The Rich Roll Podcast - Your Life Is Now: Mike Posner On Walking America, Summiting Everest & Crafting Hit Music

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

The core of every hero’s journey is a desire to step into the unknown, seek adventure, and above all, embrace metamorphosis. For Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Mike Posner, that meant trading the comforts of Hollywood for a Mount Everest base camp—and ditching the tour bus to instead walk across America. Let me explain. After skyrocketing to fame following the release of his debut song Cooler Than Me, Mike built a career writing infectious pop meditations (that have accrued billions of streams) for some of music’s biggest stars—people like Justin Beiber, Pharrell, Maroon 5, Tom Morello, Snoop Dogg, Nick Jonas, and Avicii. As follows, he also built a life on womanizing, partying, money, and fame. In our last exchange back in 2019, Mike and I discussed his moment of awakening—the events that led him to give away all his possessions, buy a van, and live more simply. But much has changed for Mike since we last sat down. Over the last two-plus years, he’s walked 2000+ miles across America and followed it up this past year by summiting Mt. Everest, racking up a depth of experience-based wisdom along the way. Mike moves through the world with such a beautiful, heart-centered perspective. I appreciate the way in which he wears his heart on his sleeve, his ability to lean into vulnerability, and the manner in which he confronts struggle with curiosity. Today’s exchange is centered on his quest for meaning and authenticity. It’s about channeling pain into art, grief into gratitude, and above all, redefining yourself and self-imposed limits. Note: Mike was kind enough to perform a few songs live in our studio, so please stick around to the very end, as he takes us out with a performance you will not want to miss. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. I’m proud to help share my friend’s experience, wisdom, and infectious hope. It’s truly magical, and my hope is that you find it as moving as I did. Peace + Plants, Rich

Everest was so dangerous, so real, like death, so close that the looking cool ceased to be something that was pulling me up word on the mountain. It became something that was pulling me down. It was like, Hey man, if that's the reason right here, you should turn around, you know? And it was just, the only thing that had pulled me up was that commitment, man. But it's hard to do anything you know you walk from where I'm sitting to your sitting I would be breathing like this like it's I mean I just I can't explain the altitude how bad it made me feel and it hits different people differently and that was another part of my journey I go in the tent one night at camp two

with John John and I are in our tent and I hear one of those rumbles it stops for a second and then all of a sudden our tent starts to shake like from all angles it feels like we're about to be picked up blown off the mountain a hole rips in our tent. Snow's hitting me in the face, filling up my sleeping bag. I'm screaming, John, John, John, avalanche, avalanche. I'm like, I'm sure in that moment I'm dead at camp two. The avalanche is hitting our tent. And then right when I'm screaming, it just freaking stopped. And I'm like looking at my hands.

They're still shaking. And I'm like, how am I alive? What happened? The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. My name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast. Welcome to The Thing.

My guest today, returning for his second appearance on the show, his first being back in March of 2019, which was, by the way, an absolute barn burner and audience favorite, is multi-platinum artist, musician, and now adventure athlete, Mike Posner. Mike is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter known for his infectious pop meditations on grief, on loss, celebrity, art, and growth, which have accrued in total billions of streams over the course of a career that also includes writing songs for and with

some of music's biggest stars, including people like Justin Bieber, Pharrell, Maroon 5, Tom Morello, Snoop Dogg, Nick Jonas, and of course, Avicii. However, much has changed for Mike since we last sat down. Over the last two plus years, Mike literally walked 2000 miles across America and he followed it up this past year by summiting Mount Everest, racking up a depth of wisdom along the way that he is here today to share. Mike is an old soul. He is a deep and truly beautiful human. This conversation,

much like our first is absolutely stellar for reasons too many to mention, and it's all coming up, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources

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find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling

addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery.com.

Okay, Mr. Mike Posner. You know, this guy, he's got such a beautiful heart-centered perspective and the way in which he wears his heart on his sleeve, his ability to lean into vulnerability, the way in which he confronts grief and struggle with gratitude and curiosity, and this quest that he is on for deeper meaning and authenticity and how he takes all of this

and channels all of it into his art and his life, I find to be very personally, deeply inspiring, and just a long way of saying that all of you guys are in for a treat today. Mike was kind enough to perform a few songs after the podcast. So please be sure to stick around at the very end for a live performance.

You're not gonna wanna miss. And I think that's about all I wanna say. I'm just proud to help share Mike's experience, his wisdom and his hope. And I think you'll find it moving as I did. So without further delay, this is me and Mike Posner. Somebody told me God is simply what we don't know. I saw a butterfly, it was dead, but it was gorgeous.

And all the robots are just walking down the sidewalk Well, it's good to see you, man. I appreciate you coming in to do this. Like we said a minute ago, so much has happened in your life since the last time we sat down and chatted. I feel oddly like very connected to you, even though we don't talk. Like it was when you came in, I was like, oh yeah, I just saw him last week. Or, you know, I don't know what that, what that is. There's some intangible thing, but I think you just make people feel very comfortable and at ease. Thank you. I feel, you know, strange because I feel the exact same way about you. I

feel comfortable around you and And you're right. Even though it's been a few years, I've felt connected to you. So maybe we were just like reflecting back the good parts of each other. Or either that or there's some past life thing going on. I don't know. We were brothers.

Woo! And the last time we did this show, I mean, the audience really loved it. I mean, you're definitely an audience favorite. So I think people are going to be really happy to see your face again. Hey, I'm happy to be here. Before we get into any of this stuff, there's so much catching up we have to do. The first thing that I have to comment on is I know that you and NQ recently went

and spent some time with our mutual friend, Doug Evans out in the desert. That is like growing compound out there. And you left that experience like this new sprouting evangelist, like you're making videos about sprouting. I mean, Doug has that effect on people. Yeah, yeah, Doug's one,

I could call him one of my best friends. I talked to that guy a lot. He's an unbelievable human being. And so I was already sprouting a little bit. But it's really, I spent some time with my family. I told you I have a house in Michigan. And when I'm there, I spend time with all the levels of my family, from like the babies to the elders and we got a

pretty strong late onset alzheimer's thing going on i've done my 23 me i got both of those genes from both my mom and my dad so um i really want to start taking that serious you know to do whatever i can and not get that so the growing the sprouts at home is it's been awesome it's been fun i'm eating like upwards of four ounces of sprouts a day which is basically like an entire mason jar full and uh it's great i do a staggered system so i have eight jars like when i first started doing it i just start all eight at once then i had like hr and then i did that too and i had so many sprouts i couldn't there's no way i could possibly eat all of them so now what i do i start a new one each day so always there's one that's like a

perfectly like ripe it's still growing and then it goes i mean there's nothing better you know like you can buy sprouts from the store and they're still really good for you, but they've probably been there a day or two. These are like alive still. And then they're, they're going in the body. So yeah, the sprouts is, is awesome, man. And I've really started to dial in, you know, like I always had my macros, right? I was never eating a lot of sugar or like high carbs or anything like that. But just, you know, dialing in like, where's this stuff coming from? Is there like poisonous toxins in there or but just you know dialing in like where's this stuff coming from is there like poisonous toxins in there or not you know and going to the farmer's market more and just start taking more serious uh because you know i don't want to get alzheimer's yeah yeah yeah i feel you man i got some of that in my family as well but you spend time with doug and it's not going to be long before you're like a hundred percent fully raw vegan. That's right. That's right. You know, he has such an infectious energy and you just want to follow his lead because he has so much enthusiasm for these lifestyle habits.

He's so passionate about it and you can't help, but like, you know, sort of absorb all of that energy. And you sat in the tubs that he's got out there and everything. know, sort of absorb all of that energy. I agree. And you sat in the tubs that he's got out there and everything. Well, he's got all these great hot springs there. Mm-hmm. But you know, I got the opportunity to spend some time with Wim Hof.

I said, Doug, you gotta get some ice, get some ice baths out here, man. So we were working on that. He doesn't have the ice baths going on yet? No, he will. Yeah, he will. I'm sure he will. I know you spent time with Wim.

We're going to talk about that. First of all, man, you look great. You look healthy. Thank you. It's the sprouts, man. It's the sprouts. That's what it is. And then you share these recipes on like TikTok and Instagram. Yeah, I do this.

So the Posner sprout recipe, take some broccoli sprouts, drizzle it with hemp seed oil, himalayan sea salt and nutritional yeast and that's it you just eat it straight dude it's great man i know i'm you're right doug has infected me so like anytime artists come over to work in the studio I'm always like giving them sprouts right like hesitantly like putting in their mouth and they're like this is all like I could eat this all day and I'm like buying them a sprout kid it's great this is the real bud yeah yeah so funny yeah um you're back in LA welcome back to town thank you I know you've been collaborating and back in the studio and making music but when we last talked it was right on the precipice of you uh beginning your walk across

america so let's like traverse that experience first great um yeah after we spoke i uh was getting ready to go and i i actually got injured before I even started. I walked into, I can't remember if this is right after we spoke or right before, but I had the date set March 1st, 2019. I was going to start at Asbury Park, New Jersey. I posted on Instagram, people are going to come. It's going to be this beautiful thing. And I was outside at this pool party.

Everyone is drinking and stuff. I'm not. I'm focused because I'm getting ready to walk across America in a month. And I go inside to get water. And I walk into the leg of a table. And I break my pinky toe. And I had a stress reaction on my second metatarsal. So it was like I went to the doctor. And he's he's like man if you want any shot of completing this like you got to let this heal

and it's like okay so before i even go before i even take my first step is a reason for me to quit right obstacle number one yeah and it's just like okay there's to be a lot, many more of these. And I let the thing heal. And I show up off the coast of New Jersey, Asbury Park, and I got two feet in the ocean. The saltwater waves are crashing over me. And to be honest, I'm scared because I told everybody that I'm going to walk across America. And it's 2,800 miles, we think, the route that we've picked. I just have no idea if I can actually do it.

I have a belief inside me, but I don't really know for sure. There's no way to like really know. There's no way to like fully prepare. You can't do like half the, you know what I mean? But that's true of tackling anything hard. Of course. You wanna know exactly how it's gonna play out.

You wanna know what steps you're gonna have to take. You wanna be able to foresee every obstacle and how you're going to meet it and it just doesn't work that way no so with all this anxiety and uncertainty i stand with the in the ocean and i take my first step and step one is take one step right step one is take one step and i keep walking i walk across the lush fields in new jersey i walk across coal country in pennsylvania where i share the road with amish buggies um i see a double rainbow in ohio i start to develop like horrible plantar fasciitis which i'm sure you're no stranger to and like i wake up in the morning and I can barely stand up,

but I keep going anyways. I walk across Indiana, Illinois. I walk into Missouri during a heat wave where the weatherman's on TV saying, stay inside. I'm like, screw it, I'm going to walk 24. I'm walking usually 24 miles a day. I walk into Kansas I walk across Kansas um where I just saw unbelievable shooting stars and uh orange sherbert sunrises every morning behind me that are so beautiful that I'm turning around to walk backwards. I'm walking to Colorado and

I've walked 1,797 miles at this point when pain shoots up my leg. I'm like, what the heck was that? And then I, I hear a sound I want to hear. I hear a sound I want to hear. And I realized that poisonous rattlesnake just sunk its fangs into my left ankle. And at first, I'm not thinking too much of it. I'm trying to just stay calm. But I glance around, and there were two fans there that showed up to walk with me but no gas station no barns no houses not even any cows like this is bad they called 9-1-1 and while they called 9-1-1 it was sort of like uh the end ofoney Tunes, if you remember that,

where it goes like this. The circles converge on the center of the screen and it says, that's all, folks. Well, that's exactly what started happening to me, except instead of colorful circles, it was darkness and just blacks creeping in from the corners of my awareness. And I could feel myself fading away now they let me speak to 9-1-1 and dispatch says sir i've sent an ambulance from two different towns and a helicopter

whatever gets there first get in and i asked am i gonna die and the the voice on the other line says, I don't know, sir. So I'm sitting there, I'm like, this is not a bee sting, you know? And an hour later, I'm in the back of an ambulance. It just dawns on me, like, this could be the end of my life. This could be. Hopefully not. You know, hopefully, like, they get me there, all works out,

but could be. Hopefully not. You know, hopefully, like, they get me there, all works out. But could not. And I just, I made a decision, Rich, that if indeed it is going to be the, like, end of my life, I'm not going to waste it worrying about if it's the end of my life. Like, so I literally have this moment in the back of the ambulance where I'm just reclining. I always feel like I was in some enlightened state. And right when I made that decision, I started to see the colors became more vibrant. I noticed this red paint on the back of the ambulance door, and it was really red. It was beautiful and vibrant and alive.

And there was just peace peace and everything made sense long story short i go to the icu for three days i thought you know they have this medicine called anti-venom right and i thought get the shot i thought if i get that because it's called anti-venom i thought it i thought i'd be walking the next day doesn't work it's called anti-venom, I thought I'd be walking the next day. It doesn't work like that. The anti-venom just makes it so you don't die. But the doctor, you're going to be here a while. You've got to watch your leg.

My leg swelled to basically the size of an elephant trunk. Yeah, you shared photos of that on Instagram. It was very haunting. yeah yeah it got real big and real painful and i went from 20 walking 24 miles every day to like i couldn't walk to the bathroom without help i had a walker and like somebody right holding me relearning how to walk i mean i think were you in the hospital for five days i was in hospital five days icu for three and then um you know due to amazing medical care at parkview hospital in colorado i started i started to get better and then actually came like the hardest part of the snake bite

wasn't actually getting bit by the snake the hardest part of the snake bite was getting better from the snake bite because you know i went after the hospital i wasn't ready to go i basically had to rehab took three weeks right you went back to michigan right kind of heal up that's right and while i was there everyone is like coddling me, cooking for me, wishing me well. You know, they're putting me on the news. John Mayer is DMing me on Instagram saying speedy recovery. I'm in like this nest of cuddly, sympathetic softness. Right.

And the idea of putting yourself back into that difficult situation becomes all the harder is horrible after the break and yeah three weeks i just can't deny it any longer my ankle was healed and so i'm looking at the map i have 1 000 you know that's 38 marathons i have 1 000 hot horrible miles left and um i gotta decide like just like when i walked into the table and got hurt before like i have another reason this is a great reason actually because if i quit no one will even think i'm a quitter like hey I almost died it wasn't meant to be whatever but I started to realize like 99 times out of 100 my reasons are just excuses wearing fancy clothes that's it they're the same reason excuse the same thing so I gotta decide like am I gonna live my life according to

my life according to my excuses slash reasons or to my commitment and i said screw it man i'm gonna go back out there i got like the sweltering heat i got that horrible foot pain i got the snake riddled roads of colorado 10 they're waiting for me in fact like basically hell is waiting for me and uh it's like screw it you know i want to meet hell too let's go so i go back to the exact spot and i was like scared man i was having like nightmares about snakes i still don't like snakes you know i didn't want to go back to that spot yeah you know of course it was scary the ptsd of it it was. What's interesting is to kind of create a little bit more context for this, the whole idea behind the walk,

I mean, I know there's this kind of origin story. You were in Teeny's jewelry shop and somebody had mentioned that they had a friend who did it and that kind of planted the seed, but the seed is germinated over the course of you completing this album and being faced with the prospect of having to do the traditional kind of promotion behind it and realizing like you couldn't get up for it like I just can't

do that yeah and the obstacles they're being like all of these people who are so heavily invested in the success of this music it took a lot of gumption and courage to opt out of that and say, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do this other thing. And I'm sure there were a lot of people who weren't very happy about that at the time. I'm not sure if we covered it last time. You can, I don't know if you remember either. It was a while ago. I don't remember. I didn't go back and listen to it. We probably did talk about it, but yeah, I had the dream of doing it like five years. And you're right. I felt like I was just caught under the weight of my own life.

And I had done all the research about the walk across America. It turns out there's a strategy to it. Best to start east to west because of where the mountain ranges line up and best to start in spring early spring in an effort to be done before winter so each time spring rolled around it was something in the way right it's an album i gotta finish there's a tour i gotta do to support the last night we're gonna be convenient there's a wedding i gotta go to and i just i i just didn't do it five years i was letting my dream die and i i i felt it man it's like i started to have this like low level depression kind of creep into my life and i was talking to another guy i think we

we haven't come elliott bis now sure elliot and i went to the same high school is that right yeah how about that so i was talking to elliot talks to elliot all the time amazing yeah he's another like guy who just exudes superhuman enthusiasm so i said let me talk to him because i feel utterly uninspired and maybe his positivity will like through our conversations seep into me you know and so i told him yeah i was like dude i just can't do this anymore this whole like mike posner show going on the road you know doing the shows yeah put your hands i can't do it he goes, what do you want to do? I said, what I really want to do is walk across America.

But I told my manager that they all think it's crazy. He goes, that's great news. And I'm like, what do you mean? That they think it's crazy. It's great news. So I'm confused. I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes, you've got to understand, not all crazy ideas are great,

but all great ideas are crazy. And I think you walking across America is a great idea. That was it. He told me that. And you got to live your life, man. I felt it like. The dream deferred. I could feel the

truth underneath what he was saying and it was just like there's never gonna be a right time no one's gonna roll out a red carpet for me people always have a reason why i shouldn't do this you're gonna hurt your body you're gonna like your career is gonna suffer i'd hurt them all but it was like this is my life and i'm either gonna live, like this is either gonna be a part of my life, this walk, this dream, or I'm gonna live some other like crappy version that I know isn't my truth. Right, but there's also this idea

of what the walk was gonna be like versus the reality of it. And on some level, you could frame it as a unique and different way to promote your music like i think there was this sense like the music's coming out and i'm going to go from town to town i'm going to play these shows and walk with a bunch of people and it'll actually be like kind of a grassroots way of sharing my music in a different you know format essentially that it would be like this moving carnival across America. And it started out like that.

It looked like, and I remember you sharing on Instagram, you would be in these college towns or whatever, and there'd be a bunch of young people, and you'd kind of end the day with a little mini concert. But then slowly but surely, the people start to fall away, and the reality sets in of just how difficult this is going to be. Yeah, that's right. I thought it would be a little bit more of like a hippy-dippy experience.

Right. I meet some beautiful people. Hey, you seem nice. Maybe I'll spend a few days here. But then I started to look at the map and the miles. And it's like you got these freaking— You're going to be doing this for the next two and a half years you got these freaking rocky mountains you know and they're 2 000 miles away and look i don't want to

be there in november i want to be there in august you know or september at the latest. And so the math just didn't work with that like hippy-dippy thing, you know. It became this exercise in extreme discipline because it's freaking hot, you know. Walking through the summer in, you know, Missouri and Kansas. walking through the summer in you know missouri and kansas so it's like you can't roll out of bed at 10 a.m and start trying to get 24 miles and you're gonna cook so i had to get up at i didn't have to do anything i chose to get up at four every day and start try to be walking by five and i could get pretty much my 20 20 of my 24 miles in before i started to get really hot anyways i say this to to illustrate that i never wanted to do it every day my alarm went off and i never wanted to get up it's 4 a.m i wanted to sleep more you know and musicians don't

wake up early anyway. Right. You're probably not a morning guy constitutionally. I like to be. You know, like my job makes it hard sometimes. Like sometimes we start work at 10 p.m. So you don't want to be super tired. Anyways, but on this walk, yeah, I never wanted to do it.

And like I just had to decide every day i'm gonna do this anyways and um it didn't matter also it didn't matter how i felt emotionally like the thing went off 4 a.m and some days i felt sad great get up and walk right doesn't matter the next day you feel happy it's like great get up and walk and i's to realize like i don't know anybody that's happy all the time we're always in the zone i'm certainly not but i know people that show up all the time you know like they they're there for their commitment their word means something i want to be one of those people and i do remember us talking about that last time yeah this idea that integrity is super important and that that shows up on the Everest challenge as well like I said I was gonna do this thing

like I'm gonna do the thing yeah you know on Everest that was the only thing left and we could talk about that later but um I went back to the freaking spot, snake bit me and I walked, you know, where it bit me. I could just see the Rockies on the horizon. They're like real small. And it was really cool to see the Rocky mountains that haven't walked from the Atlantic ocean. So I just, you know, went back to spot, took a step, kept taking steps, went up and over the Rocky mountains.

And then like, I felt like I had an invincibility cloak. It's like the snake bit me. I went over the mountains. I could do anything. I started to dream while I walked. I started to have this vision of myself climbing Everest after the walk was over, but I still had a long way to go, so I had to stay focused.

over, but I still had a long way to go, so I had to stay focused, and I walked across Colorado, walked across the Navajo Nation, walked across Nevada, walked into California, you know, walked through the Mojave Desert, walked into LA, I could see the Hollywood sign on my right, kept walking, you know, the pavement turned into sand at Venice Beach, kept walking, my walk escalated to a sprint, in the sand at venice beach kept walking my walk escalate to a sprint and six months three days after i started after walking 2 851 miles i dove in the pacific ocean and i thought i'd feel accomplished but interestingly i didn't feel accomplishment in the water i felt possibility I didn't feel accomplishment in the water. I felt possibility. It felt like the first day of my life.

I think that's a really crucial insight. This idea that there are no finish lines, that it's just another step on your path, this like notch in your belt, but really just a checkpoint, right? This idea of checkpoints rather than kind of endpoints. And when you can kind of contextualize your accomplishments in that way, I think that keeps the ego at bay a little bit. It allows you to have a little bit more gratitude and humility and keeps you on track for what's next. Yeah. I think it's fine to celebrate these things and acknowledge like I did this

hard thing, of course. Right. Yeah. But you got to keep moving. That's right. And, um, I shouldn't have because my body's pretty jacked up like i'm i'm sure you've been there probably worse than me you know but just from doing that same repetitive motion for six months i'm sure um it just hurt man like if i sat down i stood up like it really hurt everything just hurt bad like and i was a little worried that it would feel like that forever like maybe i'd jacked myself up um but i was so like i was so hyper sensitive of over celebrating it that i had this boxing coach coach marcello in la and i said can you meet me at 4 30 tomorrow he said yeah no

problem so the day after i finished the walk i go boxing with him right i just needed like i needed to gears i needed my body and my spirit and my mind to know look we're not done like this thing is over this chapter but beginnings hide themselves and ends you know like we're gonna we're working tomorrow too mm-hmm you know so I just had to get up early and like work hard again the next day yeah and during the walk I had somehow Elliott connected me to Colin O'Brady you know Colin sure and Colin I started to ask him about Everest cause he had summoned it before. Well, before we even get into that, like,

sorry, there's a couple of things. Yeah, no, it's cool. We got time, bro. We can breathe. Before we completely move off the walk, I know that there was this idea. Well, first of all, when you were in the hospital, I just remember you sharing videos of that experience and being with the walker and being really transparent about what you were going through at the time.

And I don't remember the details of that other than seeing this person who was incredibly positive. You were smiling and you were happy. That's the moment where you're like, shit shit man, this whole thing went out the window. I didn't want this to happen. It's a disaster. But you had this big smile like you do right now. And you're like, I'm in here and they're treating me so well.

And like, where does that facility to hold on to that kind of unbridled level of optimism come from? Goggins, one from? Goggins. One word, Goggins. And I don't remember what, I don't remember if it was in his book or on your podcast or on another podcast, but I heard him talking about visualization and I believe in the law of attraction, all that stuff.

Like before I went on this walk, I was writing in my notebook, I, Mike Posner, will walk across America 100 million times. I'm going on walks just saying that. It's my mantra in my head until I really believe it. Okay, we know about that kind of visualization. You visualize yourself being successful. But somewhere, maybe it was in his book I heard Goggins say you got to visualize when things go wrong too and so before I left I did that and uh I did I visualized like myself

breaking a leg on the walk somewhere and I just visualized i saw myself like rehabbing it going back to the same spot where it broke and finishing so i just already rehearsed that whole thing okay here we go this is this is what happens it was already the decision was made and um so i never had to battle that internally at that time of the injury because I had already done it in my head. So I got our boy David to thank for that. Yeah, there you go. It's a tendency to have that impact on people. It's like I had some like law of attraction person might say,

well, maybe you attracted the injury. Maybe I did. But like I had done enough research on this thing and talked to enough people that had done the walk to know like hey man you're not gonna go almost 3 000 miles without something bad happening that's actually why you're going in the first place you want to go feel that that horrible moment and see if you're gonna decide to keep going going. Right. That's why you're doing it. Those are the teachable moments. That's right. Those are the, those are the experiences that

give it the value that you're seeking. That, and there's a second part to that optimism, which is way less, uh, uh, valiant or noble is like, Hey man, we're out there it's just like it's just hot and hard right and when i was hurt you know my my left leg was like in a lot of pain the rest of me actually felt really good taking a break and like i was in air conditioning i was sleeping in a nice bed so it was easy and nobody could harsh on you for that, right? Yeah. So that was part of it too. Like the hospital is a lot nicer than the walk. What were some of the more impactful experiences that you had besides the rattlesnake bite along the way?

I mean, I know from people, I know a bunch of people who've run across America and walked it etc and one of the recurring themes that always comes up is how profound it is to traverse the navajo nation yeah that was a place that i was warned about before i got there by white people before I got there by white people. And he'd say, be careful when you go there. Bad stuff happens, that kind of thing.

And when I got there, there was just this outpouring of love and support from the Diné people. Diné is what they called themselves. Navajo is like a white word. Just got thrown on them. And so basically on the walk, most of the time, you're walking on the side of a busy road, and people are just stopping all day,

and they come out on the shoulder of the road, and they say, can I pray for you? I say, yeah, of course. And they would pray for me in their language, and they'd give me gifts like arrowheads and someone even gave me like a eagle feather which is like this very high honor that i definitely did not deserve but like let's be real about i'm a white guy walking on their land they should be their land they should be uh skeptical of me they have all the reason talk about reasons they have reasons to be skeptical of me maybe reasons to be hostile to me

but they weren't they were just loving and and that sort of love for no reason touched me deeply. And yeah, just that 180 miles was, if that was the whole trip, that would have been life-changing. Yeah, that's amazing. Now, another story. So after I got off the Navajo Nation, I was walking on the Hualapai Reservation in Arizona and this big red F-350 pulls to the side of the road. I'm sort of like

hesitant. I don't know. I have some judgment or bias about the person who would drive that kind of big truck. I'm like a little scared of them even though I haven't even seen them yet. And this young man gets out of the truck and he's on the other side of the highway because i i walk into traffic always i want to see the people and so he runs across the highway dangerously and it's a 21

year old named rowan and we sort of have small talk for a while. And before I left, this friend of mine taught me a question that you can ask that basically like if you get caught in small talk, it's like a cheat code to go deeper. And the question is, if I pray for you, what should I pray for? And so I asked this young man, I pray for you what should I pray for and his name is Rowan he is 21 and he he thought about it and he looked at me and he said five years ago my dad died from drinking and

three years ago my my only sibling, my big brother, died from drinking. And just three months ago, my mom died from drinking. He said, if you pray for me, pray for my sobriety. Because I'm the only one left. And then he turned and he ran back across the highway dangerously. He reached into his red F-350, pulled out this small leather satchel. He runs back across and he puts in my hand. He looks

me in the eye. He says, this is sweet grass. It's sage. He goes, this will keep you safe while you walk on our land from bad spirits. And he got back in his truck and he drove away with his hand out the window like that. And just moments like that and you just like moments like

that they're they're everything you know uh that's beautiful i mean i think yeah sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you but i couldn't help but reflect on the extent to which like death is this theme that looms large over so many of these pivots and decisions that you've made. I mean, in many respects, you can track the decision to doing this walk back to the grief and the self-reflection that came with losing your dad and, you know, Avicii and Mac Miller and all these people that you've been close with in your life who have passed away, leaving you, you know, to ask these deeper questions about yourself and your purpose and what it's all about and all of that. And so it's almost like perfectly orchestrated for Rowan to cross your path and share his

version of that experience. And when I hear that, it just affirms to me like, oh, this was meant to be. You're on the right path. Like this is what this is about. Yeah. And I just can't get over his spirit. Meaning, like what do I mean by that? Like how, when he was telling me that story, he wasn't looking for sympathy.

Like he was there to support me. That's why he showed up to telling me that story, he wasn't looking for sympathy. Like he was there to support me. That's why he showed up to give me that. You know, it was like, how can someone who's been through so much have so much left to give still? And that was just beyond beautiful to me. And I won't forget it. Yeah. beyond beautiful to me you know you know i won't forget it yeah i think you came across somebody who was doing an unsupported transcontinental run yeah right like i my friend ricky gates did that um he's got crazy stories about i mean that's a whole other level

but that's also like a shot in the arm of like, hey, man, when you think it's hard, what this guy's doing, he's sleeping on the ground. It's so cool because when like you make a decision, and I'm sure you've experienced this in your life too, you make a decision, you're going to do this thing. And like for me, for our example, say like the walk across America, we can use that. Everyone in my normal life think that's like a pretty wild thing to do. But all of a sudden by making the decision, I'm thrust into this new community of walkers and runners. And in this community, I'm not special at all. In fact, I'm probably-

It's completely normalized. It's normalized. And actually like in that community, I was probably in touch with eight people or so that were either walking or running while I was. And I was the least impressive one of the bunch by far. I was walking supported, meaning I had a friend going ahead of me in an RV that was getting food, finding places for us to sleep.

And also, I didn't have to carry everything because we had this support vehicle. So I just got like a little camelback on, you know? And you're right. There was this other guy, like this is actually the day before the snake bite. It was in Colorado and we're in La Junta. And yeah, somehow on Instagram, we had noticed each other and we figure out, hey, it's this guy named Stevie.

He's going west to east. He's running unsupported. And I'm walking east to west. We're going to freaking cross. So we said, hey, we got to link up, right? So we're texting. And we cross in La Junta. And look, Rich, he seemed like a really nice guy but this thing is

like tough so i ain't going east okay uh-huh i go west man that's it dude right like or maybe meet and it's like who's if we're gonna hang out who's which direction are we gonna talk here for a while but i'm not like i'm going i go east bro this guy like we didn't talk about it either but he's like he just turned around and he walked 16 miles with me backwards to be with me to connect he he had a giant backpack on and he was running 40 miles per day. He had a ukulele like bungee corded to like the outside of it. He didn't even use a tent.

He would just sleep on the ground. He'd wake up sometimes like police kicking him in the head. Just everything I did was times 100. And then I remember he asked me, he goes, what do you do for music and headphones? I said, somewhat proudly. I said, the first eight miles I walk every day is a silent meditation walk. You know, I thought I was like really doing it. And then I go, and then after that, you know, so I put the head on, I call Elliot and stuff.

I talk about it a lot. Rolling calls. Yeah. He goes, I didn't bring headphones right what he goes i didn't bring he goes i just wanted to be deep with myself he goes sometimes i look on the phone for directions but other than that it's just me me alone in here he goes it was horrible at first but after a month it's the best thing I ever did I found a clarity that I didn't even know was possible inside me and uh yeah stuff like that just inspiring you know inspiring and uh the next day I got bit by the snake I got better and and when I went back I said look like I'm still gonna walk supported but no headphones the rest of the trip you know like

I'm gonna do it how Stevie does it you know just just here that's it no calls or if I'm walking I'm just walking and you did that yeah a thousand more miles and it was he was right you know it was like the the clarity you got just it was was unlike anything I knew before. How would you characterize or articulate like what that experience taught you? Like that latter half of the walk where you really went deep and inward in a way that you hadn't before?

Just having the time to stop you know like let's say somebody a friend or something did something that bothered me or whatever usually i'm moving so quick i might not even think about like oh i'm just off to the next thing but then you have you know you have eight hours to think about it and so everything was just all my relationships cleaned up you know if there was something that bothered me as someone like I finished that day or some I call that person we I say hey that that thing pissed me off you know like let's talk about this and with the absence of more stimuli all the time, more planning, my life became very simple, you know, whereas before I was doing a tour and I have this and work on that opportunity

and it was like, no, you just get up and walk. My life became very simple and that gave me the space to have everything clear from the past so I could just be present. I think that's really the point. I forget. After Everest, I went on a retreat and was reminded of this. But we're supposed to be here. We're supposed to be present.

We're supposed to have enthusiasm and love and joy inside us. We're not supposed to spend our lives planning about the future always. Sure, you need to do that somewhat but we're not supposed to spend our time dwelling on the past was to be like in our bodies like our mind should be in the same place as our body you know and uh creating some space to just stop you know it was human beings have a hard time with that though we're not wired to be able to hold on to that and the half-life of those types of experiences whether it's the looney tunes you know circles closing in or or the mindfulness and the presence that you were able to experience

throughout that extended period of solitude tend to wane pretty quickly in the wake of those experiences so how has that been like have you been able to carry that awareness into your life in the aftermath of these experiences or do you find yourself defaulting back now you're back in la you're back in the studio like how much of that are you able to like hold on to that's a great question um and sort of become the theme of my life at least right now this version of my poster um because i kept getting these satori flashes of everything you know like in the ambulance it was peace and everything makes sense um everything you know like in the ambulance it was peace and everything makes sense um

summit of everest we could talk about that but another one of these deeply just perfect moments where i'm fully present but you're right they disappear they go away and it's like you know there's got to be a better way to access that peace than to freaking almost die or to risk my life climbing this insane mountain, right? Or to have to go back to the monastery. That's the next one. And so I actually went back to the monastery after Everest. Actually, it's a Buddhist center. There's no monks there. And the place I went, they have these solo cabins

that are set up for solitary retreats, which I really like. So you go and you drop you out. It's a little cabin with a single mattress, and they see you in three weeks, and you're just on your own. Each week they drop off a week's worth of groceries, but you don't see the person. It's like in a drop box. You're by yourself

for for three weeks and um i started to realize like basically if you can quiet the mind right uh that that sort of feeling of peace is just there naturally and you don't have to like have your dad die or walk across America or summit mount everest or to be at the monastery you just need to have a quiet mind and um while like every moment of my life is not going to have the same emotional potency of finishing the walk or of almost dying in the thing or being on the summit of Mount Everest, of course not. Like all of my moments, I believe have the potential to have an undercurrent of peace in them and at least awareness, you know, being where I, where I am. And so I'm back in LA now and I'm essentially doing the exact same thing I was doing before I left on the walk.

I go to the studio. I work with artists. I help them write songs. I sometimes write my own songs. I produce songs. But everything's different on the inside. You know, who i am is different and that's sort of just like the marquee on the show that's like what i'm doing on the outside well on

the inside my practice and i mess it up more than i get it right, Rich. But my practice is like when I'm in the room writing with someone and they're speaking, I'm trying to be present. That means nothing's in here. I'm listening to their voice, not what the voice in here is saying about what they're saying. Or maintaining some awareness of the physical sensation in my body as I'm working and and yeah there's some of that peace is is here with me for sure you know and sometimes easier than others being

around you you're a peaceful guy like we connect whatever it's easier for me to do with you than if whatever but um that's my practice yeah i would imagine that's a creative superpower you know the idea that you know it's it's calm at the bottom of the ocean and it's calm at you know 30 000 feet you're above the clouds right and having that clarity or that open space opens the channel for that creative instinct or impulse to channel through like in the moment when you're working on a song when i was at the buddhist center uh i did this like i would meditate sitting five hours a day and i'd do like three hours of walking meditation sounds like hard but like it's awesome, actually.

Right, it's all relative. You walk across America, so a three-hour walk. No, it's split up, like three, one hour. And like, yeah, it's actually a lot easier than regular life because nothing's there to upset you. So if you find yourself upset. Except your mind is attacking you constantly. Yeah, well, if you find yourself upset, you know I'm doing this

because there's nothing wrong here. I have everything and no one else is here anyways the story i wanted the mind will search for that thing to hang its hat on exactly pull you out of that moment like i'll circle back but the you're right it will do that. The mind is clever, cunning. And in my mind, like the voice, which I just call a voice in my head, I nickname it Charlie. Because in the absence of more stimuli and other people speaking and all that stuff, you really start to hear Charlie. And like you start to notice Charlie's trends.

Well, Charlie has some patterns. I've noticed. One is he's freaking way more negative than I thought. Like a lot of doomsday scenarios. Like, hey, what if I do that? And then this might happen and that might happen. And then I might die. He's like, whoa, how did we get there?

So we got that. And then the other thing I noticed about Charlie is he's incredibly repetitive. Like the same thought over and over and over and over again. It's like, I got it, man. I got it. There's Charlie again, looping that thing that he always talks about. It's so annoying and boring after a while. But sometimes it's a negative thing. It's like, dude, like, all right.

There was one day, I think it was on fifth or sixth day there, I did my two hours sitting at the beginning of the day, and I was just like, Charlie's getting quieter and quieter, and then he's just like kind of gone. And the two hours ends. I stand up, and I realize that even though I'm not sitting anymore meditating I'm still meditating and it's no Charlie and I go to make a snack like it was a I had a piece of wasa bread and I put an avocado on it. And while I made it still,

no Charlie. And I closed my eyes. I took a bite and it was like fireworks of flavor. Like I could tell you Rich, this without reservation is the best meal I've ever had in my life. And the main ingredient is, like, quiet mind. And so I tell you this story to say, when the mind is quiet, what's left? It's hard to put into words what's left, but it's not just, like, blank. It's actually, like, it's actually like it's like forgive me for this i can't think of a better way it's like taking the condom off life man you're like this is how

avocado really tastes when i'm not covering it up with all my judgments and talking in my head and analyzing things like this it's like i remember putting a sock on on my retreat and feeling like I was having sex, like putting a sock on my foot. Like all the senses are heightened because it just like we cover them up with just this blabber box in our head usually, you know. And so it turns out, I think, at least for me, when we quiet Charlie, it's not this like state of blankness. It's like, there's a lot there.

Everything comes alive. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I was feeling in the ambulance when I looked at that red paint and it looked brighter. That's what I was feeling, you know? So I think like thinking about reality is like putting on real dark sunglasses

and dulls reality and presence is like taking those sunglasses off. But I think that practice of naming your thinking mind allows you to create that distance and that understanding that there is your mind, which is good at keeping you alive and doing menial tasks and, you know, sort of propelling your body and into forward motion, but it's really not your friend when it comes to so many of the important things. And creating that separation allows you

to understand that there is a gap and a distinction between your higher consciousness, what it feels like, the experience of being truly present in your life, and the looping negative thought patterns of that thinking brain. That's right. And that in truth, you are that higher consciousness. That's right. You are not that voice. And disidentifying, because we all over-identify with the thinking brain. That's right. Right? And we think that's who we are. That's right. You are not that voice. And disidentifying, because we all over-identify with the thinking brain. That's right. And we think that's who we are. That's right.

And developing the capacity to understand that that is not who we are and that this is a voice that we can choose to listen to or dismiss, I think is a really profound practice. It's deeper than you can ever imagine, right? And freaking hard. Yeah, a continual thing. And I work on it every day, but I'm definitely there more than I ever have been in my life.

And I'm not on the walk across America. I'm not at the monastery. I'm living a life. Right, you're on the walk across America. I'm not at the monastery. I'm, I'm, I'm living a life. Right. You're in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's that, it's that adage of like, it's easy to be serene when you're in the cave, you know, metaphorically, like you're the, you're the monk on the, in the monastery or in the cave removed from the real world that's going to be an easier situation in which to cultivate stillness and quietude but the real like advanced degree is can you carry that into the world that's practice that when you are immersed in stimuli and challenges etc yeah that's right and uh

when i was on retreat i felt. It was a lot easier there. It's like it's set up to do that. It's just gain a foothold, you know. I had a book while I was at the Buddhist center by Thich Nhat Hanh. And there was a line in it. And it said, retreat is about reentry. Retreat is about reentry. So what's that mean?

He said that if your retreat is not making you a better member of society, a better brother, sister, husband, wife, when you go back, you're wasting your time. You're not going there to like feel. This is what I used to do because i've been to that place three times when i was here i thought i was like gonna gain some superpower or something or at the very least i was gonna gain experience that i could talk about and tell other people i did this thing where i thought i was gonna like put something on well that's bs man and uh it And it's selfish. Like when you go on retreat, you should come back better. That's what the retreat is for, you know, period. And when I think about that experience,

when I think about Everest and the walk, those are all kinds of retreats and so yeah what i'm up to now is is practicing that stuff internally and then trying to share the the stuff i learned because those are pretty cool and and privileged experiences you know yeah a lot of people can't take three weeks off of work and go sit alone in a cabin you know or walk across america i mean these are very unique and beautiful experiences i was blessed to have so yeah my life um now i just i go to the studio and i try to be present and also i just start doing like some uh some speaking and like storytelling where oh cool where I share some of these stories. Because I just want to share some of this stuff I learned.

On the walk, and I promise we're going to get to Everest. It's all good. I know. It's all good. What are the things that occurred to me in thinking about like what this was about for you and the different mic that kind of emerged from it, from the mic that began it,

is this arc of transcending the ego. Because on some level, yes, the walk is about you. But deep down, we're all egoistic. And you are promoting an album on some level. And you're like, oh, if I do this, this will actually get a bunch of attention. I'll get a bunch of validation. And you have this

imagined vision of being joined by like this huge group of people as you walked into Los Angeles, and all of you together would throw this big party and you'd all go into the ocean. But what happens is there is this destruction of the ego along the way where you're forced to kind of meet yourself in a new and different way, such that when you arrive in Venice, it's really about the relationship between you and you. And you eschewed the temptation to have a lot of people there and chose to just have your closest friends and to walk into the ocean by yourself. And that's a really beautiful, like evolution, I think of Mike Posner. And perhaps that was something that you had to contend with

again during Everest. And because we are all naturally egoistic, it flares up. It's not like you've just transcended it. And you are this person who has a public facing persona and has to contend with fame and everything that kind of comes with that. But I think that there's something really profound in that attempt, the striving to mute the ego, to tap into a greater level of humility and gratitude. attitude and then just in you describing how you approach your studio time now that strikes me as somebody who's who's kind of showing up in service to these artists that you're working with trying rather than like hey what am i going to extract out of this experience it's a lot different sometimes you won't even write a song you know sometimes that i can see

a person just like overwhelmed with their life. I'm like, let's just go for a walk. We don't have to write a song today. I don't care. But yeah, man, you're right. This ego thing, it's not even real. You know, like when I think about who I am, who is Mike Posner, When I think about who I am, who is Mike Posner,

it's like this loose amalgamation of random memories that aren't even all the memories, right? Because I forget most of the stuff that happens to me. These memories and then like some cultural archetypes, like characters from movies that I've like mixed up. I'm like, that's me. That's my personality. And then you weave a story around you weave a story around this trauma happened to me and this is why I'm this way

right but this this story slash concept concept slash idea I just realized one day like it only exists in my head like nobody else in the entire world has that picture of me in their head. If they even know who I am, they have a different picture and it's much less fleshed out and they don't care as much about it. That being said, none of these stories slash concepts slash identities in our heads are real. Not like this is real. Like this is a real thing.

It's just like these amorphous things that have no actual tie to reality. And just remembering like it always wants you to feel like you're separate, doesn't it? The ego. That's what the ego is. I'm this thing in the world. I'm alone. But in actuality, it's not true, of course. We come from our parents.

We're attached to the planet, of course, in deeply inexplicable ways. If the sun was a mile further back, we'd all be frozen, you know? Like we are connected to everything and just like remembering to make that shift. Life just seems a lot better when I'm living from the big place, not the ego place.

You can't walk across America, climb Everest, and climb the however many mountains you climbed in preparation for Everest and not feel a deeper connection and sense of interconnectedness with the greater whole. There is some disillusion of the ego that would have to take place with that. Yeah. Because you're meeting nature on such a grand scale. I think so.

I think it can go either way too. Like they talk about that with psychedelics too. It could fuel your ego. I did all these things. This is who I am. I'm Mike Posner and I'm my resume. I'm the only Grammy nominated guy who's climbed Everest and walked across America.

Yeah. And that is who I am. Yeah. Yeah, it could go that way. So that's like up to you, I guess. Up to me. Right. Right.

So you finish this walk along the way or at some point this idea of everest occurs to you yeah it's probably occurred to a lot of people yeah but you decide you're actually going to act on it yeah it was the it was the snake bite over the rockies where I'd start, like I could do anything. And that sort of dream, I dreamed about it before, like fantasized about it. And it started to mutate slowly from a dream into a plan. I just remember it wasn't that long after the walk where suddenly on Instagram Instagram it's like you and Colin were you at Mount Hood or something like that you guys went on a climb two weeks

later because I was already talking to Colin while I was on the walk I said man is Everest like as crowded as they say is it like because you know there's a lot of yeah about Everest misinformation and he'd been there. I said, is it crowded? Is it worth it? Is it beautiful? He was like, you know that feeling you get when you go to Grand Canyon? I said, yeah.

He's like, it's like that times 100. I'm like, that sounds pretty good. And so he had done a lot of big projects, Colin. So he, he kind of gave me some advice, like how to end the walk. And then he said, look, do you know anything about climbing? I said, nope. He ever worn crampons? Nope. He goes, why don't you come climb Mount Hood with me after your walk?

I said, great. I go, but look, like, I'm really going to come, you know, like, cause we never met. I'm like, I'm really going to come. He's like okay and uh so yeah two weeks after the walk like I was still still pretty darn sore but he took me up Mount Hood and we we summited it and uh I asked him you know if I want to keep getting better at this how do I do that and he goes you goes, you should talk to Dr. John. And he introduced me to Dr. John Kudrowski. And that's the man that became my coach and my guide over the next year and a half. And I just, I'm all in.

So I moved, I moved like basically next to John. I got a rental house there. In like Colorado? In Colorado. And we just freaking trained our butts off the next year and a half what did that training look like john has a great line he says uh he says train for climbing mountains by climbing mountains so that's what we did when we we got to everest you sit in base camp a lot like waiting for the right weather and your body. And you start to, like, forget you're a climber because you're just sitting there waiting for so long, you know.

And, like, my whole last year and a half, I've been climbing, like, every few days, like, you know. Just hitting, like, all the 14ers? 14ers. We went to Ecuador, climbed the volcanoes there. We went to Pakistan. We went to— For climbed the volcanoes there. We went to Pakistan. We went to... For Pakistan was K2? Yeah, that's a whole other thing.

I just went to base camp. You were there when the Nepalese crew summited in the winter, right? I had left a few days before. But yeah, I was at that base. I just went to base camp. camp you went up to base camp right that's it i don't really want to climb k2 man yeah well not in the winter at least i don't want to climb in the summer either i always tell people that when i was doing everest i'm like look believe it or not i do have a line you know uh because everyone's a line of acceptable risk their risk

tolerance is different and it's fine like you you climb within that that risk and k2 on the other side of my line man forget that one but um yeah we we climb and this was like full time you're living in colorado you're there for the sole purpose full time john had control my schedule right so Right. So, you know, somebody called, hey, Mike, can you come, do you want to do this thing? I go, I got to ask my coach. I had to ask, you know, I didn't have to. I wanted it to be like that, you know?

And he would have control of my schedule first, right? So he'd say like, we're going to do this, this, this, and this. And then I'd put the rest of my life in between the mountain like because i told him i go look i have no interest in going to mount everest if i don't belong there period i won't be one of these yuckle putzes that show up and they never like there's a lot of those there's nothing there's like as i don't want to do that it doesn't interest me i want to go on this journey with you and become a mountaineer and when you if you think i'm ready we go together it's great we'll get you ready and and you did so anyways we're at base camp a year and a half later and like i said you you're just sitting there waiting for like a month

for the right weather and i still forget like that i'm a mountaineer now that i'm a climber and so i took a notebook out and i had my phone all the pictures and stuff from the summits we'd done and i just made a list of all the mountains we'd climbed just to give me instill some confidence you actually did prepare yeah and list, I couldn't believe it kept going. It was 71 mountains long, 71 we climbed. Myrvus was the 72nd we did together. Yeah, that's wild. So in the preparation, what did you, like, as I have no experience

with high altitude climbing of any kind, I have an idea of what I think goes into tackling something like that, and you being a newbie going into it, what did you discover or learn that defied what you expected it to be? Like, you're like, okay, we're going to prepare for Everest or this is what it's going to be like. And then you're like, oh, shit, I didn't realize it was this. Yeah.

I mean, so many things. realize it was this yeah i mean so many things i remember our first our first mountain crystal peak uh we start climbing and you know on your backpack you have the little water bottle holders on the on the side so my water bottle's in there right i get to this we some is like a 13er we get to the summit. It's like a 13er. We get to the summit. John goes, take a drink of water. I take my water bottle. It's a block of ice. Can't drink that. He goes, water doesn't go on the outside of the pack. Uh-huh.

Okay. Like day one. One thing, yeah. Day one. You know what I mean? That water's got to go. I wouldn't have thought of that. I didn't think of it.

It's got to go against your back in the pack so it stays liquid you know um and then when you go like i don't know just when you go like probably a million things like that there's a million things like that but then even so like getting to the big peaks because everest my first 8 000 meter peak there everything's just up a notch so even though you put it you put your water in like another thing and the thing i i really wasn't you i feel like i couldn't have been prepared for was just the way that altitude hit me up that high i mean i've been high been 20 000 feet plus um but this is another 10,000 29,000

you know 29 and it's exponential right going from sea level to 1,000 is a lot easier than going from 26,000 to 27 I mean light year is different and

I just felt like up there i just felt like horrible i just felt like a zombie like i couldn't sleep because you know we're talking about a third of the oxygen that you and i are breathing now wake up gasping for air yeah soon because the you know the respiratory system slows and sleep so right when I start to oh I'm just my body thought suffocating and so you know on the Summit push you just like no sleep five days and you get real the other thing people don't realize is yeah on the summit and stuff it's really cold but you come down that same day and as you get a little lower on the mountain and the sun comes out you're still in that down suit and you start to cook man yeah i

know you shared on instagram some posts where you were stripping down to like the gear you were wearing when you walked across america yeah well that's the thing i was getting hot yeah and uh hot yeah and uh so you just like the the the exhaustion the dehydration and the the altitude i won't say sickness but yeah it is man like you're up there and you're probably at about just being there just being there rich i was about 15 i would say and then you got to climb the mountain with that percentage. There's only so much acclimation that occurs. Well, acclimation makes it so you can do it, but doesn't make it feel good.

I know that during the training phase for this, you went out to Poland though, and did the Wim Hof experience with all those guys. That was awesome. I was, you were supposed to be there, weren't you? I know. And I don't know what was going on with me.

And I, I couldn't go. I probably could have, you know, it's one of those FOMO things where I don't know what's going on. Like that's the point, right? I can't even remember what it was that I had to do.

Has Wim been on your show? Yeah. A couple of times. So have you ever practiced with them? I have. But then that's what we did. You're good. But I wanted to have the Poland experience

and I wanted to go with all you guys. I was invited and it's like a thing. And then when you guys were there, I was like, why didn't you do this? And Q said the same thing. He was invited too. I know. It looked like a blast.

That practice I think is life changing man right so really deep the thing is like did you so with those practices were you able to apply them at base camp and above to try to help like self-regulate a little bit with yeah lack of both of them i'd say like sort of the two cores and there's some other stuff of course but like i say the main two pillars of wim hof's method are cold immersion right does these ice baths and breath work both of those were helpful for me you know one is like look just everyone knows like if you if you if you live in la and you take a plane and you get off in detroit in the middle of winter it feels a lot colder to you than it does to someone living in

detroit right right so same process like as i was getting ready to go to everest there was a river by the house that i was renting in in colorado and you just get in that thing in the in the middle of winter and just you know know, you take a cold shower. Cold shower in Colorado in the mountains is a cold shower, you know. But the thing is, the difference is like, if you go out and you run every day, like you're gonna become a better runner

and you can kind of get used to the cold a little bit, but there's a cap on that. Like it's always hard. Yes, but I believe, like, don't quote me on this because I was looking it up before Everest. I believe there's an acclimation process. They're saying like they had some guys do ice baths and they were at the beginning, they were shivering after two months or whatever. I think there is that. Yeah. And I've noticed that just through doing it myself. But it never gets, it's not like,

oh, this is easy now. It gets easier, I would say, for me at least. Easier than you are at the end. Then you start to really like it. I don't know, like for me.

Yeah, that's true. I still will like stall before I actually get in, but the higher I get from the cold. Anyways, yeah, man, I would just try to like make sure I got cold once or twice every day before I showed up to Everest to just change like my body's metric of what cold was.

And then the breath work, yeah, I did. I did all the time there. And I really believe in this practice so much so that i'm actually studying to become a instructor oh wow i'm doing like the online courses are you yeah because i just want to um i just want to share that practice it's so good you know right yeah it's it's it's beautiful and the the output of the breath work is so asymmetric to the input. It's like the input is breathing, you know, fully, and then you do some holds and whatever.

You've had Wim Hof on. And the output is like this amazingly blissful, peaceful state that's like sometimes like borderline psychedelic and you're like how like you can do i felt like someone gave me a cheat code to my own body that was like how am i 33 and i didn't know like you can just do this whenever you want it's really cool at any time with breath change the experience of of your entire day yeah yeah and uh i'm a meditator so i i meditate twice a day every day pretty much like i don't know eight nine years now and if i ever really get in a funk like if i'm just like feel depressed i'll do that breath work and it seems to like shift it just seems to be able to pierce through it has a much more dramatic immediate effect than meditation yeah i would

say so those things are both great but they're different yeah qualitatively yeah so i agree so So I agree. So you're up at base camp. One of the things that is wild about all of this, like I didn't realize this, I was looking a little bit more deeply into your story, is how normal avalanches are, that you're hearing them like all the time when you're at base camp from a great distance. Yeah, you get there and you hear these thunder rumbles and they sound loud.

And you go and you look at these mountains are big, man. And you're like, where? It sounds like it's coming down on you and you find it and it's like so far away and it looks this big. It's giant, but it's really far away and the mountains are so big. So after, we're talking like you probably hear that five times a day at least and over a period of weeks

i started to become desensitized to that sound just became kind of background noise but everest is it's really dangerous it's really real um basically for every 100 climbers that go above base camp one one perishes um in fact before we saw a weather window that we liked john and i four climbers that you know weren't our team, but were in base camp with us were dead. And so you got guys going up, not coming down. We had a friend. That's some heavy shit when you're like, I'm next. Yeah, we had a friend that went up and came down with really bad frostbite.

And I was just thinking like what am i doing here like what why why am i risking my life here and all the all the bad reasons became really apparent you know like there was some part of me that wanted to be cool and tough and it's like well that's a pretty dumb thing to die for right and the she's all these just like reasons we were talking about reasons before like for me not to do it but just one commitment for me to to climb as i said i was gonna do it right the follow-through, you know, after the snake bite. That's right.

And. Like, what does it mean to say you're going to do something and follow through on that? Yeah. But then acknowledging like the ego part of it. Yeah. I mean. The validation part. Yeah.

I was. There was a plethora of reasons why I was there and a lot of them were cool and some of them weren't which by the way

I think we even talked about this last time it was true the walk too like you know part of me wanted people

to go oh that guy's cool you know whatever like so but that was that Everest was so dangerous so real like death so close

that that ceased to be the looking cool ceased to be something that was pulling me up word on the mountain it became something that was pulling me down it was like hey man if that's the reason right here you should turn around you know and it was just the only thing that had pulled me up was that commitment man and uh we saw a window we liked after in late may and we climbed to camp two it's about 10 hours and it was snowing hard it was like a snowstorm a couple days so we stayed at camp two but we knew there was good weather for the summit in a few days we just had to wait and the thing about uh like steep mountains is it's not good to climb steep faces the day after it snows that's when avalanches happen because it's just all this new snow pack and it's you know

gravity pulls it down so we're just waiting you know after this snowstorm a day or two before we went higher because we had to go on the low sea face which is just real steep and we're at camp two 21 300 feet i hate that place man it's the worst I just feel horrible there can't sleep and you're just there for a couple days you're just in the tent you can get out of the tent

and we had a dining tent which disappeared I'll get to that basically you can walk to the latrine tent whatever but it's hard to do anything right you know you walk from where i'm sitting to your sitting i would be breathing like this like it's i mean i just i can't explain the altitude how how hard that

makes every how bad it made me feel. And it hits different people differently, and that was another part of my journey. I go in the tent one night at camp two with John. John and I are in our tent, and I'm pretending to sleep, and I hear one of those rumbles. I don't think anything of it because I've heard it so many times by now. It stops for a second, and then all of a sudden,

our tent starts to shake from all angles. It feels like we're about to be picked up, blown off the mountain. A hole rips in our tent. Snow's hitting me in the face, filling up my sleeping bag. I'm screaming, John, John, John, avalanche, avalanche. I'm like, I'm sure in that moment I'm dead at camp two. The avalanche avalanche i'm like i'm sure in that moment i'm dead at camp two the avalanche is hitting our tent and then right when i'm screaming it just freaking stopped and i'm like looking at my hands they're still shaking and i'm like how am i alive

what happened and we figured out that basically this avalanche slid but it stopped just before hitting our camp so what we felt was the air blast of the avalanche like final breaths basically but still the damage is real like that dining tent told you about was gone just from the air just like yeah because it's so big it displaces all that air yeah yeah wow and and we were lucky man the camp next to ours elite x beds nim's camp was like destroyed and thank god they weren't there they were already at camp three there are they were they had already gone up they left the day before toast i mean something bad would have happened for sure it like it was but it's like we had time to feel sorry for ourselves it's still like in this moment i'm like what am i doing you know shit is getting real what am i doing don't want to die here and it's still like there's all these reasons like to turn around

just that that commitment to integrity to pull me up and so we climbed the next day to camp three slept there next day to camp four

and then you got a few hours at camp four to turn it around right you got like four or five hours and then you got to hit it yeah and it takes two hours to get ready like getting your tank on your big suit and you're not really sleeping right no that's what i'm saying i didn't really sleep well i slept okay at camp three because

that's where i put oxygen on camp two i didn't sleep at all like we were there three day i felt just bad and then yeah from you leave three you go to four that's i got there maybe 11 a.m and at 6 p.m i'm gonna start getting ready and you're hitting the supplemental oxygen from that point forward once i put on at three i never take it off so once you put it on you don't take it off sleeping with it it's on all the time if you if you somehow take it off or run out that's worse than having never put it on that's really bad because you've re-acclimated correct when you're when you're doing supplemental oxygen is that like c-level oxygen density i don't know it's still really hard to like i'm still really out of breath uh i think even with it you're still you're still struggling

it's not like oh now I feel totally normal no no not by any stretch of the imagination but it did help me get some Z's at camp three but yeah moving real slow up there and depends how much you have and how

how many liters per minute you have it set to. Right. You open it up all the way, but then you're going to run out. That's the thing. How many bottles do you have? And that's what you've got to be responsible for, like knowing how fast you're going as well and that kind of thing.

So, yeah, at Camp 4, we had that window window from 11 a.m to 6 p.m to rest i remember this sort of strange story i don't tell that much because i don't really know how to tell it that well but i like went into some strange trance, almost felt like I had psychedelic. I was having these visions there. Granted, I know the altitude had something to do with it because we were just under 26, like 25,900. And for about an hour, I was laying in the tent with my eyes closed and just seeing visuals. It almost felt peaceful in some way like I felt a little bit removed from

the experience like the like you're always doing something like managing something on the mountain you know I remember that experience kind of felt like it was giving me a zoom out. And then it was time to go. And started getting ready at 6, about 8.30 p.m. It was dark and the wind was blowing pretty good, but we thought that once we got out of that saddle, it would be better. I'm climbing in a team of four, Dr. John, who we talked about, about myself and then our two

local guys dawa cheering sherpa and dawa dorje sherpa and those guys are like those are my buddies man i still talk to them like a lot and uh we just start we start going and um you're so worried about being i was so so worried about being cold. You hear all the stories, frostbite and stuff that, we're going up kind of that first phase now. I was like sweating. And you don't want to sweat on big mountains like that because the sweat freezes. Freezes, yeah.

And it's dark out. It's dark, yeah. It's 8.30 p.m. when we start. So we're climbing through the night and where our aim is to be on the summit around sunrise. I start sweating. I'm like, man, I got to stop and take some layers off. So I stop, take a layer off.

All these climbers start passing me. And that's the other thing. You don't want to be in a traffic jam up there. So after a few hours, there's a natural resting point called the balcony where everyone takes a break because it's just kind of flat like a balcony. And there's a natural resting point called the balcony where everyone takes a break because it's just kind of flat like a balcony and there's this crazy view and i said john i said look when we get to the balcony let's take like everyone else is going to take a 10 minute break let's take a three minute break and let's pass everybody he said great so i get there we take this three minute break we pass like everybody except there's only

four people in front of us now and uh i don't usually uh eat caffeine but like your appetite also disappears up there so i was just eating like you know the gels right with the caffeine the cliff shots and i was just like i feel like i had another gear some pep in my step under like the unlike the days before and uh dawa cheering and i we we ended up passing that group before and then there was like these two headlamps way above us and we we kept climbing we got up there on the south summit and they had stopped it was our friend eric's he was like hey man i think i was going too fast i didn't want to get there in the dark so he was just sitting there waiting and then john came up he was like nah let's go now he's like

we're gonna hit it perfectly so so we walked past eric's and eric's came behind us and um dawa cheering was in front of myself and uh i just remember like he he went and he went on the summit he turned around and uh he looked me in the eye and it's just like this moment where you you would think maybe you'd you'd feel some pride up there like I did it that kind of thing but I'm looking this guy in the eye who's carrying my extra oxygen you know and it's like no I'm here because of him because of John and because it that would door Jade that's the only reason I'm allowed to be here period like ride to carry all that stuff my I don't think I could have done it. And so instead of this pride, it's just some cocktail of humility,

gratitude, and love. And I basically hugged him. John came up behind us and hugged me. And I flopped onto the summit, man. and hugged me and I flopped onto the summit, man. I just, I buried like my face and my hands on the ground and tears just exploded out of my face. And I remember I said these words, I said like, they like dribbled out.

You can always hear, I was like, this took everything. This took everything. And it was just such a beautiful moment man because john and i had been working so hard for it to be up there with them we were both just weeping and just like in the back of that ambulance you know it's like there was peace and everything made sense how did it differ from the many times that you had imagined what that would be like? Like what did you suspect it would look like and feel like versus the reality?

That feeling of possibility that i had after the walk that wasn't there that wasn't there in other words that idea like after the walk like oh i can there's way more in me it wasn't everest like oh i did everything i could but i'm only here because of these guys like that level of humility that and just like i didn't i didn't want to do anything harder than that i still don't maybe i should say harder i don't want to do anything more dangerous than that in fact i wouldn't do that again you know i wouldn't uh my my risk tolerance has changed. But the moment itself was one of the best moments of my life. It was everything and more. It was perfect. It was beautiful.

People don't realize mountains have shadows. But if you get to a summit on sunrise, you see the shadow. I mean, seeing Mount everest giant pyramidal shadow cast over hundreds and hundreds of miles it's like it was super clear too i mean i saw well it's clear like here's the thing like you're so high you gotta realize you're so high you're above the clouds yeah so i mean that's always gonna be clear up there yeah. Yeah. It's not always clear. It can be bad up there. But on some of the weather reports, like that snowstorm we had, right, where we were waiting in Camp 2,

well, that storm was at 7,000 meters and below. Like that's where those clouds were. So once we passed 7,000 meters, like there was no new snowfall there. We didn't have to worry. You know what I mean? what it's just interesting like you go above the weather yeah so the moment was i don't know what i what i expected but it was perfect it was it was unreal man i it was everything um the way the journey itself affected my life was totally different than the walk, you know, where the walk almost like we talked about was momentum to do Everest. Uh, Everest was momentum to be here, to be present.

I think that's a really beautiful and mature takeaway from the experience because it's very easy to just let that turn you into an adventure junkie where you've gotten some spike out of that experience and you then basically devote a ridiculous amount of energy towards just trying to repeat that or feel something again. And a lot of those guys suck, man. And you're kind of missing the point because you're ultimately running away.

Correct. Or you're escaping your reality yeah versus like really leveraging that experience to you know go deeper into what you just said which is like how to be more present yeah to have more gratitude and humility and all of these things i think we might have talked about it last time did we talk about when i met ram das i don't know. I don't remember. If I don't remember, other people don't. Yeah, that's fine. So I met Ram Dass,

I don't know, eight years ago before I got into all these shenanigans. And I'll make this a quick story, but basically I got invited to spend some time with him at his house on Maui while he was still alive.

And I had read some of his stuff listening to some of his talks and he had had a stroke by then and so he was in the wheelchair and he basically said a bunch a bunch of stuff i heard him say before right but there was something like he just loved me and my friends that i was there with he didn't know us but he was exuding this like i don't know like deep love for us that it was like a body high or something i mean i walked out of his house i keeled over and I was crying. I felt so connected to like the rusty gate and like the dirt and the cow shit. Like he did something just by being him. And so I thought, I want to do like, I didn't feel like I was in the presence of God or anything like that. I just felt like, Hey, somebody who's done his work on himself. And I thought, I want to do that. You

know, I want to, I want when people are around me, them to feel that. And I honestly, when I thought, I want to do that, you know? I want when people are around me, them to feel that. And honestly, when I stop, I can't really think of anything more important to do, you know, than that. And when I'm hearing you talk about these adventure junkies, it's like, all those times those guys suck, man. You're like with them and like, they, like, they don't, they don't feel like, like, they don't feel how like it feels to be in the room with you where I feel

like comfortable and, and like, it's, it's just good. Like you have a, you have a peaceful energy and like that, that, that's like more. It comes from decades of, you know, doing some work and struggling and all of that stuff. I mean, I think on some level, the person who is that adventure junkie is seeking in their own way. And they're at a surface level of self-discovery. And hopefully, I see the best in people.

And that will lead them to other things that will deepen their trajectory. But I think, um, if you get, it's like anything, if you get stuck, then you're, if you get stuck in a certain realm, like you're, you're, uh, shortcutting your growth, right? Like you always have to, like, you always have to like transcend whatever experience you have, like take what you can learn from it and then try to, you know, iterate on it or go to the next level. I mean, there's a, there's a saying in, in, in AA, you can't transmit something you haven't got. Right. So when you're telling the story of Ram Dass, it's like,

that guy's gone so deep for so long and he's carrying such a heavy vibration of love and wisdom and experience that yes there is something really true and beautiful and magical about being in the presence of somebody who who has gone that deep and you can definitely feel it right and it's very infectious and you know like when you when you have that experience you're like i want to i want to be able there's look there's a lot of charlatans out there. There's a lot of people who can go, anybody can go and repeat whatever Ram Dass has said

or their version of that. But when you're with them, you can tell, like if you're tapped in even just a little bit, you can tell the difference, right? Between the hack and like the guy who's like speaking truth from a place of deep understanding. And so, yeah, for me, it's like, how can I go to that place so that I can transmit a vibration that comes from experience,

not something I read in a book. Yeah, that's right. Have you ever had these experiences, like the opposite of the charlatan experience where the charlatan is like this person dressed up and they're like supposed to be like that guy and they're not, where I've had these experiences where people who are not supposed to be that guy or girl or they are. Sure. So for example, it's like politicians. It's like, who, who, who wants that job? It's like politicians, it's like who wants that job? It's like there's an inappropriate incentive

that's attracting the wrong people to that rope. So anybody who wants to be the guru ultimately can't really be the guru. Yeah, but I've had these experiences where people who don't wanna be the guru have guru qualities, such as like, I've been in the studio with rappers and clouds of marijuana smoke draped in 40 gold chains and like i look in their eyes and they're like they're

there you know and i'm getting like that kind of feeling from them and it's like wow okay i'm pretty sure you never meditated but but you're but you got it you know you're i can just tell you're you're present like when i'm speaking with you you're right here with me you're not somewhere off in the future in the past like i can feel it you know i always think that's cool too when that happens those unexpected ones um you were at base camp for a long time man and i think i didn't really appreciate just what a huge extended endeavor the whole everest thing is yeah like you're you're out for months it was two months door to door is that longer than normal because it seemed like you were sharing on Instagram, you're like playing concerts in some kind of like coffee house or something.

I'm like, where is he? Yeah, it is like. You're just hanging out for what seemed like forever. We were, you know, so, you know, below base camp, there are these villages, you know, because you hike, you hike a week to get to base camp. And along the way, there's these villages in the Khumbu Valley of where the Sherpa people live.

And if you get bored, you can, you can go down to our villages and um be in a little lower altitude or you know for a day anyways uh there was a hurricane i think or typhoon or something in the indian ocean and that was causing the jet stream to stay on everest longer than usual now the jet stream hits everest summit usually 50 weeks out of the year so that's pretty much unclimbable at least for my risk tolerance you know and we're talking hundreds mile an hour winds you don't be up there and usually in may late may when the season switches from spring to um the monsoon season there's these two weeks where the the the jet stream gets pushed off the mountain and um this uh this hurricane just messed it up and it was just staying on there longer than usual.

So we had an extremely late summit June 1st. So, yeah, we were there. We were there a little longer than we thought, and, you know, that created some other problems, like lower on the mountain because it's hot. It starts getting hotter, and, you know, like the anchors and screws start to get a little loose and fall out. And more, the hotter it is, more stuff falls.

So, I mean, after that close call in Camp 2, that sound wasn't background noise anymore to me. Right. And so, you just kept hearing them. And after we summited, we got down to camp two really compressed it well that's a trip like the false finish when i talk false finish line you summit but you're only at camp two you got to go down through the ice fall it's like eight hours up but then 12 hours down or something like that it was about it was about a 17 hour day so because because we started that day at four some of it came down to two but you go to bed and you summit at everest but you're

not done you're still freaking on everest is actually the most dangerous part of the mountain statistically is the lowest part the kumbu icefall that's where all the crevasses are and the ladders and that kind of thing i still like those are so low that's the first thing you do on the south side if you climb from the north look terrifying i've seen all the videos yes it's like i want no part of that we had practiced the heck out of that too on ladders and stuff so it's pretty comfortable but it's just interesting like you practice on all these ladders in america and you get the and you're wearing crampons you get there and like the steps are all smaller so it's like it doesn't fit the same way anyways um and colin and jenna were up there too right so i thought maybe you went you all went together

but they went up on a different day. No, same day. Oh, they did? Yeah, same day. Just later in the day? They left a few hours after us, I think. But once you get to Camp 4, we just lost contact with them. I mean, the wind is howling. We didn't know what tent, what person's in.

But we summited, and then when I was coming down, I saw them coming up. I saw Colin and Jenna. And they were pretty much there. I knew they were going to make it. It was pretty cool to see them. But that's like a cool moment. Because you're like, that's the guy I was talking to on the walk across America. And like, actually, here we are right now.

Well, he helped me so much. He gave me so much advice. But he does this joke with me because I'm i'm this musician right i'm out like in these crazy places with with john and him so anytime like i'm in a place that i guess like i on paper shouldn't be like i land in the skardu airport in pakistan he always comes up and he's like he goes oh shit is that mike posner in the skardu airport i'm like what's up man like he's always doing he's like in the grand oh shit is that mike posner on the summit of the grand teton in wyoming you know he's got these like folded and then he did the one and actually he's just like really cool uh

like in that moment where we crossed on the we're on the hillary steph and he did i don't know he doesn't have his phone I think he had a GoPro so he's like oh shit is that Mike Pose on the Hillary staff I'm like yeah you should do an edit of all of those we should wow man

so here you are in the wake of all of these experiences like how do you make sense of all of it like what is the what is the wisdom that you then carry into the studio? Like how does this, I'm interested in how this all congeals with and like works with the art and your expression. That's the easy part.

I mean, that just happens.cy jones said the deeper the human you are the deeper the musician you are it's true so my perspective is totally different you know so where i write from is different i don't i don't have to try to do that you know the inspiration just comes up and um it'll it's it'll just be different. It'll be right. But it gives you something to say. I mean, you can't be an artist if you're not living your life.

So if you just sat in a studio in Hollywood for the last four years, you could create technically good music, but it's not, it would be devoid of the depth that you can give it now that you've lived like these rich experiences yes and there's a balance right because there's skills involved in what i do uh that i wasn't focusing on and then some what some of those things probably waned a little bit my guitar chops are not as you know um but you're right that i've had periods of my life where it's the opposite where i was just writing a song every day and after a year of that i'm writing some song about i don't know is it in my early 20s i'm writing some song about like being at a party

and i'm realizing like when's the last time you've been to a party, man? You don't do anything. You just write. That's all you do. And, you know, I always talk about this experience I had with Redemption song, Bob Marley. It's my favorite song. I'm listening to it one day and I'm thinking, I know all the chords in this song.

I can hit all the notes and all the words in the lyrics are in my vocabulary. So why haven't I written a song this good? Well, that delta between wherever I am and wherever Redemption Song is, you know, is not found in the studio. It's not found by practicing guitar or, you know, making my voice better in voice lessons or learning new words by reading. It's something deeper than that. And I think that's part of the quest I've been on. Redemption song.

Yeah, all I ever had. Redemption song. Yeah, you gotta have a deep reservoir of life experience to get to a place where you have something to say worthy of a song like that and worthy of you being a steward of that expression. And when the universe decides that you're ready, I have no doubt that it'll just flow out of you without, without, without the thinking, without what's it, Charlie, Charlie, without Charlie getting involved. Charlie's not going to have any part in that one. But you came out of the gate with this, uh, with this freaking catchy tune. Mama always told me, I can't get that out of my head. I don't know what it is, but you have a knack for

like writing these songs that like just get lodged in the brain. Like that, that like pop sensibility, you know? I don't know where I got that. Do you think about that or is it just, I'm just doing what I feel? Or do you think, I know that these are characteristics of a pop song that work. And so I structure my lyrics or my beats around that like how does it come together you try not to think about that too much you know um but there is a frame like there is a medium we call it a medium of the song what it's about three minutes

shrinking as our intention spans shrink. You know, songs are actually becoming shorter. And there's like a typical structure to the medium, which is there's a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus, another verse, another pre-chorus, another chorus, maybe a post-chorus, a bridge, one more chorus, and that's the end of the song. And so we play with this form right in the way a painter plays with the canvas that's mounted on a frame and sometimes we say hey we're not going to do it maybe this song like just kind of one verse or you know whatever we're

not going to use that and uh but the medium exists you know before me and so i'm i'm toying with it and uh it's all about what you're trying to accomplish and you know i guess what the spirit is calling you to do sometimes like sometimes you think of a melody that's extremely catchy but it's like almost so catchy it's kind of corny and you got that i don't i don't that doesn't fit you know um so it's always different yeah yeah the music industry just seems to be always changing so quickly i mean it's changed so much just since the last time that we talked oh yeah um you know now it's about tiktok and having having your songs trend there. And I know you've had some success with that,

but the idea of like, I'm going to release an album versus I'm going to drip songs out. Like, how do you even approach it strategically to think, you know, thinking about like, this is how you do it now, or this is the way the music kind of environment functions versus the days when we were growing up where it was you put an album out every couple years and tour on it yeah that's

certainly changed um for me i'm just trying to create like or live the life i want to live i don't want to right now at least go on like a big music tour. I'm really interested in speaking. I just did my first speaking thing. I went to Ohio State and did like a 45-minute talk where I shared some of these stories and had like some slides. And then I played like a few songs acoustic at the end. That was awesome.

You could do a full one-man show that way. Yeah, retreats about re-entry you know that's what it's called retreat no but that's why i'm doing it you know it's like okay you got to do all this cool stuff what'd you learn and can you share it with with other people in a way that adds value to to them so man like i'm probably the wrong person to ask about, like, how we market music now. I don't really know. You're just trying to hold on to the purity of what you do and let that stuff take care of itself. But you're doing, like, a combination of writing for yourself and then working with other guys.

Yeah, because I really enjoy that, you know. And sometimes the writing is just an excuse to share some of this stuff. And sometimes the writing is just an excuse to share some of this stuff. You know, with younger artists, I didn't have anybody tell me what to expect or what to do 10 years ago. It's a wild, lonely industry, you know, especially when you have success. So that, and then as far as like how I'm sharing this stuff, like I'm playing around on TikTok. I'm just being real on there like

showing what i do i sprout you know i make music and that's about it dude you know and no big crazy adventure on the horizon like you feel like people are like well what's next they do ask me that and that's the there's no next right it's like that's what i learned there's no, there's no next, right? It's like, that's what I learned. There's no next. It's only here. It's only now. Like, to anyone listening to this, like, newsflash. This is your life. This is it. Whether you're like, got the earphones in while you're making food or whatever.

Like, look around. Like, this is it, you know? And who said, maybe it's Titnet Han. He said, if we can't be he said if we can't be happy now we can never be happy i think he he quoted the buddha saying that we have to make this moment the most wonderful moment of our lives um so that that's like my snarky answer and then like on the external plane i'm up to stuff i'm i'm doing the speaking uh i'm making music mostly with others now um but i'll make another album for sure at some point yeah and uh as far as the adventure stuff i'm taking a break you know that that everest was really real man it was uh

Everest was really real man it was it's just so easily you could have not come back you know and so I still love being in shape and exercising that like that's a part of my life but you know putting my life on the line

and if you die like who's it really hurt not you you're freaking dead it's like my mom you know like that's not really hurt? Not you, you're fricking dead. It's like my mom, you know, like that's not really, you know, and there's certain things that I would like to think I would die for if like she was in harm's way or something,

you know, but just to like have a cool experience to like access a piece that I think can be accessed in other ways, I wouldn't risk my life for that anymore. That's smart. That's a good move. Yeah, so it's cool. I feel really good, man.

I feel really good. Dr. John and I are also, we're talking about this idea maybe next fall of, you know, speaking of retreats, re-entry and sharing, we're thinking about hosting like a small group maybe 15 16 people on the trek to base camp because that's actually like kind of the coolest one of the coolest parts of everest is just being in the sherpa villages and there's no cars and we're thinking about like hosting a trip there but we're figuring that out yeah that's

pretty cool yeah and didn't you were you like working on a song with tom morello and like laying down lyrics on your iphone like when you were at base camp no so well first of all i got to work with tom morello i know that's like the coolest big rage fan since i was little so um we So we had this song done, and it was an idea I had sent to him, and then he did his thing with it. And basically, you know, I produced the song, which, like, essentially means, like, I should be overseeing the mixing process

and, like, taking the song from... It's one of the hats I wear, producer. Like, you, like, finish it right you know but i didn't i just like left to nepal and toms texts me like yo have you heard the latest mix it's like you know when you nitpick stuff hey the reverb's too loud in verse two or whatever and i'm just like dude i can't because there's some crappy wi-fi at base camp i said look man i i see you sent it but i can't open it up my everest base camp and i came back home and he's like i said facetime i was like yo i want to apologize like i really like kind of dropped the ball on like finishing finishing the mix and he was like

oh he's like it's all good he's like so you like you trek to base camp because that's the thing like that's kind of a life-changing trip people do they do the trek to base camp and that's what me and john are talking about hosting in the future um i said no i summited he was like what you summed it i was like yeah man he's like oh shit he's like it's all good man we'll finish the mix you know right so yeah we got it it's a pretty legit excuse like couldn't get back to you sorry i was at you know camp four yeah yeah wow but that song hasn't come out yet has it it it came out i want to say on tom song tom made an album that's not a Rage album where he collaborated with all these different artists. And it's got like Springsteens on it and Chris Stapleton and all these names

that I don't deserve to be on the CD with. Sure you do. No, it was just, it's really cool. I think he put it out a week or two ago. I'll have to check it out. I didn't know it was out. Well, dude, I love you. I'm such a fan, not just of your music, but just you as a human being. And I really enjoy being in your presence.

And I think the choices that you've made about how to live your life, how to conduct yourself, the choices that you've made about how to live your life, how to conduct yourself, how to, um, be a public figure with integrity and live your life in such an authentic way is truly inspiring, man. And, uh, I'd like to have more of you in my life. So I really appreciate you coming here today. Hey, listen, man, that means a lot. And, uh uh what you're up to is so beautiful like you you have some the most like beautiful people in the world on your on your show and you share their message um and and people hear it i've met them i would say that's probably like of all the interviews I did on like the, I was telling you before, I think we started recording on the walk, you know, like people showed up so many times and all these different states that said

they heard your podcast. And beyond like just highlighting your guests, whatever they're up to, Beyond just highlighting your guests, whatever they're up to, you take the time and create a space where you really see them. And that's a gift. of the things you you reflect back i can hear in your listening like you you get me on a on a level deeper than than uh most people then you get from just like having a conversation with somebody so that's a real gift you know to to share with other people um to your listeners but also each person i think that sits in this chair gets that from you, I presume. Thanks, man. Thank you, man.

Appreciate that. Speaking of gifts, are you willing to share a song with us? I don't have a guitar. We have a guitar here. It's not your guitar. I want to test it out. I don't know. We'll see.

Yeah, let's do it. If it meets your standards, then we can do it. Let's do it, man. All right, cool. Of course. Somebody told me God is simply what we don't know i saw a butterfly it was dead but it was gorgeous and all the robots are just walking down the sidewalk

kings that are little empires that they made up and i'm one Kings of the little empires that they made up And I'm wide open Yeah, I'm wide open Dusty got shot and then Osher got married Stewie's still dead and commitment's still scary And I got a new woman but I treat her like my old one If I keep this shit up

I know I'll end up with no one And I'm wide open Woo-hoo Yeah, I'm wide open Yeah, I don't think anything matters I don't really care at all. You want to start a revolution, but nobody cares. Everyone's tired. Work a little bit harder. And baby, so will I. You want a revolution, but nobody cares. everyone's tired And the promenade's filled with a gray cloud It's dripping black all over the playground

And the museum's all filled with a Snapchat I got the head of a dog in my backpack and underneath all my clothes is a snake skin that i stole from the temple when it caved in because they built it too close to the fault line when the capital burned we were all high on the beautiful mess we created there's a thought in my mind, this is sacred. In the future, this will all be ancient. And the water in the sink has been tainted with the urine of the governor's firstborn. On his second birthday, he got a surfboard, but he crashed it ever since he's been dirt poor. So he picked up the guitar, he's trying to learn chords. And the people want to start it all over

because the poets just murdered all the soldiers and the monks have God on their shoulders and the world's just another day older time wrote a new constitution and Jimmy wants to start a revolution my week is wide open Yeah, wide, wide open Yeah, wide open Thank you. Thank you. Old pirates, yes, they're our buy Sold out to the merchant ships

Minutes after they took our high From the bottomless pit But my hand was made strong by the end of the almighty we flower in this generation triumphantly so won't you help to sing

these songs of freedom? Cause all I ever have, redemption song. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our minds Have no fear for atomic energy None of them can stop the time How long will they kill our brothers While we stand aside and look

Some say it's just a part of it we've got to fulfill the book so won't you help to sing these songs of freedom is all I ever have Redemption zone Yeah, all I ever have Redemption zone Emancipate yourself from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our minds Have no fear for atomic energy As none of them can stop the time How long will they kill our brothers

While we stand aside and look some say it's just a part of it you've got to fulfill the book won't you help to sing these songs of freedom cause all I ever had redemption's home That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest,

including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

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with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake.

Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets, courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace.

Plants. Namaste. Thank you.