Well, Roll

On is back. It's been a minute a couple months. Was February the last time that

I think February. It's like we're quarterly now, man. I guess. I could live with that.

We'll see. We'll we'll see how this one goes.

So I'm auditioning right now?

Here. Here. Here. I wanna make a plea for those who enjoy the podcast on YouTube, the people who enjoy watching it. If you have not subscribed to the channel, but you're watching it, please subscribe. You just have to click that button. It's no big deal. And here's why.

Yes. Of course, it allows us to grow. But with that growth, we then can leverage that to improve the show to, you know, hire more people and, you know, continue to get great guests and the like. So Yeah. That's it. That's my big speech.

Just click the button, man.

That's it.

It's right there.

Tom, I

have to It's the red one.

Yeah. I know.

Today's episode is brought to you by the awesome organizations that make this show possible. You just wrote a novel and that's being kind of pitched right now around, around publishing houses. And you're in that weird kind of liminal space where you're awaiting responses.

Right. It's, it's, we have, we're still out to like 20 different editors at different houses. And you know how it works? There's like, what is it? Four big houses and then like all these different imprints.

All the imprints. There's so many imprints, but they're really only, it's sort of like when you go to the grocery store and you think there's all these brands, but there's only like 2 or 3 companies that own all of them. It's similar in publishing.

It's like that.

Isn't it just one big thing?

It is. It's like, well, and it's what's strange is like, I've been doing this for so long and I still don't, I mean, I've had, I've had a book published by major publishers. I've gotten a second deal through David. David got the deal. But working with David got the deal. David Goggins. David Goggins. Got that another deal.

And we, we didn't end up going with it because he self published. And since that, I've been completely on the fringes of the publishing industry, do what I do. But like, I don't really know anybody or know anything. Right.

You're not interfacing with editors

and all

like, like the biz.

So I get the whole submission list and I'm like Googling everybody. And I realized I don't know anybody and it doesn't matter. And I thought I'd get, in the past, Bird has sent through like passes more frequently. And I think, this time they keep it all away from me. Like I've gotten some thoughts back from editors, like, but we still have the vast majority haven't gotten to that made their decision yet. So I'm going to take that as good news. I feel really good about it. Here's the best part is I've been working on it since 2000, since the pandemic and on and on.

2020. Yeah. Because we had to, we wrote never finished in there. So it wasn't like all my soul focused the whole time, but I did 20 drafts of this thing. And, I do believe it's my best work. I love it very much. And it's going to, it's going to happen, whether through a major publishing house, an indie or through under my own thing, that if I have to do it, I will do it. It's going to happen.

It's going to be out. And, Well, you've done the work. I've done the work.

The book

is done. I mean, this is the difference between, other types of books and novels. Usually you prepare a proposal, the proposal gets solicited, you know, spread around, and you get feedback and responses pretty quickly.

Right.

Whereas a novel, they actually have to read the whole thing.

Right.

So to me, the longer, the more time that goes by and the longer you're waiting, it feels like that might be a good sign. Yeah. Because if somebody got 2 chapters in and thought, no, you know, they would let you know right away.

I would think so. But you know, you just don't know. It's like it's an, and so the 1st week that we went out, I slept really well because I've always thought this, this book has been on a journey. And hopefully when it comes out, I'll, if I remember everything that happened, it was probably gonna be 10 other things to talk about. But, I'll go through the whole thing. But it was, my feeling was once we got out to the publishers, it's going to happen. I never thought it wouldn't. And I still feel that way.

I still am very positive. And I would like it to be under a major publisher because I feel like you can get into more stores. I don't have the social media engine that some people have where you can do an indie thing and know that you're gonna reach certain benchmarks in sales. Yeah. But like I said, you know, it's not up to me. And so all I can do is be in the gratitude space. And for the 1st week, I was able to do that. And the 2nd week, the 2nd week, I was like checking my email 5 times an hour.

Yeah. Is that normal?

I know what that feels like. Yeah. You know, when there's an anticipation. Yeah. And and the response can be something that could change your life in a in a in a pretty significant way. Yeah. Like, of course, you know, you're gonna wanna, I mean, it's not good. It's not healthy to be doing that all the time, but I can understand it.

No, so. I've certainly been that person.

Yeah. And so now I've kind of reached a happy medium where I've got a little bit of that, but I'm able to kind of detach. One thing I can't do is sit at my desk and like work for any long period of time. I'm just like, I think it's just too much. And, for me, so until there's, I'm gonna give it a little more time. I don't think the resolution is gonna come before I have to get back to work.

So I'm

gonna have to get over it.

But, you know. Now you're you're a member of the anxious generation.

I am totally. I mean, I think I've always been. I've always been. I've always been. No, I'm looking forward to talking about that. You know that I love that show. So I can't wait to talk about that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cool, man. Yep. So Adam, while you're awaiting a response from publishers on your novel

Yes.

I just signed a contract for my next book.

Ah.

So I'm steeped in trying to, you know, figure out how I'm gonna turn these ideas into reality. And it's been such a long time since I've written a book.

The Pony Express finally arrived with the contract,

hun. Yeah. It did. Yeah. It did. That's a whole other thing. But it is signed. It's official.

And And I'm curious. I thought we could have an interesting conversation around, creative expression because one of the things that's been really helpful in getting me settled into a mode of being creative is a, meditation. Like I've gone, not that I've strayed from meditation, but I've just been much more diligent about it, like to the point where it's like, I don't miss a day. Like I'm doing it no matter what. And returning to a very diligent journaling practice, but not journaling in the sense of of morning pages, like journaling with intentionality. And I'm doing that because I have this dilemma, which is that when I'm writing on a laptop, it's very hard to separate the sort of flow state creative dump mind that you need from the perfectionist editorial brain. Like those things start to merge because you can so easily like copy paste, delete, and start again. And so I end up like tinkering forever, and I don't make as much progress.

So for this project, the mornings are longhand journaling on a specific thing that I'm trying to work on for this book. And then I use later periods or afternoons for taking that and then doing the editing part, or I set it aside and I do that part later. And that's been really helpful because it lowers the bar, like, especially before you have a ton of momentum and you're entering into a new project, it's such a heavy lift and there's so much pressure. And I just had to like lower that cost and just make it, like, as easy a lift as possible. And so, hey, I'm just gonna sit down. I got this pay. I'm gonna write whatever comes out. I'm not gonna edit it.

I'm not gonna judge it. I'm not gonna you know, it could be total garbage, and that's totally fine. No one's gonna see this. And that's been really good at getting me kind of into a rhythm of all

of this.

So I guess I'm curious around how you approach your writing and these books that you're doing, whether they're nonfiction or fiction, and whether maybe there's a difference in between those two things.

Well, you hit on something that is is that is definitely consistent across anything I do. And that is what you need to do as a writer in order to get your brain to not be terrified of the of the of the thing you signed up for is reduce the amount of blank space you have to deal with at a time. And so, you can do that through outlining. You can do that through just getting your research set up and your interview set up if it's a nonfiction piece. You can do it through just opening up and doing longhand in a book with pages smaller. You know? You could do it with intentionality with journaling because you know you're writing about something. So you don't have to wonder what is this gonna be about or what, where do I start? Because journaling allows you to start anywhere and then eventually you get into it because the flow is built into it. And you have a lot of experience with that.

So it's a comfortable kind of setting for you. So reducing the amount of blank space you have to deal with it, to me, is the best way to deal with with what people call writer's block or some sort of, any sort of impediment to getting some words down on page. But for my process, it's grown over the years. When I first started, I was very ritualistic about everything. I would be like, I'd light a candle. I would do this. I would have everything set up and now, and then through time.

It feels like it creates pressure. Because it's like you've done all this and now the magic has to happen. Right,

right, right.

For me, that's paralyzing. Yeah. Like I have to get rid of all of that. Yes. So that it's like, hey, it's no big deal.

Totally same. I don't

have to like, you know, create this insane environment.

Well, when, when I was doing it that way, I wasn't making a lot of money doing it. So I think what happened was the more I did it, the less sacred it became. And to the point where I wrote part of 1 breath in the backseat of a car on my way to Point Doom to swim. And I would do that several times a week sometimes. And for, sometimes I've written stories off the side of a freeway because that's when it had to have the rewrite in. I've done it every kind of different way. But what, to me, that's the big consistent thing is, is try to reduce the blank space. So with, with fiction, fiction is a lot harder.

That's what I've learned. It's a lot harder. That it's harder to be great at fiction. It's harder to be great at fiction. With nonfiction, you know what you're dealing with, so you can't really stray from that. But the difference is you can always just decide to change something and suit yourself in fiction, whereas nonfiction, you can't. So you're kind of tied to it. So they both have their advantages, but, but fiction is just harder to be great.

But, my process is basically at this point, I try to write a certain number of words per day, knowing that the beginning of the day is gonna suck. It's very rare that you get up and you get right to it and you just, boom. Sometimes it happens. It's very rare. And so if my goal is 2,000 words a day and it might take me 5 hours to get down to 500 words, and then I might do the last 1500 words in 30 minutes. You know?

And are you able to do the writing part and do the editing later? Or are you trying to edit while you're writing?

Well, what I would do.

Or is that dependent on the deadline?

Sometimes to get back into the flow of like you're in the middle of a chapter or in the middle of a thought, you have to go back to the day before and just look at it. And so then you are gonna probably rewrite and just tinker because you're gonna see things that should change. So I'm not I don't have, like, this process. No. This this lump of clay will be fixed. I'm not going back to fix anything yet. No. No.

If my brain wants to go there and, you know, any time you look at it can get better. So I'll start there. And sometimes that will will make it harder to get to the 2,000 words. It might be you won't get there because you you actually the last thing you thought that was so great that you did in 45 minutes actually sucked. And the thing that you thought sucked because it took you 2 hours to write 400 words actually is good. You know, the feel, the thing you have to separate is the feeling of the experience does not mean it's better writing. That's the one thing that I think a lot of people confuse. It felt so good.

This must be great. Because it did feel that way at the time. And you're rereading it and you're like, yeah, this is it. Actually, no. Sometimes that stuff's crap, you know? And sometimes the stuff that barely comes out is good. And so there's, and there's no, and sometimes it's the opposite and there's no rule to it. So the only rule really that there is, is reduce the amount of blank space and just consistently be there so that you can just get it done. Because it's like building, it's just building a house.

It's like, it's like, you know.

My version of that is this delusion that, unless I'm like bleeding out of my eyeballs and suffering, you know, that, that it could be better.

You know

what I mean? And then I'll proceed to make it worse, you know, because I was like, I have to make my because it's like, oh, in the pool or like, you know, it's like, you gotta push yourself. And, what is the, you know, creative version of that? And that's really, kind of a lie. But the other the other challenge I face is sometimes, like it's one thing if you have an outline, you know exactly what you're gonna say. It's different when you're grappling with an idea and you're trying to get clarity around what you actually think and how to express it. And sometimes bringing the editor into the, into that initial creative process is important because, you know, you're kind of pushing yourself to get clearer and clearer and clearer. It's like, I don't know who's the person who said, if you, you know, if you don't know what you think about something, like start right, like in the writing, like you start to figure out how you feel about certain things. And for me, bringing the editor into that process, you know, creates the tension that actually drives a certain amount of clarity that can make the rest of the writing easier. And so sometimes it's like, I need to bring that in, you know, because otherwise if I'm just vomiting out, like it's, it's so disorganized that it takes me longer later to like, well, what am I actually trying to say here? I don't know.

Right.

It's interesting. And then you're also dealing with first person, right? You're dealing in a first person space, whether it's your memoir, whether it's kind of, I believe, 1st person kind of essay stuff that you're working on now is like, and that's different. Because I I'm, I can, I get even my, my novel's 3rd person? So it's like, I could be the detached narrator and I could be the detached, you know, whether it's ghost writing or whether it's even reporting for the New York Times, I'm, I am the observer. And so it's different. You know, it's a different approach. But, listen, man, if you're getting, like, to me, it's like, just get words down. And some people like to write books all longhand. I mean, there's, there's plenty of writers that have made a living doing that.

Like back in

the day.

The problem is that then you have these journals and you're going through them and you're like, you can't just like copy and paste paragraphs. No.

Yeah. There's always connective tissue.

Right? So that's, that's a bit of an issue.

But I

did want to, like, we can kind of pivot into books a little bit. I've, found these journals that I thought were cool that I would share.

These are your older journals?

It doesn't matter. No, these are new journals. It doesn't matter what kind of journal you're using. I'm not somebody like, you have to have this kind of journal. None of that matters. But I did think that these journals are fun. They're called lecturum. The lecturum 1917 Bauhaus edition.

Oh, that's cool.

And what's cool about them, they come in different sizes and stuff like that. But when you buy them and they're not expensive. Yeah. They're just like, you know, whatever average. When you buy them online, you can, get a little inscription. So you can get, like, have, like,

my name on there and the year. 1917 Bauhaus?

They're called yeah. Like here. Like, look on the inside of that.

I mean,

that's a new one. I haven't even written in that. And this is like a larger one.

I love it.

And I like the ones that are dotted instead of lined. And those Bauhaus ones are dotted with red dots, which I don't know. It's just sort of like Oh, that's cool.

I love condensing.

It's aesthetically sort of groovy. Anyway, they're fun. That's cool. But I thought, we could spend a couple of minutes talking about books.

Okay.

We had kinda gone back and forth about

Did you have the inscription made or did they do that for you?

No. That's what I'm saying. When you when you when you order it online, it's like, do you want a thing? And you can like, I don't know. It's only a couple bucks more and you can like have it say embossed with like whatever you want.

Dude, this is clean. I love this.

They're cool.

Yeah. They're very cool. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We talked about like sharing some books. I think you brought like some of your all time faves.

I brought you suggested bringing 5, the best books I read this year and then 5 all time faves. And I don't have all, I think I'm missing a couple, but I brought, I did bring, the 5 best books I've read this year. And then I brought a couple others that mean a lot to me. Yeah.

All right. Well, how do we do this? I don't want to do like a book report on every book.

No, no, no.

But maybe just rifle off, the best books that you've read this year.

Okay. So I read, I this is the most recent book I finished. It's called the NASA archives. I posted about it in a story, but not in a post.

Does it does it talk about how they faked the moon landing and Stanley Kubrick filmed it?

It does. It does. It talks all about how they fake the moon landing, and then that the earth is really flat. That's the whole point of NASA. I don't know if they've told you that. I found this book in Todos Santos in Baja at like this cool art bookshop. And it's a Taschen.

It's a Taschen.

It's a Taschen. And Taschen usually has these big oversized books. This is like, I think this is kind of like one of those big ones that they've repurposed so you could actually read it. And, you know, you don't really read.

No, those are for like putting on the coffee table and looking cool, but you don't actually end up reading them.

Like, I mean

That is pretty cool.

The photos that they have, this like photos from

the moon. Because Kubrick did such a good job.

Kubrick's amazing. But I'm not like a super space guy or I never was. I love the idea of exploration, but I was never like the space nerd growing up. I do remember where I was when the Challenger blew up. Anyway, this book is archive material, some speeches, letters from all the names you think of, and then some deeply reported essays, all about NASA from its inception all the way up to the Hubble Telescope launch. And so it's very cool. Here you go. From Mercury to the Mars rovers.

That's what they call it.

Do you

think that, NASA has the coolest logo that was ever created?

I think NASA, not only that, I think NASA is the coolest governmental organization ever created. Yeah. And I think it's amazing.

I wish it would return to its, you know, kind of heyday of absolute cooldom.

I wish I, we're just too, we're just too grumpy to like be astonished.

What if

other, what if like, like, you know, HUD or like health and human services all had like super cool logos. TSA. Hoodies and stuff like that.

What if TSA guys just looked like spacemen?

Well, I mean, just, you know, that iconic logo that they had.

Amazing. Amazing. And not only that, but like, it goes through like how they decided to be a Cape, because Canaveral, where they, how they started ended up in Houston. Like it goes into all that and like the early leaders and how, yeah, and even just like Kennedy and the Russians and everything that was happening. It took some very big bets from people in government to put a lot of money And people were saying at the time, you know, we have a lot of problems here on earth. Why would we spend this money? And people, that's why NASA was curtailed to the point it is now. Because people stopped having the diet to put that money out into space. But we are supposedly gonna go to the moon again.

I mean, what, what is it like? I forget the number 24 people or something like that. 27 people have been to the moon and they were all one after another in those Apollo missions. And then they stopped, we stopped going to the moon. So it's, it's very interesting to, to me to, to, to dive into that. So I love that. I, this is not the book, but Philip Kerr wrote a series of novels. They're called the Bernie Guenter novels. And it's basically a noir, Berlin noir, pre World War II and then through World War II.

This is the first in the series. The book that I love the most was the last in the series and he wrote it while dying of a terminal illness. And it came out, I believe, after he died. And it's the, it was a prequel to this series. And it, that one's, that one is in 1920s in Berlin when the Nazi party is starting to make inroads into the, into the world. It's like the Nazis versus the socialist. And then this, it's in the twenties when that started. And it's really super interesting.

It's, it felt very current to our time and place now. And it's just literature disguised as genre fiction, you know, it's like, it's really Philip Kerr. If you like detective stories, this one got some attention when it came out by Alvaro Enriquez. It's called You Dreamed of Empires. I got it because, Dwight Garner in the New York Times wrote a great, he's a he's a lit, a book critic for the times and he's my favorite read in the New York Times. And basically it's about when Cortez met, met, Montezuma. And then they ended up like taking psychedelics together.

But

it's it's like it's a re it's kind of real. It's it's kind of like

It's like an alternative universe.

Alternative history, but that's what it's about. It's about the Spaniards.

Like fan fiction?

No. It's more like Spaniards coming in when the Spaniards arrived in Teotihuacan, basically. And, and Montezuma being there and all that. And that's like, that's the whole, it takes place over a short period of time and what happened in that time. And it's, it's kind of brutal and funny and hilarious. You know, it's hilarious, obviously. It's farcical, but really great. And then the best book I've read, 2 kind of old timers.

1, I read Brown Dog. It's a novella. This is a collection of Jim Harrison novellas. And the first one's called Brown Dog.

Michigan guy.

Michigan guy and Montana and Arizona. One of the greats, to ever do it, Jim Harrison. And then Like hard boiled. Yeah, kind of hard boiled, but like

Not as hard boiled as Cormac McCarthy.

No. No. No. No. Much more heart. Much more heart. You know, like a lot of heart and, much more of like earthy, kind of earthy energy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Annie Prowl. I don't don't even know how to pronounce her last name. I think it's Prowl. She wrote, she's famous for 2 books or more than 2 books, but this one, the shipping news won the National Book Award, I believe. And the Pulitzer prize, I think it won both. And she, this is, this is magnificent.

And it was a, it was a kind of a iffy movie with Kevin Spacey and Cate Blanchett. I remember that. But, but the book is magnificent. Is this is art and loved reading it. If you love the ocean, it's like, it's not like a lot of books. I think a lot of art that we see these days is curated to the point where it doesn't offend you, that it like, it's trying to meet you where you are. This has, this is, is brilliant and beautiful, but has an edge. You know, like I want more edge in, in the media.

That's the

whole point of art. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. I mean, I thought so. So that's what we try to do. Right? We try to, try to, try to tell stories with an edge. In terms of like, that's what the best books I've read

so far.

That's good.

That's plenty. I know you got more there, but like that's, that's cool.

Let's wrap it up.

We're only a semi literary podcast.

Listen. Yes. You're in the movie. I didn't ask you about the book you wrote. Okay. It's good. You can you can go. There's other stands here.

Enough. Yeah. Not enough. Not enough gold there.

There's apples over there. You want an apple?

There's an appropriate amount of gold again, and there's too much gold. The books that I chose, the books that I chose are gonna come as no surprise to anybody who who who follows me. And because we were talking about writing and your process and and, you know, I have creativity very much on my mind because I'm trying to channel it. The books that I that I chose, are all about unlocking creativity. So the ultimate one and the starting place for me is The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which is, I mean, the subtitle is A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. And it's just an incredible book that's also like a program with very actionable things to do over the course of a number of weeks to help you connect with your creativity. And there are practices like the morning pages, which we referenced earlier, which is this practice of just first thing in the morning, opening up a journal, long handing, just doing a dump, you know, to clear out whatever's in your brain, so that you can kind of get to a point of clarity before you actually do your creative work. Like that, those journals are not meant to be seen by anyone.

They're not meant to be reread. They're not meant to be insightful. They're really meant to connect your hand to the paper and and to kind of clear the cobwebs out. And there's all kinds of cool stuff in here, like the artist date. Like once a week, you take yourself on an artist date, meaning you have some creative thing that you'd like to do. Maybe you wanna take Polaroids or you want it whatever. And like you indulge that, you know, which is something that ordinarily we're busy and you're just not gonna make time for it or whatever. And I love this book.

This is the original copy that I got. I think I got this book in 1999, 98. That

is well used. I

love it.

This is this book is like, you know, coming up, it's like over 25 years old.

That's been in some trunks of cars. It's been under beds. It's been in beds. I know.

It's like fraying here. And, and I returned to it time and time again.

That's awesome. Did you return to it to begin this project you're on now?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a variation on it. Like, I don't do it super rigorously exactly the way it's lined out because I've done it many times over. But Cameron also is sober. And so there's a there's sort of a 12 step veneer to this also. Like, it's a spiritual program in the way that, in the way that Alcoholics Anonymous is.

And so there's an overlap. And, it was introduced to me by my friend, Sasha, who's been on the podcast, Sasha Horvassi. And, I just love it. And I recommend everybody check it out.

Cool.

The other book that Sasha was the first person to introduce me to, was was, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. And that's another book that I read and read and read it, read again and again and again. And it's just like the ultimate kind of like primer for getting your head around the creative process and going to war with resistance. And I couldn't find my copy of that book.

I don't

know where it's hidden. But Steven, who's also been on the podcast twice and has become a little bit of a mentor to me. I mean, just like incredible. This guy. You know, he just came out with this box set, the daily press field. Okay. Which I thought I would share. It comes in this beautiful box.

And it's sort of like the daily stoic. Like, every page has, like, a prompt Okay. That you can reflect on over the course of that day. Beautiful color. And then, yeah, he's got, like, little journal in here and, like, these cards, and I don't know. It's pretty cool. Alright. So yeah.

There's the War of Art on the back and then there's Turning Pro. These books are just instrumental. And you don't have to be faced with the prospect of writing a book to gain value from these creative texts. I think we're all creative beings, and we all have something that we wanna say and express and perhaps struggle with finding a way to do that. And I just think they're they're they're manuals for living.

1999 is when you had the art of artist's way. Right? And that that you weren't thinking about No. Not at all. Becoming creative.

Yeah. I've been doing this forever. Right. A couple other texts that have been key and important to me, the Creative Act, Rick Rubin's book, which, you know, probably most people have read at this point. I think it's still on the New York Times bestseller list.

It's on those. Yeah. It's on those.

It's crazy how well this book is doing. And this book was like really pivotal to me. I just think it's a really beautiful book.

I have it teed up on Audible. And I, you know, I just like, it's hard for me to get to my audibles.

I don't do it on Audible. This is a book you should, you should actually, I think you should actually

read it.

I should read that. So I've got it on Audible. I should also buy it. Yeah. So Rick and Neil can get some benefit.

Maybe. Yeah. Creative Calling. Shout out Neil Strauss. Yeah. Shout out to Neil Coburn who

who was, who was. Ghost riders. Ghost riders are people too. Hashtag.

The ghost riders need to unionize, I think. I don't know.

I don't think Neil wants to unionize.

No. I'm just saying, you know, the unherald, they're sort of like, you know, this whole, this movie, The Fall Guy that came out, and part of that, part of the narrative there is like, we need to really appreciate these stuntmen. They they they're barely credited. Nobody knows who they are. They don't, there's no Oscar category for what they do. And there was a real heartfelt sensibility by the director who's a former stuntman, to raise kind of like to, to have us all like celebrate the work that they do. Yeah. I think there's something, relevant to the ghost writers out there.

You know what I mean? Who toil in anonymity and do, you know, all this, you know, do God's work, and, and just are, you know, sort of like, you know, they're the ones who are jumping off buildings and, and submerging themselves, with masks on and nobody knows who they are.

Only writers want to that. Only writers want to award writers.

The other book I would call out is Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis.

I don't know

who he is. He's been a a guest on the podcast. This this book is really great. I would highly recommend it.

Okay.

It's about, like, very practical, actionable things that you can do to develop a daily practice around cultivating creativity. And in the same kind of canon, there's there's a couple books by a guy called Austin Kleon that I actually haven't read.

Right.

I think one is called Steel Like an Artist, something like that. I really should read those books.

Have you had them on?

No, I haven't. No, I haven't. I haven't. I'm aware

that they're both.

Those are

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What else is going on? You're getting you texted me the other day, about bikes.

Yes.

I was very happy to get this text. You're considering buying a bike.

So my, like, I played baseball growing up. Baseball is my main sport, like organized sport growing up. And I reached a point where I just wasn't good enough anymore to keep playing in a, in a, the highest competitive league. So in high school, I switched and I started to, I was like early adopter of, of cycling and triathlon in America. And so I was doing that stuff.

I didn't know this.

Yeah, I know. I never told you. These front teeth were smashed in the asphalt in a bike race in the desert when I was 16 years old.

Really?

Yeah. Someone cut into a Peloton.

So you Skolnick that I know nothing about.

You remember those Dave Scott Ironman bikes? Sure. I had one of those, the first Shimano 600s or whatever that was on the market or something. Wow. Yeah, I had that. And I was really good at hills. I was, I was really skinny and small and I didn't even really grow in height till I was 16 years old. And so I was really short at first. And then I got, I was too short for that bike.

Then I really grew into it. And I was great in the hills. I mean, I was, it's my, of all these endurance sports, it's the one I'm best at and more naturally. And I think it's because I did it younger. Right. So I had that experience. I was doing, I did rode from Santa Barbara to LA. I used to ride down to Laguna.

I did all that kind of stuff on this bike. And then I was in this bike race and someone just cut in the Peloton. Just, they did, they made the wrong move and I hit his back wheel and just went down. And I didn't, it happened so quickly. I couldn't move and smash my teeth. And so, and not long after I kind of lost my flavor for it.

That was it for you?

It's kind of like the Jack Johnson hitting his head in pipeline or hitting, he smashed his teeth too. He hit, went head first into the reef. Of course he kept surfing big waves. I got started partying or whatever I did.

Yeah. That metaphor, that example sort of falls apart.

It's not a good example.

Well, I'm excited for you to find a new bike because bike technology has come such a long way since then. I mean, the bikes that are now available, I mean, it's like night and day. They're so fun to work.

So let me tell you, like, I, I, when I was, I got diagnosed with this herniated disc. We've talked about this, right? And I couldn't run anymore. I haven't been able to run. And so I decided to get on this bike. It got, my back got better. And I have the bike, this like fixed gear type bike. It's not a fixie because there's, it's like the new fixies where you can flip it around and there's like a free wheel so you can coast.

Right. So

it's a single speed with a big chain ring up front, small, and you can't go at top speed downhill, but you have to go hard uphill. And so like, I've, I've got a couple of different rides I do between 12 20 something miles. And I get to pass all these people in Lycra and like high end bikes going up San Vicente because I have to go so hard to go to go up at all. Right.

Otherwise you'll, you'll Right. You'll tip over.

But I can't do hills. I can't get on the trails. I can't, so, and then I've heard about these gravel bikes for years. I've always threatened to get one. And then I rode your, one of your canyons you have here for guests. And I'm like, I love this bike. Like, why aren't I on a better bike? So I've been looking at it. So I've been looking at the Canyon Grizz is one thing I've been looking at.

I talked to my, my, one of my cousin's son, Isaiah Goldstein. He's a great cyclist. He lives up in Washington. He's more trails. And he's like, well, the thing about Canyon is you don't have a bike shop. And if you're a great, if you have all the gear, you know how to put things together, that's one thing. But, so you should also consider while you make your selection, looking at a bike shop just to see what they offer. And so I looked at Specializ.

I went down to Helen. So I've been looking at a few things. And I think I've settled on a gravel bike with a slightly bigger chain ring, changing out the front ring to like from a 42 to a 46. So you, so I can use it in a triathlon scenario,

but I

can also ride it up to Sullivan from my house and get on a trail. And I could do all the things I wanna do because I'm not that serious, but I am serious in the fact that I'll be on the bike, you know, 3 times a week, 2, 3 times a week.

Well, flexibility is important. Yeah. I think people tend to overspend on a very specific, specialized type of bike before they've ridden enough to know what it is they are gonna end up doing the most. And I so so I think a bike that allows you, you know, the ability to ride it wherever you want in the way that you want, is the more important thing. And then if you get totally hooked in, you can upgrade later. But I don't think that you should overpay now. And I think with, with that gravel bike setup, I mean, you can change the tires on it for road and

you can

have, you know, there's certain things that you can do to make it, more of a universal, type of situation for yourself. But I'm partial to Canyon. There is that idea that if you get a Canyon, it's a bike that, bike shops are reluctant to service because they have such specific components, etcetera. But, I got a guy for you. That shouldn't be that shouldn't be a consideration.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a great company called Velofix, and they basically do bike repairs mobile. And they have a van, you can book it online, they come to your house, they can build your bike. Because Canyon, they'll just ship you, you know, you need somebody to assemble it. Right. It's there's there's plenty of people who can do that.

Okay.

And and so I'll just introduce you to my guy. But I'm partial to Canyon and Canyon is a company that we work with. I love that company. I love the brand. I love the bikes.

I love that bike that I rode. And that's why I was thinking, God, I should do and it's it is a better price point for what you're getting, isn't it? Like, than a lot of these highly.

I think so. I think their bikes are really exceptional.

Okay. So you can

get more about it.

We'll talk about it. What do you think of digital shifters versus the mechanical? Like the, like the new SRAM, is it called? Or SRAM.

SRAM RED and and DI 2. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're great. Electronic shifting is is really fun. It's very precise. You have to charge them. And there's differences between SRAM and DI 2.

But it's really kind of a personal preference thing. They're, you know, all of those components now are, pretty exceptional. So I would I would go with electronic shifting. You would. If you can and that's in your budget.

Okay, cool. Yeah. We'll talk about budget. And, you know, I know the listeners out there are gonna have opinions. Please send me your opinions. Please at me. Please at me.

You could get

a lot

of opinions.

It's a

very, it's a very personal thing.

You know

what I mean? It is. It is.

It is.

It is. And as I said to you in the text, like, just ride a bunch of bikes and and and, you know, find the one that you enjoy the most, that feels the most comfortable. I mean, obviously, you'll wanna get a proper fit and all that kind of stuff. So some of that stuff, you know, you can adjust after you purchase. Right. And these Fellow

Fix guys

can help

you with

that, right? You can call a lot of people. You wanna

be excited about the bike that that you're getting. But anyway, well, this is gonna be a whole journey for you.

Yeah. It should be fun. I I wanna be able to ride with you sometime.

Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. What else is happening?

Oh, what else is happening?

Deepest Breath won an Emmy.

Deepest Breath did win an Emmy. Isn't that quite today.

Did they give you one? Would it have won an Emmy without you appearing in that documentary?

Probably. But the thing about it is that, although they've been always very nice, you know, they had a a cut of that movie done before they brought me in. I was like the last interview because they felt they needed something more. So I mean, hopefully I

can get-

Push it over the edge.

Hopefully I did. But I did get in the, at the farmer's market today, the guys I see for like salad stuff and herbs, this guy's like, looks at me and he goes, are you in the movies? And I'm like, me? No, man. I'm not, I'm not in the movies. And he goes, are you sure you're not in that movie that, that, you know, the diving one? And I'm like, oh, well, yeah. I mean, that movie. And so what happened was, what usually happens when people approach me because they've seen something of mine or usually it's a Rich Roll podcast, they talk to me about it and they they're happy to to meet me. And then I wanna talk about them longer than they wanna talk about me or talk to me.

And then they start to recede into the background. They try to get away from you.

Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, and I also wrote a book about it. He's like, all right, bro.

You know,

I didn't ask about your book, dude. That's pretty funny. Yeah. So that's what I meant.

When we had Orlando Bloom in here recently, I invited you to come to watch because, the episode of his series where he he goes free diving was at, was it called Deep Blue?

No. The Blue Hole. Dean's Blue Hole.

Yeah. The Blue Hole. Yeah. And all of the people that are kind of schooling him, and it was in the middle of the competition. Right.

Right. Right. He was yeah.

And I knew that you knew, you would know all of those people and there would be like a shorthand, for that experience. So it was cool. Yeah, it

was cool to be here for that. It was cool to see, you know, and to hear his whole, you know, as we get into the recent pods, he's one of them to hear his whole journey through Buddhism. It's fascinating. Yeah. And there's, you know, he's a beast, you know, he's like one of those undercover beasts you don't realize.

Who can, who can just excel. Like, he's just an incredible athlete. He qualifies himself.

He's in a wingsuit.

I know. After 35 jumps that were compressed into like a 2 week period, basically. Right.

Do you think that comes from just being an actor? Like you have to learn how to ride a horse really fast. You have to learn how to do this really fast. You have to like, there's, like, this compressed time to learn to be good at something.

I have no idea. I mean, I think he's, you know, he's definitely like, you know, an adrenaline adventure junkie, but I think he has, like, a base level of athletic talent also.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, that was fun to have you here for that.

Yeah. That was fun. It was fun to be here. And, like, what have you been up to?

I'm doing good, man. We're we're we're we have all the kids home for the summer, which is fantastic. We have one who just finished her 1st year in college. We have our youngest who just finished 10th grade at boarding school. Not gonna say where, where, but, I never thought I would send a kid to boarding school, but this school has just been phenomenal for our youngest, and she's now home. And the boys who already lived with us, so we're just all together as a family, and it just feels great.

I'm so stoked to be home. Is she like

Well, that's the thing that's that maybe, you know, if anything I've done that that, you know, I'm I just am so grateful for and and on some level, I guess, proud of that the kids wanna be home. Like, they they're they're off with their friends and doing all sorts of things, but but they're happy to be home,

you know?

And it's nice to have dinners and connect together. So I just, you know, I love it. I'm so glad that they're here. So, yeah.

I'm so happy to hear that, man. It's like, you're my you're my fatherhood, my Yeah. My fatherhood example.

You know, there's there's a lot, you know, it's a roller coaster.

Of course.

You know, you go through phases, and there's plenty of ups and downs. And, I always say, you know, when the kids are are are little and young, the problems are many, but the problems and the solutions are relatively simple. And when they get older, there's a lot of problems, but the problems are more complicated. You know? They get trickier and they're more fraught. And we've had, you know, every kind of, you know, color under the rainbow of stuff we've had to contend with as parents. So it's not easy, but I feel like everyone's in a really good place right now. And for that, like, I just, you know, I couldn't be more grateful.

I'm happy to hear that. That's awesome. Are you guys traveling at all this summer?

Well, we're gonna be going, to Paris for the Olympics. Olympics. Oh, right. I'm doing some things with ON, in conjunction with, with the big event that's happening there. And so we're all going over as a family, and we've rented a friend's flat, in Paris, for a couple weeks. So that's gonna be good. That's amazing. So I'm excited to I've never been to the Olympic.

I'm obsessed with the Olympics, and I've never I've never No. Witnessed one. I've never I've never attended one. So it'll be my first experience doing that, and it's gonna be great. I'm gonna do some activations with On and some of their athletes, their track and field and marathon athletes. A couple panels, one of which I think is gonna be open to the public. Like, the schedule is all still getting worked out. So I'll make announcements about that, as we near and that information becomes public.

And hopefully, I'm gonna do some podcasts there. We'll see. Okay. It's tricky because of the IOC and, you know, I mean, I'm gonna do it my, like I'm gonna bring my gear or whatever and catch this, catch Ken and see what happens. It's not like I have a whole agenda or I'm running a studio or something like that, but just to kind of old school it here and there. I just don't wanna be caught flat footed. If I'm there and I don't have my gear and I come, you know, I meet somebody who, you know, wants to do it, I wanna be able to do it.

What you need is a reporter on the ground who knows how to open some doors.

I could use a lot of things, the the all of all of which exceed the budget. I'll tell you that.

One with a with a blue blazer like this and a bicycle with a with a, with a French bread holder

Maybe.

That I couldn't slide right in now.

But on the swimming front Yes. I don't know if you've been following this. The apparently, the open water swimming and the swimming leg of the Olympic triathlon are meant to go down in the sand.

I did I did see that. I knew it was the open water. I didn't know it was the triathlon leg as well, but it made sense.

I believe so. And so, you know, going back, I don't know, 2 years ago, I started to see news about this and how they were gonna clean up the water and make it swimmable. And I checked back in on that. I was like, is that still the case? Is that still happening? Last Saturday

was it was it wasn't ready. That's the record. It wasn't ready. Yeah.

I just read an article. I'll link it up in, in the show notes that said that they're they've they've devised, I'm sure I'm gonna mischaracterize this, but they've devised some work around because the Seine, you know, has a lot of bacteria. It's not like safer swimming.

Right.

That they've cordoned off a certain, like, section of it that's, you know, like the size of 10 Olympic, you know, size swimming pools or something like that. And they have these underground, tunnels where they're gonna, like, funnel the the they're gonna funnel the river water, like, bypass it. Like, it's like bypass surgery. Right? And they're gonna have this one area that where the water will be clean. And they seem to believe that they're gonna hit their target in terms of timing, which is something They're building a

pool and a river?

I think I think maybe, like, I don't know exactly. I should probably read that article more in-depth or do a little bit more research. But my sense was that this is still very much, not only a possibility, but but, you know, how it's gonna go down. So we'll see. It's like Wild. It's like every Olympics, though. You know? Right. You you hear all the the all the venues are almost done, and then they're like 2 weeks out.

And like, you know, there's all this stuff that has to happen in order for, you know, it to get pulled off.

And true marathon swimmers are like, I swam in the Hudson and the East River and all around Manhattan. They're not trying to tell me there's not, there's not gross water there.

They do it all the time. Like people getting sick and No. And stuff like that. So anyway, yeah. So that's that's gonna be the big the big, trip this summer. And I just, you know, I've been traveling a fair amount. I was in India. I was in Austin, and then I was in Bentonville, Arkansas.

But I went to we didn't we didn't do a roll on at first. That's tough.

I thought we were gonna talk about yeah. I wanna hear all about that Dalai Lama trip. I mean, that is unbelievable.

So I got invited by Arthur Brooks to join a small group of about 20 people to travel to Dharamshala, to do a 2 day thing with the Dalai Lama that, was gonna that was hosted by Arthur in conjunction with Harvard, where he teaches at the business school and at the Kennedy School of Government. And so the group was, you know, there were people from his happiness lab at Harvard that were there. There were some social scientists, some interesting people. Rainn Wilson came

Right.

With his wife. And and Lisa Miller who's a podcast guest who teaches the science of spirituality at Columbia, was there also. But everyone else I was new to me, you know, but it was a really great group. And basically it was 2 separate days of of sitting with the Dalai Lama in in these 2 hour sessions where Arthur kind of hosted and, and, you know, sort of conducted a series of questions and conversations with the Dalai Lama. And it was it was really cool. I mean, he's 89 years old. It took place in this sort of congregation room that is attached to the domicile that he lives in that's adjacent to the actual monastery. And it was, I mean, it was amazing.

I was sitting like this far, like as far as I am away from you, from him 2 days in a row. And, you know, Arthur has a whole series of questions that he wants to ask him and he's got a whole arc and trajectory, this journey that he wants to, you know, take the Dalai Lama on and take us on. But he knows well, because he's been doing this for over a decade, that it basically doesn't matter what you ask the Dalai Lama. He's gonna tell you what he he's gonna he's gonna assess the crowd and figure out what these people need to hear. And that's gonna be his message. So most of his responses to these questions which had to do with love and transcendence and happiness and west versus east and and and the like forgiveness compassion could all be boiled down to one core answer that was sort of like his refrain or his mantra that he kept returning to, which is basically like the answer is always love to everything, you know, which is to the Western mind, somewhat infuriating in its reductiveness and simplicity. Like we came all the way here. Like let us pull it past the velvet rope, man.

You know, like this is it.

Right.

But when you reflect on it, you know, is there anything more profound than that? No. You know, that that that basically, you know, everything that ails us, all of the problems that we face and etcetera, the solution can all be found on, you know, developing a greater capacity to give and receive love. And what was interesting was how he framed it repeatedly over these 2 days, which was if you don't know exactly what I'm talking about or you feel, challenged by how to how to conjure that emotion of love, look to the mother's love for the child or look to nature, to the animal kingdom and the mother animal's love for for its offspring. And basically, you know, by by really trying to internalize like that experience into your life is basically what I'm talking about. And kind of behind it, he means, that that the love that he's referring to and the love that you should be exuding in your life, should be that of that character. Like the way that that that unconditional love that that a mother has for its child. And the idea behind it being like, love everyone as if you are their mother or you are the child. Right? Like that is the love that the the sort of unconditional, most compassionate, version of love.

You're the mother and and the other person's the child. That kind of love.

I think it's more like the mother's love is basically what we're what he's talking about.

Not the child's needy love. No. And not the father's love. I noticed the absence of father, not the father's. But not the father's conditional love. The mother's unconditional love.

And he spoke in his native tongue and he had a translator. Okay. So he didn't have to, you know, he speaks English, but he didn't have to, like, struggle with his words or or, you know, he could be more precise in his answers that way. And a couple people had the opportunity to ask, questions. I got that opportunity as well.

What'd you ask?

I'm gonna hold off on that.

You're not

gonna I'm

gonna sit on that one. Yeah. I'm holding that one to myself.

Oh, I I I have I have a feeling where that might land.

So that was cool. Yeah. That's cool. It was great to do it with with Julie and Right. To be there with my wife. And we got to spend a ton of time with a lot of monks. There was there was a whole bunch of monks that came up from southern India who live in monasteries there, who are part of his community, many of which had advanced degrees from American universities and science and the like, like super interesting guys, really fun to hang out with, super fascinating. There's a monastery, school, like as part of the Dalai Lama's kind of compound.

And there are all these kids, like little monk kids, who are growing up in that. Going to school there. Yeah, basically. And Dharamshala is a trip. You fly to Delhi and then you get this like little plane that flies north to Dharamshala and it's about a 45 minute drive from the airport. And you go up this mountain and it's sort of like the Topanga of India, you know, a lot of seekers, a lot of backpackers. Yeah. And a lot of a lot of, yeah, a lot of cows in the road and that kind of thing.

And, you know, India is my first visit to India. I mean, India is just like being on another planet. Totally. It's a trip.

Did you like it?

Yeah. It was great.

It was it was

really cool. Pretty hectic. Right?

It was

pretty, pretty wild.

It was hectic. And look, it's a massive country. So in in the aftermath of that experience, Julie and I went to Jaipur and spent a couple days in that region in Rajasthan, went to some temples, went to that city, Jaipur and got a sense of

The red, the red city?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been there?

I have.

Oh, you have? Yeah. Yeah. It's wild, man. Yeah. It's cool. It's really cool. It's a place of extremes and,

Oh yeah. I mean, you know, like barbers and cows and everything on the street. It's like, like the.

Keycocks everywhere.

Bigcocks running around. It's, I mean, the video you posted from the taxi in Dharam, Dharamsala was like, I mean, I was like, oh man, I want to be there. It felt like, you know, lately I've had this like pangs, like God, remember the travel, like those lonely planet type of travel days where you just get off, get in a cab and you don't really know where you're going. It's like, we got a little bit of a flavor for that with the family women, our little sabbatical thing, but, not like India. Nothing's like India.

There's nothing like it. No, nothing's like India. Yeah. There's no comparison really. No. So I loved it. It was fantastic. And again, it was great to do it, with Julie, with my wife.

We had an amazing time and, yeah, I can't wait to go back. I'm continuing to reflect on the experience. I'm doing a lot of writing on it. Are you? Yeah.

That's awesome. I was like, thinking what you were saying about love and what he, what he was communicating. It's like, it is the mother's love, but it's actually, it's actually harder because it's the mother's love that you're trying to repurpose in a selfless way. Because it's hard to love someone when there's nothing back for you. You know what I'm saying? Even though there is something, but you do get something back for you. And I don't mean that in a cynical way. I just, I'm just kind of like philosophizing on it, but like

What am I getting out of this? Is that what you're saying?

Well, most people, it's innate, right? When it's your child, you know, there's a reason that love is so strong. And when we love our family and our friends or love, we have that love, but then we're confronted with some situation we couldn't have seen situation we couldn't have seen coming and you're, you know, someone hits you in your car or someone, you know, some crazy- That's a challenge. Right. That's the challenge. Right. I mean, really

what he's saying

is it's speaking to the

illusion of separation. Yeah. Right. And this idea of oneness where, you know, we truly are all 1. Yes. And if you could, you know, treat everybody the way that a mother treats a child, like, wouldn't that be, you know, like, wouldn't that be a better world?

Yeah.

And it is a selfless love. So can you love another as if they, you know, in that mother's way, but also, as as if they are yourself.

Right.

Right? Because of this oneness idea. Yeah. And it's about like breaking that that that denial or that delusion around, around separation.

It's simple, but it's like, it's like you can do it and, but that's what life is, right? You wake up and you get another chance to do it again. You know, it's like, it's like Groundhog Day in a weird way. It's like, it's like, here's your next chance to try it again, to do it better. You know what I mean? To be more pure or not even pure, but like more open, more loving, you know, like every experience we have is our chance. So, you know, like it really is. So that's how I feel. I know it sounds reductive and silly and trite, but I mean, it is the basis of spirituality, right?

Of course. And there's a museum, dedicated to the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, where you can go in and you can see all of these incredible photographs and, artifacts that he's collected over the course of his, like, extraordinary life. Pictures of him, of course, with, like, every single world leader, including, you know, this insane black and white photograph of him talking to chairman Mao. You know, it's like, here's, he's like, he is, you know, in the, he's in conversation with the guy who basically exiled him and his and the government and

killed thousands and thousands of people

in a situation that's still, you know, unresolved. And so if he can demonstrate compassion and love and, and an attempt to understand with somebody like that, like, then, you know, the, the, the issues that we come across are obviously, you know, frivolous and trivial by comparison.

100%. You know, when they say, like, when I interviewed someone from the Self Realization Fellowship in Mount Washington in LA, they tried to get us to talk in some conference room, but it was like booked out. And so we had to sit on these couches. Maybe it stopped me if I've said this on the podcast before, but we had to sit in the, in front of the fireplace, just in the main house. And as the guy who sat across from me, he was like, you know, this is where Yogananda would sit every night after, because that was his main house. Every night he would sit and whatever guests were there and they'd have tea and he'd sit there. And they say that after sitting here for a while, you might feel his presence in you as you leave here, whatever. And the guy that said this to me was very polite, very nice, very kind of academic, almost.

Like I didn't feel like that amazing unconditional saintly love coming off this guy. Mhmm. So I can't necessarily pin it to him. And I didn't believe it when he told me that. I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. And we have this long interview for like, you know, an hour long interview. This is back for LA yoga years years ago. And as I left and I walked out of the garden, I felt like it's almost like the sensation of coming on to psychedelics.

It was like this expansiveness and this feeling of energy. And obviously it's real, right? Curious if you had anything like that up there. If you felt the kind of a calmness or you felt anything energetically up there.

I mean, not, not in that kind of heightened super heightened way. I've, I, you know, I know lots of people who had some version of that experience and, you know, always talk about it. I can't say that I've had that myself, which was part of the question that I asked him that I'm gonna leave hanging.

I love it.

But let's take a quick break, and we got much more to come. Hey, everybody. Today's episode is brought to you by Seed Gut Health. I talk about it all the time on the podcast. You know it's important. If you've even listened to a few of my podcasts, I think I've maybe devoted, I don't know, a dozen, 2 dozen episodes to the microbiome. You gotta take care of your gut health if you want to have optimal health. How do you do that? Well, your nutrition, your lifestyle habits, sleep, all of these things play into that.

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Get on it.

You've had some amazing recent podcasts. I've really connected to the Jonathan Haidt one. I told you that. I texted you right away. Like I wasn't even finished with a podcast and I just like That to me, because I have, I have my, my I always thought your first, your first David episode to me is my favorite personally because it has meant so much to me, but also just it did right away mean a lot to me. And then I thought the Huberman one, I mean, these, look at these 2, what they've gone on to become and in, in no small part because of, of starting here with you and get, having it all unpacked. And then this Jonathan Haidt to me is on that level. It's like that good.

It was, you know, he's one of those, he's, he's like the public intellectual you want and need, really authoritative, but also thoughtful in his approach and a great writer, great communicator. So, I thought, you know, that's, that's one of those that can really help a lot of people.

I think so. I mean, well, first of all, I appreciate that. I mean, he does tons of interviews and lots of media. So he's got his, you know, his points down. He knows what he wants to say. So in the case of having him on the podcast, like it was an easy lift for me because I can just sort of tee him up to say all the things that, you know, he can talk about with such, depth and experience. And but I think his book, you know, the anxious anxious generation, I mean, is one of the more important books, that's come out in recent years and it's definitely making a cultural impact. I think it was number 1 New York Times bestseller.

And, it's, you know, it's alarming to read that book. And I would imagine perhaps more urgent for someone like you whose kids are younger. Like my kids are already, you know, they're they're they're older. And and so the parenting piece around that is sort of a ship that's already sailed. Yeah. Whereas for you, you have to be thinking about this all the time. Yeah. And And it's looming on the horizon for Zuma.

I thank I thank him for this, you know, because like now we know, you know, social net the social dilemma was kind of one of the first things to, to, that kind of clued us in that we're the, we're the crop, you know, we're, we're the crop, we're the harvest. And this, it, it, it, to me, this is like 10x in terms of the danger, because that movie, even though it touched on adolescence, this is all about like, and really, and I think it's because their research has progressed. It takes apart how much childhood has been overwhelmed by it and what that means, which is suicide rates and depression. And so, you know, it's it's it's weird because if it wasn't for social media, we wouldn't be sitting here right now in the same way. Like I wouldn't, you'd still have your podcast, but like, I mean, your podcast was built off

of Scott. Yeah. Yeah. I've built an entire career upon it.

So it's

not a, it's not a, it's not a black or white thing.

Right.

It's a tool. It's about your relationship with the tool. Yeah. But it's not as easy as saying use it to create things and not to consume things when, it's so powerful it overrides your neural circuitry to, you know, addict you to do things. And it's driven by algorithms that are bespoke to what interests you and agitates you.

Yeah.

And that's what's, you know, driving not only poor mental health outcomes, but also in large part, so much of the divisiveness and division and acrimony right now that we're seeing culturally.

Yeah. 100%. And so it's great that he's out there doing this work and a lot of it, like you can get on his way. If you don't want to buy the book or for whatever reason, you can get on his website. He's got stuff. He's got old articles. He's got archive research. It's really You've talked about this on the, on the podcast, but I just encourage people who haven't listened to that one yet to really dive in.

And the book is just as good, you know. It really is.

Yeah. It's pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you told me you wanted to talk a little bit about the Johann Hari episode.

Oh, yeah. That's another brilliant episode. Johann. I mean, I hadn't caught the last 2, so I didn't really have an understanding for his London charm and his gift for gab.

He's quite charming.

And a hell of a, I mean, he is a gifted communicator too. Like the 2 of you. It's like there's, you had something. I felt, I think I've told you this. I felt that there was like a brotherly thing almost. Like you, you were the big brother and he, I'm not saying it's true, but that's how I, that's how it came across to me. It's like, it's like there was, there was like a creative tension that I really liked in it. Not that it was tense.

It wasn't tense, but there was a tension in point of view, which I thought really made it interesting to listen to and to, and it was riveting.

Well, it's his 3rd time on the show. And, and as a result of the other two experiences where at least on the second one, I think I pushed back on some of his ideas around addiction. We developed a bit of a rapport. Like, I like Johan. He's friendly. He's super fun to hang out with. He's, you know, obviously like a good conversationalist and he comes ready. Like, he's got all his talking points and all the stories that he wants to tell.

And my whole thing with him also, because he does lots of media and he's been on lots of podcasts, is understanding and knowing that Johan has all these stories that he wants to tell. And fine because they illustrate, you know, his thesis and the points that he's trying to make in the in the books that he's written. But I try to get him off his I try to get him off that. You know, I I was like, okay, cool. But like, how can I, you know, throw a curve ball at him and and get him off his game a little bit? And for whatever reason, like the energy between us, like it's friendly. It's good. Like, I feel like I can push back on him and we can have a good time and he and and do it in a respectful way. Yeah.

And so and so, obviously, that's what happened in that episode. But I felt like it's interesting because when the conversation was over, I was like, that was great. It was super fun. And, you know, we we definitely have that kind of a rapport, but the response to it has been super interesting.

Oh, really?

There are certain number of people who found it to be much more contentious than I felt like it was. Some people, and also because weight loss in Ozempic is a very, you know, heightened kind

of

topic or issue for for many people. People have strongly held opinions about it.

Both both

those things separately and

together. Yeah. Just pushing buttons. Yeah.

And I felt like we did a good job of canvassing not only the benefits and his, you know, firsthand experience on this drug, but also, you know, highlighting the risks and the dangers and, and the things we don't know about what's happening. And I felt like I was pretty balanced in that regard, but there also has been, you know, plenty of comments from people who are are upset and felt like I was too hard on him and that I was, you know, biased and contemptuous, of people that struggle to lose weight. And I felt like I was rather compassionate about that. Like I called myself out. Like there's the one time where I said something like, you know, you know, part of my brain is like, get it together. But I said that in the context of also saying, like, I understand that that is a wrong headed wrong headed motion. Like, it's more difficult for other people than for other for certain people than it is for other people.

Right.

And I can't begin to presume what that experience is like or the intensity of one person's cravings, you know, in contrast to whatever I experience. And I was very clear to say that for certain people who are tremendously overweight and have tried and tried and tried to lose weight or sustain some kind of weight loss unsuccessfully, that there is a real viable reason to explore this medication. Right. While also saying we don't actually know, you know, anyway. Well, I mean, it hit a nerve. I mean, the episode's doing really well. It's created like a discourse and a and a dialogue. Good.

And I I stand by it. And I and I have to say also that that, Johan was a great sport. Like I was able to push back on him and we had fun with it and he didn't take it personally. And it was kinda fun to jostle him and jot when he was like, you're still going to KFC or you had M and M's for breakfast. Like, come on, dude. You know? And I do feel like a chapter in the book is missing, which is what happens when he decides to go off it. And I did get a lot of messages and comments from people who have taken Ozempic and are now, you know, I don't know how long, like, you know, they've been taking it for a long time and have had that thing that happens with most drugs, which is that the efficacy starts to wear off and you, you start to need to either take more, like the, the hunger starts to return. Interesting.

And so they're starting to gain weight back while also still being on the medication. Oh, wow. And I don't know if that's a, and again, I'm like, I'm not a doctor.

Is that anecdotal or is that a

Yeah.

I don't know if that's

a universal thing, or that's something that only a few people are experiencing, and only and only time will tell. And then the other criticism I got was that if I was gonna have a conversation about Ozempic, why am I having it with, with this, journalist? Why aren't I having it with an expert in the field? And I can hear that, and maybe I will. You know? But Johan's the one who wrote a book about it. He's having this experience, and he's a great person to have a conversation with, and I enjoyed it. And it seems like, you know, a lot of other people did as well.

Yeah. I was left with a Well, just hearing you talk, I wonder if like, kind of like your own weight loss journey led to a life change that was so significant that it's, it's almost incalculable. Like you, you rediscovered your, your athlete, your, the athlete inside you. You changed everything. You got a new career. It's led to this. And without the pain and having the hard, the hard work, would you, you know, if you just could have taken Ozempic and I would have muted your desire for alcohol and food, would you have become who you are today? And so that would be- I mean, probably not, but

I can't project that expectation of experience on another human being.

No, no. But that could have, that could be some subconscious feeding your own skepticism of it. I was left with kind of the interesting impression because at the end it got kind of science fiction y where you guys were talking about like, imagine a drug that does x, y, and z. And he saw, he brought up Soma from Brave New World. And, and I loved it. I loved especially the end. And I thought I, first of all, for the record, I don't think contentious is the word. I thought, I thought you brought healthy skepticism and you, there was some sparring, but it was all good natured and, and he was open to it because he likes intellectual discussions.

So like, it was kind of like

And not for nothing. He's very aware of all of these risks.

He agrees

with you. They're all detailed in the book. Right. You know, at length. Right? So he's not sounding some kind of siren call that everybody should be on Ozempic. Far from far from it. And I felt like his frankness around, like just being open, like I'm taking it and here's what happened. And, and not trying to, you know, say that it's changed his eating.

Like, he's very honest. Like, I still, he still eats like shit or whatever. You know, like, he, you know, he's, he could have like been less honest about those things. So I appreciated that.

He's very transparent. I guess the only thing I would say was what I was left with was this, it's kind of a 2 parter, but, the one thing is it's very American, right, to have a pill. Like he brought up, you guys got into the alcoholism and a pill to stop alcoholism or addiction. And, and his response was, well, there's plenty of scientists who actually think Ozempic is that. And which I, the first I've heard of that.

And

so we got, you guys got into a long thread about that. You both kind of spoke at length and both said some really interesting and wise points. And what I was left, he described Portugal as this place where they took all the enforcement and punishment for, drug use and drug sales and put it all into addiction, legalized drugs, put all into into addiction treatment and housing and this in this thing. And, you know, we, you know, and it worked, you know, their addiction fell, but, but, you know, that won't apply here because we are so individualistic as a country and always have been. We bet that that I just don't see that ever happening here. Not saying it can't. I shouldn't say that. I don't see it ever happening here because the way we function is the individual must do.

That's how this, that's why these people came here back in the, you know, 100 of years ago, was to have opportunity they couldn't have at home and they were gonna do what they wanted to do. Now, not everybody had equal opportunity. We know that. That's not the story I'm telling. But the point I'm trying to make is we're so individualistic that, 2 things come from that. 1 is, you have to do it on your own because there won't be some systemic fix. And some people need something that can, some people will need to press the button, right? Some people will need to because they can't, you can't actually do it on your own, right? You have to find some way to do it. Like you have to plug in, whether it's in your case, a 12 step system that helped kind of you along or whether it's therapy or whether it's support groups or whatever it is, you can't, you know, Noom, you can't do it really, actually do it alone.

So you need to figure out what that is. But Ozempic actually kind of lets you do it alone. Right? So there's something uniquely American about it.

That's an intro. Yeah. That's an interesting, interesting thought. I wanna think a little bit more deeply about that. But I think you're right. When you say individualistic, you're not saying everybody's different. You're saying individualism. Like the whole premise of this country is based upon self efficacy and the, you know, the we celebrate, you know, the individual at often or, you know, probably at the cost of the collective whole.

We do.

Like that scale is off and that's driving a lot of the problems that we have.

But it also feeds the stories we like, right? Like even.

Right, because every, because they're self made. Right, you love

a self made. You go

against all the obstacles and you overcome them and you did it yourself. Right,

The suffering feeds your, your, it teaches you something and that you can use that to actually become a better evolution. And I agree with you on it because you said that and I totally agree with you. The thing is, is that there's this general skepticism about, we all have skepticism, right? We all are rightfully skeptical. Someone rightfully skeptical about a journalist telling you about Ozempic, or, you know, you rightly, fully skeptical about, you know, what's going to happen to your brain over time and your bone density. And like, that's so right. But you know, we, what I, what I kind of came out of it is how many of us are, we're all so skeptical. We're selectively skeptical. We're all selectively skeptical.

Based upon our inherent biases.

Yes.

And and the stuff we consume. We're not

skeptical of the things we wanna hear. No.

You know what? We're not We're

only skeptical of the things that challenge what we wanna

hear. Right. And we're not skeptical of the way we think. Almost nobody is is is automatically skeptical of what the way we're thinking.

Well, because we all think we have the best opinions. Right.

Because if

we didn't think they were the best opinions, we would change them.

Right. The version of skepticism for for that we tell ourselves isn't really skepticism. It's self flagging. It's like, it's like whipping. It's like, it's like a whipping. Excuse me. But, yeah. So anyway, that's what came out of it for me.

This, this individualistic, kind of feeling that comes with evolution that comes through the American kind of upbringing. And this kind of plays right into it. It's, it's, it, it's no, no surprise that it's a big hit, you know, as epic. And I think that what you brought up was all your points were so valid and, and, there's gotta be a balance. And we, the scary part is when you put up a medicine out into the world or a chemical and you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, you don't have to, he brought up those kind of 1970s diet pills, but like DDT is another great example. People thought we're going to feed the world with DDT. We're gonna feed the world.

And then now there's vats of it in the Sure. There's always

there's always, unexpected, negative consequences that were unforeseeable at the time. Yeah. And so we'll we will see. Yeah. We will see here, You know? But I think the point I was trying to make, and I hope came across, is that it isn't a black or white thing. It's a nuanced thing. And I tried to bring some nuance to that experience. And and Johan was a great sparring partner.

And I'm grateful that, you know, he was game for the conversation we had.

Yeah. It was awesome, man. It was awesome.

I wanna do a little, shifting gears. I wanna do a little in memoriam. Let's do it. We're recording this on May 29. And 1 week ago, May 21 was the 4 year anniversary of our friend David Clark's passing. Yeah. David Clark was an ultra athlete, a plant based person who, had lost 100 of pounds. I think he was £320 at one point.

Changed his life around, you know, was has an insane sobriety story. Like, his drinking career was off the rails and was an inspiration to a lot of people. He was really a unique and amazing soul, and he died too soon from complications from a lower back surgery, I believe. Right? Right. It wasn't like he, you know.

No, it was a herniated disc he was trying to fix. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

That probably influences whether or not you're gonna think about surgery. You never.

That ended that.

He was an amazing human being. He changed a lot of lives and I just wanted to honor him today. He's been on the podcast twice and we'll link up, Jason Coop's reflections on him in the show notes. Jason is an ultra runner and a coach, who wrote, like, kind of a beautiful reflection on David's impact on his life and others.

Yeah. We are Superman.

We are Superman. That was his thing. Right? That was his Yeah. Like, we're all we are all Superman.

That's right.

Yeah. And the other person I wanted to talk about today is, is John Urbanchak who, you know, in my opinion and my personal opinion, was the greatest swim coach of our generation.

Okay.

And he died on May 9th, at 87 from complications related to Parkinson's. He was a beautiful human being who impacted, the hearts and minds of of of so many young athletes over many, many years. I had the good fortune to know him a little bit, and, he will be, you know, just really missed. I mean, John was my favorite swim coach. I know for a fact that if I had swum for him in college, I would have been a much better swimmer. He was just beautifully touched and had the right amount of push to positive energy. Like, he really invested in p in in people. Like, he, you know, loved the kids that he taught.

He believed in them. He was very invested in their lives and knew how to get the best performances out of them through positive encouragement as opposed to, you know, being kind of a hard ass. I mean, he knew how to be a hard ass, but, he just had this touch with people. And everybody who was blessed to swim for him just adored him. And the outpouring of love and support in the wake of his passing on Instagram from so many Olympic swimmers over the years was was really quite something. So John was the coach at the University of Michigan, from 1982 to 2004 for a long time. He coached that team to 13 big 10 championships, 1 national championship. Over the course of his career, he coached 44 Olympians, 21 medalists, 21 Olympic medalists.

He was a coach on 6 different Olympic teams. Amazing. He was a coach to Michael Phelps when he was at the University of Michigan. Also Katie Ledecky, Mike Barrowman, who was my peer. I grew up swimming with Mike in Washington DC, who got got the gold medal in 1992 in the 200 meter breaststroke. He's a world record holder. Tom Dolan, who swam for my club team and was a young kid when I was in high school, so I didn't really know him. I just knew him as this little youngster, but he went on to, you know, great acclaim as a swimmer.

Tom Melcho, many, many others.

Was he, was he, who Michael Phelps would go back to Michigan between Olympiads and when he first started to get, like, get in shape again?

Bowman was Phelps's primary coach from North Baltimore. And so, you know, that was really Michael's guy. But Michael did attend the University of Michigan. And when he was there, he swam he swam for John. Later in his career, John was coaching in Southern California and he coached the crew of post grads who were training at USC for the Olympics. So it was like Ryan Lochte and like Connor Dwyer and like a whole bunch of people who who were out of college, but, you know, quote unquote professional swimmers. And I had the opportunity to swim a couple workouts under him there, which was really fun. Because I met so I met John in 1985 when I went on a recruiting trip to the University of Michigan.

And it's a story I told many times. I told it in Finding Ultra. University of Michigan and their swimming program has sort of a family legacy piece for me because my grandfather, Dick Spindle, who died before I was born, was captain of the University of Michigan team in like the late 1920s. He had an American record in the 150 yard backstroke, which was an event back then. He was an Olympic hopeful. I believe that he just missed the Olympic team, by one place at Olympic trials. I think they took 3 in each event at the time, and I believe he got 4th in his event. So he didn't make the Olympics, but he was one of the, you know, he was he was one of the top performers of his era.

And his coach was a guy called Mat Man. And the natatorium at University of Michigan is the Mat Man natatorium. Like, it's named after the guy that my grandfather coached. And so, also, like, you know, my mother went to University of Michigan. My, you know, my dad went to law school there. All my, you know, a bunch of my cousins went there. My cousin Bill was editor of the Michigan Daily. So like, and I'm from Michigan originally.

So. Does Ose Perlman know this?

I think they

come up. Did he come up?

He must have come up.

Maybe I don't, I don't know if I talked about O's is a big Michigan guy. Yeah, I know. And like people who are into Michigan, they're into Michigan. Like it is, it's like going to a Michigan football game is like a, it's a whole experience, man. And, the stadium there, I mean, it's like, it's a 100000 person stadium.

Yeah. Amazing. I've never been. I'd love to go.

So I went on a recruiting trip, and that's where I met John for the first time. That was also one of my early experiences with alcohol. There was a dual meet, and I ended up going to this house party after the meet where all the swimmers were, and there was a keg, and I think I drunk. I drank a couple times prior to that, but I was still like maybe only 1 or 2 times before that. And I vividly recall, being handed, you know, a solo cup full full of beer, by this guy who, when I looked at him, I realized immediately who he was. He was Bruce Kimball, who was, other than Greg Louganis, like the greatest American diver who had gotten the silver medal on the 10 meter platform at the 1984 Olympics the year prior, and whose father, Dick Kimball, was the diving coach at the University of Michigan. And in 1981, Bruce was hit. He was he was in a hit and run where he was hit by a drunk driver.

And he had facial, you know, sort of reconstruction. You could tell his face had to sort of, like it had to be like rebuilt. It was a very serious accident.

Wow.

It was a life threatening accident. But in 1982, he came back from that and made the world championship team in diving. And so he was like this comeback kid. He was called a comeback kid. It was like this amazing story where he came back from this accident, to basically get back to where he was as an athlete. And so for me, as this kid who's in high school, you know, I was like, I knew this whole story. I knew who this guy was. And here he was handing me a beer.

And I

was like, of course, I'm gonna drink that beer. Right. And, and again, forgive me because I've told this story many times. But he then proceeded to perform the greatest party trick of all time. Have I told you this? No. So he's holding his cup of beer, and then he launches himself off the ground and so steady. Like, it's a like, it's a like,

his hand is a steady cam, you know.

So his hand is a steady cam. Yeah. Like, so steady. Like, it's like it's like his hand is a steady cam,

you know. So his hand doesn't move, but his whole body

moves? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, I

still don't know how he did it. And I just remember thinking, like, whatever that guy has, like, I want that. Like, I'm gonna hang out with this dude, you know.

Yes, of course.

Little did I know that this was sort of a foreshadowing because I was like, oh my god. Like, so I just partied with that guy all night.

I bet.

But but what would happen was that a handful of years later in 1988, Bruce was drunk, and he plowed his car, driving, they say between 70 90 miles an hour into a crowd of teenagers. He killed 2 teen boys, injured 4, was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and ultimately served 5. And I believe now he's, he's sober. He has kids, a family. I think he might still coach diving. But I mean, one of the most tragic things that you could imagine.

So it came full circle.

Yeah. So he had his own journey with alcoholism and tragic consequences as a result of that.

Heavy.

And I think about that a lot. In any event, that's all in the context of meeting, meeting, John Urbanczyk for the first time. Oh, and at that same party, I met, Jim Harbaugh too. He was the quarterback. Right.

Right. Right.

He was at this party. We were it was snowing, and I remember we were outside this house, and, and he pulled, like so it had a low awning, and there were icicles hanging from the awning, and he pulled this huge icicle off, and he'd used it to, like, stir his beer. That is my memory. Of course, memory plays tricks.

Yes.

You know, if I could rewind the tape, I think, is that exactly how that went down? But I know that I met I know that I met him there, and we had there was a moment where I was, like talking to him. Anyway, here's an interesting story that I haven't told though. So I didn't end up going to Michigan. I think often of what would have happened had I gone and swam for John at Michigan instead. And as I said, I think I would have been a better swimmer. And I know this because that summer, the summer of 1985, I graduated from high school, and I made the team for something that was called the National Sports Festival. This is something that no longer exists that I wish did because it was such a cool thing. This summer, summer of 1985, the the United States put on what was essentially an Olympics, but only for American athletes, where everybody went to, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

And it was like a summer Olympiad, all the sports of the summer Olympics, and the teams divided into north, south, east, and west. So I made the swimming team

The east.

For for the east. Yeah. And, and John Urbanczyk was the coach of that team. So, you know, we let you go early and you train and whatever. And so I had the experience of like kind of having him, coach me for a couple weeks over the course of that experience.

How'd you do?

I did get that was like one of my best performances. Were you on the lead? I was leading the choner fly, and then I got I got touched out by a guy called Jeff Olson. So I got I got the silver.

So you that's almost like you were basically Olympic trials,

track. I never I never yeah. I didn't I wasn't I never could get over See then so then I show up at Stanford and I had all this promise, you know, but I went on to squander that promise. And so I never really, you know, realized my potential is now.

Right. Right. Right.

I was never gonna make the Olympic. I wasn't that good.

Right. Right. Right. I was like good. The times weren't on that track?

No. No. No. Yeah. Yeah.

It's hard to know though. You never know.

And then John, you know, I would I would stay in touch with him over the over time. And I remember I went to one of those UFC workouts, like right after I did Otillo. So I was super fit, and he was, like, very kind.

And I was, like, trying

to keep up with the guys who were there. Lochte was there. Yeah. Yeah.

Does he still have the sign for Bill?

Connor Dwyer invited me. Dylan Efron is there, who's sort of like, who's sort of like Orlando Bloom. He's Zac Efron's

brother, but he's this incredible athlete. He can do like any sport. He's like super fit.

Yeah. He's Yeah. And then I

met I I I

was invited to go to the Olympic training center a number

of years ago by a coach called Jack Roche. Yeah.

And Jack is like, was best friends with, with John. They had this beautiful, incredible, close knit friendship. And they're very they're very alike in their sensibility and their philosophy around coaching. Both of them just love these kids. And Jack, for many years, was, the coach of the, national junior development team. So and he he'd been on Olympic staffs and stuff like that as well.

I've heard the name.

Yeah. He's great. So there's a New York Times article obituary around Jon Urbancak that I'll link up in the show notes where, Jack is quoted in that. But anyway, this is a long way of saying that Jon will be missed. And also, and I shared this on Instagram, like coaches take note. Like if you wanna be a great coach, like study the ways of Jon Urbanjack and Jack Roach. Like these guys are like whisperers for Olympic athletes, because they understand how young people work. They know how to motivate them.

And they do that through this really heartfelt investment in them as people. And I just think that is, you know, a beautiful testament to the power of a great coach, and, you know, kind of the legacy that that has on lives, you know, many, many, many years decades later. Because it's weird. Like I was very moved. It's like if I count the number of times that I was in the presence of John Urbanski, it's not that much, you know? But he made a profound impact on my life. And I think about him often. And, you know, I didn't even have nearly the kind of experience that, you know, 100, if not thousands of other of other athletes have had with him. Beautiful.

Yeah, man. I think there's only one more thing that I wanted to cover with you today, which is recently,

Should we clear the books off the table?

Yeah. Maybe if they're in the way.

Let's clear off the books. Alright.

So recently in in Los Angeles, there's a small chain of restaurants called Sage, Sage Bistro. They have been vegan restaurants and they're of the same family that is behind Cafe Gratitude and, Gracias Madre, which are, like, you know, these beautiful, legendary plant based restaurants in Los Angeles. And, I mean, Cafe Gratitude started in San Francisco. Ryan Englehart, who's a member of that family, has been a guest on the podcast. He's a big proponent of regenerative agriculture. He's one of the guys behind the kiss the ground, nonprofit and documentary and the follow-up to that documentary, which is called Common Ground. And Sage was or is run by Ryland's sister, Molly. And the big news is that Sage, which has always been a plant based restaurant, is now serving meat.

Yes. And this tracks back to the, farm that Ryland and Molly's family owned for which they were using to provide the produce for these restaurants many years ago. They went from that farm being totally, you know, just agriculture to actually harvesting animals there as well. And that was a big kerfuffle in the vegan movement. And now the latest sort of kerfuffle is that, you know, this legendary plant based restaurant is now gonna serve meat. So this has kicked up, you know, a bit of a controversy in the plant based community. And I thought it was worth kind of exploring some of the issues that have come out of this. And to talk a little bit maybe about the regenerative agriculture movement at large.

Right.

Because that's the idea is that they're gonna serve meat that they say is cultivated.

From this regenerative farm.

Yep. Which is

part of the solution to economic degradation.

Environmental. Environmental. Environmental degradation.

Yeah. Exactly. So let's talk a little bit about it. I mean, I think to be sure, and certainly, regenerative farming is there's a lot of amazing things about this. I wish that all CAFOs and, you know, kind of factory farms could transition into regenerative practices. It's a topic I've explored many times on the podcast. Remember the Biggest Little Farm and, you know, that couple that runs that farm, they've been guests on the podcast. So certainly there are things to be learned and and many benefits to moving away from monocropping to a more kind of sustainable wild grasses, rotating, you know, kind of agriculture, you know, contained environment that's restoring the soil.

And at the same time, you know, pulling the c o two out of the atmosphere and putting it into the soil. Right? Yeah. But I also think it's worth talking about the fact that this isn't necessarily a a panacea. I don't think that this is the way forward in terms of how we're gonna feed the planet. To raise animals on a regenerative farm or to raise grass fed beef requires a tremendous amount of land. These animals are alive longer than the factory farmed animals. Like, if there's one thing factory farm does well, it's it's basically conserve as much, you know, basically conserve as much resources as possible to blow an animal up as quickly as possible so that they can slaughter it. They do it on as least amount of land possible, in the least number of days.

If you're gonna raise cattle grass fed on these regenerative farms, they're gonna be alive longer. They're gonna be consuming more. They're gonna be, drinking more water, and they're gonna be kind of pooping and belching more. So there's an argument that they're actually producing more. Each particular cow.

Methane as

a result.

But there's fewer cows though.

And they require, you know, a lot more land and more and the longer they're alive, obviously they have to be, you know, fed longer.

Right.

So when you look at it from that perspective, understanding that producing a carbon neutral or carbon positive effect of of of a so called regenerative farm requires 2.5 times more grazing land than standard animal agriculture, you quickly realize that this is not a realistic path forward in terms of providing meat for the world. Like it can provide a small amount of meat at a higher price point for those who can afford it. And certainly, that's a better option. But in terms of of meeting worldwide and growing demand for meat, as of right now, more than 50% of the planet's ice free land is already being used for livestock grazing and for livestock feed production. So even if we continue to use conventional agriculture methods, much less 2.5 times more land, there's gonna be little to no arable land left if we wanna continue producing animal based foods for the expected population of, you know, 9 to, you know, upwards of 9,700,000,000 as we approach 2050. And I think part of the issue that maybe I'm having is that there's an implicit sort of greenwashing aspect to this in the sense that you can you can go to one of these restaurants, or you can purchase your grass fed whatever, and you can convince yourself that you're you're you're doing what's in the best interest of the planet, or you're making a choice that is, you know, serving, serving, you know, planetary repair. When in truth, look, beef just requires a tremendous amount of resources. And right in front of you, you have the choice to just not eat beef.

Right. You know, it's like eating this beef is not really helpful. And I say that with the caveat that, again, like regenerative farming, farming practices that are doing a lot towards restoring the soil is a good thing. Just don't be under the delusion that by eating these animal products that you're, solving this problem.

Right. That you're on the good side of climate change or any number of issues, you're saying?

Yeah. You're still participating also in this cycle of unnecessary suffering. And when you look at plant products, like for example, a 100 grams of tofu requires 74 times less land use compared to a 100 grams of beef. And that's not to say that that's an argument for monocropping, but at the same time, you know, I think there's a lot of hand wringing over certain crops that are very water intensive at the cost of not understanding that most plant crops and foods that we can eat as humans, are just far less intensive than, you know, the ultimate intensive food product, which is beef. Yep. So I'm just saying, why not more plant based? And I think there's an argument with Sage, like, oh, we're we're kind of moving forward into this into this, way of serving food for a reason. But I have to think, like, if it was thriving economically as a plant based restaurant, would they have made that move? And I think we're seeing the closure of a lot of plant based restaurants right now. And I don't know what's going on with that.

But I think if Sage had been, you know, killing it, they would not have been making this decision.

Clearly. That's that's it.

You know, they're trying to survive as a commercial enterprise.

It's

a business. That's it. They, you can in the letter, I think, or in the, I forgot in the announcement, I think Molly said that her husband kind of grew up on a farm eating, animals as well as vegetables and always found it less authentic to be serving kind of vegan comfort food.

Whether Molly is still vegetarian.

Right. But I think that, but, so they're kind of dressing it up as a choice kind of beyond economics. But it seems to me, considering all the vegan places that seem to be going out, Nick's, you know, the, what's it called? The, Monty's Good Burger went huge and then retracted quite

a bit. Yeah. Monty's is still, it's still around. It's still

around, but it went really big and then it retracted quite a bit. They closed a lot of, a lot of their restaurants.

Running a restaurant is hard. Yeah. Under the best circumstances to make a restaurant, successful commercially is incredibly difficult. So I'm sympathetic to anybody who's trying to, you know, keep the keep the lights on. And COVID, you know, as we all know, like resulted in, you know, just a, I don't know what percentage of restaurants closed, but a lot of them. So even in the wake of that, then this long tail before people started returning to restaurants. So I understand why diversifying a menu might be the best way forward. I'm just saying like, don't be

confused. Don't be confused. Yes.

Yeah. Like don't, don't be confused. And it's just a more, you know, it's a nuanced, difficult thing. I'm not an environmental scientist, but there are people who spend a lot of time studying this and looking at it. And I'm gonna link some stuff up into the show notes if you wanna learn more about this. Simon Hill, our friend over at the Proof Podcast has done a lot of reporting on this. He did a really he's done a number of interesting podcasts on this specific topic. So if you go to the proof.com, you can just search regenerative, you know, whatever.

And there's plenty of plenty of episodes for you to listen to. He's had George Montbiage on who is very outspoken about this. George, of course, who writes for The Guardian, George, you know, George has basically said the only thing worse than feedlot beef is grass fed beef. Like he's he does not get his words.

He's against it.

Yeah. He's very against it. But, you know, he'll go through all of his arguments. I'll link up some other articles as well. There was a recent interesting study that came out in 2023, that basically looked at the difference between pasture finished cattle farms and, and these regenerative farms, and basically determined that pasture finished cattle farms had 20% higher production emissions than grain finished farms, a figure that matched those from previous research. But the most novel part of the finding was that when both the soil sequestration and the carbon opportunity cost of the converted pasture land use was factored in, that carbon footprint figure rose to a striking 42%. Just super interesting.

That is interesting.

So anyway, this is a very, you know, hotly debated topic. There are, you know, passionate people on both sides of it. And so I'm not saying that I have all of the answers, but I think it's important to look at both sides of this. And, and that's all I'm saying. Yeah. Do you have anything else you wanna say on that?

Well, there was a great book by a guy named James Reebanks who was, a legacy farmer. His his father and grandfather were basically, we'd call them ranchers, but they're farmers in, UK, in Northern England, I believe it is. And, he inherited a farm that was, they were renting their land and it had lots of problems. It had soil that was degraded. It had, there were bills to pay, fences to rebuild. And he kind of took it over and decided to make it more regenerative, like went the regenerative route. And he wrote a really beautiful memoir about it. And from what you're left with after that book is that, isn't, isn't the, that regenerative farming is the holy grail to our food system.

Because I agree with you. I don't think it is. But what, what, what you're left with is it's, it's communicating with the land again. It's, it's reinvesting in the soil. It's birds come back. It's building, it's building topography back. I mean, when we, remember when we went to, if you go out to the surf ranch, I went with Rich to the surf ranch. We shredded.

Yeah, it was amazing. We were amazed.

Kai Lenny is still talking about

it. Kai Lenny can't stop talking about it. But when you go out there, it's in the middle of this kind of decaying agricultural town, like near an, it's on an Indian reservation, but there's also this kind of once vibrant agriculture town that's down on its heels because there's so few farmers needed now. It's just all monoculture.

It's super monocrop city.

Right, it is. And maybe that's the way you can make a living. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not judging anyone, but this is another way. It did feel like you're not communicating with the land. You're imposing on the land.

I get that piece. Yeah. To reconnect us with the land and to understand, you know, it's seasonality and and the importance of diversity. Like, all the lessons that we need to learn for ourselves can be learned through the process of that reconnection. And just having that happen. Beautiful and spiritual about that. Like, I don't I don't discount that at all. And I think if you're if you were to go to the Central Valley in California and take over some of those plots of land and do that very thing where you're restoring the soil to create something beautiful and diverse and amazing, I think that that's a laudable project.

But what I don't think is a great idea would be to deforest a plot of land so that you could build a regenerated farm because the deforestation is doing more for the environment than whatever you're gonna do on that regenerated farm. So it's the conversion of of plots of land that are that are, you know, contributing to the decline and converting them into a net positive, I think is is great. Right.

It's great environmentally, but from a

food system perspective. But how important is it to have cows on these, like, can't, my whole thing is like, can't you do this without the cows? And there's a lot of talk, well, the cows and they, they, you know, they, they, they, you know, they mash the soil. And I was like, yeah, but like, like there's other ways of doing that.

I know, but you're not.

So I'm not a farmer either. I'm just talking out

of my ass. Well, you're also. My bias. You're against killing animals. That's great.

Right. But then it's like, well, if you, you know, yeah. But if you're growing these plants on these farms, like lots of animals have to die for them to, you know, I, I like, I understand.

I've had, I've had this conversation with April just to goose her because I'm, I don't, I don't eat beef. But I mean, but we, we talk about it like, you know, if you love animals, you know, if there's no, if people aren't eating meat, there ain't gonna be no cows around anymore. You know what I mean? Like all the animal, all the farm animals won't be there anymore. That's not a reason to eat them. I'm not saying eat them. I'm just saying like, we live in this.

Yeah,

but we breed them.

I know.

They're not

there because they were wandering around and we, we like corralled them into some farm.

It would

be a fundamentally different experience, you know, to have this world where the foods is, I agree. I take the Dan Butner, Shout out, Dan Buettner. I take the Dan Buettner kind of, how I stopped eating meat was through blue zones. I started to only eat, and I had chicken and beef, anything meat, 3 times a month. Because in his mind, that's what the blue zones that's what they did back in the day in a lot of these blue zones. It was a special occasion thing. It was expensive, and they use it in a special occasion. And by doing that, my taste buds changed.

I I lost the taste for it. I don't want chicken. I don't want beef. I don't want any of that, because I lost the taste buds for it. And so then I started to just eat plants. And so But

what happened with this argument with April?

She doesn't like that. She doesn't like hearing she thinks I'm just making an excuse to eat meat, which I'm not doing. Like, like people who have this, who are I was never a passionate vegan. I just happened to go this route because I thought I was because I liked it and it felt better. And also, yes, I don't wanna kill a bunch of animals. Like, I don't wanna do that. But I'm not like, you wouldn't put me I wouldn't be out. Like, if you made me a climate activist, I wouldn't be throwing tomatoes too at night.

You're not, you're not gonna go throw blood on, you

know, press

on the Tom Ford storefront or whatever.

I'm not doing it. I'm not I'm not one of those people who's gonna get outraged like that, but probably because I ate meat so so long. Right? And so I understand why people do it. But the problem is the food system, right, which brings us back to Johan actually and what we were talking about before. The problem is this food system is broken. And so, you know, to, in order to get to the point where we can talk about getting rid of animal farming, it's like a much bigger conversation, about changing the food system fundamentally from this extractive, impositional kind of dominator culture way and going back to a more communicative, integrative way of being. So in that sense, regeneration sounds great. It is great.

But is it, and maybe it's the only thing that's gonna save your restaurant. But I take your point. Let's not tell stories here. Let's not like, marijuana's legal now. There was a time when it was only legal as a medical, but it was never medical. It was all bullshit. It was always bullshit. I I was, at the time, couldn't wait for it to be illegal medically.

I was all about it. I covered it as a journalist. I I was in some of the first medical marijuana shops, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco too. I thought it was awesome as a person who liked to enjoy it. But, I never thought it was for patients, but that's what was said, right? And so this kind of idea that regenerative farming is good for the I agree with you. There's a lot of dishonesty in that. It's it's not telling the whole story. And I wish that more people told the whole story and weren't trying to pass a line.

And I'm not saying Sage is doing that. I'm just saying in general, as you see people marketing something and saying it's for one thing, when really it never was for that thing, it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And now we have, yeah, I don't know how I got on this tangent, but now you can go to the farmer's market in the morning with your kid and someone's gonna be getting high, like on the street. And is that good? You know, is that an improvement? You know, so like these kinds of things, when you don't, when you're not honest about it, you can't really grapple with it. And then all of a sudden it's here. And back to Jonathan Haidt, back to, to Johan, the same is true when we're talking about Ozempic. The same is true with these social media companies. They say 1, you know, anyone who's saying something but not telling you the whole truth, I think you're contributing to the confusion and the chaos that we're all living with today.

And that's why there's so many outraged people, because people aren't being honest.

That was a pretty good monologue. It doesn't

was it just I felt like it was good.

It was good. I like how you called things back and you just wrapped it all up in a nice bow. I don't even know what to say to that. I think you're right. Like I think, yes, when you look at regenerative farms, like our food system is broken. Part of what's broken is our total disconnect from the cycle of nature in our food system and even beyond that. Right? And to the extent that the regenerative movement is a way to repair that lost connection, it's certainly a good thing. We do need to repair our soils.

We do need to, understand that resilience comes through cultivating diversity. Like there's so many lessons that are applicable, not just with, you know, what we plant and what we harvest, but how that applies to how we as humans interact with each other and create the cultures and the future of our aspiration for future generations. Like there's beauty in that for sure. But again, yeah, just like, let's not be diluted or confused about, you know, standing or like sort of moral grandstanding on on on, you know, some kind of misplaced justification around, like, eating beef when it's unnecessary. And that's part of what's contributing to the problem. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah. Less moral grandstanding.

And I like Ryland. You know? I like him a lot. He's a beautiful guy, and I always enjoy his company, and I love the podcast conversation that we have. So it's not this is not about a slight on anybody. And I think the work that he's done and the advocacy that he's done around this movement is really laudable. Like kiss the ground, and these movies that he's put out, like they've really struck a chord. And for a lot of people, it's their first, it's like light bulb moment of like, of course, this is what we need to do. And you are seeing young people who are interested in getting into farming, and wanna, you know, learn more about like agriculture.

And and the the more that this matures, the more, economic, kind of resources get poured into it, and the more, jobs there are for people, like learning how to transition, factory farms into regenerative, like, there's so much good there. Yes. So I'm not I I guess what I'm saying is like, I don't wanna I don't I'm not I'm not being like a angry vegan poo pooer, you know. No. I'm trying to see all sides of this. That's

Well, also, also it is sad to lose another bespoke vegan restaurant. Like Sage is awesome. I ate there many times. I've eaten at Cafe Gratitude many times. Gracias Madre every time, many times. I remember the old Real Food Daily. Like these are restaurants that we grow to love because we can only go to a few restaurants. Right? And so then we grow to love them.

And so then when they change, especially in this way, it's kind of a bummer. Right? And then as a And then,

you know, then there's a, there's a segment of the vegan community that's very loud and aggressive about these.

They wanna kill you.

Yeah. Like they get really mad.

Yeah.

And that's not helping anybody either.

No. You know, so. Right. The tone, like there was the, there was something in this eater article. I don't know if you're gonna post it, but about the, Ryland and Molly's father kind of launched Caviaratitude, right? And Gracias Madre. And then when it became out that he was doing this agriculture and the animal agriculture and he ate meat, he was given death threats.

Yeah. I remember when that all came out.

I mean, that's crazy.

Because I think people were responding to a sense of duplicity. Like there was this idea that it was, you know, this idea like utopia where, they had this cyclical thing between the farm and the restaurant, and there was an integrity to that, that, when I don't know that they were ever hiding whatever they were doing, but when it came out like, oh, yeah, I eat meat, that's, I think, for certain people, that was, like, difficult for them. But that's not a justification for like that kind of spiteful anger.

It's just a person's choice in their life.

You can be, you can disagree with it, but you're not winning hearts and minds when you're like launching death threats at people.

I guess No. And for some reason, vegans haven't won hearts and minds. I don't know why.

They really haven't. They really haven't. Don't know. You

do. You do. You manage to do it.

I don't know, man. You do.

But I will say before we stop all the doom and gloom, we do have plant Planta now here in LA.

Oh, yeah.

That's right.

There's multiple locations.

And everyone is different. They're all over the country now too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I went to the one in Marina del Rey, and the the owner, like the owner of all of them happened to be there and got to meet him briefly. And, yeah, they're doing a good job.

Yeah, they are awesome.

I like that place.

Yeah, it's good.

So in the meantime, eat a salad, treat yourself right. And, we'll be back here at some point in the future. All right. All right. That was fun, dude. I appreciate it.

Me too, man. Yeah.

Yeah. You do. Can I

ask you a question before I before we get out of here? How's the how's the network going, man?

It's good.

How do you enjoy being the head of a network?

It's what you know, we're we're it's baby steps, but we're out of the gate and it's going well. I'm really enjoying, like, working with other creators and supporting them and, you know, figuring out who we wanna work with and all of that. Like, it's it's been really fun and rewarding. And we're just we're at the very, you know, beginning of what I think is gonna be a cool journey. Awesome. So I have more to share about that. Okay. Cool.

But yeah. It's been great. And, keep us posted on the novel.

Will do. Will do. I can't wait to see what happens. Cool. I like coming here because I can't check my email while I'm talking to you.

You sure you didn't do that while

you were on vacation?

Okay. Well, you can do it now. Alright, buddy. Love you. Cheers.

You too, bro. Bye.

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 atrichroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals dotrichroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/ sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful.

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