in Italy. I saw a ladybug and I was like, this ladybug has no idea it's Italian. Has no idea it's Italian. How many fucking things are we carrying around? And who are you when you drop them?

And which of those things are undroppable? I don't think there are any that are undroppable. And Ramana Maharshi has this great thing where he goes, when you're stoking the fire of your own awareness, the last thing you get the fire going, the last thing you throw in is the stick you were stoking the fire with. You can even drop your practice. All of it can go.

Because your zero, you're smallest, most irreducible, undividable you. That's the part that knows this, whether or not you vibe with this language, but there's a part of you and I would also recommend Rupert Spiro.

If you read Being Aware of Being Aware, which is a very short book and every chapter says the same thing. You can just read the first chapter. I know Richard Rohr, but I haven't read that book. Rupert is a beautiful non-dual teacher, but he will just go like, what is it that's aware of your experience?

And he's like, nobody's asking that. He says, we're like the screen of a movie, and everybody gets so caught up in the content of the movie, just like we do when we watch a movie, that you forget you're looking at a screen. But you're the screen. It's not colored or changed in any meaningful way by the light that's on it.

Right now, I'm so, oh, I'm on a podcast. I'm a screen. What is the screen? What distance is the screen? What distance is an illusion? Like this sound is farther than this. It's all happening on the screen of my awareness. And the additional delusion to that is that it's all happening in our head. Right. But that is also just an appearance in consciousness. That's what I, so science, I'm a pro-science person.

Obviously, I hope I don't have to say that, but science will say, I saw a TED Talk where they're like, reality is a greed upon group hallucination. And that's really right on with a lot of mystical traditions. This is Maya or this is play or whatever you want to say. But they'll say it originates in the brain. So that's like you and I are having a dream and I hold up a ring box and I go,

this dream is coming from this box. Like, why would a part of the dream be a reliable source of the dream? What the fuck do we know about the mind? You know what I'm saying? So we're going, it originates in the amygdala of the blah, blah, blah. That's also, you can't remove the observer. It's influencing and part of and drenched in the observed.

You are the observed. Right. The idea that there is a self that is observing is a further illusion. Right. And that that self resides somewhere inside your head. Right. And that's hard. Like it takes practice to disabuse yourself

because it's so entrenched in our deep rooted attachment to what is real. As a lifelong Star Trek fan, hosting Sir Patrick Stewart was a dream that did not disappoint in episode 785, when the beloved icon of stage and screen graced the podcast for a vulnerable exchange, covering his extraordinary life as well as his new memoir, Making It So. You've lived just an absolutely extraordinary life. And you did a wonderful job with the book.

It's wildly entertaining. It's a very difficult book to put down. The stories are just absolutely legendary. So well done in that regard. I love it. And I know you're about to embark on quite the book tour. So you're gonna be doing a lot of media stuff. I guess, you know, I'm curious about what it is

that you want people to take from the book, but also just your life. Like what is instructive about the experiences that you had and the lessons that you've learned as you reflect back as an 83 year old man on what's important, what's not, and maybe even a guiding principle or two that we could incorporate into our own lives. Well, they come down to things that I am still working on. And it's awkward being a leading actor on television and film. But being brave, being open,

being sensitive to other people, tuning into them, becomes more and more and more important to me. And I find that in the close friends that I have, that is their relationship with me too. And it's a wonderful, wonderful experience. I wish I could go back. There are things I would like to say to my parents and my brothers, both of them that I never said and that makes

me very very sad that I never told them what they gave me but this gives you an opportunity to at least say it publicly it does it kind of does

I mean my first draft of this book was over 700 pages. Uh-huh. And it's now about 440. So people are saying, so what are you going to write next? And I say, no, no, no, no, no. There's no next. This is it.

This is it. This is it. And then the other day I thought, hmm, well, maybe I could find that draft that's got 350 words in it that are not in my book. The director's cut. The director's cut, yeah, yeah. To your point, that was beautifully shared. Thank you. There's a section in the book that I found quite moving, which was about your relationship with vulnerability as an actor and how that's a tool and a vehicle for unlocking truth, but also as a way of being in the world, right?

The power that comes with allowing yourself to be vulnerable on stage, but also with the people that you care about. Yes, yes, yes. That's perhaps the primary objective in my life now. To be vulnerable with those you care about. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. There are many, for me, great resonances about being an actor. And one of the strongest other young people, and some of them significantly older, who felt the same kind of isolation that I felt.

And yet, in the company of actors, there was an almost intuitive connection that was made between us. And I was 12 years old when I first was dumped into a large group of actors on a course that was run. It was a brand new course run by the West Riding County Council in Yorkshire. And the minimum age was 14. And it was in my headmaster's office that I met a man called Gerald Tyler. He's in the book. And he had come to say that the county council were going to run an eight-day theater course,

a residential theater course. By that, it meant we had camp beds to lie on in school classrooms. But nevertheless, from the moment that I arrived there, I was in the company of people like me. Now, some of them were highly educated. I mean, I got a big crush on a girl who was at grammar school, but it didn't work out. I was at secondary modern school. It's not having anything to do with you. No, no. And yet, it was our love of acting, performing, of plays, scripts, texts, being in front of

an audience, which never scared me ever at all. And there was a reason for this. One of my first attractions to acting was that I could forget about Patrick Stewart. Right. That was my next question. How much of this, aside from finding like-minded people in this tribe of young artists, how much of it was an escape from your own life or the opportunity to step outside who you were and just become somebody altogether different as a defense mechanism and not having to deal with whatever pain is kind of lingering in your subconscious?

You explained it perfectly. That's exactly how it was to not be Patrick Stewart, if only for a few hours a week, was such a relief to explore being someone other than myself with a different background. I mean, the first role that I played, with a different background. I mean, the first role that I played, other than this thing that we'd done about the history of Yorkshire and Murfield, where I grew up, was a comedy called The Happiest Days of Your Life. You may have encountered it very occasionally, it crops up in theatre very occasionally. And it was all set in a private boys' school, a rather exclusive private boys' school. And it was wartime and a private girls' school had been found places in the school. So there were now boys and girls playing there. And I played a character,

you see, I remember his name, called Hopcroft Minor. He had an older brother who was Hopcroft. And it was such a joy to be playing an upper class child. Even though I struggled with the accent, I didn't really have a proper received pronunciation accent until I was 15 or 16. But I was learning. And sometimes it made people laugh when they heard me speak because it sounded so portentous and, you know. So, becoming someone else, that was the main attraction. Yeah. And I could forget who Patrick Stewart was. Maintaining mobility and finding meaningful movement practices were hot topics in 2023, finding meaningful movement practices were hot topics in 2023,

ones that I explored not only in a movement masterclass, but also with movement experts and Built to Move authors Kelly and Juliet Starrett. They joined me in episode 764 to give us easy ways to change sedentary habits and integrate more movement into your daily life. There's a lot of confusion around what you mean when you talk about mobility. So let's just clarify that. And I kind of want to build on that to get into the various principles that form the framework of this book and your philosophy. Well, I mean, I'll start and maybe tell you. Yeah, take a swing at it. Let's take a swing at this. I think... I mean, I'll start and maybe take a swing at this. I think, I mean, at this point you ought to be able to define it, right?

To us, uh, you know, mobility is, is really the ability to be able to move freely through your environment and do the things you want to be able to do with your body, whatever those things may be. Now we, we offer a lot of tools, which we call mobilizations, which are things you can do to help improve your mobility and range of motion. But to us at the highest level, it's the ability to move freely, ideally without pain, or at least minimizing pain and be able to do the things you love to do. And if I added a- How did I do?

Pretty good for an attorney. You've been in the game for a minute, I can tell. I would add your body, everyone agrees that your shoulder should be able to do certain things and that your spine should be able to do certain things and your hips should be able to do certain things. Every physician, every orthopedic surgeon, every physical therapist,

we all agree how much shoulder is normal, how much your ankle should be able to move. physical therapist, we all agree how much shoulder is normal, how much your ankle should be able to move. The problem is that we don't give people benchmarks for what is normative or what you should be able to do. And our lives sometimes don't ask us of that. And so suddenly when we have pain or a problem, that range of motion is never part of the conversation about, hey, I see that your steering wheel doesn't go all the way to the left. Let's just make sure that you can, you know, the pilots where they take off, you know, they check to make sure everything's working right. So we could also define mobility as do you have your native range of motion and can you control that native range of motion?

So are you a skilled person? And what Juliette said is all of that is important, but really what is it you want to do in your world and environment? And how do you want to express this body? That's the most important thing. And I think that's where we got in the weeds. You know, hip range motion is important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if it prevents you from doing something

or you're having pain, and that's also conjoined with the fact that you don't have access to that range, maybe that's the reason you should care. Well, and like, let me just give you one example. Like if you just asked anyone on the street, like, do you care about your hip range of motion? They're going to be like, no, why would I care about that? But as an example, we were recently talking to a friend of ours who has a four month old baby and has both sets of parents visiting and his parents are like in their mid-60s. So, you know, not that much older than us. And his mother is able to get up and down off the ground and sit with the baby, but his mother-in-law

can't get down onto the ground or up off of the ground and so can't sit on the floor and play with the grandchild. And that's one of those things that you don't think about until it's like a use it or lose it kind of thing. But like that right there is hip range of motion. So you may not care athletically about hip range of motion because you're not trying to run faster or lift more weights or, you know, whatever an athlete might need to care about hip range of motion for. But, you know, most people would say, man, do you, you know, do you want to be able to sit on the floor and play with your grandchild when you have one? And they'd be like, yes, I do. And so, that's one of the reasons why people should care about their hip range of motion. Right. I feel that humans are not very good at casting their gaze

that far into the future though. So true. Especially like it's not until- Yeah, if you're 25. Yeah, you're just like, I'll deal with that when I can. Do you remember this? Or that's not gonna happen to me. Yes. Especially with an elite athlete, like forget about it, right? So the barrier to being able to convince somebody that these things are important has to be,

it's like a high bar for you, right? To like communicate with people like, hey, we can talk about longevity. How long do you wanna live? What is it that you wanna be able to do when you're 80 and 90, et cetera? But when you're 30, even in your 40s and you're essentially pain-free

or you don't have some kind of injury, that's a challenge. But it is true that like, whether it's heart disease, diabetes, any kind of brain degeneration, similarly with our physical bodies, like these things are progressive. And if you're not working on this stuff

far in advance of those aging years, you're gonna have a problem. But if you do undergo, sort of shoulder the responsibility of doing these things that you guys talk about so much, you're taking out this insurance policy to be able to do all those things in your later years. But it's just that humans are not good

at like evaluating the cost benefit analysis of these sorts of things. And our environment gives us a lot of cues or guides us into poor decisions. I just, I think New York Times had an article just recently about how some of our foods hijack our brain chemistry, right? Our modern foods is umamis.

We just think, oh, they're so good. So here's a story. I was a young physio student watching the cardiac catheter lab. And I'm watching a really wealthy kid, a wealthy man in San Francisco and his whole family's outside. And he has three beautiful daughters,

which I can start to like put myself in his shoes. He has this amazing wife, killer law practice. He's rich in every definition of the term. He's one life. And he's in there having three stents put in his heart and he's overweight. And what I thought in that moment was, if this guy has every resource and every reason to live

and it's still that hard to change and to make these things, to keep himself alive with his family. What recourse does an average person, mortal person without his resources have? And really that was a kind of a shocker. And I think if I'd videoed the two women, you know, putting in the catheter, like chain smoking, you know, like as a matter of fact, that may have showed him that video, maybe that would have changed his behavior, but it's really difficult to sort of untangle what seems like the biggest Gordian knot in your life.

Where do I go? Especially since sometimes we don't see the results right away. Yeah. So when talking about mobility and movement, how do you diagnose somebody's mobility? Like everybody, you know, you guys have like this superpower. You can like look at somebody just sitting or standing or walking and be like, oh, I see 10 things wrong with like what's happening there. Like most people

don't have that ability and don't think about that kind of stuff. You know, the average person, if they're pain-free is going to say, well, this good enough. I can walk and I can get up and sit down and all that kind of stuff. So where does one begin to try to self-diagnose and understand their own mobility capacity limitations and what they should be focused on working on? Well, in this book, we literally identify five areas where we think that if people just kept an eye on it, like just kept an eye on

it. A vital sign. Yeah. We call them vital signs because we have these 10 vital signs, but we specifically chose the word vital sign because it started coming up more and more in the pandemic. Actually, everyone was like tracking all these vital signs, like their SEO too. And, you know, obviously everybody knows that 120 over 80 is like, okay, blood pressure. And if you go over that, it's something you should keep an eye on. And so that's why we, we thought, well, if, if regular people can keep an eye on a vital sign, like blood pressure, then why can't there be some movement specific or health specific vital signs? And so, um, you know, obviously the human body is the most complicated thing in the known universe. Um, but we really tried to boil it down to a few

areas of range of motion we thought people should keep an eye on or that we consider to be vital signs. And we do have these simple tests in the book that people can just do once and sort of say, okay, this is where I'm at. You know, this is something I need to keep an eye on. This is something I'm doing great at. And, you know, and then the things we suggest for people to work on them, we think we've suggested, you know, things that they can literally do like while they're watching Netflix at night or while they're still sitting at their office. Like we've really tried to make it so that you don't have to go to the one hour mobility balance class and, you know, journal in the morning in order to get it, in order to get these things done. One of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation,

the great Judd Apatow, graced the podcast to discuss his fascinating perspective on filmmaking, on storytelling, on creativity, and just tons more. So here is a slice of that exchange. The other person that was an important mentor to me was David Milch, who created Deadwood and co-created NYPD Blue with Stephen Bochco. And he was another one that, you know... Everybody talks, I mean, reveres him as a genius.

You know, he taught at Yale, but he also, you know, had a lot of issues with addiction and gambling. And he was one of those people that would lay on the ground, there'd be a microphone on the ground, and he would dictate the show. People would wait around while he channeled the show. And he believed, he used to say, inspiration comes to prepared souls. And his whole thing was about that connection. Can you open yourself up and be so present and available that the creativity comes? And to trust that. And I learned so much from him about that.

Or one of the David Milch things is to, you know, to just start writing. You know, he always says, you can't think yourself into writing, but you can write yourself into thinking. So just start and it'll just come.

And so that was a real lesson for me. You know, like, there are ways I could be better at this. That's why when you get back to self-help, I'm always looking for something that will make me open up in some way, heal in some way, learn something that will make me more efficient. And sometimes I'm drowning in self-help because I just read and listen. Yeah, that creates its own paralysis. Yes, because I'm a in self-help because I just read and listen to too much of it.

Yeah, that creates its own paralysis. Yes, yeah, because I'm a hoarder a bit. So I'll listen to too much. But with this, I just said, okay, this is really simple. Just get your ass in the chair. And then amazement at it actually working. Yeah, because you go like, how creative am I?

Do I have any jokes left in this brain? And to see it happen was really rewarding and made me think, oh, maybe I could do that three more times this year. How do you balance the collaborative aspect

of the creation and writing process versus that like ass in a chair alone at home? But once I'm done... What is the daily... Do you set it up with a schedule? Well, once the script is done, then I just send it to everybody

and just go, what do you think? What do you think? And then at some point, I'll sit alone or with a writer's assistant and just rewrite it. And then I try to read it out loud. And then I can watch it like a movie and see if it works for me as a movie and then rewrite it and then I try to read it out loud and then then I can watch it like a movie and

see if it works for me as a movie and then rewrite it then read it out loud again and then at some point if someone will let me make it we go into rehearsals and then it changes a lot once the actors bring their stuff right into it how do you know when you're when you have an idea I think I asked you this earlier but like that that you know it's like once you commit to an idea there's a long road ahead

right is there like something does something light up in your brain where you're like this is it or this is the thing

like or is that an instinct or you have an instinct but then you just keep like telling it to people and so you're like

if they like it it stays with you yeah it seemed funny and to people. And so you're like, If they like it, it stays with you. Yeah. It seemed funny. And it's just like a movie about like, guy gets girl pregnant and he hangs out with those stone friends and he's a nightmare,

but she wants to see if maybe he could be a good boyfriend. And, you know, and then you start showing the outline to some friends and you're looking for some reinforcement that you're not in a crazy place. And then at some point you think, am I really going to do this? Okay, maybe I'll write five pages.

Let me just see if it comes to life. And then usually you go, oh, yeah, this seems funny. Does it start generally with a conceit for you or with a person, like a character? Like, oh, this person, what would this person, what adventure would this guy go on? I mean, each time is different, but I like working from some very passionate idea or truthful idea. You know, when Leslie and I were at the hospital having our second child. Just everything went wrong

other than she's beautiful and healthy. But like the doctor was mean. The doctor was mean. The other doctor just didn't show up, just left town to go to a bar mitzvah. And I just took notes that night. I was like, this is so crazy how weird this night is. So in the back of my head, I'm like, there's probably a way to tell this story. And then you back into it, you know,

eventually, uh, you know, with, with Pete Davidson, with the King of Staten Island, we had worked on a different idea for a while. And then usually it, you just say, what should we really be writing about? And then it just comes out. Like, are you willing to explore what we probably should explore? And Pete was. And so then we started writing that version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

The, like, knowing when, you know, it's time to pull the thread a little bit further versus moving on. pull the thread a little bit further versus moving on. And it's really hard to start a script for me because I think one of the things I always have to get over is by, by writing, I'm finding out if I'm terrible. So it's very easy to not write because if I don't write, I won't find out if I'm bad. Do you still go to war with yourself in that way though?

I think so. I think it's subtle, but it's just, just because there's just a little, there's a critical voice that you are always wrestling with that basically says, just don't do it. Just go watch TV.

Like you don't have to suffer through this. And to try to turn it into a pleasurable experience, I'm still almost in hyperventilation or anxiety. Most of the time I'm actually writing. I'm still almost in hyperventilation or anxiety. Most of the time I'm actually writing. I'm just, my breath gets short. I'm so nervous and I'm trying to like open a spigot and I have to relax to let it come out. But there's just a weird part of me that's just scared,

scared it's going to be bad, scared I'm going to... That like Steven Pressfield resistance, Exactly. Nora Hart kind of thing. It's totally that. Yeah. And that's what the flow thing helped me with, which is, you know, I can toss it all.

I don't have to... Lowering the stakes. I can throw out all the work today. Just trust there might be something good. Like if you... I wrote this script kind of fast. And I just said, I'm going to write straight through to the end.

I'm not even going to reread yesterday's pages until I get to the end. And then I got to the end and then I started reading it and I was like, I don't even remember writing almost anything.

Like I remember the story, but the language and the jokes. And I was really pleasantly surprised by it. But I just forced myself to just go to, you go to that part of my imagination and just followed wherever it led me. And that's not how I always wrote. I think I was more methodical. And I just thought, maybe I'll just kind of go into the trance and see what bubbles up.

Make it sort of like morning pages, no stakes. Exactly. And I did those, I mean, the Julie Cameron artist way, you know, I did that in the early 90s. Yeah, I think I started that in 90, when did that book come out? 97, 98? I mean, I could have done that in the... No, it was early. No, no, because I did it early 90s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, yeah. I could have even done it late 80s.

But, you know, so that idea of morning pages that just write, don't judge, just whatever comes out, it doesn't matter, which was also a David Milch exercise where he said to get your creative juices going for two weeks, right, for 20 minutes a day, print it and then tear it up just to get used to your brain being creative two weeks, right, for 20 minutes a day, print it and then tear it up.

Just to get used to your brain being creative. Like the Zen Buddhist sand mandala. Exactly. But he said, you'll open up that part of your brain and it'll fire up.

And I'd never done that, but I understand what he's talking about. Just not being precious, not being too attached. It's like having a baby. Suddenly your body knows how to make a baby. Your whole life is not making a baby. Then one day this machine builds

itself and you have a baby. Well, there's a part of your brain or your mind that you can turn on and it builds itself to be creative? Yeah. There might not be anyone better to close out 2023 than Olympic runner, award-winning writer, poet, filmmaker, and friend Alexi Pappas, who joined me to discuss evolution, self-belief, how to find the courage required to blaze your own path, and the power of finding joy in the journey.

Here is a powerful clip from our conversation. Oh, Glop. Can you talk about Glop? Yeah. So Glop is my favorite chapter in the book, and it represents knowledge that I gained since writing Bravey, which was a fun thing to, like, update what I knew in the world. go into a chrysalis and they don't just sprout wings, but they are actually reduced down to a liquid form, complete and total liquid called unscientifically glop. And then they become a butterfly. And what I identified with so strongly is that when I'm going through change, when any

of us are going through change, we might be reduced down to our lowest glop state. We might not feel great. And that's not a bad thing. And anytime I felt like I was glop, I usually try to revert back and become a caterpillar again and put myself back together. But to look at science as inspiration, I think is really empowering because you can celebrate glop and decide to move forward and become a butterfly. And humans are unlike caterpillars in that we can choose to stay caterpillar forever. And we do feel the pain of glophood. So caterpillars are unconscious in their chrysalis, but we are not. So I think the metaphor and the chapter is important to me because we should feel that glop is good. And if you're feeling like glop, you can celebrate it as a non-negotiable stage that you have to go through to become something else.

Yeah, yeah. And you can print it on a shirt and say, I'm Glop and wear it around like a prideful label. Which if you haven't done already, you probably are doing. I put it on a sweatshirt when I was Glop. But no, it's fun because kids, people should tell kids you can't predict your life. It will always surprise you. And that change is hard in a way that is actually like normal you know yeah that's really important i mean and that that goes to your reflex towards like

actionable tools to use as opposed to feel better or it'll be fine but like no what can i actually do i can shake my arms out or I can like, what is behavioral? Well, and also there's so much dialogue now that says like, it's okay if you don't feel great today, if you do nothing. And like, I understand that. I think it's important to allow people their like recovery days and mental health days. But like when you are feeling like glop, the thing that will move you forward is not just patience and time, but also action to become a butterfly. Yeah. Not just wallowing in the glop. Yeah.

Exactly. Trying to usher the glop into the butterfly. Right. Yeah, yeah. I think, first of all, all change happens a lot slower than we think. And that's why when people see people they admire or they read books about transformation, I think they can often be misleading and make people think that change is like a right turn when like the right turn is usually happening in a series of very, very, very, very tiny steps. And I think big changes happen very, very slowly. And accepting that is super important because when I see people whip their life around when they think they want a big change, it usually either spirals them into depression or it's not an effective way to actually make the change or it leaves them with like a tangible change but not the time to like emotionally

change with it so to evolve as a person um so that i think is the first thing then as far as what are you doing so let's say you feel like you need to change then it's like what is the change where am i headed what do i do or what is the identity I want to shift or whatever it is? There's been two things that have been helpful to me that I'll share. One was an exercise that Deepak Chopra took me through in like this small seminar that I asking us to ask ourselves questions without reaching for the answer. So in order to figure out answers, basically, you simply keep asking the question without reaching for the answer. So the question might be, what is my purpose? Right. And the goal was just to simply keep saying what is my purpose what is my purpose what is my purpose without trying to reach for the purpose because when we reach we're often

reaching for something like an occupation or something in the tangible world and it's too like contextualized in the world but when we just ask and like wait it was so cool because for me in the world. But when we just ask and like wait, it was so cool because for me, what came to mind was like hugging 21-year-old girls and saying, this is gonna sound weird, and saying everything's gonna be okay. And like everything's gonna be okay and everything's gonna be okay. And like that's not a job, but it felt like a purpose to help people feel okay. And it did feel accurate. And that felt like the first step was to pull our evolution out of the material world or the world as we know it and to make it more of an ideaian. Because leading up to the Olympics, the steps there were very clear and they were outlined by coaches, right, as you said, and they were tiered based on what was most productive toward that goal. And now that the goal is less of a tangible, like I don't want to be an

Olympian anymore. I want to have those certain feelings that I shared with you or I want to share with the world and they're not as rooted in a job or tangible results. So how do I pick my actions now and how do I evolve that? And I think the way I do it now is really different. Monica, who is our shared physio, she was like, Alexi, every cell in our body, when it's happy or safe, it expands and moves toward. And that's like the feeling of having a crush on someone or when someone's like, let's go out to sushi. And you're like, yes, like that's a really, it's a known feeling that we have. And she said it's cellular. And it was the feeling I was having roller skating. And she said every cell when it's

unsafe, it contracts and moves away. And that's what you feel when somebody puts food in front of you that you're allergic to or have had food poisoning or something. You know that feeling of like, I just won't eat that. And she said, I want you to start thinking about your life in terms of, are these decisions expansive or contractive to me? Or now I think about it as, do I have a crush on this decision? And once I started doing that, it made decisions a lot easier for me. And I started to actually evolve without overthinking the decisions I was making and doing things that like were surprising to me, which has been very, very useful. I hope you enjoyed this reflection in the rear view and found these two episodes both uplifting and inspiring. I wanna thank you again for the love and all the support.

This podcast truly has been just an amazing journey and I'm beyond grateful that you're on this journey with me. I look forward to growing and learning together in the new year and many years ahead. Links, as always, to all the full episodes and the social media accounts for all the guests excerpted today can be found in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing that you can do is simply subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts,

on Spotify, and on YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media is of course always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer

of any page at 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 by Davy Greenberg and Giselle Peters. Graphic elements, courtesy of Daniel Solis. And our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. Appreciate the love and support. See you next year. Peace, plants, namaste.