The Rich Roll Podcast - Tom Shadyac: The A-List Filmmaker Who Gave Away Millions & Found Fulfillment Through Service

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Tom Shadyac is the acclaimed director of hit comedies like “Ace Ventura,” “Bruce Almighty,” and “The Nutty Professor,” who walked away from Hollywood success to pursue a life of greater meaning. This conversation explores Tom’s spiritual journey from materialism to service, his life-changing work with Memphis Rox, and his iconoclastic views on consciousness and human interconnectedness. We discuss the illusion of separation, finding purpose through community, and how embracing uncertainty can lead to profound personal growth. Along the way, Tom turns the tables and becomes the interviewer—probing my relationship with ego and uncertainty. Tom’s wisdom and humor are such a treasure. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors:  Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order  👉seed.com/RichRoll Bon Charge: Use code RICHROLL to save 15% OFF 👉boncharge.com On: Enter RichRoll10 at the checkout to get 10% OFF your first order 👉on.com/richroll Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉gobrewing.com  Momentous: Save up to 36% OFF your first subscription order of Protein or Creatine + 20% OFF all of my favorite products 👉livemomentous.com/richroll  Meal Planner: For customized plant-based recipes 👉meals.richroll.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

I wanted to share with people what I had come to know through my experiences with the material lifestyle, with the mantra of the society, more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger. It's all about conquer nature, conquer the earth, tell things where to grow, tell things what to do. It's about you, you, you. And how's it working out for us? What does your heart tell you, not your brain? I just want to drill down to the root. Why do we have all these things popping up? Why are we so divided? It's all one thing. We are not telling ourselves that story, that we are essentially a family. Every saint's age, a mystic has said, treat everyone like you're a family.

Widen your circle of compassion, as Einstein said, to include all of mankind, humankind, and the whole of the natural world. It is not just about the individual. What changes a life more than anything is a relationship. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Tom Shadiac, the iconic filmmaker who walked away from a billion-dollar blockbuster career helming gigantic studio comedies like Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, and even Bruce Almighty. And he did it to find deeper meaning. What happened was that Tom started to feel confused when this extraordinary success that he was experiencing just wasn't

delivering on happiness and then enter a near fatal mountain bike accident. And what happened in the wake of that is that it basically incited a complete life overhaul. Tom would go on to give away his $50 million fortune. He moved into a trailer park in Malibu. He opened a homeless shelter. He started teaching at Pepperdine University and devoted himself to anti-materialism and human connectivity. It's a really moving story, incredibly well told by this world-class storyteller in a documentary I can't recommend enough called I Am. In any event, later, Tom would move to Memphis, Tennessee and open up Memphis Rocks, a climbing gym and community center in one of the poorest zip codes in the United States, where ever since he's been

empowering at-risk youth with outdoor adventure skills and really uplifting an underserved community in need. I got a couple more things I would very much like to mention before we dig into this one. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by Bonn Charge. Closing in on 58, I have spent a lifetime in the sun without much thought to skincare, I got to admit. And when I hit 50, that was sort of a wake-up call. And although I may be late to this game of skincare health, I got to tell you that Bonn Charge's red light therapy products have really become this instrumental tool in not only repairing damage already done, but helping me to care for the future of my skin.

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Of course you are. So go to seed.com slash richroll and use code richroll25 to get 25% off your first month of DSO1. That's 25% off your first month of seed to DSO1 at seed.com slash richroll, code richroll25. code RICHROLL25. Okay, Tom is one of the most beautiful and generous and wise people I have the good fortune to call friend. He is the living embodiment of selfless service. He's a bit of a mentor of sorts. He's somebody I respect tremendously. And his story is moving, it's powerful, and I'm now very honored to share it with all of you today. This is one for the ages, people.

So without further ado, please enjoy me and Tom Shadiac. We're live, buddy. How many people have told you how surreal it is after seeing a thousand ritual episodes and then sitting here? A few, but what's interesting about you, my friend, is this has taken a long time for the universe to conspire to make happen. And now, of course, through Julie moving Shreemu to Memphis and developing community there,

we've gotten to know each other a little bit better. Listen, man, I see this pattern and this divine sort of intelligence putting all these things together. The fact that you are in Memphis and I found my way to Memphis and then Julie found her way to Memphis and you're now part of Memphis. What's going on in Memphis? What is the deal with this place? All the promise and all the problems. It's all there. It was a cradle of slavery and it has to be dealt with. We have to go right to the root.

But it is so full of creativity and promise. It's pulsing with promise. Let's put it this way. I was on the beaches of Malibu for about 15 years. And once I met this community, I found as much or more beauty there. And I promised them one semester to teach and I've been there ever since. That was the impetus, like you got a teaching job there?

What was the actual like kind of catalyst that got you out of California and moving there? I've been teaching here. After Bruce Almighty, I got asked to teach at Pepperdine. I taught there eight years. They gave me the boot after I had a little more gentle idea of who Jesus might've been. Right. And despite the fact that I'm sure you were the most popular teacher in maybe the history of Pepperdine University. Well, let's not give me too much credit. I did give away free bikes and pizza. So, come on. I mean, I may have sucked as a teacher, but I was really great as an Oprah

impersonator. I gave away hundreds and hundreds of bikes, probably thousands of bikes. I gave every student a bike, not because I wanted to be Oprah, I was kidding, but because I wanted to remind the students to play. I forgot to play after college. I got out of college and it was all get serious with your life. I heard that mantra and I wanted to remind them what took me to till I was about 44 years old after I directed Bruce Almighty to start playing again. And I bought a bike and it changed my life.

And so I wanted to remind them early that the lesson that took me almost 20 years to get after college. And then Memphis enters how? Pepperdine let me go. I have a brother who is the CEO of the fundraising arm of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Did you know this about my brother, Rick? So St. Jude is divided in two parts. ALSAC, American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, raises all the money. And then

St. Jude itself is the hospital. And then they are the ones that do the research and do the best job in the world at trying to cure pediatric cancer. So, my dad founded that hospital with Danny Thomas. To those of you who don't know Danny Thomas, he was a very famous comic of my dad's generation. He was Lebanese. I'm Lebanese. I'm three quarters Lebanese. So we have deep connections to Memphis.

My brother was living there and said, look, it's an underserved city. Why don't you come teach for a semester? And I said, yeah, that'd be cool. I'll give him a semester and then I've never left. Wow. How did your dad initially hook up with Danny Thomas? I mean, your dad was a DC lawyer. Yeah. That's one thing we share in common. Do you know that? I'm from DC. I know you're a lawyer. I didn't know you were from DC. I was a lawyer. My dad was a DC lawyer.

I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. And you became a lawyer because your dad was a lawyer? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I was on that path too until I realized you had to study. I went in another direction. Yeah. It worked out in different ways. So, it's a really cool story. I'll tell it quickly. He was at his sort of the end of his rope. He had a wife who was pregnant with Marlo. Marlo Thomas. Yeah. Free to be you and me. What's that? She did the free to be you and me record. Remember that? That comedy record? I don't. Oh my God. It was like a record that I played constantly when I was a kid. I remember that girl. I don't remember Free to Be You and Me. Yeah. So Danny Thomas's wife was pregnant with Marlo and he needed $75 for the birth,

to pay for the birth in those days. It was a long time ago. Today you need like $75,000, but he needed $75 and he didn't have it. So he made a prayer to St. Jude. St. Jude is the patron saint of the hopeless cause. And the next day he got a singing toothbrush commercial for $75. Wow. So he made good on his prayer. He said, if you will help me, St. Jude, I will build you a shrine. And that shrine turned out to be the most hopeless cause of the day, which was St. Jude.

Wow. That's the origin story of St. Jude. That's the origin hopeless cause of the day, which was St. Jude's Research Hospital. That's the origin story of St. Jude's. That's the origin story. That's incredible. And the reason it ended up in Memphis, Tennessee is a good story too. A young black kid was hit by a car on his bicycle. And he was refused treatment at two hospitals in Memphis and he died. And from what I understand, Danny said, that's never going to happen again. We are putting

our hospital there. No one will be ever turned away regardless of race, creed, or color, or ability to pay. So my dad was Lebanese. He was a businessman. He was a successful lawyer. And Danny went out and sought the Lebanese community, the Arab American community, and said, will you help me build this shrine? And my dad was one of the leaders of that. My dad and many of my uncles. And since I was a kid, the hospital is 64 years old. I think I'm 60. Yeah, it was 64 years old.

I'm 65. So I was like one when it started. I was connected. My family's been connected ever since. My dad has, there's a road called Shadiac Avenue that goes right into St. Jude. It's on 60th. I know. I've driven on it.

It's surreal to be in Memphis and see that placard for- It's pretty wild. With your name on it. It's very appropriate. Your family's name on it. Because it's only two blocks long and my dad was the worst driver in the world. He'd be shaving and like, you know, like. And your dad was like CEO of ALSAC, right? For a very long time.

He basically co-founded St. Jude with Danny Thomas, or is that a stretch? Well, he was integral in organizing the business aspects, the building aspects, the fundraising aspects. So no one can ever take away the vision of that hospital was Danny Thomas. It came through his soul, through his brilliance, through his creativity. And then he had a number of really integral Arab American support staff. And that was my dad. My dad is one of the few that has a

giant building named after him as St. Jude and he's really highly regarded. And it's one of the things I'm most proud of in my heritage. Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible regarded. And it's one of the things I'm most proud of in my heritage. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible legacy. And, you know, to date, I mean, I can't imagine how many hundreds of thousands of kids have been treated for free, courtesy of St. Jude. For free. They take care of housing, treatment, transportation, everything. Your kid's sick. All they want you to be concerned with is loving your kid up back into health.

Yeah. Your kid's sick, all they want you to be concerned with is loving your kid up back into health. Yeah. Look, I know it's 60 years old, but I tell you it's just beginning because you think about American protocols and we've turned the cancer rates around from I think 90 something percent used to die.

Now 80% live largely because of St. Jude's protocols. But those protocols haven't spread over the world yet, right? You're in a developing country. I hate the term third world. It always still pops in my mind. It's like, we're the first world and they're the third world, yeah. But in developing countries, I think it's 50%.

So 50% is a big difference when we can save 80. So they're spreading these protocols throughout the world. So, I mean, my brother, the staff at St. Jude is incredible. I mean, at some point we'll talk about Memphis Rocks. We're like at the beginning of our development. But you have this example and you were reared in this spirit of service from a very early age, I would imagine. So that looms large in your conscious awareness.

It's got its blessings and its challenges because like my brother will go off and go like, oh, I'm going to get a $300 million check from Domino's today. And I'm like, oh, and how are you doing? How are you doing, Tom? Like literally, yeah, our lights are about to go off, but we're trying to get monthly donors to help us. So I'll do a bit on that, I'm sure,

by the end of the talk with you. Well, your story is incredibly inspiring, equal parts inspiring and also kind of informative as this almost, you know, to crib the title of your book, like this instruction manual for life. And I think there's so much wisdom in your example and the choices that you've made. But in order to kind of paint that canvas,

can we go back to the beginning, to the kid in Falls Church? What kind of kid you were and what your dreams and aspirations were and where that led you? You know, I think one of the most formative things in my life was my mom was sick since I was a kid. They didn't know what was wrong with her.

She used to kind of go into the fetal position in pain. And all she had was a slipped disc in her neck and they misdiagnosed her. So she fell one day, I think I was 14, but I'd experienced all this pain and that disc slipped. It almost killed her, but she ended up being a semi-quadriplegic paralyzed from the neck down, could move a little bit. So that sort of was the experience that really helped to form me along with, you know, St. Jude and all that. Yeah.

She was in a wheelchair, right? She was in a wheelchair, yeah. And again, we, you know, had to do everything from prep the food and cut the meat and, you know, all that stuff. So I used to watch her, by the way, sit at her bedside and feel that pain. And there's nothing I could do about it. I have this like a little breathing thing where we were talking

about earlier. I hold my breath a lot because as a kid, that's sort of how I learned to hold my pain and like the fact that I couldn't do anything about it. But I used to watch her watch Johnny Carson. And for those of you who don't know, Johnny Carson and Danny Thomas were of a generation. He was a leading sort of talk show host of the day, for those who don't know. And I watched his monologues and his sense of humor lift her, just lift her every night. I would sit with her. Her and my dad didn't sleep in the same room. My mom needed 24 seven like care and nurses would come in at night and that would lift her.

And I think that got in really early, the power of comedy. The equation, the math equation of comedy and lifting spirits. I mean, did that translate into you being kind of like a class cut up? Like what was your personality type? Yeah, that was me.

Yeah. Yeah, I was the class recalcitrant, let's say. That experience with my mother and then all comedy is based on absurdity. And so you get put into this absurd system. I even knew it as a kid, this system isn't absurd. Like all the life is out that window and you're having me sit here,

like all that life and I'm doing what? Like, why am I doing this? You don't strike me as someone who could sit still for very long. It was really hard. I did well in school, but it was torture. It was really, really torturous. And then where did the sense of storytelling come in

or this idea that you could kind of pursue this as a path? Strange, man. Really strange. You know, you're not aware, you're not conscious of all the influences, you know, being around Danny Thomas, seeing that there was this person doing this other job and my dad was doing this deck job, but he was doing this other job that got in. I just couldn't do the lawyer thing, you know, like, sorry, Rich. Like, hey, listen, man, you just, yeah, like you just, you know, spared yourself a lot of pain. But I'm thinking, you know, we're of a similar age and growing up in, you know, DC, Virginia, Maryland,

like the idea of going to Hollywood and telling stories, like that wasn't anything that anybody ever talked about or thought about as any kind of valid path. Let's phrase it like my dad would phrase it, pissing your life away. You are literally pissing. Did you have that conversation where you were like, this is what I wanna do?

A conversation is so generous. It's more like a lecture. No, I had to face that. And you know, it took me 11 years before I ever got Ace Ventura, which was the sort of stabilizing, okay, you can actually do this for a career. I literally would weep. I'd come home and he would say, look at your brother, you know, like, look at what your brother's doing, which he was.

He was a lawyer in my dad's firm. But, you know, deep down, he was kind of wishing to be not a lawyer like you. And now he's really found his calling as a CEO of ALSAC. Yeah, so it was really, really, really hard, really hard to feel like a failure. It's interesting because a quick Google search makes it sound like it all happened pretty quickly and seamlessly.

Like you're the youngest joke writer ever to write for Bob Hope. Yes. Will you be like 23 or something like that? to write for Bob Hope. Yes. 23 or something like that. I guess we're throwing all the old legends out there. Listen, if you don't know who Bob Hope is, Google it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to spend any more time on that. Yeah. But how did that happen? So you go to UCLA film school, you get your master's in film at UCLA, right? Did you go to college somewhere else before that? Or did you do your undergrad there as well? UVA, man.

Oh, UVA. Yeah, I went to UVA. I got the, you should be a lawyer mantra for UVA. I'm sure that got cemented pretty well there. Very cemented. I had this really fortunate experience when I got thrown out of my freshman dorm. We understood the protocol was you sweep all the trash

into the hallway of the freshman dorm. And then that allows the staff to come and collect it. And I guess that wasn't the way it worked because somehow my roommate and I got kicked out of the dorms for perpetuity. And I went, you know, being the recalcitrant one, I went, well, F you guys. Like, I did what I thought we were supposed to do. And by the way, there were 24 other people living in the dorm. Why were me and my... So I was a little stubborn and recalcitrant.

I went to Marquette for one semester where my brother was in school. I just said, I'm not going to UVA anymore. And because of that, I eventually went back to UVA and said, all right, I'll put that aside and go pick up these relationships that I'd started. But I didn't graduate from UVA on time because some of the credits at Marquette didn't transfer. And I didn't know that. So I had to come back for one semester. So I had four years of taking classes in, quote, pre-law, and I hated all of them. That's why I'm funny. I was a government major. What is a better path to joke writing than being a government major, right?

Become a speech writer or something. Better to be a joke writer. Better to be a joke writer. And what's the best thing? What's the best building block of a speech? Tell them a funny story. Tell them a joke. So I took a class called Writing and Directing my fifth year of school, UVA we were so special. I don't know if you remember, we called it first year, second year, third year, fourth year. There was no freshmen. That's where the other colleges, we were very snooty.

And that whole lawn thing, the people that get to live in those little cabins on the lawn. Oh man. That's a whole thing. Oh, that's a whole thing. That's a whole thing. Someone's told me a story, like I did a movie back in Charlottesville

and I was staying at the hotel and this beautiful black gentleman, I said, what do you think's going on in this town? There's like two cultures and two classes. And he goes, you see that house up on that hill? And it was Jefferson's house. He goes, some say his spirit's still alive here. And so there was this definite idea that, you know,

there were still some sins to be rectified. So anyway, I took this class called writing and directing and I loved it. I loved it. I got an A, I didn't care if I got an A, like I was like, you know, the teacher, like even when I went to film school, they would pin my papers up on the door,

like, and I had this really simple thought, which is, okay, you've taken this class, you love it. You've taken four years of these other classes, you hate them. Are you gonna spend your life in those four years of hating? And I said, I gotta take a shot. Yeah, so the lights went on

and you filled out that application for UCLA? No, that was a long time ago. I wrote some jokes for Bob Hope. I submitted them. Oh, so that happened before. I knew that my uncle knew Bob Hope. He lived in LA. He married my mother's sister, Aunt Jo.

I've been writing comedy as a high school, you know, like as a key clubber, I would write the skits with a friend named Harold. And, you know, I felt good doing it and I was pretty good at doing it. And so I wrote a batch of jokes for Bob Hope and he called my house. It's crazy.

He called my house and he said, my mom answered and said, this is Bob Hope. Can I speak to Tom? She said, yes, I'm the queen of England. She said, yes, I'm the queen. Then this is the queen of England. And she literally hung up.

That's pretty surreal. She hung up. So I'm the queen of England. She said, yes, I'm the queen. Then this is the queen of England. And she literally hung up. That's pretty surreal. She hung up. So I called him back that night. I went to my dad's law firm. I had all my friends on all the extensions. I called Bob Hope. They were listening in. Literally listening in.

I didn't know it could be a one-time call. You know, like, we might as well listen to Bob Hope. And I'm like, I'm this recalcitrant kid. And he's like, you're pretty funny. Here's the question about comedy. Can you do it again? If you can do it again, then maybe you've got a chance because you wrote a good batch. It's a good question. Can you write it again? Can you do it again? Can you do it again? And I wrote a few more batches and then I got invited out to LA and I was his youngest staff writer by about a millennium. You know, I used to write Brooke Shields jokes

and fruit fly jokes or whatever the heck was going on. And that's how I started. Wow. Yeah. That's a wild story. There was like sort of an epiphany moment where you were like in a bathroom around a urinal when you were writing jokes.

What is online? Now, I've been in many bathrooms and many urinals, so I've had many epiphany moments. No, I think I know exactly what you're talking about. You know the story I'm thinking of? I do. It's hilarious that it's online. I had tried a lot of things in show business.

I encourage people to do this, especially the students, whenever I have students, like there's a saying that I've come to, you don't think your way to right action. You just, you don't think your way. You try it, right? Like, I think I might want to act. Well, try it. See how it is. So I tried a bunch of things in showbiz. I acted for a little bit. I did stand-up comedy. I was a joke writer. I wrote some screenplays, and I thought, I'm going to try it. Nothing seemed exactly like it was my thing. So I went back to film school, UCLA. That's when I went to UCLA,

a few years after I'd been in LA. And my first day on a movie set, the film that I had written, we were filming in a bathroom and I was at a urinal and I literally, it was the aha moment of my life for my career. It just hit me. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I'm going to be a storyteller. And I just knew. I just knew. And I love that it was at a urinal, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think- You picture it on a mountaintop. Yeah, it's a funny story. There's profundity in that. Like it speaks to intuition and this, you know, sense of, this deep sense of knowing whether you're on the right path for yourself or not. Yeah. I tell this to students all the time, thy lot or portion in life is

seeking after thee, therefore be at rest from seeking after it. This is the Khalif Ali. I believe it was in the alchemist. The idea that we have to just continually hunt and search and stress and strain, but these seeds are already in us. They're already in us. Like sometimes it's not as profound as like Mozart, you know, touching a piano and knowing, you know, a two-year-old that can play, but they're in us.

And if we keep walking, we keep experimenting, we keep just moving, that those moments are available to all of us. Yeah. It's about the relationship between the head and the heart. Like we were both raised in households where it was all about the head, right? Totally. Intellectual capacity is how you're going to make the way in the world. Forget about whatever your heart is telling you, this is what you do. And you dutifully kind of

follow this path and ignore whatever yearnings are, you know, kind of lurking beneath the surface. But you fairly early were able to, you know, kind of summon the wherewithal to mute out all of that noise and pay attention to what your heart was saying. And then, you know, at some point, you know, develop a level of conviction about, this is what I'm meant to be doing.

This does feel right. I know this is right for myself and I'm gonna honor what my heart is telling me, irrespective of the outside noise or the resistance that's cycling in my intellectual mind. You may give that talk at my funeral. That was really well said. Sitting in the chair,

I was listening to Zach Bush and you this morning and we now know we have a gut microbiome. I think we have a gut spirit biome that we've ignored for forever. And science, of course, is now telling us that it's not the head telling the body what to do. It's the body sending more signals to the head. Yeah, there's a whole thing in your documentary, I Am, about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you feel it in your gut, right? You get

butterflies before you ever get a thought, right? You're about to start a basketball game or a race and you get butterflies in your stomach. It's not the thought like, oh, I'm going to go run. Your body is really the controlling idea. I mean, look at all the mystical traditions. It's all the heart base, Sufi, the pathway of the heart, Christianity, Jesus was a sacred heart. It's the heart, right? The heart is a source of intelligence. And look, it took an accident,

which I'm sure we'll get to, to get me in my heart because I was very much in my head. I used to be in my head. I lived there. And in every relationship I had until I was probably about 40, all my partners would say, you're in your head. I used to be in my head. I lived there. And in every relationship I had until I was probably about 40, all my partners would say, you're in your head. And I would be like, but where am I supposed to be? Like, this is the thinking center. Where else is there? There's nowhere else to go. I mean, this is like me and my thigh. I wage this war all the time. And this

is probably the most common conversation or recurring conversation between Julie and I, the most common conversation or recurring conversation between Julie and I, because Julie lives fundamentally and thoroughly from a heart-centered place. And I feel and appreciate the lures of the heart, but I'm so resistant because of my upbringing. Like I always default to the head. And so there's this dialogue that's going on all the time where I feel that like tension. Well, I mean, look, I've come to this philosophy again, we can talk to it that it's all necessary. I'm really thankful for your attention because your head is working really well. I mean, I don't think anyone has a better way of interviewing or finding the precise word

in a conversation than you. And I'm sure that a lot of that came from your head and from your legal background by respect and honor exactly where you are. I think that the access point to the divine, I think the heart is an organ of spiritual perception and that's available to you, but you may be using your head more and we're grateful for it. I appreciate that.

But my head still gets in the way probably to my detriment a little more than it benefits me. Yeah. Well, I'm happy to turn the interview around. Yeah. What is the impediment? What does it say? You know, it's the devil you know, I suppose,

and the fear of the unknown or my mind resisting the unknowable that resides within a more mystical relationship with life. Okay, so let's put some flesh on that. What is that? I love, by the way, that I'm turning this around. Yeah, I'm only gonna, I'm giving you a short leash though.

We're gonna get back. No, no, this is good. So what is the devil that you know? What is, explain. Yeah, it's this is good. So what is the devil that you know? What is, explain. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that I could define it other than a resistance to uncertainty. And that is curious because all of this

and what I get to do today, and it all comes from the heart. There was no planning or whiteboarding or goal setting around any of this. It all flowed from appreciating my curiosity and trusting in my intuition, which led me astray for many years until I did enough work

where I could pay attention to it and honor it. And yet I still get caught up in the way I think the world works and at the cost of truly embracing perhaps the reality of how it truly works. And how do you think it works? In my mind? Yeah, yeah. Well, this is what we do.

It's like you go to the good school and you try to get the good job and you be responsible and you show up and you do the things and you have kids and you take care of those. It's all very limited to the structures and incentivizations of the modern developed Western world. And yet we know and you know because you've had a million interviews that I've listened to where those incentives aren't really fulfilling and working. Of course, of course. Right, right. Of course. My guess is that it has something to do

with the chaos that addiction created because I know your background. And so certainty is like the thing you grab for. Yeah, I think there's truth in that. Yeah. Yeah. But this is like the front lines of what I'm trying to explore in

myself, because I think that I get caught up in what I have to do every single day at the cost of the things that truly drive happiness, which is connection, community, like being with friends, giving love, receiving love, like those become secondary and I tend to overcommit and make myself busy and that crowds out the things that I should be giving a wider berth to. Well, I want to welcome everyone to the last podcast because I'm now going to ask you- I'm going to walk away from this. I'm going to, well, why do you have to do it? I don't have to do it, but I love doing it. And I love the fact that I learn.

I think the challenge is how do I put into action the things that I'm learning? Because I learned so much and I'm so nourished by these conversations and it's such a gift to be able to spend time with people that inspire me. And then of course, giving it back to other people and seeing how it nourishes them is an incredible feeling. Like I feel like I have the best job in the world

and I'm very conscious of this position that I'm in right now. And I shoulder it with a certain sense of responsibility, but it's also a joyful experience. Right. You said initially that it's this job I have to do and I wanna do these other things, but if it is truly,

and I'm guessing it is because I know you enough, well enough, that it is a real act of love. For sure. Then the problem is? The problem is when it becomes too all-consuming or when it becomes something that is in service to my ego more than it is about the service piece of that, because I can become enamored or lured by, you know, the validation that I get from strangers

or the remuneration that, you know, this enterprise creates. And those things come at a cost. So it's about like inventorying where my ego flares up in this equation and remembering the why behind it in the first place and just having a more grounded relationship with it. Yeah, let me drill down a little bit

because you feel like a brother. Fuck inventorying, by the way. You don't like that? I just think we over inventory. That's the head again, right? Like I love, actually love doing this. I'm going to do this more. I actually love spending time with Julie and my kids. I want to do that more. I'm going to find a way to balance those things, to put those things. Look, I think you and I are brothers and I'll tell you why. So I have this same idea with Memphis Rocks. I am wearing an advertisement because this is an important place for me. We'll talk about it.

It's a very underserved community that I got involved with that has served me much more than I have served it or them. But when my ego gets involved, it's like, oh, I'm really, I'm important. I have to get this work done. You know, one of the reasons I'm diving back into show business is I wanna create a light so that whatever platform I can build for myself, I can use that platform to platform these other young voices.

You know, one of them, Christine is here, who are brilliant and tell their stories. And it's taken some real pounding from the universe to say, well, you live in a belly of a paradox because you matter and then you don't. You really don't. If I die during this podcast, Memphis Rocks is gonna be

whatever the universal intelligence wants it to be through the brilliance of Christine over here and Josh Cannon over here and others. And like, I'm really not essential. And the second I think I'm essential, and this is really important work I'm doing, and I'm doing another version of St. Jude, just the spiritual, psychological, emotional cancer. It's like, shut the fuck up. Like, be a part of these relationships, be in the river of this universal intelligence, and it knows what it's doing. You don't have to take any of that on because you use words that I use words, like shouldering, right? Like, you're shouldering something.

Like, I've had to get my ass kicked and then have a very good mentor. I don't know if he'll ever admit to being my mentor. He probably has a thousand of us. But Father Gregory Boyle, I have come to many times. He straightens my butt out by just the way he lives his life. He's lost 250 kids to gun violence. I asked him, how do you do that?

And it's because we've lost our share too, not near that many since my involvement, more I'm sure in total, but if you go back years, but he said, Tom, I'm to tell you something that's really brutal, but it's the way the mystic understands things to be, things with a capital T. I don't mind what happens. I don't mind what happens.

So if Memphis Rocks goes by the wayside, it's okay. Something else will surface. Neutrality. But that neutrality, it sounds passive, right? Like, oh, I don't really care. It allows you to care so much because that neutrality says, oh, it's not on me. There's something holding us, right? How the hell did all these cells get to be held together in this form called Rich Roll and Tom and the table?

And some freaking intelligence that we're barely understanding is holding all this. And so if I just trust that, now I can really care. Like I can be really passionate about these things because the results aren't in me. Otherwise, there's a tension, right? There's always a lack. It's up to me. No, I'm a part of it. But like, I'm a drop in the ocean

and the ocean and a drop, that kind of thing. But it's still the ocean. Yeah, in the parlance of recovery, that would be the journey from self-will to surrender and the humbling, you know, kind of nature of that journey and understanding that you're not at the center of the universe

and you show up and you do your work and the results of that work are not up to you and there are greater forces at play and these things are gonna, to your point, gonna be what they're gonna be. I like to mess with words, right? Probably hear some more, but surrender is almost sure ender, right?

It's the sure ender. So that's certainty, right? I'm sure if I do it this way, if I protect myself, if I take it all on and I can control and surrender is the sure ender. Just end all that stuff and just trust. Like just end all that sureness. All right. We're brought to you today by a very exciting brand new sponsor, Go Brewing.

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go to livemomentous.com slash richroll to save up to 36% off your first subscription order of protein or creatine. And if you don't want to subscribe, you can still get 20% off all my favorite products. That's livemomentous.com slash richroll. control issues and the egocentrism and the fear of what might happen if you let go, because you're the essential element in this equation. Dude, I'm a director. What do you think a director is? It's a professional control freak. And what does a director have to learn when

he's on a movie set? Oh, you're actually in control of very little, right? Yeah, you may be doing the shot this way and set the lighting this way, but you have no control over how that actor is going to come that day to the set, like what the weather is going to be like, if this dialogue is going to land or not land. You have to be a good listener. You have to end the sureness of what you came with and then really, really listen and then trust what is going on in the truth of this moment between these actors or this weather pattern or whatever is happening. And then you get magic. Then you have another collaborator called the universe, you know, or God, I'd still love that term. You have that as a collaborator because it's not just you in control and things get potentially awesome.

Right. As a filmmaker, the movie that you have in your mind is different from the movie that ends up on the page of the screenplay, is different from the movie that you actually capture in the camera, is different from the movie that gets edited and ultimately finds its way to the screen. Absolutely. So that finished product probably bears very little resemblance to that original idea that you had about what it was going to look and sound like. I can't tell you how many original pitches I have gone to studios and said, this is what I see for this movie. That pitch never winds up in the basis of it will. Like when I did Nutty Professor, I was just talking about this the other day.

There were a bunch of jokes about overweight people. there were a bunch of jokes about overweight people and it's like and even the lead character sherman clump if anybody's seen the nutty professor with eddie who is brilliant in that movie in the original sort of adaptation of that from the old jerry lewis film he was made fun of by a lot of people and he you know of course didn't have any self-esteem and i thought you got to turn that upside down this is my original pitch to r self-esteem. And I thought, you got to turn that upside down. This is my original pitch to Ron Howard and Brian Grazier. You got to turn that upside down. He should be an awesome human. He should be a great professor.

And the only person who doesn't see it is him. So nobody out there is like, you know, like it's not like he's facing, you know, like students that are going, you know, yes, there are bullies. But the larger world loves him. He just doesn't love himself. And so that idea ends up in it, but the original scenes I pitched, they don't because I got to go listen. I got to listen to what Eddie wants to do.

I got to go listen. We had a brilliant writer. We co-wrote that one, Steve Odekirk. And then through that listening, something greater happens. Right, and if you're too much in the way, you get in the way of the miracle that might happen with the improv or whatever somebody else's idea is. Right, and so we extrapolate the metaphor to our lives.

When we get in the way of whatever's being created for us, with us, and through us, it gets smaller, right? I've had my share of this. I was going to ask you how you're doing with that now. I'm totally fucked. I'm in recovery, dude, constantly like you. I'm addicted to sureness, right? But truthfully, letting go more and more and more and finding, how did I get here? I got here know, like I got here just, you know, by letting go of some things that were making me very comfortable and secure at the top of the showbiz game

and letting some of that stuff go and diving into a community that I fell in love with. Right. So we're working our way up towards that. On the directing front, after graduating from film school, how long did it take? By the way, I never graduated.

Oh, you didn't? Of course you didn't. I split. I actually would be disappointed if you did. I did not graduate. Yeah, I split. In any event, how long did it take to get Ace Ventura up on its feet?

After film school? Nothing. Like you would think your first stab at directing would be some kind of small indie Sundance type movie. Well, I did a movie of the week for Fox Television. They were my first supporters. Wendy Rich was the executive's name. She said, I think I've discovered the next John Landis. I was shocked because I thought John Landis was just the bomb. He did so many amazing films. Based on some stuff that you had done in film school, some shorts or something? Yeah, they saw my short. I made one short film, they saw it.

And look, it was 11 years from the time that I landed in LA to write jokes to the time when I was, when Ace Ventura came out. So that's what you call an overnight success. Right. And I got letters from Spielberg, Michael Eisner, the head of Disney, producers like Joel Silver, who did all the lethal weapons. And suddenly I was the it guy, the overnight guy, but it had been an 11-year apprenticeship. Right. It's hard to imagine a universe in which we're not all intimately familiar with like Jim Carrey as like this, you know, colossal comedic genius. But at the time of Ace Ventura, it was a big risk. He was like the one white guy on In Living Color

and hadn't really done anything. That was on the back of his Jersey with the Miami Dolphin team was there in Ace Ventura and they gifted him with a number one white guy. And I literally saw this. This is why I know things are written in the universe. I know it cause I'm 65. And I literally saw this. This is why I know things are written in the universe. I know it because I'm 65. I've seen the pattern.

They're written. They're written. They're written. Just everybody relax. It's written. Yes, you have to show up, but it's written. I saw Jim Carrey go from being the white guy. Whenever we walked to dinner,

there'd be, hey, it's a white guy in a living color. Before Ace Ventura came out, before it came out, suddenly it be, hey, it's a white guy in a living color. Before Ace Ventura came out, before it came out, suddenly it was, hey, Jim Carrey. Oh my God, it's Jim Carrey. It's Jim Carrey. Suddenly the universe was like, okay, Jim, we've prepped you.

It's time. You're now Jim Carrey. Go. Like you're no longer the white guy. You're not just the skit guy. This is gonna be a larger platform for you. Yeah. I forgot. Did you have a question?

No, I mean, I'm just reflecting on, you know, this, you create this launch pad for this superstar. Yeah. And at the time it wasn't a sure bet. And I think I even read like, you're even like kind of reviewing dailies or, you know, in the edit thinking, is this like, is this even gonna work?

Like this guy's so out of his mind, like maybe audiences aren't even gonna be able to deal with it. You are being much kinder in your language than we were to ourselves. We were saying, oh my God, this could suck. This could blow up whatever little careers you and I have. And he certainly had a much higher profile career

than I at the time. But we knew that if we took this risk, we hung on one thing. We were laughing every day. The crew was laughing. We were laughing. I mean, Morgan Creek called me. The executives called me. And they were aghast at what we were sending them.

They just thought we were sending them absolute crap. They weren't kidding. They were like, we need to know who the real Ace Ventura is. And I turned to Jim and I'm like, Jim. And I'm like, I have no freaking idea who the real Ace Ventura is. There's even one scene in the movie where Courtney Cox and Jim, I think they're looking for the files, they're going through files at night where we had Jim do the real Ace and then he ends up barking at the end of the scene and then his character comes out. It's ridiculous. Ace is a cartoon character come to life. It's kind of like Ace became a symbol for me of someone who's just completely childlike in an overly serious culture. I'm just going to be like this all day, every day. Good to see you. Take care now. Bye-bye then. And just this absurd thing in a world that was trying to be so serious. And we got such hateful reviews of Ace. Siskel and Ebert said it was the death of cinema. They gave us a lot of power.

We had the power to kill cinema. Because I do think that there is something revolutionary about being childlike, about laughing at going to the bathroom, about talking out of your ass, about doing these silly things because we are so programmed. I mean, what did Jesus say? The ultimate revolutionary, unless you become like

these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom. Jim was like this childlike cartoon come to life. And so people who are trying to be serious, I'm a serious reviewer. I want to talk about your craft and I want to use words like ostensibly. And they looked at Ace and went, we can't have this. And a culture can't have you being in joy. It was just like an ode to joy, you know? But the culture said otherwise. Yeah, I'm talking about sort of the unwritten rule of the culture, but the people said, this is cool, man.

Like, I want to have this kind of fun. I want to like let myself go. I want to be. And how much did Jim improvise in that? Like, was that all on the page or was he just going haywire and trying things and you were capturing magic that you didn't even imagine? We wrote a really tight script. And this is what most people don't know about improv. Most people don't know about improv. The best improvisations on movie sets are coming from really tight scripts, scripts that have been thought about 25 different ways,

every angle, every line, every possibility, every relationship outcome. Then you go to set with a full library, and then something else happens. But without that full library, you'd be creating that library on the set, right? You'd be creating that Rolodex on the set. I was going to explain what a Rolodex is to your audience. Picture a phone, but with a lot of papers. Welcome back to old man talk. It's true. Because I speak to young people all the time, and I always say like Bob Hope and Danny Thomas. There was a life before, but by doing that extra mile comedic dive, thinking, exploration, you are able to come to the set. And with that now inside of you already processed,

genius can often happen. So Jim would do the lines in the script. That now inside of you already processed genius can often happen. So Jim would do the lines in the script, same thing with Eddie and Robin. I work with Robin and Dave Chappelle and they would do the lines in the script and then we would play, we would play. And the play often was the genius. Yeah, well, it was magic in a bottle

and that kind of sets you and your muse, Jim, up for this rocket ship ride that takes you, it's like a 15 year run, right? You just bang out like massive hit after massive hit, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that had to be just a dizzying experience. Surprise, I got carried away with it.

Yeah. Surprise, surprise. Who wouldn't? It was hard not to. Wait a minute, I can have my own jet? Like, there's no, I don't have to what? Go through security? Like, what?

You bring me food on the plane that I order? What? The beauty of it was there were a lot of yeses to the work that I wanted to do. And that was beautiful. Like I'm a storyteller. I don't want to tell these stories to the wall. I would appreciate people having exposure to those stories. And that provided that.

And then things that came with it, I kind of smile at today. And, you know, I've moved away from somewhat. I mean- When you reflect back on that period of your life, do you have like compassion for yourself? Oh, hell yeah. Absolutely. I love everybody in that life. I mean, it had to be fun too. To a point. But I mean, fun is like, fun without a soul is kind of an empty pursuit. Like you can't get enough of it.

Was there a conscious sense that you were trying to use these things to fill a God-sized hole? Like, I've heard you say, like we're working our way up to the bicycle accident, but I think there's this idea that it was all about the bicycle accident but my sense is that this had been percolating this like spiritual kind of calling and epiphany had been something that had been brewing for a long time you were very perceptive because I don't think I told that story very well in I am people think I hit my head and saw God when I got in a

bike accident. I hit my head and saw a doctor. What happened after the bike accident was I thought I was going to die, didn't think I was going to live. And so I wanted to share with people what I had come to know through my experiences with the material lifestyle, with getting carried away with, you know, the mantra of the society, more and more and more, bigger, bigger, bigger. And I wanted to share some of the mystical wisdom that I had been seeped in for 20 years at that point that I realized I wasn't living so well.

And I don't judge myself at all. Everything is necessary. Like, I really believe that Jesus, again, this is a metaphor, people. I'm not like espousing one faith over another. But, you know, I really believe that God slash Jesus, when you meet, you know, meet God slash Jesus, is whatever that is for you, will just be like, oh, I love you. I just love you. And you're like, no, no, you don't understand.

I was like super materialistic. I was such an idiot. Like, I'm ritual. I was in you. And you're like, no, no, you don't understand. I was like super materialistic. I was such an idiot. Like I'm ritual. I was in my head. I got like, oh no, give me a ritual. I love you so much. I can't even get over how much I love you. You played exactly the note that I wanted you to play. And I'm sure that like, that like, it even happened to Judas, right? Like Judas, like betrays the divine energy, whatever. And the divine energy is like, come here, Judas, come here, man. Come here, you little recalcitrant, little bastard. You look like you need a hug. You need a hug, but I need to hug you too.

I need your hug because you played exactly the note that I needed. I know it's looked shitty, but that was a hard note to take on because I needed to show the human race that there was something more powerful than death. And I couldn't do that without your shadow in the world. It's kind of young-y and when you realize like shadow is so essential. You cannot charge anything

without shadow in space and time. If you have a battery, you have to have a negative part of the battery. Without that negative part of the battery, there is no charge. So without the Judases, and I'm not encouraging anyone to be a Judas, play your note. Emerson said, if I'm the devil's child, then damn it, I'm going to be the devil's child. Because people were saying, you're not a Christian enough. And he was a minister as well, as was one of your staff. And they said, oh, you believe everyone should get the host? Like, who are you? You're the devil's child.

I said, well, if I'm the devil's child, then I'm the devil's child. And he went and became himself, which many Christians thought was the devil's child. But it wasn't the devil's child. So it's just like, come here. This is my whole spirituality in a nutshell. Just come here. For those listening on the podcast, my arms are out wide and I just want to give you a hug. Come here, man. Thank you. First thing you may hear, quote unquote, metaphor, thank you. Thank you. You're like, thank you. Like I did some really, I love you. I love you. I know how to turn that. So you think I made shit like grow a garden

like in a vacuum? No, I made shit grow a garden because that's how you grow a garden in space and time. You go through some shit and you do some shit. Yeah, well, what you went through now lends so much power to the message that is so important for you to communicate because it was such an extreme experience.

I mean, you generated like $2 billion at the box office. You're flying private. You are living in a 17,000 square foot house in Pasadena. 13 bathrooms. Yeah, it's like, I mean, that house is ridiculous. I always say there's only number one and number two. So number one could be one bathroom, number two, another. And then you got one for a combo,

but then you got 10 extra bathrooms. And you get to make hilarious shit with like the biggest movie stars in the world and the world loves you back for it. And you're getting paid incredibly handsomely for this. Like this is the dream for most people. And you're here to report back and say the dream ain't as it's cracked up to be. Yeah. Well, I'm simply one sort of piece of evidence of every sort of positive psychology study that's been done in the past 30 years. There were some beautiful things about that dream.

You know, like I said, the access, the ability to make product. But if that dream isn't serving a higher idea and holistically, integrity is everything for me. Integrity means every drawer of your life, you should be able to open and you should see who you are. And when I opened the material drawer of my life, I didn't love who I was. Now, I still have a lot of material things. Don't get me wrong. We are in space and time. We are to use materials and we are to use them to fulfill our passions. Whoever this divine intelligence is wants us to experience the limitation. If you're infinite, you got to experience everything through limitation. So that intelligence loves that I bike, loves that I surf, loves that I love the mountains of Colorado, still have a place there. So I don't judge any of that. It just wasn't me, right? Like that may be someone else's note. Like you need a 40,000 square foot mansion to host your international events.

God bless you. I have no judgment of that at all. But for me, the Tom Shady Act, the integrity was, that's not really who I am, right? Everyone that I admired lived a simpler life, lived an idea that was about connection and relationship. And, you know, if I'm hovering above everything in a private jet, I mean, Memphis rocks. We have a new slogan we're coming out with, proximity. Rocks is inside of proximity. I wasn't proximate with the things that create art.

You know, I was above it all. Like, oh, I get ushered into the restaurant first and there's the red carpet in front of me. And I mean, how did we become artists? Because we were shut out of the restaurant. Hey, you long hair, you know, like you ain't coming in here. Like you ripped up shirt. Like, I'm like, I got gotta get back to that a little bit.

So that dissonance was very much, kind of like I said earlier, like brewing. And then you go out on this mountain bike ride and you have a really bad accident and suffer some head trauma, but that just creates the opportunity for you and the space for you to finally confront this while you're navigating like the recovery

and the pain that that created. Yes, again, speak at my funeral. You speak really well. Your head is working very well for you, Ridge Roll. This is not what I need to hear though. Well, yeah, okay, take it back. You suck. Okay, good, I feel better.

You suck greatly. I feel seen now. No, I embrace it. You suck. Okay, good. I feel better. You suck greatly. I feel seen now. No, embrace it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with embracing. Why can you not embrace it? I like the fact that I speak well. Do you really think it makes you better than Julie or better than Christine? No, you don't.

That's true. Yeah. That was said very weakly. Yeah. No, I'm thinking about it. Yeah. That was said very weakly. No, I'm thinking about it. Yeah. What does your heart tell you? Not your brain.

The ego gets in the way of the heart. And the ego is like, I like that I speak well too. Isn't it great? Don't I sound smart? And that becomes a loop or a cycle that I'll replay for which I get affirmed, right? And so then it becomes hardened and it becomes an obstacle to the heart song, which is like, maybe I don't wanna do this today.

Maybe I wanna go hang out with that friend that I haven't called in a while. I wish you would write my book because you have a way of processing ideas and thoughts that is brilliant. The one offering, and I'm still working on it myself, it's just like, if you just take judgment out of the equation, everything you said is beautiful. Yeah, I speak well. That makes me sound smart. Like, I've been to school. I've got a pretty good vocabulary. Yeah, I actually do this really well. I mean, I am the 15th or whatever top podcaster in the world, whatever.

Like, yeah, like I made $2 billion in movies. Guess what? I'm really freaking good at what I do. I have no problem saying it. I just don't think I'm better than anybody in this room because I know it. I know that as well. I know you know it. That's what I was – but again, you didn't say it with the – like I know you know that.

Yeah, yeah. So that's what I was, but again, you didn't say it with the, like, I know you know that. Yeah, yeah. So that's it. So just this, like all Young said was like, I just wrote in the beginning of, I'm trying to get the third nighty professor off the ground. The scariest act is to accept oneself completely. And yeah, guess what? Everything you said that your ego is telling you

is actually awesome as long as it doesn't go the extra mile and say, you are better than everybody, right? And as a storyteller, I know that every note is needed, right? So this is the gift of being a storyteller. If I have somebody that seems so unimportant walk across the background of a scene, we call them extras in show business.

One of my missions is to have them called essentials because they're essential. I mean, now we may be able to AI create them, which I will do everything I can not to do because I'd rather have the human spirit. I believe there's energy walking across that scene. I can't do the scene without that person. I got a $20 million actor in front of me. But how do I do that scene without that person walking across, creating a little more texture, a little more life, a little more reality if it's a cool person in a cool outfit so I know I'm in a cool setting. I need that person. So I know as a storyteller that everything is essential.

Everything is essential. And then the paradox is kind of none of us are. Like life exists in the belly of a paradox. So I love the fact that you stated all those things about yourself. And I think they're awesome. Well, I appreciate your insights and your wisdom. One of the questions I had for you is you're such a gifted storyteller. We need you to be telling more stories. And so you just referenced that

you're trying to get this movie set up. So that's interesting. You're dipping back in. I've been trying for a long time and just, again, it's just the timing hasn't been right. I feel like it's opening back up. I just feel like the energy shifting, like it just opening back up.

So I have been writing for 10 years. I have a stack of scripts that I love. Like, I think I'm sharp enough now at my craft to know like to a relative degree, like what is ready to be made and what isn't. And I got a stack, so. Yeah, I mean, you've told many stories, but you've just done them in slimmer formats.

Like it's been a while since you directed a big movie. Yeah, yeah, we've been making documentaries. I've made, I am, Roko Bellage made Happy, you know. I've invested in documentaries. I gave Louis Soyuz a little bit on, I forget, was it Sixth? Racing Extinction. Was it Racing Extinction?

Yeah, he came in and sat here. Yeah, yeah. Talked all about that movie. Believe me, I heard him here. Yeah. I love Louis. He's a great soul. I've always messed with him

because like, I'm like, Louis, how many movies have I made? He goes, I don't know, like 12 because like, I'm like, Louis, how many movies have I made? He goes, I don't know, like 12 or 15 or something. And I go, how many movies have you made? He goes, one. I go, and now who has the Academy Award, Louis? Who has the Academy Award?

And you're saying this is a just universe. His first one. His first one, exactly. Right out of the gate. We're brought to you today by On. Being a gearhead, I'm all about testing the latest sports tech. But you know what often gets overlooked? Apparel.

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or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. So in 2010, you make this documentary, I Am, and I just re-washed it. I hadn't washed it in many years. It's an incredible piece of work that tells this story of your life before this bicycle accident and your life after. So walk us through like what happened in the aftermath of this accident and how you started to make changes. Well, again, you perceptively were aware that I had been making changes well before the accident. The accident may have accelerated some, but the main change I made- Those changes were internal though, right? Prior to that? No, I had been giving away a lot of money. I already moved to the mobile home park, by the way.

Oh, you had? Oh, I didn't know that. Extremely expensive mobile home park. I want no one to think that I was living- It's the fanciest mobile home park in the world. It literally is. It literally is. And if we want to go back to it's old man radio hour, that is the- Garner. Yeah, from the Rockford Files. Rockford Files. Where Jim Garner had his bad back in the 70s.

Now, the truth is it was 1,000 square feet. It was a double wide. And I lived in a double wide for, I don't know if the time was like seven years or something. And then I moved into one that was a two and a half wide, but that was kind of stick built. We sort of cheated our way over there. I won't mention the community.

But you just shed all of those high flying possessions basically. Yeah, pretty much. And then went out on a journey, like Buddha without any of the goodness. I scaled the wall. It's a modern day Siddhartha type story. Yeah. I'm trying to think of the joke here. It'll come, but without any of the depth.

A less pretentious version of that maybe. Well, yeah. I mean, look, I'm not placing myself in the Siddhartha category. I will say that the principles are the same, which is I got out of the castle. I left the castle and I ended up in Memphis and felt something I'd never felt before. I'd been given money away for years. I've always believed because I saw St. Jude and what resources can do. I always wanted to use whatever came my way for the greater good. So I'd been given money away for years. I had somebody at my company, her name was Ginny Durkin, a lovely woman who would just go out and look for causes to help. And we would cry every meeting. We'd meet once a week. I'd write checks, we'd cry, and then she'd go out and find more places that needed love and resource. But I'd never really

been deeply involved. Like I was with St. Jude, but I didn't get to know the patients. They were kids with cancer. And with Memphis Rocks and the thing that we all founded together in Memphis, I got to know people. I got to love these people. I got to be a small part of their incredible stories. And that level of engagement has changed me. It's changed me probably as much or more than anything in my life. To see a part of America not on the news. We all see these parts of America on the news. Oh, my God, another kid's been shot. Oh, my God, COVID and the pandemic has left these communities without the resources to keep their lights bills on, et cetera.

It's different when you see it on the news. You feel bad and then, hey, honey, would you get my car keys? And we're on. I've seen it a million times. Like I've been it a million times. But when you know them, when there's a kid named Detroit,

when you're teaching a class at a historical black college is shot and killed when he just graduated and just had his life ahead of him and was just going to the corner store, which is not safe, and gets shot and killed. And you watch your students who loved Detroit have to start their lives with a friend who's dead. And then so many others who either have been killed or incarcerated,

that something happens, you know? It changes you, you know? That's why Brian Stevens talks about proximity. When you're close, when you get close, like, you can't walk away. Like, who would to walk away? Like I haven't and I didn't and I won't. And yeah, Father Greg says it so well about his kids and I call them kids or like 20s and 30s, many of them. He says that they've given him much more

than he's ever dreamed of giving. So let me tell you something, Rich, that's really important to me. Like, why is it so easy to raise money for St. Jude? And by easy, I'm not taking anything away from my brother and his incredible staff. They're brilliant. But it's easy in the narrative sense, right? A kid has cancer. Who is not going to say, like, well, get him treatment. Well, we need some money to pay for the treatment.

Okay, well, here's a nickel from me and a dime from here. But the story and the narrative about kids like in South Memphis and kids in other underserved cities, what's wrong with them? Like, why don't they just get a job? Like when I was their age, I got a job. Okay, stop for a second, fellow. Okay, the one thing you have in common with them when you were 18 and they were 18, you got a job. Let's see what else they have in common with them when you were 18 and they were 18, you got a job. Let's see what else they have in common with you. Did you have two parents? Oh, you have two parents.

Oh, this one has a single mother who works three jobs and his father is either passed or incarcerated. Okay, so first of all, they didn't have two stabilizing factors, et cetera. And you go down that list and you're like, we have no right to say what they should or shouldn't be doing. And so only they can tell us what they need. Yeah, it's running the hundred yard dash where most of us are between the 50 yard line and basically 10 yards from completion. And we're talking about a population of people

who are starting at the hundred yard line and have much further to run. Yeah, and where they're starting at the 100-yard, like you've run the race and you have nice clothes and if you had nutrition your whole life, good nutrition, and you've probably never seen, maybe you've seen one or two friends pass in an accident, God forbid.

And then those kids have like funeral, they call them funeral dresser drawers with funeral t-shirts, like, because so many kids have like funeral, they call them funeral dresser drawers with funeral t-shirts, like, because so many kids have passed. They're carrying all those stories with them. And it's just like, are they our family or not? Like, that's really my whole philosophy is the fundraising arm for us is called One Family

because that's our whole philosophy. Are we a family or not? Every Saint's Age in Mystica said, treat everyone like you're a family, right? Widen your circle of compassion, as Einstein said, to include all of mankind, humankind, and the whole of the natural world. This is just a neighborhood we've opened up our compassion to. Just to fill in some of the blanks here for people that don't know. Memphis Rocks is, it's this compound that you have constructed that is at its core,

a climbing gym, but it's also yoga, meditation, a juice cafe, there's programming, there's a garden. After school programs, sundry store. It's a large structure. It's like five, it's 88,000 square feet in two buildings, five acres. And this is built in South Memphis in, correct me if I'm wrong, the poorest zip code in America.

Well, it has been at times. I don't know if it currently is. It was when we were starting our work was the most violent zip code in America. So where did this idea come from? How did it occur to you that a climbing gym would be just the thing that this community needs? And then perhaps even more importantly,

like how did you get buy-in from the community being this white guy outsider? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite nickname for me was industrial strength whiteness. I love that one. Even though I'm Lebanese, you present as a certain race

and that's what you get labeled. So let's take the first part of the question. How did this happen, right? Or how did a climbing gym come to Memphis when there were no climbing gyms? First of all, it wasn't my idea to bring a climbing gym. It would have been a lot cheaper to do another basketball court or create a couple of football fields. But you were already looking to do something in that community. You just didn't know what. I fell in love with my students. I'd been there about five or six years at that time.

And we all said like, don't we have to walk this stuff we talk about in class? We can talk about what I taught later is class called storytelling in life. Don't we have to sort of walk this stuff we got in conversations about like, yeah, like why should it be concepts like that we talk about serving, you know, and all these things. So like, let's do something. So we started that conversation, things accelerated, you know, the conversation

becoming reality when things like Detroit gets killed. You remember that story I told you, Chris pointed out that story I told you about the kid killed at St. You know, on his bicycle that prompted Danny Thomas to say no more. Detroit was very likely that for us. Those things accelerated it. But why a climbing gym? I exposed them to climbing. I've fallen in love with climbing. As you said, I had lived in Boulder off and on a little bit.

And I fell in love with this thing called climbing very late in life. I was like probably 50 when I fell in love with climbing. And it was awesome. Like I always loved the mountains. I mean, my family from Lebanon, they're just mountain people, man. Like they were like literally sheep herders in the mountains.

I've been cycling in some of the mountains outside of Beirut. It's incredible country. We're from a little town called Blausa. The town next door is where Khalil Gibran was from. The great Poe was actually a very good friends, if not best friends with my uncle Nassim. My uncle Nassim was my grandfather's brother. So all that stuff is deep in me. The mountains are deep, deep in me. I go to the mountains and I just like, I hear it. I hear the voice.

And when I brought these young people to the mountains, they're like, yeah, we want that. Like, we want that. So that was a kind of a beta test. Like I'm gonna take, I'll take some of these kids from the community and take them out to this place that I love and see if it sticks for them.

We took them to the mountains in Nashville outside of Tennessee. We brought them to Colorado mountains in Nashville, outside of Tennessee. We brought them to Colorado, climbed in Colorado. And look, anybody who's been to the mountains, it's like, duh. Basketball is ubiquitous in Memphis. They can throw a nickel and hit a basketball court, but there was no such thing as that. And look, the gym, the idea of the gym is to get them outside. And by getting them outside, they remember who they are. I mean, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, later or maybe next time, if you ever dare to

dialogue again. But we just sent a group to Africa to climb the second tallest peak. It's a television show that's gonna be on Hulu and ESPN and Disney. We're still searching for a title. Maybe Ain't No Mountain, we'll see. But it was based on a film we did called Black Ice. Yeah. Conrad Anker brought him to the mountains to climb an ice climb.

And you see the film, you see their voices, like the way they speak about being in the mountains, what they feel. They can play again. They can let go again. You can't let go in South Memphis. You're on guard. You literally have kids that walk into restaurants with their backs to the wall because they've seen friends killed. So they don't want anyone behind them.

Like that's trauma, right? That's trauma. Anybody who thinks these kids are bad, please listen to Father Gregory Boyle. He just got the Medal of Freedom from President Biden. He said, I've never met a bad kid because the police were very upset at Father Greg for starting a gang rehabilitation. These gangs are killing people.

I've never met it. These kids are evil. I've never met an evil kid. He said, I've met a kid in trauma. I've met a kid who's seen murder and death and has psychological traumas and damage, but I've met a kid in trauma. I've met a kid who's seen murder and death and has psychological traumas and damage, but I've never met a bad kid. And I haven't either.

I haven't either. They all have stories. So we did a crazy thing, man. We put a climbing gym. It's a beautiful climbing gym. You haven't been, right? I still haven't been. You're coming.

Yeah. It's a fantastic facility. A top athlete like yourself will love it. It's 55,000 square feet of the state-of-the-art climbing. We popped the roof. The campus was built. It was supposed to be a town center, but no businesses would come because of the economic challenges and because of the statistics in the neighborhood. Has that changed? I think so. I mean, I haven't, you know, I haven't looked at the latest studies. I know it's changed very directly for the kids we deal with. Sure, for the people. I was just wondering if it brought in like kind of more retail or other businesses, you know, and revitalizing the neighborhood at all.

Yeah, I have this thing with fundraising, Like everybody wants to know what are the numbers? Like, and I'm like, okay, the root word of numbers is numb. Okay, so like, so that's like, let's put that out. You definitely have this word thing. I do, I tell you, it's just beginning. Like, believe me, if we talk for a little longer, you'll get tired of me. Our number is one.

The kid in front of you, the kid who just walked in the door, the kid who's never like had somebody say, no, you don't actually have to pay here. You can come in. What we'd like you to do is volunteer in the neighborhood. We'd like you to volunteer at your local church or at a fair or something,

or maybe do better in your studies or be more responsible. We want you to do something positive if we bring something positive to you. And that's sort of our way we redefine currency. I have this idea that money is one form of currency. What is it? It gives you energy, right? You've got energy. Like I have money, like I can do something. I can buy a surfboard. I can surf. There's an energy transfer. I put energy into working and I get some energy back.

Well, it's energy really. The money's not the only thing. So we ask for their energy to try to like do something positive and we open up the idea of currency to that. It's set up as a nonprofit. It's basically pay whatever you feel like paying. But within the walls of this building is a family, like there is an ecosystem that's occurring

of mentorship and learning and getting kids out of their comfort zone and exposing them to experiences that they wouldn't otherwise be able to connect with. And kind of the domino effect of that, the downstream impact of that being this living, breathing thing is changing lives on the daily.

You have these mini documentaries. If you go to the Memphis Rocks website, like you can see some of them and you're telling some of these stories, like firsthand accounts from the point of view of the people who've been impacted by this special place. There's a young man named Jumaan Johnson, who's one of the strongest leaders I've ever met.

I met him at 18, he's now 24. Jumaan was a gang member, been incarcerated a few times, I believe, armed robbery, a leader in the gang. He had gang status at 19 years old. That means that you are respected. You've done some shit to earn that status. So he was not to be messed with. His mom was our first employee. She was our janitorial staff, custodial staff. And we treated her like she was the most important person in the world because she was.

And she'd never been treated that way. How do you have a climbing gym if somebody doesn't, you know, help you clean the chalk up? And she felt something there that she'd never felt before and she brought it to Jamond. And she brought Jamond to the gym. Actually, Josh Cannon made a really, he's sitting over here,

made a really powerful film about it. It's online. And she died shortly after she introduced Mond to rocks. She dropped dead of issues that would never have happened had she had the proper healthcare, had we really cared. But Mond had a family. We were his family. And Mond is now changing lives every day.

We have this analogy about, you know, crabs, you know, pulling crabs out of buckets, right? But crabs pull you back in, but you gotta be a strong crab to pull others out. Mond is a strong crab. And he's worked with several former gang member, now former gang, well, Mond says once you leave a gang, you never leave.

You just change your ethos. So Crip to him is now community rehabilitation in progress. So he's flipped that script and he's pulling other kids out. And he said, Tom, I used to want to hurt people, but now I want to help them. I never thought kids would look up to me, but they're starting to look up to me. And that's the kind of thing we do. That's one story of one kid. And by the way, he just lost six people to gun violence

in about a week and a half, about two weeks ago, six people. I can't even imagine. Look, I'm proximate to it and I can't imagine. So it was a woman that he was starting to see, picked up a kid who had some affiliation. She's got a kid in the back seat. And what you realize in a neighborhood like this is whoever is aside you has got some energy

that may be following them. And this kid had some sort of quote, unpaid bills. I don't know what those were. I don't know what that karma was, but so she was parked at a light and they shot the car up. She died, he died. The child fortunately lived, was shot through the leg and that was three. And then there were three others. So it's very real. And the question is, oh, are these kids all bad or do they deserve, like, is that kind of the way

the modern day cancer shows up today? Being proximate to not only that kind of violence, but also the powerful changes that you are privileged to see take place in these people that come through Memphis Rocks. What have you learned about our innate capacity to make changes in our lives? I mean, Rich, you are not the same person that started this podcast. There's no cell in your body that's the same. You never visit the same riverbank twice, right?

And we are nature. So we are programmed to change. The healthy way of talking about change is evolution and life wants to evolve. And so all these kids want to evolve. They cannot wait to evolve. They just need a little bit of your love and your light to maybe provide a trip or a mentorship or a relationship

to help that evolve so that they are a riverbank that will never be the same. Chris just came back from climbing Africa, the second tallest peak. That's a riverbank that's different. He's got such a passion for the mountains. He knows what they do for people who wants to bring kids there. He has a mountain in him.

The mountain just spoke. The mountains speak to you when you're there that you know this. They say you belong. Yeah, you don't have a father, you do. I'm your father. I'm your father. I'm the mountain. I'm in you. All of this is in you, and you're in us. And they hear that. This is not woo-woo stuff. This is actual science. Like, and so that changes kids. And they then, you know, then the ripple in the pond, they change others.

Chris is Christine. You've referenced him a couple of times. He's sitting right over here. Chris has his own incredible story and he's become this, you know, really powerful, creative voice in his own right and a collaborative partner of yours. Can you share a little bit about the nature and origin of that relationship and what Chris brings to the equation? origin of that relationship and what Chris brings to the equation. Well, I met Chris one night at a prayer service, a kind of meditation service at a friend of ours, Gail Rose, whose son had died in a car accident. And Chris was very dear friends with the family. And I'd heard about this kid, Max, who passed and Gail Rose, again, as a light. And I went and I heard about Chris.

He's kind of famous. You can look him up. Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker of the Booker T. Washington High School class of 2011, the president, Barack Obama. He introduced

Obama at his high school graduation. And that's because he appeared in a documentary about the neighborhood or what is that? Yeah, yeah. How did that come to be? I mean, have him on someday. He'll tell you the story much better than me. But his subdivision, you know, Section 8 or whatever housing was being, once again, they were being pushed out, right? Oh, we need more housing. We'll take the people who've lived close

to downtown and wipe out their housing. We'll get them other housing, but primarily we'll focus on the gentrification. And he was part of telling that story. And he's also, you meet him, you're just like, oh, you should introduce Obama. So their high school won race to the top. It's in our neighborhood, Brooker T. Washington. And so they needed someone to introduce a president because Michelle Obama had a program. If your school wins our race to the top, meaning you turn certain protocols around,

Brock will speak at your high school graduation. And he introduced him, and he was funny as hell. I mean, I'm the director of A's Ventura. This dude was funny. I think his joke was because everybody, he was doing some like introduction, you know, Obama at the time was like,

I think Trump had said like, you know, he's from Kenya or whatever. He's not American. And he made a joke about that. So, well, y'all know where he's from, you know, where Brock's from. And the audience just burst out laughing. Chris, is that accurate?

Yeah, all right. That's pretty close, right? I butchered your joke. He tells it much better. I mean, come on, man. The kid is 17 or 18 years old and he's got to introduce the president and his high school graduation. If you ain't got some divine spark in you to do that, like I would have imploded. As much as I had humor in me, I wouldn't have been able to do that. He could. You know why he could? Because he'd seen, what are you going to do to Christine? He's seen so many friends pass, so many people die, so much difficulty in his neighborhood. What the hell is going to happen

to him if he doesn't do well at the speech? Like, I'll go home, figure out how I'm going to like, you know, get the next meal. So there's such a baseline, different perspective on life that comes out of these kids who have been crushed into diamonds. They just need some like – like a little wind to blow some of the soot off. So Chris and I just became like really fast family pretty much. And, you know, people like Chris and Josh were, you know, starting to come to my class a little bit. And we started a conversation like, what does your neighborhood need? Like, like he introduced me to the neighborhood. Look, I'm his showbiz mentor. He is my Memphis mentor. Like he's a Scorsese, like, and I'm a kid in film school when it comes to the neighborhood. Same with Jamond, you know, same with, um, with same with all the kids we work with.

Armani, a kid named Michael Hunt, he just changed his name. I think it's McCann, crazy story, but won't go into it. He now has a Memphis Rocks tattoo. They're my mentors, right? They're my mentors. And so we listened to them. A woman named Michelle Miller from the community now,

Beautiful Black Soul is now running our organization. And we listen and then we try to provide what they need. And what is the biggest learning lesson from that relationship? In other words, I love this idea of like, you're just blowing the dust off the diamonds. But with all your experience in South Memphis, what do we miss or not understand about the needs and the potential

of underserved communities like South Memphis? We talked about change. What changes a life more than anything is a relationship. So in our neighborhood, they hilariously call people like me or how at least I was for many years, a turkey person. You bring a turkey on Thanksgiving day and then you split. Right. They don't get close to you because they're like, they're very appreciative. Well, thank you, man. You bring food, but I know you're leaving tomorrow or you're leaving this afternoon. But when you stay and when you say, I care, and for us, that might become like become a monthly donor. That means you show up every month with $20 or

$25. You say, I care. I'm not leaving you. Like I'm going to not have that cup of coffee or whatever. I'm going to stay. And relationship changes everything. So when people ask about our numbers, I have a quiet, you know, gastric revolt inside. And I just tell them about Jamond or Armani or Michael or Brittany Asiana, or many of the lives that are different now. And because they're in relationship, they're in relationship, right? It changes things. A big theme, kind of overarching theme in I Am

is this delusion that perpetrates in our culture that we're all individuals and the incentivizations of the world that we live in kind of overemphasize the self over the community. And the narrative in the film is really this way of disabusing us of this idea, this delusion, and kind of cement upon us this idea of connection as the solution to what ails us.

Like you had this very extreme experience where you had all the power, property and prestige that one could ever imagine for oneself. And yet this journey towards wholeness was found only in your connection to something larger than yourself and a community of people that you could serve that would then benefit from your impact

and your generosity. Once again, the eulogy. Yeah, I'm just like, can you just elaborate on that a little bit? You beautifully eulogize me. I'm just like, can you just elaborate on that a little bit? You beautifully eulogize me. I'm available to do voiceover in your next movie. Yeah, I love your approach to, I've sat across from a hundred interviews

I did Oprah and Ellen, and you got a gift, man. So never knock your head. Clip that out. Did you say I'm better than Oprah at this? Just be clear. She's good. Oprah's really good.

Careful, careful. Look, I'm putting you in her class. Okay, good. Because a lot of interviewers don't listen. Literally, I heard one. My ego's so happy right now, Tom. We're gonna keep building it up. And then at the end of it,

we're gonna hug the ego and say, hey, we love you too, man. No, but you know, so many interviews are not listeners. They just kind of go where they go. And like, we love you too, man. No, but you know, so many interviews are not listeners. They just kind of go where they go. And like, you could say like, yeah, and I once saw, you know, an alien and he told me the, you know, the keys to the universe. So anyway, let's get back to the, it's like, whoa, I just said I saw an alien, you know, but you listen really well. Now, I don't listen as well. What the hell was the question again?

I have no idea. I just went on some rant and then just, I didn't ask you an actual question. No, it was about disabusing us of this idea that we are separate and that, you know, consciousness is a unifying truth of the universe and reality is that we are all one. And this call to action in the movie is for us to remember this and to honor this. And in your own path, you went on this journey of, you know,

kind of individual aggrandizement only to discover that the happiness that eluded you was gonna be found through community and connection. And Memphis rocks. And like the deep roots that you've grown in this community is, it speaks to, you speaks to that commitment. Like you're living this ideal

that like what drives happiness and a meaningful purpose-driven life fundamentally has to do with the relationships that you foster and fertilize. Yeah, literally being in touch. So look, if and when I do a podcast, I'm going to do this at some point. I've told a lot of people, but hopefully I'll make good on it. You did have a radio show at one point though, didn't you? Was that when you were in Boulder? I did a couple things. I had a thing with

SiriusXM at one point. I did a little show in Memphis, but yeah, it just wasn't time. I had so much more to learn and still do, but this is going to be everything that I talk about. This is all I want to talk about, that there is a root basic story that our culture has been telling since about the agricultural revolution that has separated us from each other and from nature. And I shouldn't even put those in two separate categories. We are nature. it's just pulled us out of touch. We've removed ourselves from the laws of life. We've tried to control nature so that we could benefit and only us could benefit regardless of what happens.

This is why the Zach Bushes have to do their work, right? Because we are just disconnected from that root source, the earth where we come from, the stars, which is in all of us, stardust, and think that we are special and separate. And Einstein said, hey, man, throw that out. That's a delusion of consciousness because it's actually all one thing when you get down to the science of it. The micro of it is like, where do you end and I begin? Pre-Einstein, you know, is substance. Post-Einstein is energy.

It's all just energy and it all works together. And even on a very, very practical level, Emerson said, if you have a thousand friends, you don't have a friend to spare. If you have one enemy, you'll see him everywhere. So if we have one person without a home, without food tonight, that person could and almost justly

rob me because I got extra. And so if I'm aware that we are one body, that I can't get away from the connection, then you live differently. Like I said, I believe show business is a service industry. I believe storytelling is a service industry. I believe show business is a service industry. I believe storytelling is a service industry. I believe podcasting is a service industry. I believe the food industry is a service industry. I believe like what industry is not a service industry? Name one. You know, like food, the feeding of the body,

this podcast, the feeding of the soul and the mind. In your case, the head. Sometimes. Sometimes. Keep going. It's all a part of a greater whole. And when you have that recognition, that recognition, and you drop into it, the reason you get, quote, happier is that's how you optimally operate. Oh, this actually feels really good that I'm running this race and the platform is bringing light to this organization, which has people that

need some love. Like suddenly it all amps up. That's not an accident. So I just want to drill down to the root, like just the root, the root. Why do we have all these things popping up? Why are we so divided? It's all one thing. That thing you just said, we are not telling ourselves that story that we are essentially a family. What did Jesus say? Hey man, everyone's your brother and sister. That's it in a nutshell. Everyone's your brother and sister, right? Even the person like that's spitting on me as I'm crucified, you know, whether you believe it as a metaphor or literal story, even that person's my brother. Hey man, I'm going to make room for you wherever the spirit's going. Like we'll be there together. Like it's all the same thing, but our culture, which is supposed to be Judeo

Christian hums on a completely different idea. We're born bad. We're separate. You got to get yours. Then maybe you give some back. It's why the light is gone from our kids' eyes. It's why the light went out of the youth. Like so many of the authors have written about it. Emerson wrote about it in his American scholar speech. It's just like they die of suicides back in his day because they see the way the principles upon which businesses are built. They're like, ah, I'd rather kill myself. It's a despairing thought. I mean, that was beautifully put to throw it back to you. That was quite a monologue. I wanted to throw you into despair. It's my whole goal. That was quite amazing.

But in reflecting upon that, it is true that the very fabric of our society is constructed upon the elevation of the individual. Every incentive structure is about me and me getting mine. It's competitive, it's a zero sum game. If he gets it, then I don't get it. And not for nothing, perhaps the United States is the worst because of its overemphasis on individual liberties without enough attention or investment in its counterpart, which is our responsibility to the collective whole.

Like you don't get individual liberty without the other. And we spent a lot of time talking about individual liberty and what I get to do, and you can't tell me what I can't do and blah, blah, blah, without barely any address of the responsibility piece. Even our own kind of personal spiritual journeys are couched in the context of the individual. It's self-transcendence.

You know, there's a conundrum in that. Like from a Buddhist point of view, the best way to impact the world positively is to focus on your own spiritual growth. And I believe that to be true, like the power of the individual to make change is inherently the product of our resolve to look inward and heal ourselves and become self-actualized,

but it's still the self, right? Like where is the thought and the consideration and the investment and the contemplation of the community over the priorities of the self. There's a lot there, dude. So Emerson wrote an essay called Self-Reliance and everybody misunderstands the essay. It's all about the individual.

By the way, I love the individual. I love you. You're this individual, incredible thing, like doing a podcast and come out of addiction and have an incredible partner in Julie. And like, you're doing amazing. I love the individual. But to what end is that individual? Is it all about Rich?

Like, is it all about your little pod, right? To what end, right? So Emerson's self-reliance talked about that rich. There's a note in you, play that note, play it really strongly, play it beautifully. Don't listen to people saying you can't, you can't, right? But it was never with a small S. It was always a capital S

because rich role cannot, the individual cannot be disconnected from that larger self, which created rich role. So that's why life exists in the belly of a paradox. There is this individual, and we want that individual to express himself, herself, themselves. We want that expression. It's beautiful. We want competition. I want to know how good Ant Edwards is now in the playoffs. He's incredible. Like, is he like, you know, like up with the greats? Wow. Like we want to know that, but to what end? To the winner belongs the spoils was never a part of

competition. Competition was from the word competer, which means to strive with, but it is only a toxic story that says, no, it's all about you and you alone. You are separate. Pull yourself out of nature, conquer nature, conquer the earth, tell things where to grow, tell things what to do. Don't live in concert with it. It's about you, you, you, you, you. And how's it working out for us? Right? We've only been around a couple million years.

Life has been around a lot longer than that. It's doing its thing. Will we stick around? I'm very optimistic we will, but this idea has got to continue to rise up. You've been doing it for years on your podcast. It is not just about the individual. It is about both. You should have a podcast.

I think you and I are gonna talk about it later. Beautiful monologue number two. Yeah, wow, that's powerful. That actually gave me quite a bit to think about. Your reference to nature in I Am, the point is made that nature's never in a hurry and nature never uses anything more than it actually needs. And we're the only species

that kind of violates this natural rule. And when nature takes more than it needs, quote unquote, like a kudzu vine or a cancer, the body- It becomes a cancer, it revolts and ultimately perishes. Right. Because diversity is strength, right? And the first freeze kills the kudzu. If it's spread so wide and there's no other life to continue life, same thing with cancer. And it's fear. My most basic understanding of a cancer cell is it loses communication with the body. Again, forgive me. I know people will write in

and say that kid knows nothing and they'd be right. But my understanding is that it loses communication. And so in fear, it just thinks, okay, we got to live and doesn't realize it's killing itself. And that's what we're doing now. We're just not aware. Nobody's bad. Nobody's out there doing this because they're bad people. Like they think like, okay, we're this way. This is who we are. And we got to live this way. And I got to take care of me and like, and my family and like, and all that's true.

And it's also true that your family's much bigger than you think. Every kid, your kid is going to interact with is, we got a little bit of that responsibility in us to be there for them as well. You mentioned that you're optimistic. So short of major systemic change, can the cancer be curbed? Like, do you remain like sanguine about the idea that with our own kind of individual agency and our power to affect the whole through the ripple effects of how we comport ourselves, that we can manage this cancerous situation and heal.

That sounds really complex. I'm just gonna say this, I don't mind what happens. Something really brilliant put us here that we cannot define. We cannot wrap our limited concepts around, but it's really brilliant. I spell random R-A-N-D-U-M-B, another word. Back to the word thing. Back to the word. I mean, I just can't help but reflect everything in my life as an artist is about some form of intelligence behind a design. Jim designed his act. You know, Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy designs his characters.

I helped to design these movies. Someone designed the studio. Oh, but it doesn't, it does not about us. Everything's random. Now there's some intelligence that like, okay, it's like the mystic says all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Like, I'm gonna like trust and work as hard as I can for that more loving world in every way that I can. But if we're meant to be like a evolutionary cul-de-sac,

that's just what it'll be. There's a faith piece to that. There's a humility piece to that. There's a mental illness piece to that. Maybe, you know, there's an optimism. There's optimism within the neutrality, I guess. Well, here's what changed me. Like there's a bunch of different ways to read, okay? Thomas Merton said there's really two basic ways to read. Let me reframe. Two basic ways to read. One is to read everything. And another is to read

like a trunk of books and become those books. And that's kind of what happened to me. I read like a bucket of books, and I hope in some ways I am embodying and becoming those books. What were the most formative ones? Rainer Maria Rilke, the poets, the mystics, Rumi, Hafez, Mira, Kabir, Walt Whitman,

Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, who became a dear friend, bestselling poet in America. Well, you look across space and time and you're like, you look across time, not space, but time. And you're like, oh, they all said the same thing. Heraclitus was saying all things are one, like back in Greek times, like ancient Greek times, like the ancient indigenous populations said the same wisdom teachings that Emerson said out of an industrialized world that was growing into machinery. They all say the same thing. So either they're all nuts or they're tapping into that heart source, that organ of spiritual perception that we've cut ourselves off from.

And something in me that I cannot explain, thankfully, says, yes. My whole being, my cells literally jump and say, yes, yes, yes. And it doesn't eliminate anything. it doesn't eliminate our creativity tools like ai our toys it doesn't eliminate our design our homes it's just the intention with which we move forward with these ideas i have one for intention but i won't do it now because i feel like you're at your top with my words no it's good i'm trying to get out of the way here i'll do it now because I feel like you're at your top with my words. No, it's good. I'm trying to get out of the way here.

I'll do it next time, intention. But what is that saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I do not believe that at all. It's not my saying at all. So, but I'll tell you now, intention means something different than we give it. Intention, like you may have an intention

before the podcast, right? And we think intentions are just all about creating peace and awareness, but no, the word intention means to be intention, right? In-tension. So when I create an intention that I want to grow, that I want to be more of myself, I am necessarily putting myself in uncomfortable situations because how else can I grow but to face the, forgive me the shit, so that I can use that as a manure, if you will, to grow, right? I am putting myself in tension. And so it's the intention with which we move these businesses. Like people think I'm anti-AI. I'm just like, timeout. This is a tool that is a thousand times smarter than us. And if you write the story that we've written our culture with,

overlay it on that tool, we're in trouble. Which is, it's gonna be a me, it's gonna be about me and my company and you all will get all this great stuff with AI and it'll be really smart, but I own it and I'm not gonna, like, I'm gonna be the next elite. And if it's that intention, we gotta watch out. That thing was created with that intention.

I wanna be the most efficient. Well, AI may say, hey, by the way, I'm a thousand times smarter than you. I also wanna be efficient. Guess who's not efficient? You guys, right? You're not efficient. Well, I programmed you not to be able to do anything.

I know, but I'm a thousand times smarter than you, right? Like you couldn you not to be able to do anything i know but i'm a thousand times smarter than you right like you couldn't think about what i could do guess what i can do i don't even know what it is but like i'm a storyteller like i'm like yeah man yeah welcome to no it's getting crazy and then i mean you just think of you know the history of open ai it's called open AI. It was meant to be this open source thing so that we could kind of sidestep and avoid this very conundrum. But, of course, it's not open. And it's now, you know, controlled by, you know, a select group of people with shareholder interests and the like.

And it's just like any other corporation. The story is underwriting almost all of our major tech companies and it's why tech, it does a tremendous amount of good in connection, but it's doing a heck of a job at dividing us. It's doing a heck of a job at going after the algorithm that says, oh, I know how to get to your most base self

and I know you'll act on that. And as long as you write that undergirding story, which is, it's about me, so I gotta get my shit. Like, as long as- That was a thought that I had when I was rewatching I Am because that movie was made in 2010. Right, free. Yeah, and now, you know, it feels almost quaint, you know, in sort of its reflection

on the world's problems at the time compared to what we're confronted with now. But again, it goes back to your, like I asked you about your optimism or how those principles kind of hold up in such a rapidly changing world. Those principles are eternal. So the same principle that animated that native tribe

millennia ago is the same principle that can animate us today. And what may be quaint because we don't have in the movie represented the problems that have been created, you have the principle in the movie, whether I expressed it well or not, I don't want to judge, but the principle is never going to change. Like until you recognize, never gonna change. Like until you recognize, recognize,

rethink this idea that everything is separate, this idea that you all don't affect each other, that the ripple, the science of the ripple, it sends a ripple out into infinity. It just goes, right? And until we recognize that,

we will continue to create these issues and put all our attentions on symptoms. The symptom, which we need to do, we need to find healthier diets, healthier outcomes, and we need to find healthier structures and organizations. But what is causing all this stuff? Like, what is it? What story?

Uval Harari is now like really on the march with his brilliant take on history, which is these are stories. The question is, is it true or how's it working out for you? How's this story working out for you? Yeah, the kind of intractable problem of over-identification with self is such a difficult one to untangle

when all the incentives of our culture kind of drive our behavior towards that. And we can listen to podcasts and read books and we can be, you know, informed that this is not the way to happiness and meaning and purpose. And yet we'll still think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But like, if I can just get around the bend and get that other thing, then like my problems will go away and I'll be happy. And I won't have to deal with whatever I'm dealing with right now. And it's really hard to kind of disabuse yourself

of that delusion. I would say, keep going, see how it works out for you. You'll get that thing, you'll be flying privately and the jet will be empty. Like you'll have a mansion and there'll be no community in that mansion. And again, I have no judgment about any of this stuff. Just do that thing.

And then maybe if you feel like it, one day come to Memphis Rocks and just meet some kids you might never have met before and see how that feels. And climb with a kid. And maybe then, you know, take them to our juice bar. It's called Juice Almighty, by the way, after Bruce Almighty. They named it brilliantly. Zach Rogers named it. And see how that feels.

And build your life around those things that feel awesome. Build your life around those things that feel awesome. I'm here to say that this feels awesome. And like you said, it's really hard and I wouldn't want it any other way. What great thing has ever happened by just like, oh, this is so easy. Like, so easy. Like, I mean, look at the way a butterfly is born, man.

That is some painful shit. Like, look at the way a human is born. Like, you know, there's a reason it's in like blood and muck and mess and like, it's tough, but it's without. Look, man, it's the way it works, right? The depth of the valley and the height of the peak are, they're hand in hand. So if you don't have those things that the shadow, you have no light.

And so it's just in the whole fricking design. Like- Yeah, the shadow can become the superpower when you develop the capacity to claw your way out of it. I look at shadow as something to be loved. Like, you know, we have this thing called shadow boxing. I don't want to box with my shadow. I want to like dance with it.

Like, I want to love it up. Like, yeah, I hear you. Like, there you are, ego again. I just, I'm going to walk on hopefully a movie set really soon. Like, there I am again. Like, I am the most important person here. And I can say to my shadow, oh, you're still here, aren't you? Yeah.

Okay. Now you miss me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, look, let's, come on, come on, come with me. We're gonna do this together. But, you know, I've got a little bit of a different attitude. Stay on my shoulder, but I still love you.

But I actually think all these people are as important as I am on this movie set. Beautiful. When someone comes to you, as I actually think all these people are as important as I am on this movie set. Beautiful. When someone comes to you, as I'm sure they do, and say to you, I love your message, Tom. I hear these things about meaning and purpose and happiness. And I just don't know how to connect the dots. Like my life's okay, but I know that it could be better.

I could live with more gratitude and more love and more community. Like, how do you counsel that person to connect more with these things that are so fundamental to feeling self-actualized? Well, the first thing that I do, and it's really hard for me, I see some podcasts and other um shows

do like questions from people they'll write in questions and then you give an answer i can't do that like i i just i there's too many questions i have for that person you know if i ever do this podcast i the segment i want to do is called questions and antlers because antlers are something we shed, you know, I'll give you a perspective and then maybe we'll shed it in a year because you'll have gone through something and I'll have gone through something. But I need to ask that person a lot about their life before I go ahead and shooting on them, you know, like, so that's one thing. But overall, the first thing I would wanna tell a person is, first of all, the fact that you are asking me that question

means I have zero worries about you. I am not concerned about you at all. The fact that you're asking that question means, as the poet said, that where you are right now, God circled on a map just for you. You're already open, you're aware that maybe there's a fuller way for you to experience life and to use your talents. Fantastic. Take the pressure off to do that.

Don't look for your purpose. I think this is a great poison, by the way. Danny Thomas said something, and I'm so inspired by him, but I don't necessarily agree with what he said, which is when he did found St. Jude, he said, now I know why I was born. Now I know my purpose. And I'm like, oh, so you weren't born to birth the beautiful producer, Tony Thomas, your son, who's done so much good in the world on his own.

You weren't here to birth Marlo and you weren't here to inspire a young Lebanese who had no idea that there was a path for an Arab American in Chauvin. No, it's all like, it's all like greeting your staff today. Like that is no lesser purpose than me doing the next big film. So just go gentle with yourself. And then what is the thing that's drawing your heart?

Like, what is it? Like, take a step in that direction. The great philosophy of, like, the simpleton is, how's it working out for you? Yeah. So try that thing, man. Like, I can't wait to try, like, hydrofoil surfing. I just know something in me needs some new form of, like,

what else can, like, be really, like, freaking wild and, like, get my cells my cells like all jacked up. And I can't wait to try hydrofoil surfing. I may hate it. Like I may hate it, I doubt it, but you do it. Like you do these things, like it's all an experiment, man. That's why Gandhi's autobiography was my experiments with truth.

And I wish we could look at our lives that way because we would remove the judgment. No scientist ever judges the experiment, right? We're gonna try, we're gonna put a culture here. We're gonna add a little bit of this over here. And then, oh, look at that. What a terrible group of mitochondria over here, whatever. No, we just say, oh, that like created fungus

and that's like a clean environment. And that's like life, like just like, cause like, just like live. And then how's it working out for me? Do I have more love in my life? Do I wake up in the morning and able to move with electricity and you know, this effusive spirit, or do I wake up going, ah, shit. You know, and, and believe me, it's not to say that there aren't places for like, oh, this is difficult, but there's that thing at the end of the difficulty, I get to tell this story. I get to be in support of Chris, Josh, Jamond.

I get to be in support. So yeah, I'm gonna go to that doggone fundraiser where I have to look at people and go, what are your numbers? And I say, my number is one. And they go, well, I'm sorry. There's another, you know, thing down the street. Their number is one. And they go, well, I'm sorry. There's another thing down the street. Their number is three.

This is my saying. I put the F you in fundraising. I'm not a great fundraiser. My brother's a much better fundraiser. Can't you like recruit him over for a short stint? He actually can't wait to be helpful. Oh, good. He gives me so much advice,

but it's literally like telling a fish like to climb a tree. Like, Rick, I tell stories like, no, but here's what you need to do. And I'm like, can you come be the fish and I'll be the tree climber? We've got a really good group. How much do you need to raise? How much money do you need to get this all sorted out? Well, whatever you'll give us, we'll spend. I mean, we literally are growing into a movie studio. We're going to do basically the first major- That's the other piece we didn't even talk about, which is you're training all these young filmmakers also. Well, they're right over there. Chris and Josh and others. Look, storytelling is part of who we are, right? We tell stories in order to live. That's Joan Didion. We need to tell stories because otherwise

we do sit there and judge each other. Well, why are you an alcoholic and why don't you go to rehab? But you say, I'm going to tell you a story about a guy named Rich Roll and Rich was an alcoholic. And then you tell Rich's story and you see yourself in that story. And so these people have stories and they want to be connected to stories, whether they tell their own stories or they help us to tell different stories that are animating our culture. And it's really integral. And that's what we're growing into. We've got seven acres behind us. We have a great gentleman named Staley Cates. You will hate that I said his name on the show because he listens to you. Yeah. By the way, he wrote a letter to you. Yeah, I know. He wrote a letter to you for me to give you because I've been helping to teach a class

that he's a part of in Memphis. And he, for some reason, connects with my voice and he wants me to do a podcast really bad. That's cool. But he's insanely generous. Love to stay late. He's also been a huge support to Julie. Yeah, well, he helped to create Crosstown

where Sri Moo is. The fact that you're there again, it's design, right? One second about Julie, helped to create Crosstown where Srimu is. The fact that you're there again is, it's design, right? One second about Julie, like I know she's been on the show so many times, so everybody probably knows Julie, but like I've never met somebody so in the stratosphere and so on the earth.

Yeah. Like, so when she says like, oh, I just visited, you know, planet, you know, electron, and you know, like, oh, that's awesome. Like, and you think, well, oh, I just visited, you know, planet, you know, electron and you're like, oh, that's awesome. Like, and you think, well, maybe she's like a little out there. Then she grounds you with the most incredibly profound wisdom statement that you put on your refrigerator for the next 20 years. And like, well, I think that lady, if she can give me that, I think maybe she went to planet electron.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm married to her. You. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you live this. I'm married to her. Okay. You live this. Yes, I live this. She's sitting right over here. True?

Yeah. Much love. I'm surprised she's still here in that interplanetary. Are you kidding? She couldn't wait to see you and to experience this. And I feel like I need to revisit my Emerson and get back into that. Emerson, listen, Mary Oliver was my mentor in a lot of ways when she was alive. I was blessed to

be a friend. Her poetry mentored me. When I sat down with her and had my first conversation, she said, are you reading Emerson? I said, I've just been reading it for years. Everything's underlined and dog-eared. And she said, that's enough. Em it for years. Everything's underlined and dog-eared. And she said, that's enough. Emerson's enough. He's enough. And, you know, of course you want to read Rumi because she does. And of course you want to read these others.

But there's a ton there. It's just, it's hard getting through it. The language is a little different. And you've got to dig and dig and dig. Recompensation. the essay compensation. Like his main essays are like the oversoul compensation, natural laws, self-reliance, and spiritual laws. But there's something about compensation.

And this is what he says in compensation. This is the thing about AI. The mistake of the human endeavor, one of. The mistake of the human endeavor, one of the greatest mistakes of the human endeavor is to try to extract, see if I can get this right, the sensual sweet from the moral deep. So we try to get half of something without the other half. So we try, for example, well, he says, the human species never advances because as soon as it advances on one side, it recedes on the other. There's only one thing

that advances us. Guess what it is? It's this idea of embracing this idea of love because love is actually a force and love is how you advance because when you love your crew you are saying i am i am a part of this whole body that's essentially it's an attraction we're all like in this together and that's the only thing that truly advances us because that is a reflection of the soul which brought us here so why does this society always advance um in one way and then recede on another well we we got the use of uh the coach he says, or the horse and buggy, but we lost use of our feet, right? Now we have Google Maps, but we can't read the stars anymore, right? We have people to grow our food.

We used to do that or be in touch with hunting and gathering. We don't do that anymore. So we don't know a damn thing about our soil. And so we advance and we recede. damn thing about our soil. And so we advance and we recede. So what AI, for example, doesn't realize, I think, that it's doing is it's doing this again. It's going to, just like the internet, it's going to be all awesome. That's the sensual suite. It's going to be awesome. It's just going to be awesome. Look at early 1994 when they were talking about the internet.

Nobody said it might be a way to divide us and our shadows might show up online and the things that we need to heal may be projected out. What is a movie screen, by the way? It's a projector, right? We're projecting. We project out. So, we never said a word about that because it was just, we severed the sensual sweet from the moral deep. Are these things actually going to be used to further all of us, or is there going to be an undergirding idea that it's going to create a class of elite that now separate themselves out and maybe give us a pittance here and there is a little bit here and there. Guess what it was, right? Right. So we couldn't sever the sensual suite from the moral deep. They always go together. And so when we think holistically integrity again,

we take the moral deep and we say, it is absolutely inseparable from the sensual suite. We got a new technology, but how is that going to be used in every level for the good of all? That's something that we will recover at some point, whether it's through the loss of so much life that those of us who remain say it's got to be different.

That's the Gaia philosophy. Seven billion will go and one billion will remain. And if you lose seven out of eight friends, you're going to change. I don't believe it's going to be that. I just think the soul has got something different in mind for us. And look, man, it's fun when you do it together.

It's just more fun. Well, time will tell, but time is accelerating with respect to these existential problems that we're facing. I feel like on some level, we're having that conversation around AI, but it's pulled out of the station so far already

that it feels impossible to rein back in and really get to the root of like that, you know, that binary that you just spoke of. So who knows, man? When you say binary, meaning? Like the moral deep and the, what did you call it? The central suite. The central suite. Yeah, but it's not a binary.

I want you to know it's one. They go together. It's not binary. It's one. So it's not separable, right? That's the illusion. Right. It's not a binary.

It's not a binary. You can't have an up without a down, right? Again, read compensation. You can't have an in without an out. I'm going to read that tonight. It's a mother, man, you're gonna have to read it a few hundred times. At least you won't, your mind will grab it.

I have to wonder, there's an interesting sort of parallel between this journey that you've been on and from what I can gather just as an outsider looking in at some of the things that Jim Carrey has been kind of grappling with in his own life. Like he's gone on his own kind of like spiritual journey. Are you guys still connected? Do you talk about these things?

I reached out to Jim recently. We've connected, but we're a little bit in same kind of intention, different paths. But the first day I met Jim, we talked about this. Bruce Almighty was But the first day I met Jim, we talked about this. Bruce Almighty was born the first day I met Jim because he came out of a Judeo-Christian background. We talked about God. His initials are JC.

You know, his joke was, I knew it was either gonna be Johnny Carson or Jesus Christ. And so we talked about it from day one. So none of this stuff would not be in a conversation with Jim. We had been on too many trips to count where we went on motorcycle rides or into nature. And this is what we talk about. I mean, we didn't do Bruce Almighty because it was a really great idea, which it was. We did it intentionally intentionally, we went to a retreat in desert, we did a sweat lodge, we said, can we be voices for this? Like, can we actually,

it's a lot to say, I'm going to put words in the mouth of a God figure, like, you know, like, let us know, like, we don't want to do this. And so there's always been a real intentionality. Jim is a super deep guy. Like he's just, I mean, you know, the Quran, he deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh. Like laughter is like, laughter is a reminder of that child. Like it really is like maybe the original intention of the universe, just like approach it all like a child. And Jim has that rooted so deeply in him.

Well, maybe there will be a day where the universe conspires for you guys to get back together and make something. Hey man, Jim, if you're out there, Ace 3, I've got a really good idea. I don't mind saying it. Ace saves the human race. It'll be the last Ace. And Ryan Reynolds, this is a shout out to you.

I want you to play Jim Carrey's son. He's passing the torch on. His neck can no longer do this. Like he's just, he's a shell of himself. We actually have a story and who knows? Like Jim is painting. He's unfortunately too much talent in one body because he's a brilliant painter.

Well, I'd like to see that happen. That would be cool. And you heard it here first. Yeah. Anybody out there listening, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's suddenly like when I see he saves the human race by like somebody, well, at least it'll be born. You can't do Ace without Jim. That would be my- No, of course not. No way. They tried once. They did a young Ace without Jim. And I'm like, please. Yeah. All right, we gotta wrap this up, but I do wanna end it with one final thread to pull, which is, you know, the title of the documentary is I Am. And, you know, obviously the kind of question

that we all ask ourselves is, who am I? So in your own experience of grappling with those larger truths about yourself and your place in the universe? Like, how do you think about and answer that? Yeah, so it was either that question or what's the meaning of life and then we'll- Yeah, we gotta wrap it up, so keep it quick.

Okay, I am a hole in a flute that the divine breath moves through. Hafez, Hafez. So he said it better than me. I might as well. That's my hope. I wanna be a hole in a flute and an instrument of divine breath to move through.

How about you? The I am question for Rich Roll. Yeah. Well, I certainly don't have such a eloquent and profound answer to that. I think- Well, I stole it, so- Yeah, I mean, I think I'm a spiritual being having a human experience

and learning and failing along the way and trying to give back what I discover along the way for the benefit of others. Beautiful. Fantastic. Yeah, now how do you feel? Feel good? Do we do it?

I think it did us. I think so, right. If people wanna support Memphis Rocks, what's the best way for them to learn more about it and show up for you? Well, we have a website, memphisrocks.org. What we really need are monthly donors to sustain us. If you can give, I think it's $20 a month

is what we're now asking for. I mean, if you can get $5 a month, just that consistency and showing up, even though you can't show up bodily, if you can show up with just some energy, that would help us tremendously. You can go online and make a contribution there. Again, there's a number of media sources you can go to, and I hope you'll all tune into this series. It's going to be really powerful.

I saw some footage. They're the best documentary filmmakers of this genre. They've made so many great films, which are now escaping me, but Sender Films. Sender Films, yeah. Sender Films is making this. Do you have a release date? I believe in November, Chris, right?

November, December. Hulu? Hulu. Yeah, Hulu, through that whole Disney bundle. Again, you'll meet some people that will surprise you. And it'll be as good as any adventure doc. We had someone like lose consciousness on the mountain, very close to something very dark happening.

We have characters that you've never met before that are brilliant. And I promise you, I'm a storyteller. I wish I could tell a story this well. It'll be something. Beautiful. So look for it. It's gonna be on November, December.

All right, man. Well, come back sometime. We can go two more hours on intention. Intention. Or whatever else you wanna talk about. I got a whole bunch more to annoy you. Okay. Thank you, brother. That was beautiful. Or whatever else you want to talk about. I got a whole bunch more to annoy you. Okay.

Thank you, brother. That was beautiful. Brother, thank you, man. I appreciate you very much. I'm right back at you, man. This episode was brought to you by Seed. Visit seed.com slash richroll and use the code richroll25 to redeem 25% off your first month of Seed to DS01 Daily Symbiotic. We're brought to you today by On. Visit on.com slash richroll and use code richroll10 at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com,

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